Ryan Shaer

Vice President at Ace Limousine | Former Startup CSO | Investor | Mentor to Emerging Entrepreneurs

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

@bryan_johnson @ThroneScience tracking bathroom habits has been a game changer.

[Throne Science @ThroneScience]

We raised $10 million Series A to build the next generation of Throne! 🎉

Your body files a health report every single day, but very few read it. We built a sensor that reads it for you, automatically, with no logging and no habit to maintain.

This round funds the next generation of the device, more scientists and engineers, and the research behind our long-term vision: a smoke detector for colon cancer and the other cancers of the lower GI and urinary tracts.

Grateful to Will Ventures for leading, and to every partner and member who got us here.

[Scott Hickle - Poop Guy @ScottHickle]

I'm thrilled to share that @ThroneScience has raised $10M to advance our vision of building a smoke detector for colon cancer.

We started this company three years ago, and in that short period of time we built a world-class health tracker that our members often compare to Apple.

That's exactly what we were going for, and we're just getting started.

I am incredibly grateful for the support of our investors, my co-founders, our team, and, most importantly, our members.

In particular, I want to thank @BennyG49 and the team at Will Ventures, @KatieS for being our Day One, Fern Mandelbaum, Warren Shaeffer, Max Mullen, Tara Viswanathan, Justin Driscoll, Justin Mares, and all those whose belief have made this next chapter possible.

My younger brother recently said it best: twenty years ago, it was a crazy idea to sleep in a stranger's home or ride in a stranger's car.

In twenty years, it will be crazy not to have a camera in your toilet.

Throne has the unique opportunity to save a million lives. I cannot imagine a more meaningful way to spend my life than to work in the service of this mission.

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

@ThroneScience Gut health is going to thrive! Excited!

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

@kane @garrytan @DanielLurie @sfgov Sad and needs to stop

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

Finished a seven day social media fast. It feels like the most effective longevity therapy I've done.

Everything got better: mood, sleep, energy, presence, judgment, relationships, and optimism.

Evidence shows a seven day fast produces a reduction of anxiety (16%), depression (25%) and insomnia (15%). The effects felt bigger.

Conversely, dipping back in, I can viscerally feel that my body metabolizes social media similarly to a fast food meal, corrosive relationship, hangover, and sleep deprivation. My body hates it.

After the previous fasts (40/hr and 70hr), I wrote that social media is pollution.  Not a vice or guilty pleasure. It’s closer to water toxins, air pollution and microplastics.

This time, the major insight was that social media is a form of intoxication.

Alcohol is honest intoxication. It clearly tells you what it's taking from you. Social media on the other hand does not disclose itself as an intoxicant.

It produces the sensation of being informed, engaged, and connected while quietly evacuating your capacity for depth and independent thought.

You don’t feel drunk, you feel current. But evidence shows that it causes your brain to shrink. The impairment is real by you can't feel it. Making it the more dangerous type.

If you haven't tried it, I strongly encourage you to try a social media fast. Even if for one day.

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

@jwmares Great post, I recently recommended BPC-157 for a shoulder recovery and their response was “my sister is a nurse and it’s not FDA approved and has side effects”. Most in the medical field don’t approve either. But I’m glad peptides are becoming more available and beneficial.

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

A lot of hype around OpenClaw. Can we assume something better and more accessible without needing a Mac mini will be built within 12 months?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Powerful words

[Justin Mares @jwmares]

Today, 90%+ of healthcare spend (all $4.5T of it) goes towards treating chronic conditions after someone is sick.

Less than 3% of that spend goes towards prevention.

@Truemed exists to get more people investing in True Medicine. Exercise, food, supplements, movement, sleep, toxin removal… lifestyle interventions that help people treat and prevent disease, not just treat the symptoms of underlying sickness.

We’re building tools that allow qualified individuals to unlock the $160B in tax-free HSA/FSA funds, and use them on these root-cause interventions.

Since launching just 2.5 years ago, we’ve helped almost a million individuals pay for these interventions, and we’re just getting started.

If we want to fix healthcare in America, we fundamentally have to help Americans get healthier.

I’m extremely proud to announce our $34M Series A led by a16z, and am excited to continue our work to end the chronic disease crisis.

[Naval @naval]

Founders cannot outsource recruiting.

“Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people. Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They’re self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical—maybe one or two sellers—but you can’t watch everything. You can’t micromanage everything.

The early people are the DNA of the company. When you outsource recruiting, when you have other people hiring and interviewing and making hiring decisions without your direct involvement and veto, that’s a sad day. That’s the day that the company’s no longer being driven directly by you.

There’s now a fly-by-wire element in between. There’s some mechanical linkage going through another human, often at a distance. And other people are not going to have the same level of selectivity that you will as a founder.

The important size at which a company starts changing is not some arbitrary number, like 20 or 30 or 40. It’s the point at which the founder is not directly recruiting and managing everyone. The moment that there are middle layers of management, then you are somewhat disconnected from the company, and your ability to directly drive a product team that can take the company from zero to one goes away.

So we really cannot outsource recruiting. People think you can. They hire recruiters, for example. Maybe you can outsource a little bit of sourcing, but I would even argue that’s difficult. The reason recruiting is so, so, so important—and a lot of it is obvious, I’ll skip the obvious reasons—but one non-obvious reason is that the best people truly only want to work with the best people.

Working with anyone who’s not at their level is a cognitive load upon them. And the more people they’re surrounded by who are not as good as they are, the more keenly they’re aware that they belong somewhere else, or they should be doing their own thing.

The best teams are mutually motivated. They reinforce each other. Everyone’s trying to impress each other.

One good test is when you’re recruiting a new person, you should be able to say to them, “Walk into that room where the rest of the team is sitting. Take anyone you want—pick them at random—pull them aside for 30 minutes, and interview them. And if you aren’t impressed by them, don’t join.”

When you do that test, you will instinctively flinch at the idea of them interviewing randomly a certain person that’s kind of in the back of your mind. That’s the person you need to let go. Because that’s the person keeping you from having this high-functioning team that all wants to impress each other.”

[Scott Hickle - Poop Guy @ScottHickle]

My biggest opp for improvement for my next public speaking gig:

bring a water bottle

got nervous dry mouth AND IT SHOWS

[Brett Adcock @adcock_brett]

Every week I get asked my cheat codes to raising money.

Since I’ve raised $1B the last 10yrs, people expect I have secrets.

I don’t have secrets.

But I do have a playbook:

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

Don’t move to L.A to become an actress — you’ll just be a waitress. Don’t drive to Nashville to become a country music star — you’ll just end up playing empty honky-tonks at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

And don’t move to Silicon Valley with a twenty-page business plan and a head full of ideas. You’ll just run out of money somewhere in San Mateo, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with six or seven other aspiring entrepreneurs.

I tell aspiring entrepreneurs all the time: Validate your idea locally. Get some experience under your belt. Prove your idea has legs where you are. Spend some time as a big fish in a small pond. Demonstrate that there’s a there there… there. Where you live.

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

Attention founders, advisors, and investors: I'll be in Silicon Valley the entire month of June, preparing for the MVP launch of @SliceSpace. Feel free to direct message me if you'd like to connect. I'll be attending meetings daily throughout the Bay Area. #fintech #startups

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

There are three things I look for when investing in a company:

1) The people
2) The people
3) And, the people

One of the last things on my list is the idea.

The idea doesn't count for anything, it's only a starting point.

I’m looking for a team with the persistence to keep going and the creativity to learn from any dead-end they run into.

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

https://t.co/igbgXnS4DB

[Ryan Shaer @ryanshaer_]

Just finished book number 2 for 2023. The 6 Habits of Growth by Brendon Burchard. Highly recommended!

[SliceSpace @SliceSpace]

What is a REIT? A Real Estate Investment Trust is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate.