Do not index
Do not index
Founders spotlight, is a series where we interview amazing founders in the fitness and health space and discuss their motivations, struggles and visions for the future. Want to be part of the founder series email us.
Who are you/what’s your background?
I’m Jason Jin, one of the co-founders of Crescent Health, the world’s first sleep health company. I studied Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts college near Philadelphia, known more for producing Nobel Laureates and academics than for its entrepreneurship scene [1]. For me, Crescent Health also started off as a research project - I was excited by the advent of a new generation of wearables to solve my sleep challenges, and began working on a project to analyze the health and sleep data generated by these devices. This led to me becoming the principal investigator of a research study on how to better generate actionable insights and personalize sleep and wellness plans for the unique individual, as opposed to providing generic advice for the average person. Shortly after the study, I started working on Crescent Health from my college dorm room with my roommate Josh, to help others better improve sleep and unlock its benefits for health, performance, and longevity. Today, we’re a small but mighty team of all-star clinicians, coaches, scientists, and engineers, focused on crafting the most personalized solution for sleep improvement.
What is Crescent Health building and why?
Crescent Health offers digital health coaching & programs to help you unlock optimal sleep and performance. We believe everyone should have easy and affordable access to expert care tailored to them. Sleep is the most underserved part of our health and it’s where we’re starting to deliver this experience.We’ve built Crescent with our coaches, scientists, and expert team who come from the NBA, Stanford, Future, Noom, Parsley Health, and more. They’re using their expertise and experience to design and implement programs for elite athletes, busy professionals, and individuals who see sleep as a performance enhancer and longevity booster.
What is your Sleep ritual/routine?
As a founder, it can oftentimes be challenging to separate yourself from work in the evenings. The business can literally keep you up at night, and makes it all the more important to have a sleep ritual and routine.
A common misconception is that your sleep routine is only in the evening. I start prepping for good sleep during the day, by being intentional about physical activity, light exposure, and meal timing, all factors that regulate your circadian clock. In the evening, I block off time to wind down, making some chamomile tea and practising breathwork and yoga Nidra to help relax.
Where do you think the future of wearables is going?
Wearables are evolving at an exponential pace. They’ve moved from hobbyist toys, of counting steps, to now monitoring key vitals within our bodies, enabling capabilities such as detecting heart disease, predicting fertility and much more. I’m particularly excited about the concept of a check engine light for the human body.
If you think about it - the average car has hundreds of sensors to help detect when things need to be tuned up or fixed. The average human body? Zero. One day, we’ll have powerful monitoring systems built on top of these devices, which empowers you to be much more proactive and predictive around your health, as opposed to reactive.
Going further in the car analogy, we are missing a GPS navigation system for health. In the world before the GPS, you had to know how to read and use a paper map and learn through trial and error how to get around. There was no way to avoid traffic, find the best routes to take and new places to go to. That's the world of health today. The future that wearables enable and the one we are working towards is one where a "Google Maps for Health" exists - health should be as easy as entering your health goals, and getting a real-time, personalized path towards those goals.
Why are you excited to use Vital?
Vital brings together all the massive amounts of siloed health and wellness data together into one place. It’s like having one API to rule them all, instead of individually building support for each platform and device. This radically improves the developer experience and enables new health applications to be developed at a radical pace.
How will Vital support Crescent Health’s Mission?
Vital enables Crescent Health to focus on providing the most personalized and delightful experience for sleep improvement and optimization and abstracts away the messiness of having to build and maintain support for different services and devices. We’re excited about the value Vital provides us and their part in building a world of better health and better sleep.
