This Startup Plans to Save a Million Lives Using Your Toilet | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E7

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)

Scott Hickle, co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, shares how his company uses AI-powered toilet technology to track gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and prostate health—ultimately aiming to detect colon and blad

Key takeaways

• Throne Science’s smart toilet tracks gut health, hydration, bathroom habits (e.g., time on the toilet), and urinary flow for men—using AI to detect early signs of colon/bladder cancer

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Today's episode is sponsored in part by Shopify, Indeed, AT&T business, Northwest Registered Agent, Mindstone, and Quince. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash profiting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75-sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at indeed.com slash podcast. AT&T Business delivers reliable business-grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive edge. Switch to AT&T Business at business.ATT.com. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance you need to build a complete business identity. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap Free and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone helps ambitious professionals master practical AI skills without the complexity. Get 10% off their four-week AI competency program at experience.mindstone.com slash yap. Quince makes your summer wardrobe feel easier with elevated essentials at radically low prices. Go to quince.com slash profiting for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at young and profiting.com slash deals. Last year, 42,000 Americans died in car crashes. 50,000 Americans died of colorectal cancer. Oh my gosh. All traffic accidents combined. For our generation, it is the deadliest cancer in Americans under 50. We are putting cameras and toilets to improve people's health and one day save lives. And that is a new concept. And people need to get comfortable with that. Scott Hickle is the co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, a company that uses AI-powered toilet technology to track gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and urinary function. And what makes this story so interesting is that Scott is building a real business around something most people would rather not talk about. This is a crazy fact. There is a 10% risk. One in 10 people will be diagnosed with a cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract at some point in their lives. One in 10. Like, a lot of our friends. You got rejected by 100 investors. Why couldn't they see the vision? Because for me, when I got introduced to throne, I was like, maybe can I invest? Because everybody should have this on their toilet. I don't understand how investors wouldn't have thought that too. It's a great question. And I think at the end of the day, we are consumer health hardware. And what was your worst product decision? The cost of like getting this wrong could kill the company because if we have to recall these, it's over. So when you're building hardware, you go through a like three step process. And that is Scott, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. Hala, thanks for having me. It is so exciting to have you here. You're actually one of my friends. you're my boyfriend's best friend. And it's so cool to live in Austin and be around all these amazing entrepreneurs. And I always tell Mike, like, hey, can I invest in Scott's business? Like, I feel like it's going to blow up. So congratulations on everything you've been building with Roan. You're kind of like a legend in Austin for what you've been building. And just really excited to break it down with everyone for the How We Profit series. That is the warmest intro. Thank you so much. I love Mike. Love you. Love being in Austin. Love what I do. I'm excited to have this. chat. Yeah. So Throne Science is the name of your company. And you essentially have a smart toilet, but it goes like so much more beyond just like a smart toilet device. So in your own words, how would you describe Throne? Yeah. So Throne is a wearable for a toilet that tracks your gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and for men, your prostate health, hands free automatically every time you go to the bathroom. It's like aura for your flora or whoop for your poop, we joke. But the whole idea is that there is a untapped world of health information in what's happening your gut that you just flush away. And we track that so you don't have to think about it and help you tie the dots between what's happening in your lifestyle and what's showing up in your gut health. And ultimately, our vision is to build not just a wellness device for understanding gut health, but it will ultimately be the first continuous cancer screener looking for early signs of colon cancer and bladder cancer every time you go to the bathroom. That is amazing. And so when I first heard about this product, I was thinking you were going to make money off the hardware sales. But then actually my boyfriend, Mike, has a throne device. And he's talking about how he's, like, looking at his app. And he's, like, monitoring his progress. And it's actually like a subscription model, too, right? That's part of the plan. It's the aura model. So we charge for both the hardware and the subscription. One of the unique things about our product compared to other wearables is, like, your aura or your Apple Watch, you're going to be the only person wearing that device, right? It's a one-to-one relationship. Whereas with a throne, it's a one-to-mini relationship and a many-to-one relationship. because you can have up to six members in a home using the same throne. Oh. Or you can use multiple thrones all to one account that sinks up seamlessly. So everybody has like three, four bathrooms when they have a house. Exactly. So like we have three bathrooms at the office and I have two at home and they all have thrones and it all goes to my account, whichever one I'm using. And so how does throne work exactly from my understanding it's a camera and a microphone? Yeah. So can I take it out and walk through it? Okay. So basically it's a little device that clips onto the side of your toilet. So, you know, the water's down here. And this is a proximity sensor that determines when someone is standing or sitting in the toilet. And then it uses your phone's Bluetooth to know this is Scott versus Holla. And then once it identifies who's there, it turns on. And so this camera and microphone's pointing down into this toilet bowl. So it records everything happening inside the toilet. You leave. It turns itself off. And then you walk away. And you get a push notification a few minutes later with basically a report card that tells you, here's how hydrated you were, here's what your gut health looked like. And most importantly, it allows you to see the trends over time because your gut is super responsive to changes like diet and lifestyle. For me, it's stress. Yeah. And it's like frictionless. You just go to the bathroom with your phone already, right? Yeah. Most of us. Most of us, most of the time. And so the whole idea is that that is how we identify you. So it stays off for guests. If you have members of your home that don't want it on, it just stays off for them. So it's like really an elegant solution to tracking gut health for people who want to. understand their digestive health better or their hydration better for any number of reasons. Yeah, and I know a lot of these like microbiome tests are really popular now. You go and you send in your stool or send in your saliva and you get all this information, but this actually allows you to track a really important part of your health on a daily basis, right? That's exactly right. The whole idea is it's hands-free automatic every time you go instead of a point-time test. So like I like to think of Throne as we are to a microbiome test. What like your wearable device is to like a blood, draw or like from function or, you know, any of the other big blood draw companies. In the sense that like with your whoop or your aura or your Apple Watch, you are getting, you know, 15 to 20 biomarkers every single day. Same with Throne. And then when you want to dive deeper, you can go get a microbiome test or a blood test. I don't get you 120 biomarkers, but like that's a one time point in time test and you have to pay for the next one a year later. Yeah. So what can Throne measure today and what do you hope it measures like in the near future? That's a great question. four categories today, gut health. So, like, when you think about it, take a step back, what does gut health mean? It's patterns, right? If you're having regular healthy bowel movements, that's good gut health. Yeah. Anything outside of that, you know, too loose, too firm is not good, you know, constipated or diuretic. And those are defined by patterns. Like, you don't know how your gut health is just by looking at one sample. And that's, you know, microbiome test can tell you what's living your stomach, but it doesn't tell you how your gut health is over time and how that's changing. So we look at stool frequency, stool consistency, or form on the Bristol stool scale. We look at color, volume, buoyancy, which can tell you about fat content. And then the next big category is we look at your hydration. Yeah. So every time you go to the bathroom, we can measure your P and look at the color and volume and the clarity of your P. And that tells you about hydration or what's called estimated urine osmolality. And, yeah. You become a real poop expert. Oh, my gosh. I did not think that I would grow up to be this, but like seven-year-old me is stoked right now. And so then we look at what we call bathroom habits, so your timelines on the toilet. So the two most relevant there are the time to first evacuation, is the technical term again. That is a proxy for constipation or urgency. And then the other big one is your total time you spend on the toilet is highly correlated hemorrhoid risk. And so we can send you a push notification and say, hey, stop doom scrolling. And then the last big category is for men. and you were asking about the microphone earlier, when you pee standing up as a man, because it has to go straight into the middle of the water, we can turn the acoustics of that pee stream into what's called a urinary flow rate curve. And that flow rate curve is the most important marker for prostate health. And that is a men's health metric, only men have prostates. So it kind of works out that the science and the physics of it all meshes. But, you know, something like 50% of men by age 50 and 80% of men by age 70 have enlarged prostates that make it harder to pee. And this is a great way. of measuring that. Wow, that's so interesting. So it can already do so much. And I know colorectal cancer is something that you feel really passionate about in cancer in general. So how do you imagine something like Throne helping with cancer detection? So that's our ultimate mission as a company, is to build the smoke detector for colon cancer, bladder cancer, basically any cancer of the lower GI or urinary tract whose earliest manifestation is microscopic blood in your waist. So let me take a step back and just share some of the numbers because it's like actually mind-blowing. So last year, 42,000 Americans died in car crashes. 50,000 Americans died of colorectal cancer, right? All traffic accidents combined. Jeez. And still like 20% more died of American. And that's just in the United States. Around 900,000 people globally died of colon cancer last year. And it is the only cancer in the United States whose incidence is rising. The only one. Every other cancer is on the decline except for colorectal cancer. It is now, it used to be for like our parents' generation, they thought of it as like an old person's disease, right? For our generation, it is the deadliest cancer in Americans under 50. And the crazy pernicious shape of this disease is that on average, it takes seven to ten years before it was called a pre-cancerous polyp, like a little wart on the inside of your colon. Yeah. It takes seven to ten years before that becomes a malignant tumor that's actually a cancer. So it's like very preventative. Exactly. And like if you got a colonoscopy every year and they looked for those warts on the inside of your colon, you would never get colorectal cancer. The only reason people die of cancer, and by the way, one in three people diagnosed with colon cancer dies from it because we wait too long. Yeah, it's too late of a stage. Exactly. Like the earliest way that people can identify colorectal cancer is by looking for, it's called fecal occult blood. So that's microscopic blood. That's the occult part. It's invisible to the naked eye in your stool. And we are building a future version of this device. And our mission is to build a in this device that is looking for that fecal-cult blood and able to identify the patterns of bleeding in your stool because there's so many things that can cause blood in your stool, right? Like, hemorrhoids. Yeah, hemorrhoids, fissures, fissurlus, ulcers, viral infections, like, you know, got food poisoning or, like, drink too much alcohol. There's so many things, but, like, the important thing is looking at the pattern over the course of months. If you can look at a pattern over the three, six months and see that it's increasing, you know, day by day, week over week, that is totally different than something that's like, you know, comes and it goes. And that is definitely worth throwing up a yellow flag. And so that's ultimately where this is headed. It's like, I believe that product belongs in every toilet in the world. Yeah, fam, if I had a dollar for every time a business leader came on the show and told me, Hala, hiring the right people is everything. I'd probably be retired by now. And guys, they're right. Hiring gives you leverage. But the wrong hire can weigh down your entire team. And I've seen this in my own business, Yap Media. So when I need to hire, and right now at Yap Media, we've got five open. U.S. roles. I use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. 95% yeah, bam. That's the difference between hoping the right person sees your post and actually reaching the quality candidates that you need for your business. With sponsored jobs, your post is boosted in the search results so you can reach people who match what you're looking for, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help give your jobs the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com/slash/podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show Young and Profiting by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed. sponsor jobs. I think about all these wearable devices and how popular they are and I feel like it could be like something that's mandatory in everyone's home because it's such like a huge like your poop is a really big health indicator. It's universal and human like people don't talk about but like that's also just like such a uniquely Western attitude right? Yeah. I give a Ted talk about this last year but like the idea that poop is taboo is like a relatively new thing in human history right like and we're flushing away all this amazing health data. Exactly. And the advent of the toilet was actually like a great sanitation innovation that saved hundreds of millions of lives. Like the deadliest diseases in the 18th and 19th centuries were diarrheal diseases, dysentery and cholera. And so looking at stool was one of the most important diagnostic tools we had for most of human history, especially recent history. And then the introduction of the toilet pushed that out of sight and out of mind. And that all converged with the Victorian era when like, you know, we had prim and proper adity. and modesty and you're talking about privates was like not allowed. And so now we're at a point where like, you know, Dr. Curran, our chief of science has this beautiful phrase where he says, people are dying of embarrassment. Oh my gosh, it's so true, especially certain cultures and women. That actually just reminded me of a really crazy story. I know somebody, their parents were very conservative, their mother was very conservative. And her breast was literally, like she had breast cancer, and her breast was oozing, and she was too embarrassed to go to a doctor in even, show them her breast. And she passed away very shortly because they caught it so late because she was so embarrassed to have to go to the doctor and talk to him about that. But how great is it to have like a device in your home that can flag to you? So even if you are a little bit embarrassed about talking, but at least you can go to the doctor knowing something is flagged. Exactly. And I think there's a statistic on this that I think is really important, which is so Aetna, the big health insurance company, sends out a million prophylactic, so like preventative, what's called called fit test, fecal immunochemical, which is testing for that fecal occult blood, but you have to collect a sample and send it off to the mail. And people hate doing that, as you might imagine, right? Yeah. It is not a user-friendly experience. No, like that's a horrible thing to have to do. The return rate on those fit tests is like three to six percent, like microscopic, right? Like, so people don't end up actually doing it. Yeah, they sit down 100. They get like three or six back. Oh, wow. Yes. The other side of this, though, is Coligard, which makes a more advanced test that also looks at not just for microscopic blood, but is also looking for, like, DNA mutations in your stool associated with colon cancer. Same thing that you have to collect a sample and send it off to a male. They get a return rate of, like, 66%, because that's prescribed by your doctor, and they're, like, barking down your neck, telling you, like, take this thing, you can save your life. And I think there's a really, like, you know, negative interpretation of that, right? Which is, like, still one in three people won't take this thing that their doctor says, this could save your life. On the other hand, when your doctor says this could save your life, it increases compliance by an order of magnitude, 10 times more people return them when their doctors are saying, hey, please do this. And it's, to me, that just says there's so much power behind probable cause, right? When you show someone, and to your point, having this in your toilet every day that's telling you useful things about hydration and how your diet's impacting your gut health, and one day it says, hey, by the way, like, there's a yellow flag here. Like, you should be aware of this. And, like, don't be embarrassed. Like it's not embarrassing. It's human. It's natural. And like, this is a crazy fact. There's a 10% risk. One in 10 people will be diagnosed with the cancer of the lower GI or urinary track at some point in their lives. Like one in 10. Like a lot of our friends. That's really sad. It's sad, but it's also like it's universal and it's human and it's random. And we shouldn't be embarrassed about it. And we should talk about it because to your point, like when you wait too long, I can't, especially with colon cancer, which is like, you know, breast cancer is like, I can understand how that is private and, you know, taboo culturally, but like colon cancer is even like... Even more taboo, right? There's so many stories about particularly, like, put to your point, women, men, it's universal, but like people are... It's just like embarrassing, right? It's embarrassing to say that something's wrong with you down there and, and yeah, it's scary. But hopefully you are kind of de-tabooing everything that's going on with our poop health. 100%. And that's one of our secondary missions is like, A, we want to build this product and get it out in the world. But B, we want to make it okay for people to talk about it because it's totally not a embarrassing thing. It's human and universal and it's like everyone does it. Why would you be ashamed? Let's talk about the actual business behind creating a healthcare hardware device. What would you say is the most difficult part about the type of business that you're creating right now? Creating a new category by far. Like, this. This does not exist. We are putting cameras in toilets to improve people of health and one day save lives. And that is a new concept. And people need to get comfortable with that. Yeah. And I know that when you first had this idea, you and your co-founder went to Trader Joe's. And he started asking people at the grocery store how they felt about a camera in their toilet. What was some of the concerns of privacy that people have? And what made you realize, okay, like, I think we could make this happen and people could be okay with this. Man, that is a deep cut. That's an amazing recall on your part. So, yeah, that's exactly what, like, we thought this was a crazy idea at first. And then we had to go out and convince ourselves that, like, no, this actually has legs and people will do this. And a huge part of that, we ran some surveys on, like, Facebook and survey monkey. And those surveys kept coming back and people were interested, but we were like, no. Like, are they sure they're okay with the camera in the toilet? It was just like pixels on a screen. I didn't know those people, right? And so we were like, we got to go look in some people's eyes and, like, actually confirm that, like, we're not losing our minds here. So we went outside of Trader Joe's. And of course, we'd, you know, ask people, do you wearables? Like, what, how do you track your health? And then we'd ask them, okay, like, would you be interested in tracking your gut health, your hydration? And, like, almost universally, clearly. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, a shocking amount of people have gut health issues that they would like more insights into. And then we'd always ask them at the end, okay, but now let's say we're doing this with