
Weilos (YC S13) Wants To Pair You With An Online Weight Loss Coach  - rwu721
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/07/weilos-wants-to-pair-you-with-an-online-weight-loss-coach-who-has-shed-pounds-themselves/
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rwu721
Hey everyone, I'm Ray, one of the founders of Weilos. We just got started, but
early signals are promising with active users making significant progress on
the site. Very excited about this opportunity to help a lot of people! Would
love to hear what everyone thinks.

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jlees
Interesting approach, and congrats on the coverage. I just signed up as a
coach - I've found informal mentoring (in both directions) very helpful on
other sites, e.g. Nerd Fitness.

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dylangs1030
So my questions/concerns:

1) (asked elsewhere) Do you guys have particular domain experience in
nutrition and weight loss? I know one of you is an MD at Cornell, what about
specifics?

2) How will you keep people on the site? Weight loss trends and diets are very
fickle investments because people kind of jump from one to another
inconsistently. You'll need to constantly get new users.

3) What's the revenue source? How are you monetizing this?

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rwu721
Thanks for asking!

1)I spent a year doing diabetes lab research at the University of Michigan and
a couple projects focused on obesity at Cornell, but admittedly the bulk of my
knowledge comes from reading a lot of peer reviewed journal articles, talking
to a lot of successful people (people who have lost weight themselves as well
as numerous obesity specialist MDs).

2) Right on with your observations. What we're trying to do is provide the
necessary ingredients (social combined with technology) to make weight loss
something people feel good about. We give people a leader, which provides
trust/inspiration that they are on the right path, and a peer group for
support. Early signals have been good that this keeps people engaged. That
said, getting new users will always be important.

One additional thought is that people who are successful as members could
potentially transition to the coach role after some sustained success. This
could lead to very long term engagement, but it is too early to tell.

3) Honestly, we are focused 100% on making something that actually works.
Current options for weight are not great by any judging criteria, and we are
confident the business model will work itself out if we are able to provide
real value in the form of good outcomes.

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chegra
Wow, amazing. I'm about to launch a similar service. I like the fact that you
are involving people who have lost weight before.

Well good luck, I will be keeping an eye on you.

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rwu721
Thanks chegra - good luck with your project as well!

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404error
I don't mean for this to come out negative, but the name Weilos to me sounds
to much like whales.

Is this on purpose?

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codegeek
I am guessing it is short for WEI(ght) LOS(s) ? Just a wild guess.

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rwu721
Yes that's right codegeek. Definitely did not intend to have the name sound
like "whales"

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edolfo
I'm looking to get back to race weight, so weilos looks appealing. However,
I'm wary of getting someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Is there a
way to search background or do some more advanced filtering?

The general advice for losing weight when someone is overweight or grossly
overweight is fairly standardized and generally works well. However, I think
my situation is a bit different - I'm 6 feet fall and currently at 160 lbs,
but my race weight is 135lbs.

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far33d
Personalized guidance will be a huge component of any service that hopes to
make people live healthier and more active lives. We are certainly pushing in
this direction at RunKeeper.

An aside - this model feels a lot like an AA sponsor. AA works (I've heard,
not a friend of bill myself), and I'm surprised we haven't seen a semi-anon
online accountability model like this in similar domains.

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aray
The diets dont look really applicable if you don't cook for yourself. Are
there coaches that work with zero-cooking lifestyles, or is that just out of
scope for Weilos?

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acheron
This is the weirdest comment I have seen in awhile. "Zero-cooking lifestyles"?
What? What do you eat then? I'm trying to avoid a "mom's basement" comment but
I don't even get it otherwise.

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mahyarm
It means someone else provides your meals because you work 10-12 hour workdays
at your start up job. You get food at restaurants or it's provided for you by
your work.

For example, my work provides all my weekday meals, and I'm only home
occasionally on weekends, so I can't rely on having fresh food in my fridge.
Therefore I eat out on weekends.

You can also live in small places, travel a bunch, share a unreliable kitchen
with room-mates, etc. If you want a personal cook to cook meals to weight loss
specifications, it costs something like $1500 per month total.

What is needed is something like these guys in Australia:
[http://www.musclemealsdirect.com.au/](http://www.musclemealsdirect.com.au/) .
I'm really surprised this doesn't exist in NYC, LA & SF. Eat Club, waiter.com
and others do NOT provide any sort of calorie and macronutrient estimates like
they do:
[http://www.musclemealsdirect.com.au/index.php/faq](http://www.musclemealsdirect.com.au/index.php/faq)

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thoughtpalette
I think it's a great idea. /r/fitness would probably be engrossed in this.

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rwu721
We've come across so many amazing people from the reddit community! Really
love what they have going on there - we're just trying to give a bit more
structure to the people who need it.

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Metitiri
How do you validate the results people claim??

