Health Makers: A Late Father’s Wishes Lead to the Tech Wellness Company Noom

NAME: Saeju Jeong

AGE: 39

TITLE AND COMPANY: CEO and cofounder, Noom

Saeju Jeong was supposed to be a doctor. His father was a physician, as are his two sisters and countless aunts, uncles, and cousins. “We have 29 doctors in my family,” says Jeong, who grew up in Yeosu, South Korea. “We’re like the doctor mafia in Korea.”

There was just one problem: He didn’t get into medical school. “I tried hard, but I couldn’t make it,” says Jeong, 39. His father was a highly regarded physician and the CEO of a hospital, and his son couldn’t hack it? It was mortifying.

Jeong, who was “passionate” about heavy metal music, founded a record label at 19 and studied engineering. But “as soon as I got into school, I got lost,” he says. He ended up dropping out of university and focusing on his music.

One day in 2005, the phone rang. Instinctively, Jeong knew something was wrong, and it was. His father, who had never smoked a cigarette in his life, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Before he died, less than a year later, Jeong’s father imparted some wisdom.

“He told me that being a doctor was a great job and he was proud of his service, but that it was ‘highly paid manual labor,’” Jeong says. “Rather than being an expert in healthcare, he was a ‘sick care expert.’ He felt powerless and hopeless. Disease prevention was so difficult to manage, and he wondered why.” His father thought that technology was the answer. That it could help save lives.

He also told his son to go abroad rather than spend his life in South Korea, as he had done.

Helping People Manage Weight by Changing Behavior

The conversation “helped me to prioritize what’s important in my life and follow what I believe,” says Jeong. After his father’s death, Jeong moved to New York City. He hustled to learn English and pay his rent. He thought about the sort of company he could create to help people change their lives and prevent disease. It finally hit him: weight management.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. “Weight management is the most effective and efficient way to deliver health,” Jeong says. “The CDC has always been talking about managing weight by changing behavior. If you can lose more than 5 percent of your body weight, that’s great enough that you can experience a transformative healthy transition.”

Two years later, Noom sprang to life. Noom (moon spelled backward) is a software company whose goal is to help people change their behavior and lose weight in the process. The moon, after all, is a guide when you are, quite literally, lost; Jeong felt it reflected his company’s ethos.

“Changing behavior is such a journey,” says Jeong, who is married and has two young sons. “We understand how hard it is. Just like if you’re adventurous and take a journey and you get lost. But the moon is right there to help you find a path and guide you. Noom is the same.”

Pairing Consumers With Coaches and Using CBT

Noom connects consumers with real-life human lifestyle coaches who help them use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to change their behavior. They can talk to their coach every day if they want. The coach, in turn, helps them retrain their brain.

“We provide a curriculum for every individual,” he says. “We don’t provide an in-depth education about how to prepare to eat, what to eat, how to eat, and when you eat but rather, what’s the better behavior and why do you feel cravings and so on? It’s all psychology-based. We do not create cookie-cutter templates.”

Clients are given homework, which usually takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Jeong and his lifestyle coaches — he has 1,700 full-time coaches on staff — expect clients to do it. “These people are adults,” he says. “It’s doable and affordable.”

Noom costs $129 for a four-month program. To date, more than 52 million users have downloaded it. The average user loses 7.5 percent of their weight and has kept it off at a six-month follow-up.

“I don’t think we created the silver bullet,” he says. “I just know we cracked something that’s working. I think my father would be proud.”