When Technology Becomes Treatment-How Digital Therapeutics Are Creating a New Category of Healthcare

Monisha Saldanha (00:03) Welcome to Colorado Tech People, the podcast where we talk with founders and leaders using technology to solve real world problems. I am your host, Monisha Soldana, an executive with fifteen years of product management experience. What happens when the future of digital therapeutics is not just more AI, but better human support, better evidence, and better behavior change?

Today I'm joined by Dr. Samantha Monson, founder and CEO of We Hate Exercise, a digital health company helping people build sustainable movement habits through evidence-based support, accountability, and community. Sam brings a rare combination of clinical expertise, lived experience, and founder grit to the conversation. We'll talk about why behavior change is so hard, and

how digital therapeutics are evolving in the age of AI, and what it takes to fund a company that is both mission driven and commercially scalable. Sam, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Sam Monson (01:10) Absolutely. I love what you all are doing and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Monisha Saldanha (01:15) So glad to have you be a part of it. So let's dive in. First question for you. We Hate Exercise starts with a refreshingly honest premise. A lot of people know exercise is good for them, but they still hate doing it. What made you decide to build it around that truth instead of using the more typical wellness language of motivation, optimization, or performance?

Dr. Sam Monson (01:40) It's such a great question and it's built into the reaction that people have about our name. When you name what is true for people in a radically honest way, it tends to unlock or create flexibility in their thinking. And that's exactly what we want to do to try to give a reset or a new opportunity for folks who have been unsuccessful with the dominant narratives.

Monisha Saldanha (02:03) Fantastic. And I mean, it's maybe obvious, but what was the problem that you solved that you want that you saw that you wanted to solve?

Dr. Sam Monson (02:13) Yeah, absolutely. I spent decades working in primary care and I watched primary care providers over and over again telling patients about the benefits of exercise, even recommending specific things that they would do before follow-up.

And overwhelmingly patients w would return having been unsuccessful, which both meant that they didn't get the benefit for their health, but they also felt guilty in the process. And so I really wanted to offer an intervention, a therapeutic that would prescribe exactly the gap, which is that motivation, that accountability, that support that gets someone to do what they know they should do.

Monisha Saldanha (02:51) Fantastic. You are a clinical psychologist and someone with lived experience managing cystic fibrosis. How did those two perspectives shape the earliest version of We Hate Exercise?

Dr. Sam Monson (03:05) Yeah. You know, most founders live the problem that they're solving, and that is absolutely true for me. So cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition that includes limited lung capacity. Exercise is one of the best things for self-management and for symptom control, but because of the limited lung capacity, it also makes it extra hard. And so the reality for me for my entire life and for other CF patients like me is we have to do something for a disease that makes doing that really challenging.

And so I wanted to really embrace that dichotomy, that unique relationship that people have with exercise in those cases. And that is not only true for CF, that is true for myriad different diagnoses. Your health needs you to do it, and your health is making it harder for you. So I think it helped me build from a real place of empathy and of lived experience. The fact that I also am a clinical psychologist and that I have a doctorate in the solution to hard behaviors like this just let me then overlay the science that could change people's experience.

Monisha Saldanha (04:06) Hardest assumption you had to test in the beginning that people would engage, that behavioral change could happen digitally, that organizations would pay or something else.

Dr. Sam Monson (04:19) And you know, it's really interesting. The biggest challenge early on is that people would say, Exercise is really hard to get people to do. It's too hard of a nut to crack. I don't believe that you can be successful with this. And so we were in a bit of a chicken and egg situation of saying, No, I think that we have something that we believe really works. We need to be able to put people through this intervention to demonstrate that it works, but we had to have enough buy-in to do that. So those early heart conversations

very much pushing the boulder up the hill. Once we started having some early data and we could really show that we do have a success rate, which is unlike anything else that has been seen with other methodologies, the conversation softened and people s started to believe. But I can tell you a lot of people are still very skeptical. You know, they say behavior change is really hard, exercise is one of those, that's why most people are not as physically active as they should be. And so at the very outset we're saying

No, we know it's a hard problem. We have a way to solve it, but you have to trust us that we do.

Monisha Saldanha (05:23) In health tech, there is often pressure pressure to make big claims quickly. How did you decide what claims We Hate Exercise can responsibly make based on evidence?

Dr. Sam Monson (05:35) Yeah, I think that As a health tech founder, I have a unique perspective in that I also have been an academic and a researcher with the medical school here in Colorado for a long time. So the feedback that I got was I was too hesitant to make claims that were the kind of claims that were made in the health tech space. I was waiting to be able to make scientifically validated peer reviewable claims. And so for me I think it was the opposite problem that a lot of people have.

I solved that by setting up a research lab internally with our company to be collecting data that I was satisfied was rigorous enough, but on short enough cycles that we could put that out into the customer conversations, the investor conversations, even the end user conversations to be showing them the traction that we were getting and the difference that we were making.

Monisha Saldanha (06:27) Concretely, does We Hate exercise support behavior change? Is it just like interactions within the app? And what are those interactions like?

Dr. Sam Monson (06:36) Yeah. So The way that we support behavior change is that we bring people in who have been unsuccessful with getting physically activity bef physical activity before, but are being told that this is really important for their health. So they're in a double bind. We have real human coaching that they receive that looks at where they've been and where they want to go. And once that health coaching helps them identify what's called a SMART goal,

then each time they log into our platform to track their progress against that SMART goal, we have a complex and proprietary scientific framework that's based on the best behavior science that delivers iterative microinterventions to keep them doing whatever they need to be doing to stay on track with that goal. Now, the end user isn't experiencing those as microinterventions, they're experiencing them as

a message from their team for social support, a message from their accountability partner for shared experience, perhaps a prize for extrinsic motivation, all these different things. So we help people right size a goal and then we keep them motivated to stick with that despite the inevitable curveballs that life throws.

Monisha Saldanha (07:46) What's the most difficult trade off between clinical rigor and start up speed?

Dr. Sam Monson (07:53) my goodness. I think it, you know, it really goes. I'm a data nerd and I really care about the veracity of science. And I needed to, in my mind, what happens is you have an intervention, you prove it out through pilots and ultimately an RCT, and then it can go out into the world. And that is not the way that you're able to move a startup forward. So for me, it was really figuring out how do those things come together and how can my

focus and emphasis on sound science be built in as a selling point or a differentiator for our startup. and the other piece is that I surround myself with people who can fill in

experience or knowledge that I don't have. And so I have one particular advisor who's really amazing, who's also a clinical psychologist who feels this, but who's also an exited digital health founder who is able to help me sort of crosswalk my knowledge and experience into the startup world.

Monisha Saldanha (08:50) The digital therapeutics category is growing quickly and AI is changing what feels possible in personalized care. Where do you see AI genuinely helping behavior change and where do you think the hype gets ahead of the evidence?

Dr. Sam Monson (09:08) I think AI can be an incredibly powerful tool standalone, and we have seen this with lots of studies coming out about AI being experienced as empathic, for example, and AI being experienced as clinically responsible, and error rates not being dramatically different from the usual error rates of humans.

AI will always make things more available to people right when they need them. If you need to have a behavior change motivation and it comes at 5 a.m. when you're trying to decide if you're going to lace up your sneakers and go out for your walk or not, there's not going to be a human necessarily who's going to be available in that moment to you, but AI enabled systems will. And so I think it can help really create patient-centered solutions and attuned solutions. I think that the

hype comes from thinking that it will crowd humans out from the need to make behavior change possible. And as a clinical psychologist, I don't believe that that's true. I think that there is always an innate human need for other humans who we know share this existential experience with us and who can drive motivation, adherence, accountability in a different way than s that than an entity can.

Monisha Saldanha (10:26) just upon my next question. We Hate Exercise emphasizes real human connection and accountability. In an age where many companies are trying to automate support, why is the human layer so important?

Dr. Sam Monson (10:41) Yeah, such a good question. You know, there is an element of support that we're automating. We're also having AI help us get better at knowing what people need and serving up what they need in a more efficient way. But the human layer is important because at the core, when someone is trying to change a hard health behavior, and in particular when they're trying to do that because their health is on the line,

that taps into something that is very mortal and very human. And having another human who's in that with you unlocks a sense of validation or being seen that lets people feel like they can be more brave, but also when they are successful, that they feel more celebrated. And the way that those pathways light up in the brain is stronger and more lasting when it comes from that human connection.

Monisha Saldanha (11:35) How you think about the line between a wellness product, a digital health tool, and a true digital therapeutic?

Dr. Sam Monson (11:44) This is such an important distinction and a very common question that we get, especially when we're talking with potential investors. So there are many wellness products out there, tens of thousands. I like to think about this really as when you go into the grocery store and you have a symptom that you're trying to treat, you're gonna walk

through aisle through aisles that have many, many, many different products that are available to help you. So this would be like your supplements, things that say there is some reason to believe that this will be helpful. There's little harm in trying it, but it's a bit of a this feels right.

Then you move into digital health tools, and that's where you really see things like vitamins that have some pretty rigorous data behind them. You think I should have reason to believe that this works. If I talked with a medical professional, they would probably agree with that.

And then you get into true digital therapeutics. And those are when you reach the pharmacy counter. And that's where you say, I'm picking up a prescription because I need something that has been tested and known to provide a benefit. And that a medical provider decided was the right thing for me at this time. And I can count on getting the result that I need. So all are important, but obviously all serve a very different purpose.

Monisha Saldanha (13:02) And is there a any regulation around digital therapeutics?

Dr. Sam Monson (13:08) Yes, absolutely. So digital therapeutics are regulated by the FDA in the same way that medical devices or medications are regulated. It's obviously a really new category and so there is still a lot of regulatory framework and decision making around what gets FDA clearance or not based on what is being put into the market. And so

in the next few years we're really gonna see something very unique and very interesting, which is the companies that are innovating are really going to be defining how the regulatory landscape looks and what ends up being available to patients as the end users.

Monisha Saldanha (13:52) And has We Hate Exercise gotten FDA approval?

Dr. Sam Monson (13:58) We are actually quite a few steps away from that. So for a digital therapeutic, we will be seeking FDA clearance. We will need to have randomized control level data. That takes that typically takes three to five years. Few companies have reached it. So if you think about the number of medical devices on the market today that have been either cleared or approved by the FDA or medications.

With digital therapeutics, you're looking at around a dozen. So it's a brand new space. So we are driving toward that, but we do actually have interim steps that are revenue generating before that, because there have been some case examples of companies jumping all the way to digital therapeutics and while it's so new that being a risk that their company was not able to withstand. So it's on our roadmap, but we haven't yet arrived.

Monisha Saldanha (14:45) Exciting. For movement and chronic condition management, what kinds of data are actually useful for personalization and what data can become distracting or even harmful?

Dr. Sam Monson (14:58) Yeah, this is this is a I think Thinking about data and the use of data and how it applies to people's experience is that we really want to gather just enough data to know what people need and then to give people what they need and to move everything else aside. With behavior change, in including with chronic condition management, a lot of times people get flooded with trying to make too many changes at once

or with a change that has too much complexity or too many steps. And so I think data can be really helpful to personalize what does someone actually respond to in terms of observed behaviors. Not what they think they need, but what they show through demonstrated behavior they respond to. And then putting those things to the forefront and serving them up in just the right amount to do the job that need is needed to be done. And then everything else gets pushed aside.

For a digital therapeutic, this is similar to if someone said, we're gonna start you on an antidepressant for your depression. You would start a small dose and you would not add more if the w if the symptoms were being well managed by a small dose. Or the same thing with an anti hyp with an antihypertension drug. Same idea with behavior change and the use of data to tailor it as the person progresses.

Monisha Saldanha (16:14) If AI could safely support one part of We Hate Exercise experience over the next few years, where would you want it to help? Personalization, coaching support, adherence prediction, outcomes measurement, or something else?

Dr. Sam Monson (16:32) I would absolutely say personalization. Really the heart and soul of the best medicine is that it meets people where people where they are and that they feel seen and heard and understood such that they can unlock the next step into our into their journey toward wellness. And I think this also speaks to really pushing the forefront of AI because creating that personalization is in essence trying to have someone

be feel that they are known in the way that they would be known by a human in an authentic relationship. So I think it's both pushing the boundary and the frontier of AI, but also in keeping with the spirit of the best medicine and healthcare that we have known to be true, that patient centeredness. And I think that's really where the magic can happen.

Monisha Saldanha (17:19) Many digital health products struggle with engagement after the first few weeks. What have you learned about designing technology that people return to even when they are tired, overwhelmed, or discouraged?

Dr. Sam Monson (17:34) This is a classic problem that people run into, is that you see high engagement in the beginning and that it really trickles off. The key that we have found, and this speaks a little bit to personalization, but is that you don't just want to have one solution or one intervention that you're applying in repetition over and over again, no matter the outcome that you're getting, but instead that there are a suite of offerings that the person is being exposed to, and as they go through different

life experiences, places in that stage those stages of change, that you respond to that and serve up something different. Humans also love novelty. They get bored if something feels the same time after time. And so part of that personalization too is figuring out someone's unique balance of how much how much repetition feels familiar and gives me comfort and how much novelty is needed to keep me engaged and to step back in when I feel tempted to disengage.

Monisha Saldanha (18:32) Have you learned any lessons about where behavior change fails? Like what are the most common steps at which somebody fails to make behavioral change?

Dr. Sam Monson (18:46) Behavior change tends to go well when the setting in which the initial change was framed or started remains stable. So for example, I decide I'm gonna start jogging. I feel pretty healthy. The weather is decent. My provider made that recommendation and I'm gonna see them in a few months. And it t it can Behavior change can often go well in those conditions. The problem is when life inserts variables that make that initial solution no longer viable.

So a common thing that we see is that people say, I got sick. So I stopped exercising and then they never get back to it. So that condition of wellness initially poses a problem. Or I started jogging outside and I live in the mountains. And by the time winter came, jogging outside was not safe because of the ice or comfortable because of the temperature. So I didn't really know what to do. So I just sort of stopped.

So what we do is we solve that by having it instead of saying you're going to have one solution that you're going to do into perpetuity or one strategy that you're going to use, we help catch people as that slippage is starting or even predict it before they see it coming and say, how are you going to flex and how are you going to modify that goal so that it doesn't need to be in a stable setting, it can actually be responsive to instability.

Monisha Saldanha (20:06) Fantastic. You are building We Hate Exercise in Colorado with roots in clinical care, research, and the local startup ecosystem. How has Colorado shaped the company's path so far?

Dr. Sam Monson (20:21) In a lot of ways, Colorado is one of the healthiest states in the nation and one of the most physically active. And so in a way, it's a funny place to be building a physical activity program. Because when I tell people in Colorado that the the nation and our globe has a problem with physical activity, they don't necessarily believe me because that not has not been their experience or the experience of people around them.

I wanted a very early on, did like a strangers on the street kind of initial response c set of questions down in the downtown of where I live. And most of the people responding had some sort of athletic wear on and had just finished some sort of hike or other physical activity. and I think that really drove it home. However

When because Colorado is a place where a lot of people value this, they also feel very deeply invested in unlocking it for people in places that we know that that is not true. I think the Colorado ecosystem is also innately incredibly generous and incredibly gritty for back of a for lack of a more refined term. When Coloradans I think really feel like we want to help each other and we're up for an uphill battle.

And I've been buoyed by that community in so many ways.

Monisha Saldanha (21:44) Colorado has a strong health innovation community as well, but it is not always perceived as the first place people think of for digital therapeutics. What advantages have you found building here?

Dr. Sam Monson (22:01) Think that build building a digital therapeutic, which you're exactly right, is not something that Colorado is known for, has really been like rallying people to root for the underdog. There is a lot of support of the innovation community and especially the digital innovation community and the tech community to say, we think that Colorado should be on the map and we're gonna work really hard to put it on the map.

And when we identify companies that are gonna be able to do that, we're gonna back you because we wanna change the narrative and we wanna unlock something with you. So I think there can actually be a lot of excitement about being on the leading edge of this that people can really get behind in a way that wouldn't be true for, you know, either of the coasts, for example, where you see more of this type of innovation traditionally coming out.

Monisha Saldanha (22:50) What kind of partners are most important for a company like We Hate Exercise to scale? Employers, payers, providers, community organizations, or investors?

Dr. Sam Monson (23:04) Think All of these partnerships are important, but I think without providers, the everything else falls apart. Providers are the ones who are determining what patients need and then making sure that they have access to that in myriad different ways. So when we think about, for example, the management of pre-diabetes or the treatment of diabetes, providers are the ones who have been working and have been relentlessly trying to manage that for their patients, for their patient panels.

When we say, now we have a new tool to offer you, they both need to be able able to offer it and they need to help us understand where we're missing the mark. And so I think they really are iteration and innovation partners. I met with a primary care practice earlier this morning. I'm meeting with another one this afternoon. I have as many conversations as I can as often as I can, so I can really understand how clinicians think about what they've been doing and how digital therapeutics could up level that.

Monisha Saldanha (24:03) You have an interesting funding story because We Hate Exercise sits at the intersection of health outcomes, social impact, and commercial potential. How do you think about blending traditional venture capital with venture philanthropy?

Dr. Sam Monson (24:18) So this really speaks to a side quest that I have been on, which is that I specifically want our health tech company to be equity-owned not just by impact and traditional capital, but also by philanthropic capital. The story behind that is very personal. As I referenced before, I have cystic fibrosis. In the early 2000s, the cystic fibrosis foundation pioneered what is called venture philanthropy. They

As an as a foundation, use their hard earned dollars to invest in a biotech startup, forty million dollars. That was catalytic to bring in other traditional capital and to fuel the development of medications, which within recent years have changed completely what it means to live with cystic fibrosis. Those have actually saved tens of thousands of lives and we'll continue doing that in the future. My life included.

Additionally, when the CF Foundation made that initial investment and then sold the royalties of those drugs, that $40 million investment was then the royalties were then sold for $3.3 billion. So the CF Foundation now has a tremendous amount of assets to be able to fuel continued innovation. So having personally experienced the power of this, as I think about myself now as a health tech founder, I believe that having this type of capital on our side will enable us to do

more now and with return cycling back into mission aligned entities, it's also going to be doing work out in the ecosystem and building up wellness in many other ways. And the say the phrase a rising tide lift all lifts all boats is exactly that. If the goal is wellness, let's make sure that we're doing it in many ways.

Monisha Saldanha (26:04) Venture philanthropy has played a major role in areas like cystic fibrosis, like you just mentioned. what lessons do you think digital health founders can take from that model?

Dr. Sam Monson (26:17) Digital health founders are completely unaware that philanthropic capital is an option for them. Digital health founders are socialized to know that there is are you sort of go through a friends and family round, perhaps, then there's angels, and then ultimately you get VC capital. The thing that they're really missing out on is that

philanthropic capital can be a catalyst to get you from one to the other, and it can be more patient if you're in a highly regulated industry like digital therapeutics. And so it's really a disservice to the ecosystem that this is not known about, even though it's been available for decades. And I think that for founders, my message or my hope, is that they look into this and educate themselves in the exact same way that they would educate themselves about any of these other traditional vending

funding streams because if they're not unlocking it, they're really leaving money on the table and values aligned smart money.

Monisha Saldanha (27:16) How do conversations differ when you're talking with the traditional venture capital firm versus a mission driven funder or foundation?

Dr. Sam Monson (27:25) You know, it's really interesting. I think it's what the balance of the conversation. Both things are true that you can have strong financial ROI and strong impact ROI, but in a conversation with a traditional investor like an angel or a VC, you're really emphasizing a return of their capital on a many X scale. The conversation is similar

when you're talking with a mission driven funder like a foundation, but you're saying, you know, that balance is still true. We would like to recycle your capital back to you and amplify the amount of assets you have available to do your mission. But first and foremost, we're gonna make sure that we deliver an impact ROI. So as a psychologist, we often talk about two things being true, an and instead of an or. And so in both conversations, I'm talking about both sides of this coin, but the emphasis is on what is important for that.

investor profile.

Monisha Saldanha (28:23) We often talk about exercise as a lifestyle choice, but for many people it is tied to chronic disease, mental health, loneliness, aging, and access. What do you wish more people understood about the real world barriers to movement?

Dr. Sam Monson (28:41) I wish people understood that for many people exercise is and always will be a chore. So the dominant fitness narrative and actually the dominant narrative in medicine about fitness has been find something that you love and then it won't feel hard to exercise anymore. Maybe that's yoga or maybe that's Zumba. But the reality and fact is that some people will never find something that they love and they shouldn't wait for that. They should do it anyway.

I often have a a an analogy that I use like you don't wait to find the perfect toilet brush so that you love keeping your toilet clean. No. You get the job done and you're glad when you did. Can we do same exact thing with exercise? Sure. Try a lot of different things. Maybe some of them will make the job easier, but at the end of the day, you just have to do it.

Monisha Saldanha (29:31) Can you share a story without identifying anyone of a participant whose experience helped you understand the deeper impact We Hate Exercise could have?

Dr. Sam Monson (29:43) My job is really fun in that as we see people go through our intervention, there are countless stories. One of my favorite ones recently is we had a woman who was in her mid-40s who went to her annual wellness visit and was surprised to hear from her primary care provider that her cholesterol was trending in a direction that suggested that she might want to go on a medication.

She was shocked. She felt like in general she's a healthy person. She didn't feel like she was aging. You know, it it it came really hard. And she said, I don't want to go into medicine. What should I do? And the provider said, Well, you should exercise. And she said, Okay, what does that look like? And the provider said, I mean, you could jog or you could do yoga, but I guess our visit's up. So I'm so sorry. Good luck. Come back in a few months. We'll see if you've been able to exercise or if you need to go into medicine. So she found us, she joined one of our teams. The health coach

came to understand that this was her goal, they were able to set her up with an iterative process that started her with really where she was and doing very little physical activity to moving all the way through but getting very close to meeting the CDC guidelines. First and foremost, she said to us, I just after being in the program for a couple of months, I just went and visited my niece. I've never been able to pick her up before, but because I've been doing this strength training, I

I was able to pick her up and that felt so good for me as a human. Secondarily, she went back to her primary care provider, got her labs rechecked, and they said, Okay, the trend has changed. You need to keep exercising, and that's the reality, people need to do this ongoing, but we don't think that you need to do medicine right away. So she also felt like this had unlocked something that could only be achieved previously by a medicine. With the support of We Hate Exercise, she was able to avoid that. And that was important to her.

Monisha Saldanha (31:37) That's a great story. When you look five years ahead, what would success look like for We Hate Exercise? Clinical outcomes, number of people reached, payer adoption, disease specific programs, or a broader cultural shift in how we talk about exercise?

Dr. Sam Monson (31:55) So, like any good founder, I dream really big. So in five years, I would like We Hate Exercise to be a household name as something that can help people in the same way that other household name interventions can. So for example, if someone said, Gosh, I think I need a treatment for depression, maybe I should ask my doctor about Prozac. That would be an example of a household name. But instead, they could say, maybe I should ask about We Hate exercise. Maybe a digital therapeutic is a better option for me.

Or perhaps someone says, you know, my mom is trending toward pre-diabetes. I really, Is she gonna need insulin? Instead, someone would be able to say, you know, my mom is trending toward pre-diabetes. I've heard about this thing called We Hate Exercise. Maybe I should have her ask her doctor about that. So I want digital therapeutics, we hate exercise included, to be thought of as a medicine, something that can truly help reverse the course of problematic biologic processes.

Monisha Saldanha (32:54) And the human part of We Hate exercise, how big is your team that's delivering the service to the users at the moment? And how is it structured?

Dr. Sam Monson (33:05) Yeah, so this is this is a pretty unusual structure that we have, but it's by design. So I'm a person who thrives in community. I'm also a person who really loves having synergy and continued growth by leveraging the talents that other people have to fill in gaps. So I actually have a team of ten.

Everyone is an independent contractor and part-time, but fills all of the traditional roles of a health tech company. So we have engineers, we have designers, we have customer engagement people, we have our research lab, for example. The reason that I did this is I knew it's the way that I would function best, and I wanted to work out what does a team look like before we got additional capital so that once we got additional capital, we would be able to scale up that

well functioning team to deliver immediately and to deliver fast. So everyone has been on the team now for 12 to 18 months and we're really excited to take the next step together. But typically at this stage companies might have just a couple people working tons and tons and tons. And I have found real success in having, sure, a little bit of that, but also a lot of people who are passionate about this, working hard and being ready to do it more.

Monisha Saldanha (34:23) And what form like That initial consultation? Is that done via Zoom or how do you do the initial consultations?

Dr. Sam Monson (34:32) Yeah. So anyone who is gets is getting started with the We Hate Exercise interacts through our what's called a progressive web app. So whatever the technology is that they feel most comfortable with, a tablet, a computer, a smartphone, they log in and they're communicating through a messaging structure that's similar to texting in the app.

That is with our health coach and they're being asked questions in a sort of intake survey to be able to give the information that we need to help them be successful. Initially we thought, gosh, people are going to want to have a phone call with the health coach or they're going want to have a video call. That was a hypothesis that we found through iteration not to be true. People actually want to use text-based interactions because they're the lowest lift, they feel doable when someone's ready for it. So instead of feeling like

Okay, I'll schedule for a week now to do a video call or whatever it may be. They can say, I'm ready right now to talk about this or to talk about a challenge or to talk about what I want to drive toward and they can do that in that moment and get immediately responsive feedback.

Monisha Saldanha (35:39) So last question for you. What is one book every builder should read and why?

Dr. Sam Monson (35:47) There are so many books that I've read, pardon me, that are amazing. And of course, my nightstand is stacked with others. I think that one of the most important ones is one that was recommended to me when I was in a Techstars program, and that is called the Mom Test. The Mom Test is really one of the sentinel texts in customer discovery. And it encourages people to go out and in the

proper open-ended way to talk with people about the innovation that they have. And instead of trying to get yeses, to actually look for the no's so that you get honest signals about the direction that you should go. It's also just a really fun light read. And since I'm also a qualitative researcher, I feel like collecting data in sound ways is really important. And I think that it threads the line between that

and being enjoyable enough to really take in and I don't know, I'd read it on a beach, but I'm a founder. I read lots of stuff on the beach.

Monisha Saldanha (36:44) Yeah, I love that book. I I would second that recommendation. Thank

Dr. Sam Monson (36:49) Awesome.

Monisha Saldanha (36:49) you so much, Sam, for joining me today and sharing the story behind We Hate Exercise.

Dr. Sam Monson (36:57) Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.

Monisha Saldanha (37:00) Yeah. What stands out from this conversation is that the future of digital therapeutics may not be about replacing human support with AI, but about using technology to make evidence based care more personal, more accessible, and more sustainable. We also explored why companies solving real health challenges may need new funding models that blend traditional venture capital with mission driven venture philanthropy. If We Hate Exercise succeeds,

it could change the way people experience movement from something they feel they are failing at to something that helps them feel stronger, safer, and more connected. Thank you everyone for listening today and see you next time.