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This Week in Startups · June 22, 2026 · 1h 3m

The hottest running app has nothing to do with speed | E2303

Alice Zhang, Louis Phillips
Spotify

Jason and Lon interview Louis Phillips, founder of INTVL, a gamified running app that turns local runs into competitive turf wars, which grew to 1M downloads without paid advertising. In a second segment, Alex chats with Alice Zhang, CEO of Verge Labs, which pivoted from drug development to building AI infrastructure for pharma companies and has accumulated one of the world's largest proprietary brain datasets.

This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.

Novel

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Brain tissue is a fundamental scientific modality—'the LiDAR of neuroscience'
Alice Zhang describes human brain tissue samples as the foundational data layer for neuroscience, analogous to how LiDAR is the primary sensor for mapping physical space.
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Highlights

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Gamification reframes fitness from individual performance to territorial competition7:44
INTVL removes speed metrics entirely and instead gamifies running as claiming and defending geographic territory, turning solo runs into a worldwide competitive experience.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini
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Building in Australia as a geographic advantage rather than constraint0:00
Louis Phillips built INTVL from Melbourne, Australia, which gave him a different cultural perspective on fitness and competition than Silicon Valley.
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Editorial

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Organic growth via content marketing can outscale paid user acquisition
Louis Phillips grew INTVL to 1 million downloads without spending on ads, instead creating homemade videos from his office that went viral.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini
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Pivot from drug development to AI infrastructure unlocks different value
Verge Labs shifted from being a drug discovery company to providing AI-enabled infrastructure for other pharma companies after an ALS trial failure.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini

Misc

✧INTVL grew to 1 million downloads through organic growth and homemade videos—no paid acquisition
✧The app ignores speed entirely; competition is based on claiming geographical territory
✧Verge Labs pivoted from failed ALS drug trial to become an AI infrastructure play for pharma
✧Brain tissue described as 'the LiDAR of neuroscience'—a fundamental mapping modality
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