This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Hou, 22, who left his job as an investment banking analyst at Evercore to co-found Ren, an app that helps users determine how specific interventions, like specific supplements, are affecting their health by running experiments on the body. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As an investment banking analyst at Evercore, sleep was by far the most common subject of conversation. Not sleeping was almost like a badge of honor. It proved you were working on the coolest deals. Some of us relied on caffeine, others on nicotine, which made it harder to stay healthy overall.
A few months ago, my best friend and I began talking about founding a health optimization company together, and I realized that analysts should focus on making the most of the few hours of rest they get. Lots of my coworkers used Whoops, or Apple Watches, or Oura Rings, but it seemed like most people just accepted their health was going to be messed up for the next two years.
We eventually came up with Ren, partly because I realized that people often didn’t measure the outcomes of healthcare choices. They’d take a peptide or supplement without ever keeping track of the results. I couldn’t focus on the company while working banking hours — my cofounder and I would email during the day since I didn’t want to be on my phone — so I decided to quit three months before my bonus, after about a year at Evercore.
It might seem weird that I didn’t stick it out until my bonus, but I live by Jeff Bezos’ regret minimization framework. A decade from now, I assume I’d regret staying in banking more than missing out on the roughly $50,000 bonus I might have made. Hopefully, that money won’t be a huge deal to me by that point.
Banking was never my calling
I started on the finance track as a freshman at UT Austin. It sometimes felt like there were only two career options for the smartest, most successful kids: banking and consulting. Within the first few weeks on campus, I was bombarded with invitations to different club info sessions and coffee chats, and eventually was one of the few people to get into my investment team.
Some of my friends truly loved finance. They’d read finance books and watch finance movies, but I always found myself on Twitter and online reading about the tech world. But I knew I’d feel left out if I didn’t go through banking recruiting, and by sophomore year, I landed a summer internship at Evercore.
The tech world wasn’t my only outside interest — I’ve been into fitness since I was a little kid. Growing up, I played pretty much every sport, but I was still chubby. I’d eat two lunches most days, one that my mom packed and one from the church across the street from school, and go to McDonald’s for a snack before swim practice.
When COVID hit my junior year of high school, I had nothing to focus on but losing weight. By senior year, I was in the best shape of my life. My mom told me not to take protein powder or creatine, and instead pushed the health hacks she read about from Chinese influencers online. That’s when I first started wondering how you can verify what actually works for your body.
College meant an unlimited meal plan, more drinking, and a longer walk to the gym, and I gained 30 pounds my freshman year. I constantly battled my weight, losing it all, gaining it back, losing it again, gaining it again. People say you can’t outwork a bad diet, but I sure as hell tried between marathons, Ironmans, and gym sessions. My Instagram feed was full of these super jacked guys, which made the insecurity and body dysmorphia that much worse.
The cycle continued during my 10-week banking internship. I was just too tired, stressed, or worried about other things to get to the gym. When I got back to school, I locked in, trained for an Ironman, and lost the pounds I gained, and health was top of mind when I returned to Evercore full-time.
I was preparing to leave for a few months
Between the lifestyle and my interest in the tech world, I knew early on in my job that I might leave banking to do something risky. At the beginning of this year, I stopped contributing to my retirement account, and I’ve now liquidated my savings from my year in banking. I know I can always move home if I really need to.
There were so many more practical reasons to stay in finance than to leave, especially since we had the app’s basics but no users by the time I left. AI is making it easier than ever to found a company, and our initial platform was entirely vibe-coded.
My parents weren’t initially thrilled I was leaving my safe finance job, but they’ve eventually come around. I told them the morning I decided to quit, and their support was the last bit of confidence I needed to tell my manager and the rest of my team members, who weren’t too surprised.
We have around 40 beta users, mostly friends who care about their health. A lot of my day is spent iterating on their feedback — fixing bugs, going over requests for new features, all that stuff — or thoughts we got from people at our gym. I also spend a lot of time preparing for launch and thinking about how to attract investors, along with training for a marathon with one of my cofounders. Now, I have time for both sleep and a workout.
Eventually, we want to sell every component of health experiments through Ren, like supplements and blood tests, but for now, we’re focused on getting on the app store.
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