Episode 002 - Thriving Under Uncertainty

Thriving Under Uncertainty with Brooks Powell '17 and Pilar Castro-Kiltz '10

SHOW NOTES:

Watch Brooks Powell pitch at Shark Tank. Find alcohol-related health from Cheers at cheershealth.com.

Learn more about Princeton Arts Alumni and their "Alumni in the Arts" programming.

Learn more about More Canvas Consulting: Business Management for the Arts.

CREDITS:

Produced by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council. Music by Wright Seneres. Theme music by the Treadmills (Wright Seneres, electric guitar and electric bass; John Damond, Jr., drums). Engineered by Dan Kearns and Dan Quiyu at the Princeton Broadcast Center. Edited and mixed by Wright Seneres. Promotional readings by Megan Donahey '20.

TRANSCRIPT:

From the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, this is the Princeton Spark. I’m Wright Seneres. 

The various people that make up the Princeton entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem have long been at work, taking risks to bring transformational ideas and companies to the world, in the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity. These are the stories of Entrepreneurship the Princeton Way. 

At PEC, we support Princeton-connected startups and help to build the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Jersey and beyond. 

In our series opening three episodes, we are exploring three important aspects of entrepreneurship. If you haven’t heard the first episode on taking risks, it is available now at princetonspark.com or wherever you get your podcasts, so do check that out. 

The very nature of entrepreneurship is doing something new and innovative, and so there is always some uncertainty involved. Navigating this uncertainty is something all entrepreneurs need to do if they want to thrive. So how do they do this? For one answer, we turned to Brooks Powell. 

Brooks is the founder of Cheers Health, which used to be called Thrive Plus. So in an episode on thriving, I thought I’d go to an expert. 

My name is Brooks Powell. I graduated from Princeton in the class of 2017. And I founded a company called Cheers, which we like to call an alcohol related health company.

I came across an article that just been published in 2012. I was reading this a few months after it being published, titled "Dihydromyricetin as a novel anti-intoxication medication". And in this article, they showed that DHM, which is a chemical extract, like caffeine to coffee, or THC is marijuana, is basically the active ingredient that makes the plant work. Well, basically, in Asian countries, people will steep this leaf in hot water and drink it after consuming alcohol. And evidently, it made them feel better in the moment. And then it also made them feel better the next day. A team at UCLA, they took that, they took the chemical extract, dihydromyricetin, injected it into rats, and they found that they can instantly sober up rats. They can prevent rats from becoming alcoholics. They can cure alcoholism and rats and oh, yeah, rats given DHM show no sign of hangovers. Basically, I took this study, I found it really compelling. I brought it straight to my neuroscience professor, he thought it was compelling. He scrapped the planned class lecture and lectured on this instead. Within a month or so all of my sort of post graduation career ideas, and totally transformed to me basically thinking, you know what, I'm gonna try to start a company off of this dihydromyricetin. 

Starting an alcohol related health company is sure to have much uncertainty around it. 

I think our uncertainty is really sort of related