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Kyriakos Eleftheriou

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Kyriakos Eleftheriou, the founder and CEO of Terra API speaks with some of the best founders and CEOs in the space of health and fitness, to learn how the best are building their businesses. At TERRA API, we are on a mission to enable developers to connect and create solutions by using health data.

1 DAY AGO

Chief Growth Officer of HYROX: Douglas Gremmen

42,000 tickets for one New York event. 15,000 gym affiliates. $0 spent on influencers. HYROX CGO Douglas Gremmen joins Kyriakos, CEO of Terra API , at the Connected Health Summit in Stanford to talk through what actually drove that — and what didn't work. The US was their first market outside Germany and their hardest. Three years of losses. A single Lance Armstrong weekend changed the momentum — not because they paid him, but because he just turned up. The gym affiliate program started as inbounds with no structure; it's now the foundation of a bet to reach 100 million people. The CrossFit comparison gets a real answer, not a PR one. But the most interesting parts are the early decisions: rejecting the $2 race t-shirt, the photo package that created the organic flywheel, and a simple principle — invest in the event experience and don't run paid marketing. 00:00 Welcome to Stanford 01:46 Running HYROX at a Conference & the "Bubble" Moment 03:48 The Sweaty Barrier to Participation Problem 05:44 Douglas's Backstory: Sports Marketing & How HYROX Was Born 08:59 From First Event in Hamburg to Leading Global Expansion 10:29 Early Growth: The Van, T-Shirts, Red Bull & the Photo Flywheel 12:36 Global Expansion: Japan, Brazil, India & Getting on the Calendar 14:56 Why the US Was the Hardest Market to Crack 17:28 Losing Money in America — Keeping Belief When the P&L Doesn't Work 19:09 The Lance Armstrong New York Bet: $1M & 30M Impressions 20:27 Influencers at HYROX: Always Organic, Never Paid 21:52 Scaling to 42,000 Tickets: 9 Days of Racing Bigger Than NYC Marathon 23:45 Building Operations: Christian Tutske's Eye for Detail 25:39 Why Athletes Keep Coming Back: Community & Identity 28:00 HYROX 365: From Events Company to 15,000-Gym Affiliate Business 30:54 Accelerating Gym Growth: Big Box Operators & Chicken-and-Egg Dynamics 34:27 HYROX as a Gym Retention Play: Coach Education & Member Stickiness 36:49 Fragmented Gym Tech & the Data Opportunity 38:23 HYROX vs. CrossFit: Honest Comparison & 1,500 Shared Affiliates 43:10 The Pickleball Analogy: Low Barrier + Social + Price = Rocket Ship 46:49 The Path to 100 Million People: Events, Gyms & Knowing Who Trains 49:50 HYROX x Puma: Building a Fashion Brand & the First Dedicated Shoe 54:14 Contrarian Take on the Future of Fitness: Back to Fundamentals 56:35 Physical Events vs. Social Media: Why Credibility Is Harder to Fake 59:11 Post-COVID Perfect Storm & Tickets Selling Out as the New Challenge 01:01:09 Where Will HYROX Be in 5 Years? Formula One, Olympics 2032 & 100M People

1hr 4min
2 MAR

CTO + Director of AI at Flo Health: Roman Bugaev + Vladislav Nedosekin

In the latest episode, Kyriakos Eleftheriou sat down with Roman Bugaev , CTO of Flo and Vlad Nedosekin Director of AI Platform, at the Terra API HQ in London, to discuss how they built the top health AI platform globally for women's health. CHAPTERS (0:00) Intro — Flo Health: From 20 People to 80 Million Users (1:02) How Flo became the fastest-growing health company in the world (1:48) Roman's early days: 20 employees, no revenue, product-market fit (3:15) How did you know the product was a hit? (3:25) The underserved women's health market — everyone was building Uber alternatives (4:31) First ML: neural networks for cycle and symptom prediction (5:31) Product evolution — from symptom tracking to AI-powered insights (5:38) Building chatbots inspired by how doctors ask questions (9:18) A/B testing at scale — Flo's custom experimentation platform (11:43) Engineering structure: autonomous two-pizza teams (13:51) Team mistakes — why separate mobile and backend teams failed (15:29) Scaling from 4 servers to 600 services and petabytes of data (17:53) "Whenever it's possible, we are NOT doing AI" (23:15) Why temperature data is critical for ovulation prediction (25:09) Why Flo is the most accurate period tracker — data diversity advantage (28:04) Competition: "We don't really have real competitors" (29:00) AI content creation — generating personalized medical articles (31:01) Hallucinations vs. conflicting medical sources (32:34) The three-person blind test: when AI disagrees with humans (35:10) AI is more consistent than clinicians — but biased against women (36:52) Fine-tuning open-source models on synthetic women's health data (38:25) User profile: the foundation of Flo's personalization (41:19) The digital avatar — your AI health twin that notices what you don't (43:09) AI router: like a GP triage system for language models (46:04) Router also controls tone of voice and remembers past conversations (47:29) "Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation" — how Flo picks models (48:40) Model stability: why proprietary model updates are dangerous for medical AI (51:01) Anonymous mode: privacy that enables AI instead of blocking it (53:49) On-device ML for the most sensitive health data (56:03) Cloudflare outage — "when everyone is down, you're allowed to be down" (56:58) Fine-tuning Llama 7B on Databricks — 10,000+ GPU hours per run (58:07) Training vs. inference cost breakdown (59:45) 100,000-token prompts: the hidden cost of medical AI (1:01:05) Build vs. buy: "Build your competitive advantage, buy everything else" (1:04:47) Value creation vs. value capture teams (1:07:04) The future: AI that knows you better than you know yourself (1:09:00) Time series models: the future of health prediction from wearables (1:10:38) Q&A

1hr 42min
18 JAN

Glovo and Yellow.vc co-founder, Sacha Michaud

In this episode, Kyriakos Eleftheriou, Terra API CEO sits down with Sacha Michaud, co-founder of Glovo, one of the biggest tech successes in the European tech ecosystem,and Yellow.VC, an early-stage fund Sacha shares the journey of building the on-demand delivery service from its inception in Barcelona to its expansion across 25 countries and a $2.3 billion acquisition. He discusses the initial challenges of fundraising, competing against larger companies, and the importance of passion and culture in building a successful team. Michaud reflects on the early days of Glovo, where they experimented with a simple app that allowed users to order anything from the city, leading to unexpected viral growth despite initial losses. He emphasizes the significance of adapting to market needs and the evolution of Glovo's business model over the years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated the demand for grocery delivery. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:29 The Birth of Glovo: From Idea to Launch 05:59 Viral Growth and Initial Operations 12:06 Realizing the Potential of Glovo 21:39 Expanding into New Markets 38:55 Navigating Competition and Strategic Decisions 50:39 The $2.3B Acquisition 55:00 Yellow, and investing in new startups 01:04:11 AI and Future Trends in Delivery

1hr 25min
21/10/2025

Thriva CTO: Tom Livesey

In this conversation, Kyriakos Eleftheriou is joined by Tom Livesey, CTO and co-founder of Thriva, who discusses the journey of his health tech company, which has transformed the way individuals monitor their health through innovative blood testing solutions. He shares insights on the challenges faced during the startup phase, the impact of COVID-19 on their operations, and the importance of consumer awareness in health diagnostics. Tom emphasizes the need for personalization in health insights and the role of technology in improving user experience. He also touches on the fundraising journey, navigating the NHS landscape, and the future of health tech. Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:44 Navigating the Challenges of Health Testing 05:30 The Evolution of Thriva's Product Offering 08:33 Fundraising Journey: From Startup to Success 11:15 COVID-19: A Catalyst for Change 14:11 The Future of Health Diagnostics 16:53 Building a Sustainable Business Model 19:29 Customer Acquisition and Marketing Strategies 22:27 The Role of Technology in Health Monitoring 24:56 The Impact of Consumer Awareness on Health 27:32 The Next Decade: Predictions for Health Tech 30:35 Addressing Consumer Anxiety in Health Testing 33:15 The Importance of Personalization in Health Insights 36:06 Navigating the NHS Landscape 39:00 The Future of Home Testing and Diagnostics

55 min
21/09/2025

Huma CEO: Dan Vahdat

The first Iranian entrepreneur to build a company worth over $1B in Europe, Dan Vahdat, founder of Huma, is joining Kyriakos Eleftheriou, founder of Terra API They discuss: 00:00 - Intro 02:10 - Communicating with @EmmanuelMacron and @kmitsotakis 08:55 - Why are Greece and Persia not empires today 13:40 - How the best people look like 18:30 - Short-term vs long-term thinking 24:27 - Dropping out of PhD 26:57 - The first months of Huma 32:00 - Early days 32:27 - 'I never had the ego of being turned down' 34:00 - First customers 37:21 - How to price expensive contracts 48:30 - Regulation as a moat 59:10 - Raising $300m from partners instead of VC 1:02:58 - AI 1:06:00 - Storytelling advice 1:09:55 - Running 1:14:32 - Cyrus, Darius, and Achaemenid inspirations 1:19:23 - The future

1hr 37min
05/09/2025

Virgin Active CTO: David Turner

David Turner is the Group CTO of Virgin Active, a global health brand with more than 230 fitness clubs across 8 countries. He previously led NHS tech during Covid. The host: Kyriakos More about Virgin Active00:00 - Intro01:26 - UK Tech05:33 - F1 telemetry vs fitness data07:33 - Betting + health data09:30 - Getting into software engineering13:51 - Inside NHS tech: joining mid-Covid chaos14:00 - Leading the NHS Covid digital response, 24/720:56 - Building national-scale testing tech24:49 - The real data engine behind the Covid travel pass26:00 - Virgin Active after NHS30:40 - Inside Virgin clubs tech33:40 - 360° member view41:40 - Rewards45:19 - Why true gym innovation came from outsiders54:40 - Advice to young engineers: fail fast, fail often58:17 - The future of health: your constant digital twin

1 hr
04/08/2025

Nucleus Genomics Founder: Kian Sadeghi - Live

The founder of Nucleus, Kian Sadeghi, joined Kyriakos Eleftheriou, in the second health day in San Francisco, and shared his learnings in front of a 300-person audience before the Y Combinator AI event. 00:00 Intro 02:01 The Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight sponsorship story. 05:01 "Fundraising is an art." 08:01 Competing with Mr. Beast and the importance of storytelling. 11:01 The evolution and impact of genetic testing. 14:01 Future of genetics and embryo selection. 17:01 AI in genetics. 20:01 Narrative in startup success. 23:01 Regulatory challenges 26:01 Personal journey and insights on building a company. 29:01 Genetic testing market 32:01 The role of computational biology in genetics. 35:01 The impact of whole genome sequencing on healthcare. 38:01 The future of genetic engineering and its societal implications. 41:01 The intersection of AI and genetics. 44:01 The importance of storytelling in the tech industry. 50:01 Future vision. 53:01 Q&A

1hr 17min
15/07/2025

Strava cofounder: Mark Gainey Live in San Francisco

After the Y Combinator AI event, Kyriakos Eleftheriou sat down with Mark Gainey co-founder of Strava, who shared his entrepreneurial journey, discussing the evolution of Strava from a startup to a $2.2 billion fitness platform. Chapters 00:00 Intro 04:15 How technology changed 11:35 Should you be niche with AI 13:20 Building a Community 17:00 Dealing with big companies early on 20:53 User Feedback 23:00 Elimination process 25:10 Fundraising 28:43 AI 30:50 Adding more sports 36:18 The Future of Fitness 42:20 Storytelling 46:00 Q&A

1hr 13min

Kyriakos Eleftheriou, the founder and CEO of Terra API speaks with some of the best founders and CEOs in the space of health and fitness, to learn how the best are building their businesses. At TERRA API, we are on a mission to enable developers to connect and create solutions by using health data.

Creator

Kyriakos Eleftheriou
Years Active

2022 - 2026
Episodes

66
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Kyriakos Eleftheriou
Show Website

Iron Foundry by Terra API