YouSaid · the spoken record

Zach Reitano

lines on the record: 19
first: 2024-03-21
most recent: 2024-03-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Talking about this, because it really is, and the pipeline is tremendous as well. So it's not just Bulgovi or Zempec or Zepound, Munjaro, and Sixenda, but over the next three, five, ten years, you're going to see, we're in the middle of this Cambrian explosion of our understanding of cardiometabolic health, which will lead to all of these different inventions. So I think that you will see not only this drug and this drug class, but what this drug class spants in terms of understanding our overall health.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that we are just getting started. And there's a few reasons why that's the case. One actually is the shortage. So right now, the things that people want to talk about, things that we talked about last year, things that impacted us was the shortage. And that because of the demand and sort of the quote unquote out of stock, like that's topic, that's discussion worthy. But what are we going to see? What are we going to talk about in 24 or 25 is when it ends, right? millions of people are going to have seen the benefits. Well, then people are going to want to talk about, well, what are the, what's the cascading impact on society? Look at the impact that it's had on people's health. Look at the impact it's had on the grocery business or the restaurant business or travel or the healthcare system, you name it, the sort of cascading impact. So I think because we're just getting started with access in the first place and our understanding. So, you know, only a few million people have this, but 110 plus million people are eligible. There's a long way to go before we're done.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In addition to prices come down, there's research being done that highlights the benefits beyond obesity. So in addition to society catching up to the underlying health impact of excess weight and excess adipose tissue, the label will expand to cover more things. Heart disease, chronic kidney disease, sleep apnea, as I mentioned before, is being studied for all these things. And what you're also seeing is you're seeing the pipeline here is tremendous, where it's going from once a week injectables to some that are being studied for once a month, some that are being studied once every six months, some that are being studied really early on for almost vaccine-like once a year. That's far less expensive, right? 52 times a year versus once. And then you're seeing oral versions of GLP1. So daily tablets, twice a day tablets being studied. Tablets are far easier to scale than these injectables. So there's a lot that's happening that will hopefully”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right now there's people who have insurance coverage and people who have to pay cash. If you're not covered, you might pay around $550 a month. So the people, let's just say broadly right now, the people who are not covered pay $550 a month on average, that's still too expensive. For the people who are covered, there are tens of millions of people who are covered. So about 30 to 40% of employers cover it. That's about 50 million people. When they are covered, the publicly available data says that when someone's covered, 80% of the time they pay $25 or less. And we do see the vast majority of patients on our platform pay less than $100 a month when they're covered. So about 30 to 40% of commercial plants cover it. All federal employees cover it. So I think that's an amazing or covered them and their families. I think that's an amazing step by the U.S. government. Over time, what you will see is as more and more pharma companies enter or as there's more and more competition, we'll hopefully see prices come down.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fact that people do see it as a flaw of self discipline. I can tell you that advertisement resonated with them. For us, the advertisements that we create, we say, what will resonate with the people who need this treatment or access to this? We solely focus on that. And if that frustrates other people, so be it because we are speaking to the people who want and need our help. And that, I think, is, again, it's about being unapologetically patient-centric. And that's sort of the guiding principle for us, right? And even take erectile dysfunction or sex. People have sex. It's how the vast majority of us are here. Yeah, we don't want to talk about it. We don't want to talk about the role that it plays. We don't want to talk about the fact that someone having positive, consensual, intimacy with their partner more frequently than not is a good thing for themselves, their life. There's no shortage of research that shows that healthy sexual relationships has a positive cascading impact on people's lives. And then if you're unable to, that's a problem for those people, for whom it impacts. They deserve to have.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the only thing we described was we said a weekly shot to lose weight. And this caused outrage. And the source of the outrage is very understandable. It's because body composition, body shame has existed for far too long and it's too strong a force in our society. And no one should feel shame about their body and when they wake up. Loving yourself is very, very important. And even the words body positivity, a lot of it is right now the community is trying to shift and evolve to body neutrality, to trying to reduce the role that your physical appearance plays in your emotional and mental health. So what was fascinating is that people did have this philosophical hurdle around someone seeking medical treatment for obesity. And a lot of it is because of the stigma that is attached to it.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, again, it comes back to unapologetic patient centricity. So I'll take our out-of-home campaign for obesity and for the body program. And we showed patients that were of an eligible BMI in the ads, which is not always done by companies in the space, but that is done by us. And we showed these patients at positions of power and positions where they had tremendous agency, real strong power poses. And then we showed them using the medication.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To so many different components, there's sustainability, there's lifestyle choices, what we eat, what we feed our kids, how we gather, how we celebrate. There's so much that food consumption and exercise in health are wrapped up into that we all have very strong feelings towards it. And that does impact how society judges it and how likely someone is to receive treatment and how people who seek treatment are viewed. And so hopefully we can break down a lot of that stigma together.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We only facilitate treatment and high quality obesity care for patients who have obesity and are considered quote unquote on label for the drug, which means they either have a BMI of 27 to 30 with a comorbidity or they have a BMI of 30 plus. Now, knowing also that BMI is because that is the label, that is what is required by the FDA on the label, we could talk for hours about the flaws of BMI and why it is used, but I will just say Roe treats patients that are on label for the drug. And we have a rigorous qualification process in order to make sure that we are only doing that. I think that the reason we're all talking about this so much is because there is so much stigma attached to obesity and to weight loss and to the way that it's achieved. And it's tough, right? Because there's so much here. Obesity is attached.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the same way that AI is this Unbelievable, let's say facilitator of leverage for society. I think that what we are seeing is that these drugs are going to have a profound impact. We're going to see a tremendous impact on the healthcare system from the surgeries that are needed to the procedures that exist to the level of down to like the number of auto injectors that are built and developed. People eat 30% fewer calories. What they eat changes. They eat far less ice cream, far more fish, poultry, vegetables, and then lifestyle behaviors. On the other side of people losing weight, do they exercise more or less marriage and dating? You actually see an increase in both marriages and divorces on the other side of large impacts of body composition. And so we can't yet fathom, predict, digest the true cascading impact of AI. And I definitely think we can't truly understand the cascading impact of GLP1s 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The second thing we did is we moved on from just about 20% of the company. That's some humble pie too when you have to move on from people because in large part it was our doing. Ultimately founders and CEOs are accountable. Will have to live with and learn from. And the next thing, actually, that we did was we shut down a few of our products, revenue generating products that we shut down, but to narrow our focus even more, the confluence of those four things has worked together to create the re-acceleration that Roe has seen.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Building a company is a continuously humbling experience. You're constantly doing things where you're wrong. It's this weird combination of when you're building a company, you need to have such conviction in what you're doing because there's so many hurdles and so many people are telling you no all the time. They're telling you your idea is stupid. We were laughed out of the room when raising money constantly. When we raised our Series A, there were 40 no's out of 43 pitch interviews and pitches. So it's this really difficult tension between needing to have really high conviction and being wrong a lot and being told no all the time. And in 2022, my co-founders and I refounded the company. And that included some of the things we've mentioned thus far. It included bringing everything under one brand. So that was part of the refounding.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we first launched the company under the name, under the brand Roman, and the first product was erectile dysfunction. We always knew that we wanted to treat patients of all ages, sexes, genders across the country. And so we knew that even as we were building the brand, we knew that Roman wasn't going to be the end state. But we sort of wandered our way to try and find the right solution. We tried a house of brands. We had Roman, we had Rory for women's health. We had zero for smoking cessation. We had Rode Derm for dermatology. We had a bunch of different brands. And ultimately, the thing that I think we realized is we wanted one brand that represented the ethos of the company. And so we put all of our products and services under one brand. But to your point, we still needed a hero product. How would the majority of people learn about Road? We had a strong hypothesis that...”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Building a brand is part art, part science. And because if it was just pure science, everyone would be able to do it. I deeply believe that you need a single hero product to build a brand. It's the initial tip of the spear. It's how people are introduced to the company and to the promise that you're making to them. And over time, I think when people talk about, oh, your brand will only be known for one thing. That's a champagne problem. That means you found product market fit, which is the hardest thing to do as a company or as a product when you're first starting.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that is true. To me it was I was like going to be obvious that I thought the world would be so impacted by these things. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're a lot wrong, but it takes a tremendous amount of trust by the team. So the team, I think, said, you know, classic disagreeing commit. And then once they saw, and it didn't take much, I think it didn't take much convincing once people saw the impact that it had on patients' lives.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We made a uncomfortably large investment there, probably ahead of where people thought maybe it warranted at the time and ahead of not only because it was such a large investment relative to our business and our resources at the time, but also because people had doubts what weight losses is a category from a clinical perspective that is littered with failures and with overpromising, under deliver, and then not to mention this was a weekly injection. So there were so many reasons why people thought this will never, this is never going to work.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Disease. And so my dad was seeing an obesity specialist and he ended up being prescribed as Epic and now he's on Munjaro actually. And he lost 40, 50 pounds. I saw him in almost a matter of like a week or two go from this drive, this obsession, as he would describe it with food, and it disappeared almost overnight. His midnight trips to the kitchen, all of them disappeared. When I heard that him articulate that and then look at the number of people that we were helping, the number of people that were asking for it, and saw that there was an opportunity to replicate that experience for millions of people and knew that was the most profound thing. Thought that we could do and build at the time.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad, who's a physician, and he's actually, and I can share this part with a big smile on my face, but he has saved my life. He saved my sister's life. He saved my mom's life because we've all at one point in time or another had life-threatening illnesses. Ibaca and general heart condition, and he helped me navigate that. But even as a physician himself, he has always struggled with his weight for as long as I can remember my entire life. And I saw the fights that that created because when people don't understand the cause of obesity, they make the false assumption that it's willpower, that it's self-discipline. And so you see this person and my dad who's devoted his life to his family, devoted his life to helping others, but why can't he just do this one thing for us? Why can't he just lose weight and get healthy and be there for us as we want him to be? And again, it's out of love and fear, but it was driven by what a lot of people have, which is a misperception of obesity as a”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lily launched a drug called Zepound, and that allowed us to start advertising again, start onboarding patients because we had extremely high confidence as we added that to the formulary that they would be able to access some form of treatment.”
2024-03-21 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Riding the Ozempic wave, w/RO's CEO Zach Reitano · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT