042 – Philip Kasumu of Lyle – Trusting the Knowing

Learning to trust yourself in the entrepreneurial journey… Philip Kasumu of Lyle (an app which uses artificial intelligence to help men lose weight and empowers them to be fit and healthy) joins Julie Chan in the MouthMedia Network studios (powered by Sennheiser) to talk trusting your gut and the challenging path of a tech entrepreneur, and Chan offers Kasumu an intuitive reading.Starting Lyle, getting healthy, and a father’s inspiration Kasumu discusses the moment he decided what he wanted to do, how he wasn’t crazy about his consulting job and started reading articles, building a tech news product, which then started getting some activity, but users kept coming back to read articles on nutrition as many as five times a day. How Kasumu realized maybe there is something in that. He reached out to readers to find out their biggest pain point, learned that people wanted to be told what to do, so came up with another app to help read nutrition labels which had challenges. How he discovered that successful entrepreneurs always did something unconventional, and made list of those entrepreneurs then emailed all of them. He told them he had two failed startups in London and asked if he could shadow them for free. Kasumu found that nobody talks about body shaming for men, he wrote a article while at Greatest which got a lot of traction, so he decided to start an app to help men be healthier. Lyle is an AI powered weight loss app for men, which interacts with you like a dietician would. The focus is more on nutritional value than managing calories, with a high protein-based diet based on lifestyle. Getting ingredients, understanding nutrition better and motivating men to live a healthier life; being conscious of what you’re consuming and connecting to a creative mindset—about the way people should live. Plus, the significant influence of his morbidly obese father.An intuitive reading, navigating by knowing, and an octopus Chan offers Kasumu and intuitive reading which brings images and metaphors of the use of limbs like an octopus that help map his environment, the ability to sense things that are external to his own body, and how he must trust that he is sensing these things. Also, the ability to sense detail, which allows him to navigate world with knowledge and knowing. He shares how he does have a strength in reading rooms and people, is a good networker and knows how to approach certain situations. Trusting your gut feeling, constantly moving obstacles out of the way, and how his business might have changed if he had trusted himself. Plus, the courage it all takes.Future vision, people of color in tech, and a year in India Where metaphor can take Kasumu in 5-10 years, how he believes Lyle will be enormous and helping million of guys become the best version of themselves. The deep issues men face that people aren’t talking about, and how this platform can be part of the solution and beyond weight loss with the effects beyond the individual. Being a person of color as a founder in the tech industry, and whom he’d like to have a conversation with. Also, why Harvard, Y Combinator, and living in India for a year would be important experiences.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.