This Feature Will Save Us

Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker

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This Feature Will Save Us is the podcast for product leaders building the future of health, fitness, and wearable technology. Hosted by Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker of ROOK, each episode goes inside the roadmap decisions behind the apps, platforms, and biometric systems shaping the next generation of health products. Built for CPOs, CTOs, and the teams shipping real health tech.

13h ago

Thomas Iwasaki - When Science and Healthtech Move at Different Speeds

Having access to sophisticated science gives a healthtech company plenty of possibilities. It can also make deciding what to build surprisingly difficult. Thomas Iwasaki, CEO of Vitality Blueprint, joins Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker to discuss the product decisions behind turning complex blood work into useful guidance for coaches and their clients. He shares why he's seen a five-minute conversation about two biomarkers accomplish more than handing someone a report with 100, and why scientific breakthroughs don't always take priority on the product roadmap. They also discuss the challenges of building technology that fits into a coach's existing practice, keeping software development moving while the science takes longer to mature, and finding more value in lab results people already have. Thomas breaks down: → Why Vitality moved away from biomarker-heavy reports → What analyzing biomarkers together can reveal that individual markers miss → How a 30-day principle guides product priorities → Why Vitality uses interpretive models instead of AI for its current analysis → Why coach adoption is as much a sales challenge as a technology challenge → The opportunity in interpreting lab results people already have Follow Thomas Iwasaki LinkedIn: Thomas Iwasaki Website: Vitality Blueprint Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: Marco Benitez LinkedIn Jonas: Jonas Dücker Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:00 - Rapid fire with Thomas 4:55 - Why Vitality focuses on omega-3 testing 6:30 - The gap between blood testing and interpretation 8:45 - Building Vitality for coaches and their clients 10:35 - Bringing elite performance science to a broader audience 12:50 - Why science alone doesn't make a great product 14:50 - Prioritizing scientific breakthroughs and customer requests 17:00 - Balancing short-term results with longer-term health improvements 18:50 - Making new technology fit into a coach's workflow 21:10 - Getting coaches to adopt another software tool 24:45 - Why more biomarker data doesn't always mean better outcomes 27:50 - How Vitality interprets blood work without AI 30:35 - The problem with selling longevity 32:20 - Why coach adoption is also a sales challenge 35:35 - Finding value in lab results people already have 39:45 - Balancing scientific development with startup speed 42:40 - Looking beyond individual biomarkers 44:20 - Expanding Vitality's interpretation tools and integrations 45:45 - The feature that will save us: getting your heart rate up
Oct 28

Steven Webster - When Fitness Products Start Acting Like Coaches

Steven Webster thinks fitness products have become too obsessed with scores and dashboards. His alternative is much closer to the way a coach actually works: observing what's happening, understanding the context and stepping in when needed. That idea runs through much of what ASENSEI is building with movement recognition and AI. Steven joins Marco and Jonas to talk about moving from apps to agents, the proprietary language ASENSEI built to describe human movement, and why that language became unexpectedly valuable with LLMs. They also get into the product decisions behind a 12-year journey: building toward technology that didn't exist yet, letting customers influence the roadmap without simply reacting to requests, deciding what not to build, and making an early bet on on-device AI. Steven breaks down: → Why fitness products have become too obsessed with scores and dashboards → What conversational coaching could look like as products move from apps to agents → How ASENSEI built a language for human movement and why LLMs made it more valuable → How to build toward a product vision when the technology doesn’t exist yet → How ASENSEI lets customers influence the roadmap without simply reacting to requests → Why knowing what’s core to the product also means knowing what not to build → Why ASENSEI is betting on on-device AI for coaching Follow Steven Webster LinkedIn: Steven Webster Website: ASENSEI Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: Marco Benitez LinkedIn Jonas: Jonas Dücker Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:00 - Rapid fire with Steven 3:35 - Why fitness is too obsessed with scores and dashboards 6:10 - Coach vs machine: who gives better feedback? 8:45 - Moving from apps and screens to conversational experiences 13:00 - What changes when an AI coach already has the context 15:00 - How ASENSEI uses movement recognition for AI coaching 18:00 - From martial arts and Adobe to building ASENSEI 22:30 - Why ASENSEI started with indoor rowing 25:00 - Building a language for human movement 26:30 - Why that movement language became valuable with LLMs 29:30 - Product evolution vs pivoting 33:00 - Building toward technology that doesn’t exist yet 37:00 - Designing for your customer’s customer 42:00 - Knowing what’s core and what not to build 44:00 - Reactive roadmaps vs acting ahead of the market 47:00 - Why ASENSEI is betting on on-device AI 50:00 - The feature that will save us: an agentic workforce
Oct 14

Nick Longo - When Does Software Make Gym Equipment Better?

Nick Longo has spent the last five years at Life Fitness / Hammer Strength, starting as a biomechanics engineer before moving into product management and, more recently, partnerships and integrations. He’s seen how seemingly simple product decisions can play out once equipment is actually in the gym. Making Quick Start easier to use on treadmills got people moving faster, but usage of other workouts dropped. Bringing casting to commercial equipment meant solving problems that don’t exist at home, especially when 20 treadmills are lined up next to each other. Nick talks with Marco and Jonas about those decisions, why serviceability and uptime have such a big influence on product design, and how he evaluates partnerships when they have to compete with the company’s own product work for resources. They also get into where today’s wearable integrations come up short and what could be possible if workout and recovery data moved more easily between the products people already use. Nick breaks down: → Why serviceability and uptime have such a big influence on commercial fitness equipment design → What happened when Life Fitness / Hammer Strength made Quick Start easier to use → Why bringing casting into a commercial gym is harder than doing it at home → What Nick looks at when deciding whether a partnership or integration is worth pursuing → Why partnership work can be difficult to prioritize against internal product development → Where today’s wearable integrations still come up short → What could change if workout and recovery data moved more easily between wearables and fitness equipment → How Life Fitness / Hammer Strength learns how people use equipment that isn’t connected → Why product teams sometimes need to zoom out from the feature or product in front of them → How Nick decides when negative feedback is something the product team needs to act on Follow Nick Longo: LinkedIn: Nick Longo Life Fitness/Hammer Strength: lifefitness.com Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: Marco Benitez LinkedIn Jonas: Jonas Dücker Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 00:00 Rapid-fire with Nick Longo 07:00 Designing for serviceability and uptime 12:00 Evaluating partnerships and integrations 15:00 Bringing casting to commercial fitness equipment 18:00 When Quick Start changed how people used workouts 23:00 Where wearable integrations fall short 25:00 Connecting workout and recovery data to equipment 27:00 Software, subscriptions and the fitness equipment business 33:00 Learning from equipment that isn’t connected 37:00 Knowing when to zoom out from the product 39:00 Handling negative feedback after product changes 41:00 Prioritizing partnerships against internal product work 45:00 What Nick wants to see next in connected fitness
Sep 30

Rohit Nambiar - Great Execution Should Be Boring

After more than 20 years in large organizations, Rohit Nambiar decided that if he really wanted to understand AI, he needed to get his hands dirty. That took him from studying AI at MIT and advising startups to building one himself. Today, he’s CEO and co-founder of Sabai, an AI-powered health companion, where the move from corporate leadership to startup life has put him much closer to the day-to-day work of building, testing and growing a product. Rohit joins Marco and Jonas to talk about what that experience has taught him about product and execution, including why the day-to-day discipline behind good execution can be surprisingly boring. They also get into building a remote team, deciding when to keep going and when to cut, and where Rohit thinks human judgment still matters as more of the work gets done with AI. Rohit breaks down: → Why the feature a product team spends the most time on may not be the one users actually value → What he looks at when deciding whether to keep iterating or cut → How product usage changes across markets, languages, and urban versus rural users → What he’s learned from building a fully remote team across several countries → Why he thinks execution matters more than strategy → Why he focuses on lead indicators like usage, retention, and acquisition → How Sabai approaches guardrails for AI in healthcare → Why he asks his team to share their AI prompts, not just the finished output Follow Rohit Nambiar: LinkedIn: Rohit Nambiar Website: SabaiHealth Book: The Simplicity Trap Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 1:45 - Why healthcare and insurance struggle with trust and complexity 6:05 - Where Rohit looks for talent and why his startup is fully remote 8:15 - Building culture and accountability across a remote team 11:30 - Leaving corporate life, learning AI and becoming a startup founder 13:10 - Building Sabai’s MVP and the problems that showed up after launch 14:00 - Growing from 3,000 to 35,000 users and what Sabai is building 17:15 - Product bets that worked, failed and surprised Rohit 19:45 - Why Sabai’s medication reminder became an unexpected hit 22:10 - Using data to decide whether to iterate, persevere or cut 24:50 - When a product is too early versus solving a problem that doesn’t exist 26:00 - Building guardrails for AI in healthcare 29:30 - Why culture comes before frameworks when building quickly 32:00 - Why execution beats a brilliant strategy 33:55 - The lead KPIs Rohit uses to manage the business 36:45 - Why human judgment becomes more important as AI gets better 37:55 - Why Rohit asks his team to share their AI prompt
Sep 16

Ed Buckley - Great Distribution Beats a Great Product

Ed Buckley has built companies across fitness, healthcare and education, including Peerfit, Sword Intelligence and now Scholar. Along the way, he’s changed how he thinks about what makes a product successful. Distribution is a much bigger part of the equation now. Ed would rather have a good product with great distribution than a great product with good distribution. For him, that starts with knowing who will use the product, who will pay for it, and where the biggest opportunity for distribution actually is. Ed joins Marco and Jonas to talk about what he’s learned from building and selling products across very different markets. They get into finding the right distribution channels, the deal with Peloton during COVID, building inside Sword Health, what happens when a product looks right on paper but people don’t use it, and where he draws the line on customization. Ed breaks down: → Why he’d rather have a good product with great distribution than a great product with good distribution → Why product teams need to think about who uses the product and who actually pays for it → How product adoption and usage shape what matters in an enterprise product → Why selling Sword Intelligence meant bringing product and engineering into the sales process → How an earlier relationship with Peloton turned into a deal when COVID changed the fitness market → What to look at when a product makes sense on paper but customers still aren’t using it → How a feature around special education accommodations became the focus of Scholar → Where he draws the line between enterprise customization and individual personalization Follow Ed Buckley: Website: edwardjbuckley.com LinkedIn: Ed Buckley Instagram: @ejgatoriii Scholar Education: joinscholar.com Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/ LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/ Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:25 - Welcome and rapid-fire questions with Ed 5:45 - Why Peerfit was the hardest company Ed built 7:05 - Why great distribution can beat a great product 9:30 - What changes when almost anyone can build a decent product 11:30 - The difference between the person using the product and the person paying for it 13:30 - How product supports distribution in enterprise 16:45 - Selling across employers, insurers, schools and hospitals 17:55 - Why Sword Intelligence brought product and engineering into sales 19:55 - Learning to lead when you’re no longer the subject matter expert 21:35 - From Peerfit to FitOn Health, Scholar and Sword Intelligence 24:50 - How the Peloton deal came together during COVID 30:20 - When a product should work on paper, but doesn’t 32:15 - The teacher request that changed Scholar 33:55 - How one feature became the focus of the company 36:30 - How easier development changes the customization question 37:40 - Enterprise customization vs. individual personalization 40:55 - The next feature Scholar is trying to figure out
Sep 2

Jason David - The Gym Owner Is Never the Problem

Jason spent years running a CrossFit gym before he started building Gym Force. That experience gave him a pretty specific view of what wasn't working. He'd used gym management software, marketing tools and outside business support, but having access to more tools didn't necessarily make running the business any easier. Now he's on the other side, building a product for the kind of operator he used to be. Jason talks with Marco and Jonas about how that experience has shaped Gym Force, from the problems they chose to build around to how they listen to gym owners without taking every request at face value. They also spend time on community and what actually makes people stay with a gym. The discussion gets into the role of coaching, learning and skill development, where technology fits into those relationships, and where Jason thinks it doesn't. Jason breaks down: → What running a gym taught him about the software built for operators → How Gym Force identifies the problems worth building around → Why customer requests don't always lead to the right product decisions → What "the gym owner is never the problem" means for the way they build → How Gym Force thinks about measuring whether the product is actually working → Why community plays such a large role in Jason's thinking about fitness products → Where technology can help coaches and gym owners, and where Jason draws the line Follow Jason: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-david-2642371/ Website: https://gymforce.app Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/ LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/ Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:21 - Welcome and quick questions with Jason 4:31 - Jason's path from CrossFit gym owner to building for gym operators 5:41 - How COVID exposed the business side of running a gym 6:51 - Having the software doesn't mean the problem is solved 8:51 - Wanting to coach without constantly selling and finding new members 12:11 - Why the gym owner is never the problem 13:01 - What Gym Force is being built to do 13:46 - Building the roadmap around customer struggling moments 14:31 - How Gym Force thinks about measuring success 15:21 - Identifying what gym owners are actually struggling with 17:16 - What customers ask for vs. what they're trying to accomplish 18:51 - Connecting independent gyms with corporate wellness 21:01 - The missing data between fitness, employers and insurance 28:01 - Is community actually the product in fitness? 28:41 - Why lasting communities need learning and skill development 31:11 - Building around coaches and communities 35:41 - What the fitness industry should stop building
Aug 19

Dave Hannum - Stop Building Features Just Because You Can

Dave Hannum has spent more than 30 years building products in the fitness industry. He led product and business development at Technogym before founding Functional Solutions, one of the early platforms for connected fitness and digital coaching. For most of his career, building software meant working within engineering constraints. Today, those constraints are changing. Dave shares how that shift is changing the way product teams think about roadmaps, customer feedback, feature development, and where real competitive advantage comes from. The conversation also looks at what AI changes, what it doesn't, and why understanding people is becoming even more important as building software gets easier. Dave breaks down: → Why faster development doesn't always lead to better products → The tradeoff between building for today's customers and tomorrow's customers → How AI is changing product teams without replacing product thinking → Why legacy software is becoming harder to compete with → Where roadmaps still matter, and where they don't → Why understanding people is still the biggest competitive advantage Follow Dave: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehannum Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/ LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/ Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:21 – From product roadmaps to vibe coding: how AI is changing the way products get built 4:25 – If coding isn't the moat anymore, what is? 8:50 – Rebuilding Functional Solutions with modern AI tools 9:03 – Functional Solutions and the early days of connected fitness 11:31 – The SMS feature that kept members engaged beyond the gym 14:03 – Why building for your biggest customer can derail your roadmap 15:39 – Feature bloat doesn't disappear. It just happens faster. 17:46 – Product failure, iteration, and rewriting the rules of development 20:45 – Why building software is getting easier, but building a business isn't 25:30 – Generalists, specialists, and the future of product teams 30:30 – Legacy software, acquisitions, and what big companies can't move fast enough to do 40:45 – Why understanding people is still the real moat 42:41 – Rapid-fire questions
Aug 5

Brian Shoemaker - What Life Time's 190 Clubs Taught Him About Killing Features

Brian Shoemaker started as a developer before he ever had a product title, and ten years later he's running Life Time Labs and the company's new Innovation Hub. His background shows up in how he talks about product decisions: less about the pitch, more about what survives contact with 190 clubs and real staff on the floor. It also means he's got a running list of the ones that didn't make it, and a few that got shelved only to come back around years later once the technology caught up. He joins Marco and Jonas to talk through the Apple Watch feature that took eighteen months to kill, and what Life Time is trying next. Brian breaks down: → Why LT Connect's Apple Watch integration made sense on paper and fell apart in practice → Building live streaming across 40 Life Time locations in a month during COVID, and why it later scaled back down → How the Labs team decides whether a pilot is ready to scale past a few clubs → Why a failed facilities-intelligence pilot from years ago is worth revisiting now → How the Labs team stays small by borrowing people from other teams for a few months at a time → What the Innovation Hub does with 190 startup applications and a 20,000-member beta pool → Where agentic coding tools are becoming a multiplier, and the new bottleneck that creates → What changes for Life Time once iOS 27 opens Siri up to booking classes directly Follow Brian: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianshoemaker/ Life Time: https://www.lifetime.life/ Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/ LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/ Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/ Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/ 0:00 - Welcome and rapid fire questions with Brian 3:20 - Brian's path from developer to leading Life Time's Labs team 4:10 - Cardio, strength training, and the shift toward hybrid fitness 6:00 - Favorite AI tools for research, coding, and legal drafting 9:00 - The most underrated metric in product: L28 10:40 - A pilot that looked great in one club but never scaled 12:20 - Face recognition check-in, and why it never stuck 14:00 - Reviving a failed vibration-sensor pilot as a facilities intelligence platform 17:30 - When cost actually enters the product decision 19:20 - How big the Labs team is, and borrowing talent 21:00 - Life Time's squad structure and two-week sprints 22:40 - Launching the Innovation Hub and rehydrating the old beta program 25:30 - How 190 startup applications get vetted 29:40 - Agentic coding as a multiplier, and the new bottleneck it creates 32:30 - Structuring a day around constant stakeholder input 34:20 - Building live streaming across 40 clubs in a month during COVID 37:00 - Why live streaming scaled down once the world reopened 38:40 - LT Connect and the Apple Watch integration Brian was sure would work 41:30 - What's next: Siri, iOS 27, and whether the app is still the product

Trailer

Trailer: This Feature Will Save Us

Every product team has that moment. Someone pitches a feature and says, "This is the one." Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they are very wrong. Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker talk to the people actually building products in health, fitness, and wearable tech. The ones making hard calls with messy data, shifting priorities, and stakeholder pressure that never really lets up. They get into why decisions made sense at the time, and what changed once they had to hold up in the real world. Follow This Feature Will Save Us for new episodes every other week. Hosted by Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker. Powered by ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io

This Feature Will Save Us is the podcast for product leaders building the future of health, fitness, and wearable technology. Hosted by Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker of ROOK, each episode goes inside the roadmap decisions behind the apps, platforms, and biometric systems shaping the next generation of health products. Built for CPOs, CTOs, and the teams shipping real health tech.

Creator

Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
Years Active

2026
Episodes

13
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© 2026 This Feature Will Save Us
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This Feature Will Save Us

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