Iron Foundry by Terra API

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

In the latest episode, Kyriakos Eleftheriou [https://twitter.com/kyriakosel] sat down with Roman Bugaev [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbugaev/] , CTO of Flo and Vlad Nedosekin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladislavnedosekin/] 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

Glovo and Yellow.vc co-founder, Sacha Michaud

In this episode, Kyriakos Eleftheriou [https://x.com/kyriakosel], Terra API [https://tryterra.co/] CEO sits down with Sacha Michaud [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachamichaud], co-founder of Glovo [https://glovoapp.com/], one of the biggest tech successes in the European tech ecosystem,and Yellow.VC [https://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

Thriva CTO: Tom Livesey

In this conversation, Kyriakos Eleftheriou [https://twitter.com/kyriakosel] is joined by Tom Livesey, [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlivesey/] 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

Huma CEO: Dan Vahdat

The first Iranian entrepreneur to build a company worth over $1B in Europe, Dan Vahdat [https://x.com/@danvahdat], founder of Huma [https://huma.com/], is joining Kyriakos Eleftheriou [https://x.com/kyriakosel], founder of Terra API [https://tryterra.co] 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

Virgin Active CTO: David Turner

David Turner [https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjamesturner/] 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 [https://x.com/kyriakosel] More about Virgin Active [https://www.virginactive.co.uk]00:00 - 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