Launch HN: Fella (YC W20) – Tackling men's obesity using medication and coaching
I don&#x27;t know how young you are.  Great story, but, sorry, no.  Every single weight loss program claims exactly what you claim.  And they all deliver pretty much exactly the same results.  My guess is that about 10 to 20 percent of weight loss program participants achieve sustainable life-long objectives, keep the weight off and change their lifestyle.  The rest are in a range between utter failure and yo-yo diet programs to some short term success, no long term behavioral modification and ultimately, a return to their prior state or worse.<p>Every single bullet point you list requires one thing that you cannot control --nobody can:  A personal decision to change.  And no pill is going to force this decision.<p>Look, maybe you are well-meaning, however, what you are looking to do here is no different from the myriad weight loss supplements out there.  I know people who made millions peddling Garcinia Cambogia, Forskolin and other weight loss supplements on Amazon.  I know people who swear by the stuff.  I would be willing to bet that, statistically speaking the results are not very different from almost any other purported solution.<p>At the end of the day, the day weight loss isn&#x27;t difficult at all.<p>In its harshest form its as simple as eating less.  Even if you eat junk, if you eat less, you lose weight.  Physics.<p>A more sophisticated approach is to learn and decide to eat better.   In both cases no exercise is required beyond normal activity.<p>Even a person who is confined to bedrest --no exercise at all-- will lose weight if they consume less matter than their bodies process into energy and excrete.  My mother passed away a couple of months ago.  A couple of months before that she simply did not want to eat very much at all.  The amount of weight she lost was incredible.<p>The issue with obesity is bad food, unhealthy eating habits being promoted from childhood and a situation where adults almost can&#x27;t escape all the things that make them sick.<p>And yet, after all of that, it becomes a matter of making a decision.  And it is a very difficult decision to make for most.  To use an analogy, it takes far more effort to help someone who becomes a drug addict than to guide them down the right path from early childhood.  That also happens to be far better for society.<p>To use a business parallel:  You can build the best hotel, have the greatest and most amazing rooms, serve incredible food and have amazing customer service.  And yet, you cannot force people to take a vacation.<p>And so, all the bullet points in your argument sound fantastic.  If you go to Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers, they pretty much claim exactly the same things.  And their road to success is paved with the sorry bodies of the millions of people who thought they found magic, only to end-up exactly where they started --or worse.<p>The right solution isn&#x27;t a pill.  Its investing time, money and effort to change what we are doing about food and how we are destroying our kids health by not acting with their best interest in mind.<p>That said, congratulations.  With YC&#x27;s backing there&#x27;s probably no doubt your startup will have a unicorn-scale exit.  If there&#x27;s one market segment were the same story can be used again and again to make billions it is the weight loss industry.  So, again, congrats.  Brilliant move.