From Series B Fintech Founder to Starting Again in Health Tech w/ Fizel Nejabat | Performr.ai

00:00
Fizel Nejabat
Last 10 years, nutritional deficiency related admissions to hospital have goneup. 3x 850,000 people last year were admitted to hospital just on nutritionaldeficiency.

00:10
Amardeep Parmar
That's Fizel, co founder and former COO of Algbra and now the CEO and cofounder of Performr.AI went from a series B Fintech to starting again in healthtech.

00:22
Fizel Nejabat
We combined digital acquisition with community events and then content creationoff the back of the community events.

00:27
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

00:28
Fizel Nejabat
Standard Charter took a stake in the business. Our rating was like 4.7 stars orsomething. We had a launch which, broadly speaking, zero hiccups.

00:36
Amardeep Parmar
But health challenges for himself and his family changed his perspective.

00:40
Fizel Nejabat
How many other people must be going through something similar? Right, soPerformr is going to be the world's first wearable device. The same size as awatch that can actually tell your vitamin levels, mineral levels, hormonelevels, without actually going into your blood.

00:56
Amardeep Parmar
You can learn more about his fascinating story and the sacrifices along theway. Algbra continues to thrive and performer is taking on a big new challenge.

01:04
Fizel Nejabat
I want everyone to turn around and say, of course that was possible.

01:12
Amardeep Parmar
So you've been doing great stuff and you're in the second startup now.

01:15
Fizel Nejabat
Yep.

01:16
Amardeep Parmar
But let's rewind. When you were a kid.

01:18
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

01:18
Amardeep Parmar
What did you want to be growing up?

01:20
Fizel Nejabat
It's a great question. It's a great question. I think it changed about athousand times. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to be, but when I wasabout 17, I actually had to start deciding it. When I wanted to go touniversity, I thought, you know what I want to do is I want to make an impact.

01:33
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

01:34
Fizel Nejabat
And I don't know what that exactly meant at the time.

01:36
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

01:36
Fizel Nejabat
But I knew that I wanted to make an impact and I thought the two places whereyou could do that is either in business or in politics. So then I went touniversity and I studied law because I figured in law you could either go intobusiness or you could go into politics. Whilst I was there, I went to theOxford Union and then I walked in and I looked around and I stayed there for anhour and I thought, this is not for me. So I thought that was the moment whereI decided actually I wanted to go into something where I could build productswhere I could see them in people's hands and I could see them being happy withthem and getting those moments that make them feel better.

02:06
Amardeep Parmar
So what happened there? Did you drop out or.

02:08
Fizel Nejabat
At Oxford? No, no, I stayed. I actually did law. I mean, the story is that ittook me a law degree, a master's six years of practising law to realise that Ihated it. But in truth, I wanted to go somewhere where I could build, where Icould know what it was like to be in a billion dollar business. That was what Iwanted to do. I actually started off my career in startups. I worked for acompany called Obelisk Legal Support, and they were doing working from homebefore working from home was ever fashionable. So most women tend to leave thelegal career in the middle of their careers and work from home because they'vegot kids to raise.

02:43
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

02:44
Fizel Nejabat
At the time, there was no such thing as working from home. So this businesswould outsource work to them and that allowed exceptionally qualified lawyersto continue to be involved in work and it allowed companies to get exceptionallegal advice much more cheaply than they would have in the city. So that wasactually where I started off my career.

03:00
Amardeep Parmar
And so you said, like, you knew straight away that it was in this in the rightplace.

03:04
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

03:04
Amardeep Parmar
Then how did that affect the decisions you then went into? So you said youcontinue to stay in law.

03:08
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

03:09
Amardeep Parmar
Even though you weren't quite sure what was right place to you?

03:11
Fizel Nejabat
I think I was very happy to go into law because there was still a hugecommercial element involved.

03:17
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

03:17
Fizel Nejabat
I was in commercial law. That's what I did. So for about six years, I worked onsome of the largest M and A transactions, a lot of them in technology as well.I worked for the SoftBank Vision Fund. I worked on the SoftBank Vision Funddeal. I did tech investments into the United States. So I really enjoyed thatpart of it and I liked it because success was dependent on very objectivemetrics.

03:38
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

03:38
Fizel Nejabat
There wasn't a huge amount of subjectivity around it.

03:40
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

03:41
Fizel Nejabat
So that's why I didn't really want to go into politics. I wanted to go intobusiness. And law was an amazing stepping stone to doing that. Everything fromdoing your late nights to managing complex situations and actually deliveringsomething to a very high standard and very high quality. Those are the skillsthat I picked up in law.

03:59
Amardeep Parmar
So, Austin, were trying earlier about how you've got martial arts background,right?

04:03
Fizel Nejabat
Yes.

04:03
Amardeep Parmar
And you did that like earlier when you were younger, but then recently. Howmuch do you think the martial arts played in your attitude towards work aswell? And that ability to do a lot of hours.

04:12
Fizel Nejabat
Hugely, hugely. I mean, the one thing they'll teach you, the first thingthey'll teach you is, you know, stay calm, stay relaxed.

04:19
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

04:19
Fizel Nejabat
I was very fortunate to actually go and train at the Shaolin temple in China.

04:23
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

04:24
Fizel Nejabat
So I spent six weeks there and I did the whole thing a bit like now I shavedoff my hair, but even less hair than I have at the moment. And I went and Istayed in a temple for six weeks, right. And initially I went there because Iwanted to learn how to actually compete in the ring and so on. Right. ActuallyI came back having learned all of the softer stuff, meditation, Tai chi.Because over there they see those two things as inherently interlinked, Right.You can't be too hard, you can't be too soft. You have to have a nice balancebetween the two.

04:52
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

04:53
Fizel Nejabat
So when you're doing your late night, when things are going wrong, when thingsaren't exactly working, you realise that actually just centre yourself back inand reset. And that ability to centre yourself back in and reset is incrediblyvaluable and there's no better place to learn it than either in a startup orwhen you're in the ring and someone's trying to get one over.

05:11
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. I credit like my martial arts background as well, so much of my attitudebecause like I said, if you're, when I was younger, if you're used to having tofight off black belts and having to defend yourself and all these differentscenarios, especially in training, for example, we have three one and thesedifferent things. If it can handle that, then a lot of other stuff just seems alot less scary, Right?

05:28
Fizel Nejabat
Exactly, exactly.

05:29
Amardeep Parmar
It's doing hard stuffing really does help. And they said you worked in Norfolksix years, right?

05:35
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

05:35
Amardeep Parmar
When did you start to get the itch?

05:37
Amardeep Parmar
Okay.

05:37
Amardeep Parmar
You've worked on M and A, you've worked in these Bishop Softback Vision Fund tonow let me try and do something myself or let me try and build?

05:43
Fizel Nejabat
So the excellent question, when I completed my training contract in law, Iactually sat my GMAT, right? And I was going to do an MBA and mentally it wasI'm going to go do a one year MBA and it'll be a personal incubator, right.That's where I can meet co founders, that's where I can meet potentialinvestors, that's where I can test out ideas and it will just be a year where Ican do that without the pressure of actually working seven days a week, sixdays a week in an incredible law firm.

06:07
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

06:08
Fizel Nejabat
So that was initially the plan. Right now as I was applying for my MBAs and Igot the offers to do my MBAs. Acquaintances that I actually knew who were alsoinvolved with Clifford Chance, right. They were looking to work with them atthe time, they reached out to me on a Saturday and they said, Fizel, do youwant to come out this evening?

06:23
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

06:23
Fizel Nejabat
So went out, we met for coffee and they said, listen, there's an idea calledAlgbra, right? This is what we're looking to do and this is what we're lookingto build. Half of the world's unbanked are Muslim and we want to build adigital bank that can serve their needs. I said, okay, let me think about it.This was on a Saturday. By Friday I handed in my notice at Clifford Charles,right. And I was living in Dubai at the time. I moved out from Dubai, came backto the UK in the middle of COVID and we started to build out Algbra, right. Itwas something where once the opportunity was there and it happened, I decidedlet me just take this opportunity and I will make the absolute best of it.

06:56
Amardeep Parmar
Oh, so it's a big decision made there.

06:57
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

06:57
Amardeep Parmar
And it's played out really well. But at that time, what was the reaction to thepeople around you? Because like you said you're going to go to an MBA and likeobviously MBAs were very prestigious. It's very status driven, right. It helpspeople like, oh, okay, you've done an MBA and then to gift it up and then gointo what you're doing. Were people around you supportive? What was the. Howdid that feel internally? Were you very confident and straight away or did ittake a bit of time to?

07:20
Fizel Nejabat
They were incredibly supportive. I was very fortunate that the people around mewere incredibly supportive about it. And actually once, you know, we got theprecede round going and we started to invite investors, a huge number of myfriends invested in the business.

07:35
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

07:36
Fizel Nejabat
A huge number of my ex colleagues invested in business, my bosses invested inthe business. So actually that really made the journey. In many ways it made ita lot easier because I felt like I had the support of my community around me.In many ways. I thought, you know what, I really have to deliver for everyonenow because it's extremely personal. But then when you're building a businessit always is.

07:53
Amardeep Parmar
So I think it's really. Because I think sometimes people have in their headsthat nobody's going to support them.

07:58
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

07:58
Amardeep Parmar
Their friends aren't going to care or like their family are going to thinkthey're whatever. But actually there's more and more stories that you hear of.Actually people do support you.

08:05
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

08:06
Amardeep Parmar
And if you don't share your idea, don't share what you're thinking becauseyou're worried about what people in the thing, you don't give people the chanceto actually be supportive.

08:13
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

08:13
Amardeep Parmar
If they don't know what you're doing, how can they support you?

08:15
Fizel Nejabat
Exactly, exactly. I think most people will jump at the opportunity to behelpful.

08:19
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

08:19
Fizel Nejabat
Most people would jump at the opportunity to kind of push you forward and tomotivate you and push you and help you to achieve what you want to achieve.

08:26
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

08:26
Fizel Nejabat
Because I think somebody achieving their ambition and positivity can be a veryinfectious thing.

08:32
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

08:32
Fizel Nejabat
So I think you're just opening that up and actually there are going to bepeople that turn around and say, well, you know, I don't think you should dothis. Right. That's a silly idea. Guess what? You're going to get that from nowall the way through to IPO. You are going to get that from absolutelyeverybody.

08:44
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

08:45
Fizel Nejabat
So it's also good training to just have a bit thick skin and crack on and geton with it.

08:49
Amardeep Parmar
So you mentioned that the problem. Right, the problem was that half the world'sunbanked Muslim.

08:53
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

08:53
Amardeep Parmar
Now you've got to try and solve that problem.

08:55
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

08:55
Amardeep Parmar
How did you go about that? What were the steps you took? What was the actualproducts or solution you come up with?

09:00
Fizel Nejabat
So start with your end goal, with your vision and work backwards from that.

09:04
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

09:04
Fizel Nejabat
If that's my vision there for half of the world's unbanked. Well, what's theprevious one? Well, not half of them are going to get a quarter of them.

09:11
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

09:11
Fizel Nejabat
If you look at a quarter of them, which countries are they kind of based in?Okay, well, we need to launch into these different countries. Great. I want tolaunch into these different countries. What is it that's going to help me tolaunch into those countries? Well, if you actually based in the UK, with acredible banking system, incredible regulatory system and amazing technology,we have the talent here to actually build that. That's what you need to do.

09:28
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

09:29
Fizel Nejabat
From there it's a hub and spoke situation. You can go into all of those othercountries. So then it was, okay, we're going to launch in the UK. Did youlaunch in the UK? You have to be successful. Great. Which customers are goingto be successful? And actually in each case, there's a product market fitassessment, there's a customer segmentation assessment, there's a productassessment, but that's completely natural and normal and all those things arewell worn. Right. The innovation is in how you get from where you are from allthe way through there. And you're going to face a thousand challenges on theway.

09:55
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

09:55
Fizel Nejabat
But all solvable and mark one, all manageable.

09:58
Amardeep Parmar
So what you said there, it's common sense, but I think many people don'tnecessarily realise that.

10:01
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

10:02
Amardeep Parmar
Because the challenge, especially in something mission driven like what you'redoing there, you are trying to sell all these people unbanked. But if peoplefocus on that end target, sometimes it may take intermediary steps.

10:13
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

10:13
Amardeep Parmar
And it can be so easy to get overwhelmed by trying to help half a billionpeople, how many people there are, and actually breaking it down into differentproblems. You mentioned there about what you do at the beginning isn'tnecessarily what you can do later on.

10:26
Fizel Nejabat
Correct.

10:26
Amardeep Parmar
And I think a lot of people struggle with that concept.

10:29
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

10:29
Amardeep Parmar
Because like, oh, but I'm selling out. Oh, I'm not actually working towards it.But I just said you need to be successful in something to have a base to goonto there.

10:37
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah.

10:37
Amardeep Parmar
And for people who are in that kind of moral quandary at the moment, wherethey're like, okay, this is what I want to achieve, but if I'm doing this otherthing, is that the right point path I should take?

10:45
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah. And people want to start in developing the final product. Guess what? Thefinal product is never going to be the final product.

10:53
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

10:53
Fizel Nejabat
The person that you were last year isn't the same person that you are thisyear. Your view of the world is going to change. Your perspectives, yourmotivations, your customers are going to change.

11:01
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

11:02
Fizel Nejabat
Everybody that was developing certain software applications three years ago,all of their products have changed overnight because GPT came along and AI isnow a much more mainstream thing than it was in the past.

11:11
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

11:12
Fizel Nejabat
The world is going to continue to change.

11:14
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

11:14
Fizel Nejabat
The only thing that you can do is take that first step. You might not know howthis, the old saying goes, right? You don't know how you're going to get to thetop of the mountain, but you don't plot the path all the way from the verybeginning.

11:25
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

11:26
Fizel Nejabat
You take the first step and you take the second step and the path becomesclearer to you as you get on. And just going back to what were saying earlier,right? I think building a business, entrepreneurship, all of that fun stuff,right. It's as much about managing yourself as it is about managing a hugebusiness or a small business or a problem or a solution or an opportunity andwhere you can manage yourself and think, you know what? I will get on withthis. I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to have the confidence in myselfto make it happen. That's the thing that's going to drive you from that tinyone person, two person organisation all the way through to being a massiveorganisation.

12:02
Amardeep Parmar
As you said, when you mean joined, right, Tiny one or two person organisationright at the very start, yeah. You've got to decide what role you're going toplay in that and how dynamics going to be. And could you talk a bit about that?Like how did you figure out which role you're going to take and what roleyou're best suited to?

12:16
Fizel Nejabat
So my background was in law, right? I did a lot of financial services as well,I did a lot of regulation. So it just made sense, right, for me and Zeiad aswell, my co founder in Algbra, huge amounts of respect for him, right? Ilearned so much from him. It was very important that we actually just stuck towhat we knew best, right? And Ziad had built his first business from zero totwo and a half billion of AUM in about three years, right? And then the idea ofalgebra came along to him and the opportunity and that's when he gave me a calland we started up. So for him kind of fundraising, setting the vision, settingthe strategy, setting the motivation for the business. For me it was just sweepeverything, right?

12:53
Fizel Nejabat
But because of my legal background, I was able to ensure that everything wasdone in a compliant way. Was able to ensure that everything was done withoperational resilience. And when the consumer duty came in, sure, everything isdone in line with the consumer duty, making sure that our compliance, if you'rerunning a financial institution, 60, 70, 80% of it is going to be compliance,right? Which was my bread and butter notwithstanding that I didn't like law,but I bit the bullet and got on with it, right? So that was kind of. It wasquite easy for us to segregate it, right? Especially in the early days as well.But as the business grows and it expands actually that those roles start tomerge into one, right? They start to merge into one.

13:30
Fizel Nejabat
So last year Standard Charter took a stake in the business, right? StandardCharter took a stake in the business. It was always my passion, it was alwaysmy ambition to actually just build my own business on my own vision, right? Iwas so grateful for the experience at Algbra alongside incredible people likeAdam Sadiq, New World and Ömer Düzyol, and all of our early stage investors.But after Standard Chartered Investor, I said, guys, the organisation is nowbig enough, then it probably needs that once point of leadership. And I'm jackof all trades, a master of none. I've hired the master of one in all of ourfunctions, I hand this over to you and amicably we decided that I should takemy leave and that's when I started Performr. Yeah.

14:10
Amardeep Parmar
So it was about five years. You're part of Algbra, right?

14:12
Fizel Nejabat
About five years, yeah.

14:13
Amardeep Parmar
What was the highlights of that? What was like the things you're most proud ofif you look back on that journey?

14:18
Fizel Nejabat
I mean, so many things. The thing that always made me the happiest was when Isaw our customer reviews coming in. Launching a fintech, in my view at least,and from what I've seen, is challenging, right? It's very challenging becauseit's not a widget, right, where you could launch it and if it goes wrong, it'sfine, you just take it off the App Store and you continue. No, no, you'reholding people's money. There are security concerns, there are complianceconcerns as well, Right. It's regulated. If something goes wrong, it is goingto make the news, right? Because everybody wants to write about that fintechthat got it wrong. We had a launch which, poorly speaking, zero hiccups. Icredit that hugely to our team, right?

14:57
Fizel Nejabat
Not only were there no hiccups, even though we had, I mean, one day we had1,300 scammers trying to attack the system at the same time, all trying to login, right? And we had spent the time to do the groundwork properly to ensurethat if that occurred, we could turn it away. And we did. Not a single one ofthem got through. I was very proud of that launch. But it wasn't just that welaunched it well. We had, I mean, our rating was like 4.7 stars or something,right? And it's still very high. It's still very high. That's a huge win. Ireally like, because I love the fact that people love the product and we didour customer service interviews and people came back and said, you know, thisis amazing. This is what I wanted. This is what I think.

15:36
Fizel Nejabat
It's amazing to see this idea that was just a seedling on a piece of paper somany years ago actually start to make people happy. That that probably has tobe the best experience and the best feeling. There are loads of others, butthat was probably quite a big one.

15:51
Amardeep Parmar
Hello. Hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. We'rethe community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators andinvestors in the UK. You can join us totally free@thebaehq.com/join. There.You'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, eventsand opportunities. You can also get access to our free startup fundamentalscourse by joining. Let's get back to the show. Obviously, now you're on yoursecond startup, but as I always say, second time founders are so much more likesucceed. There's just that information, that experience you get from your firstcompany makes it so much easier for you in the future. What were those lessonsyou took away? What were the experiences you had from algebra that you thinkmakes you much more effective now as a second time founder?

16:43
Fizel Nejabat
On so many levels, right? On so many levels. I think when you go out tofundraise, you already have a network in place, right. So you can actuallystart to call people and make those conversations and they're not calledconversations. And when you have those conversations with people, they've seenwhat you've done over the last five years and that makes it slightly easier toactually fundraise. That said, even as a second time founder, your ambitionschange. So because you're going for a bigger ambition, it's still going to bechallenging. Right? And I think fundraising is always challenging. That's justthe nature of the beast. Our go to market, I think our go to market was verysuccessful in Algbra.

17:12
Fizel Nejabat
So we did a really cool thing where we combined digital acquisition withcommunity events and then content creation off the back of the communityevents.

17:19
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

17:20
Fizel Nejabat
So we engendered trust with people by doing financial education workshops.

17:24
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

17:25
Fizel Nejabat
And that trust in Genderman and that content creation off the back of it reallyallowed us to have quite a low CAC. And it was one of the lowest CACs in theset of. In the kind of, if you, within the first four or five years ofbusiness, it was a very low cac. Very high customer spend on our cards as well.So understanding how to go to market, there is another lesson I'll take away.And there's some other lessons that you take away as well. Yeah, we do thatdifferently as well.

17:48
Amardeep Parmar
Was it, what was, what do you think was the hardest time during Algbra as well?

17:52
Fizel Nejabat
I think the hardest time for me personally or for the business? There's twodifferent things.

17:57
Amardeep Parmar
We go for both.

17:58
Fizel Nejabat
Then do we go for both here? I mean, look, for me personally, I think withinthe first year of starting the business, my sister Sara had a quite a seriouscondition and she ended up in hospital. She was in hospital for about fourmonths. She had a stem cell donor, couldn't find one nationally. She was goingthrough a condition called myelofibrosis, which is becoming cancer. So helpingmy sister to find A donor and running a national campaign on that and doing allthe newspaper pushouts, community events and all that at the same time aslaunching Algbra at the Design Museum in front of 400 investors, politicians,journalists, and actually having to have a working product working at the sametime.

18:44
Fizel Nejabat
So distinctly, remember on the Monday my sister left hospital and then likemaybe three days later or something, I had to get up on stage and show that wehad this working product and this working device and everything was going on.Glad to say that she's okay now. She's doing fine. She's great. And I'm alsoglad to say that the launch went off without any hiccups as well. But that waschallenging. That was challenging.

19:07
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

19:08
Fizel Nejabat
But going back to that lesson you learned from, you know, martial arts. Bite onyour gum shield and get on with it. There's no other way around it.

19:16
Amardeep Parmar
And I think that's an important point as well, is that for all founders,sometimes what you saw in LinkedIn, what you see on, like, different people,that's their award and this one or whatever it is, the reality is that even ifthe company is going well, it doesn't mean that other things outside of thecompany aren't going well. And that's such as a constant struggle. Because itdoes. I think probably when you start to work as well, this whole idea, youseparate business from personal life, but if your sister's in the hospital andfighting for a life, that's obviously going to affect your efficiency and howgood you are at building. And when you're a founder, there's just less, Iguess, support.

19:49
Amardeep Parmar
If when I had a job and I'm part of a team and the people above me, you cankind of slack off a little bit.

19:54
Amardeep Parmar
Right.

19:54
Amardeep Parmar
You can just pass on as. Yeah, but if everybody's reporting into you, then it'svery difficult because then if you don't do your job properly while there'ssomething else going on that affects your employees. Yeah. And if that doesn't,then doesn't work out, then you don't have to let them go potentially. There'salways different that cycle. And how did you. So you obviously mentioned aboutmartial arts, but like, how do you think you deal with that level of security?

20:15
Fizel Nejabat
I think one of the things that I learned from Algbra is that you need to have ateam that's really bought into your culture and is really brought into thevision.

20:26
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

20:26
Fizel Nejabat
Because yes, when all of that was going on, inevitably I had to take trips tothe hospital and doing all of that stuff.

20:34
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

20:35
Fizel Nejabat
And actually what happened is the team just. They rose to the responsibilitybecause they cared about the mission, they cared about the culture, they caredthat we had a smooth, no hiccup launch, right? So that's what I found. So thebiggest, one of the biggest takeaways for me, which was, I mean, it's commonknowledge, right? But a shared mission and shared values amongst your team isextremely important.

21:00
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously that experience there helped inform what you're going on to donext.

21:03
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, exactly.

21:04
Amardeep Parmar
So tell us about that.

21:05
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, with my sister, it became. I started to learn alot about blood and blood disorders and how they can go wrong, etc, and then afew, kind of, maybe a year or so down the line, I started to have my ownmedical problems, right? And I went to the doctor and they prescribed me acourse of injections and I didn't like the side effects of the injections,right? So I said, let me just get a second opinion on this. So I went and got asecond opinion and they said, look, you don't need to do any of that. Just takemagnesium and just take magnesium bisglycinate. It's a specific type ofmagnesium. Not a lot of shops sell it, so you won't find it in Holland andBarrett, but you can find it from a good retailer online.

21:41
Fizel Nejabat
Here's one. So I went and bought it, took it for two months, lo and behold,everything was fine. And I was so taken aback by this. I was so taken aback,right? My mood changed, my energy changed, my sleep was much better, myrecovery was much better, my muscles weren't as sore anymore. And I justthought, hold on a minute, like, how many other people must be going throughsomething similar, right? So I started to do the research on this and between10 to 60% of the UK population are deficient in five key vitamins and minerals,right? We are all, generally speaking, deficient in magnesium for women. 9 outof 10 women are deficient in iron pre menopause, right? Post menopause womentend to be more deficient in vitamin D and calcium, right?

22:23
Fizel Nejabat
Then there's the way that you actually take all of these supplements together,right? Vitamin D, you shouldn't take. You should take it with vitamin K.Because if you don't take it with vitamin K, it's not going to absorb iron. Youhave to take it with vitamin C, right? If you really want to get the bestbenefits of magnesium, you should be taking it with zinc as well, right?Particularly if you're a guy, if you're taking magnesium, you should have. Itblew my mind. And I just thought, what on earth is actually going on here,right? How is all of this not just common knowledge? The common knowledge iseat your meat, eat your greens, and, you know, everyone is the lowest commondenominator. Everyone should be eating the same diet, everyone should be eatingthe same amounts of carbs. This is just incorrect.

23:00
Fizel Nejabat
It's completely incorrect. So I thought, is there a way to track magnesium,right, to track my mag, because I was wearing, you know, wearables and all ofthat, so there must be something to track my magnesium. And there wasn't. So Ithought to myself, is there a way to actually be able to track magnesium noninvasively, right? And this, at this point was just curiosity. It was purecuriosity, right? So I started to look into it and I realised that, wow, thereare actually lots of ways of being able to track what you're eating, what'sgoing on inside your blood, but not invasively or minimally. Invasively, right?And you can actually put all of these into a wearable device. So I started tothink about, okay, well, you know, how could you kind of possibly bring thisinto life?

23:39
Fizel Nejabat
And it's not my background and it's not my world, but it's something that I'mextremely passionate about. I really want to make it happen. So in Muay Thai,I, you know, went to see my coach, Amro Ghanim, right, who helped me throughthree, four fights or something. And we got to see him fight in Milan, right,for the European belt, which he won that evening. And I met another one. It wasstudents, right, Dr. Louise. And Dr. Louise is a biochemistry graduate fromUCL. Went straight from her degree into her PhD, Francis Crick Institute, HenryRegatta Gold. So I just started to talk to Louise and I was like, what do youthink? She goes, you know what? I've actually had a similar idea, right. Istarted to think about this myself.

24:18
Fizel Nejabat
So that's when Louise and I got together and we started to think about, okay,how do we actually build this and how do we make it happen? Then how do wepotentially bring it to life? So Performr is going to be the world's firstwearable device, the same size as a watch, that can actually tell your vitaminlevels, mineral levels, hormone levels, without actually going into your blood.It's just going to be a simple device that sits on the wrist or can sit on thearm. And we are looking to help initially elite athletes and fitnessenthusiasts, and then after that from wellness consumers as well. And thevision is quite simple. You need to know what's going on inside your body tothe level of a blood test by just looking at your phone.

25:01
Amardeep Parmar
How long ago is that conversation that when it started it was about?

25:05
Fizel Nejabat
This is about a year ago, a year and a half ago.

25:07
Amardeep Parmar
Obviously leaving the very fast growing startup that's doing really well.

25:10
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

25:10
Amardeep Parmar
To then start something else which is very again, mission driven and somethingto really care about. Personal experience. How do you then like, what are thesteps you're now taking? Obviously you're probably on a faster track than youwere because of digital experience.

25:20
Amardeep Parmar
Right?

25:20
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah.

25:21
Amardeep Parmar
So in the last year, what's been the big steps you've taken?

25:24
Fizel Nejabat
The first thing that we want to do is validate the technology.

25:26
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

25:26
Fizel Nejabat
So we worked with a couple of universities that managed to validate thetechnology and we know that it works.

25:31
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

25:32
Fizel Nejabat
A basic. Fantastic.

25:33
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

25:34
Fizel Nejabat
And great. The actual, the sensors actually work. They actually measure whatwe're looking to measure and there's a good level of repeatability andsensitivity and all of that fun stuff.

25:42
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

25:42
Fizel Nejabat
Once we got the sensors working, we then went and actually started to speak tosports scientists and nutritionists and team doctors for elite sports clubs.

25:51
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

25:52
Fizel Nejabat
The likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, England rugby, Welsh rugby, golf, tennis,rowing, gymnastics, endurance cycling. And we just started to ask them, okay,so which analytes do you actually want?

26:04
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

26:04
Fizel Nejabat
Because the technology that we have can do 10, 15, 20 different analytes.

26:08
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

26:08
Fizel Nejabat
We can do vitamin B, vitamin C, we could do vitamin E,  we can do sugars,we can do antioxidative stress, we can do lactate, we can do all of thesedifferent. Which ones do you want? And they started to tell us these are theones which are most important to us and which would be most important to ourfootballers, rugby players, etc., etc. We got that market validation quitequickly and now we're starting to manufacture the prototype and that prototypewill be ready in September.

26:38
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

26:38
Amardeep Parmar
So it's a very different industry.

26:39
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

26:40
Amardeep Parmar
So you went from fintech into now health tech, hardware as well.

26:44
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

26:45
Amardeep Parmar
So what's been the hardest transitions in that?

26:48
Fizel Nejabat
I think the hardest transition is the product life cycle.

26:52
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

26:52
Fizel Nejabat
Or the product iteration cycle, if you like.

26:54
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

26:55
Fizel Nejabat
The iteration life cycle in software is measured in hours, right. You know,probably these days, minutes even.

27:02
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

27:03
Fizel Nejabat
With advancements, hardware lifecycle. No, no, it doesn't work that way.

27:07
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

27:08
Fizel Nejabat
You are looking at minimum, kind of if you're changing nothing, it will takedays, right. If you're changing nothing at all, it will take days. Often itwill take weeks. A lot of the time, it will take months.

27:18
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

27:18
Fizel Nejabat
Thinking about manufacturing, lifecycle, thinking about how you do delivery,how you do distribution. But for me, I think that's really exciting.

27:25
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

27:26
Fizel Nejabat
For lots of reasons, I think one, hardware is hard. I like doing difficultthings. I like doing complex things. If I wanted you to do the easy thing Ilike, I probably would have stayed in my previous business and just coasted itthrough the honorary chairman of the board or to run one of the departments inthe business. Right. I just didn't want to do that. And that was what I said tomy co founders. I said, guys, I'm just. It's not in me to do that.

27:47
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

27:48
Fizel Nejabat
So I like doing challenging things, I like doing difficult things. I likeseeing things in people's hands that they like, that they enjoy using, thatmake them happy, that make them healthier in this particular respect as well.So from that perspective, it is a very different business. It is a verydifferent business. But you listen to people who are smarter than you involvepeople who are smarter than you. You look at people who've done it before. Mostof the challenges have been solved.

28:13
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

28:13
Fizel Nejabat
Distribution is a done and dusted problem.

28:15
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

28:16
Fizel Nejabat
It's been solved before. Customer service repairs, productive ratio, all ofthese things have been solved.

28:22
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

28:23
Fizel Nejabat
The innovation for us is in the biosensors and that.

28:26
Fizel Nejabat
That's hard.

28:28
Fizel Nejabat
That's hard.

28:29
Amardeep Parmar
So on that front as well, so you, like I said, you've done all these differentsteps already. How have you found kind of a second time, founder journey? Areyou enjoying it? What's the bit? It's like you said, you've gone from somethingwhich you could have coasted if you wanted to, as like, things got bigger. Howhas that decision been for you?

28:45
Fizel Nejabat
I like wrapping my head around new things, I like wrapping my head around newchallenges and I like wrapping my head around things that haven't been donebefore.

28:52
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

28:53
Fizel Nejabat
I think to me, at least once it gets into the process stage, it's somethingthat excites me.

29:00
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

29:00
Fizel Nejabat
I do get excited by it, but I really like the initial innovation and the growthfrom there.

29:06
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah.

29:06
Amardeep Parmar
So one thing we're going to start doing now is so over a hundred episodes in.So the idea is in two years time, we'll get you on a get.

29:13
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

29:14
Amardeep Parmar
And what would you love to say that you've been able to achieve former AI inthat point? So I asked you about Algbra and what you achieved in that fiveyears were most proud of. What would you love to say in, okay, two years timein Performr, we've been able to do this?

29:26
Fizel Nejabat
Here's what I'd love to say. A lot of people will now look at what we're doingand say, is that even possible? In two years time, I want everyone to turnaround and say of course that was possible. I wanted to feel like it wasobvious in hindsight. This is just a ubiquitous piece of technology thateveryone is using. And of course you would go and use the performer strap orthe patch, right. Why would you not go out and use it? So that's what I wouldwant in two years time.

29:51
Amardeep Parmar
Two years time and then say in 10 years time.

29:53
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

29:54
Amardeep Parmar
What's the overall big dream, big ambition that might sound crazy for this?

29:59
Fizel Nejabat
I would love to see the level of nutritional deficiency decrease passively.

30:06
Fizel Nejabat
Right?

30:06
Fizel Nejabat
That's what I would like to see. In the last 10 years I read a statistic whichis quite crazy. Nutritional deficiency related admissions to hospital have goneup 3x. 850,000 people last year were admitted to hospital just on nutritionaldeficiency. We're not talking diabetes, right? We're not talking cholesterol,just in lack of vitamins and minerals.

30:27
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

30:27
Fizel Nejabat
Scurvy's on the rise, rickets is on the rise. These are the things that wehaven't seen since God knows why. Right. I would love to see us reverse thattrend because I really do believe that when you give people the information andyou give people the understanding, I think people want to take better care oftheir health. And I think preventative health is going to be a huge thing inthe next five years. And Performa will be at the very forefront of putting thatliterally into people's hands.

30:57
Amardeep Parmar
So it's interesting, I know there's some startups right now doing extremelypremium products, right? So it's like for the pure elite people, right, to beable to have this kind of access information and what it seems like you'redoing is obviously you're targeting the people who benefit most, first atsports clubs, people like that. But then like I said, this is a piece ofhardware that eventually, someday, if it's a case that everybody then now knowswhat their hormone levels are, the magnesium levels are, their advisory levelsare just my impact that can make.

31:25
Amardeep Parmar
Right?

31:25
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

31:25
Amardeep Parmar
And look at the overall health tech seed. Is that the way that you see thingsgoing to be able to make these devices available for everybody someday ormajority of the population?

31:33
Fizel Nejabat
It is a consumer device then. It's absolutely a consumer device. Yes. Yes. It'snot something that we are building just for elite athletes. It is somethingthat I want to put into the hands of every fitness enthusiast, every wellnessconscious consumer. It should be something as easy to wear and to easy tounderstand, a little accessible as maybe an Apple watch or even a Fitbit.

31:56
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

31:57
Fizel Nejabat
And that's actually the price points that we're targeting.

31:59
Amardeep Parmar
What's interesting is kind of comes almost full circle. So when we're talkingat the beginning about Algbra, about how the overall mission, what you'retrying to achieve there, but that's not. You don't build that productinitially, you build it for particular segments, then get the validation, getthe feedback and then go further from there.

32:14
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah.

32:14
Amardeep Parmar
And it seems like it's like you said, it's the same playbook, right?

32:16
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah.

32:17
Amardeep Parmar
Let's start with elite sports clubs and people who are going to be reallyobsessed with this data and then use that as a validation to then get intolater places. So it's quite interesting.

32:26
Fizel Nejabat
And look, I mean, in my opinion, right, the best impact businesses are notimpact businesses in that way.

32:32
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

32:33
Fizel Nejabat
And I think businesses that position themselves as impact businesses, they havea very tough time a lot of the time. Because nobody wants to be an impactconsumer. Right? Nobody wants to be a consumer who needs impact related stuff.

32:47
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

32:47
Fizel Nejabat
They just want to be a consumer. They want to use something exciting,interesting, really cool.

32:52
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

32:53
Fizel Nejabat
And I think that's what we're doing.

32:54
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

32:54
Fizel Nejabat
But I think that the impact on health is going to be very dramatic.

32:59
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. So hopefully in two years time when you come back you can be able to say,well, hopefully in two years time you come back, I'll be wearing one myself.

33:05
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah. Or we'll get you on a box sooner than that.

33:08
Amardeep Parmar
But yeah, so we're gonna go to a quick fire questions now.

33:11
Fizel Nejabat
Yep.

33:12
Amardeep Parmar
So first one is who are free Asians in Britain you think are doing incrediblework and you'd love to shout them out?

33:18
Fizel Nejabat
I think  Husayn Kassai is doing amazing work.

33:20
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

33:20
Fizel Nejabat
I think he's doing incredible work and what I like about these built incrediblebusinesses. But I also really love how much time and effort he puts into theecosystem as well.

33:30
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

33:30
Fizel Nejabat
So he's not just doing get famous, he's really trying to pull everyone up withhim and pull the UK up with him as well. So I have huge amounts of respect forhim. I'd say Hana Hussain, right, our big issue, invest huge amounts of respectfor what she has done, what she has achieved and what she continues to and justforce of nature, real powerhouse. And the third one I'm going to. I'm going toadd two more, if that's okay.

33:52
Fizel Nejabat
Right.

33:53
Fizel Nejabat
I'll add yourself and Gurvir, because I've actually followed your journey for awhile and I just think what you guys have built on, what you're doing isincredible. So, yeah, really awesome.

34:01
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you so much. And then if you want to find out more about you and whatyou're up to, where can they follow the journey?

34:07
Fizel Nejabat
LinkedIn. Performer.AI is the website and maybe the next podcast.

34:13
Amardeep Parmar
And if people can help you today. Right, so people listening right now, they'veloved listening to the story, they've loved what you're trying to build. Whatcan they do to help and get involved?

34:22
Fizel Nejabat
You know what, join the wait list.

34:24
Fizel Nejabat
Right?

34:25
Fizel Nejabat
Everyone who's joining the waitlist, we will give them early access to theproduct. We will also probably reach out to you for market research. Reach outto us on LinkedIn. Connect with us, follow our journey, engage with it. I justwant to hear from people. I just want to hear, what do they want? What do theyneed? What's important to them? What do they like? What do they not like? Themore people just flood us with opinions, the better it will be for us and thebetter it will be for the product.

34:50
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for coming on. Really enjoyed listening to the story. Andobviously earlier were reminiscing about martial arts days.

34:56
Fizel Nejabat
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

34:57
Amardeep Parmar
But have you got any final words to audience?

35:00
Fizel Nejabat
I think for anyone who's listening to this and who actually wants to start on ajourney, the hardest part is that first step. Just start. And as soon as youtake that first step, everything else becomes clearer. It's never clear 10steps ahead, right? It's never going to be 20 steps ahead, but those next stepsare always going to be a lot clearer for you. And take your magnesium.

35:21
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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