On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2021. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Sam ↗
In their words
When I started working on this, I thought that the problem we were solving was ignorance. And I'm increasingly convinced that we're actually solving many decades of intentional misinformation.
I was spending the overwhelming majority of my time working on things that I kind of stumbled into, and I'd probably spent cumulatively 10 hours of my life thinking about what I actually want to do.
Levels was actually started fully remote, which at the time — which was pre-COVID — was pretty controversial, and a lot of funds explicitly passed on us because we were remote. Which is kind of ironic in retrospect.
More from TechTO ×2
Around the web ×2
Quick answers
Who is Sam Corcos?
A co-founder of Levels, the metabolic health company, where he was CEO and now sits on the board. He is chief information officer at the US Department of the Treasury. Before Levels he was a software developer and technical co-founder, most recently of CarDash, a Y Combinator company in car repair.
Why did he start Levels?
He took a year off after CarDash to work out what he actually wanted to build, studying theology and network theory among other things, and narrowed it to systems that lock people onto a failure track. Healthcare was one; a conversation with Josh Clemente about glucose monitoring turned it into a company.
How does he track his own time?
In 15-minute increments, religiously. He told TechTO in June 2021 he knew how he had spent almost every quarter-hour of Levels' first two years and was writing it up — the post landed on First Round Review that August, logging 7,922 hours across ten categories.