A Slice on Derek Lurth, Founder and CEO of HealthLoq
We all know that clean eating is “in”, and it’s almost trendy to eat clean. Derek Lurth noticed that even with these trends, there was a lack of trust when it came to transparency in the industry. With little to no regulations about what claims could be made, Lurth saw an opportunity to create a platform for consumers to be able to track and trace what exactly is in their food or supplements, and HealthLoq was created. HealthLoq is a cloud-based platform geared towards consumers seeking information about specific nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage products.
Entering the professional world with a background in finance, Lurth was enjoying his job as a financial statement auditor and certified public accountant. He worked at a big accounting and consulting firm, Deloitte and Touche. His daily responsibilities included looking for evidence to back up assertions made by other companies and look for supporting financial claims. Lurth made his way up the career ladder by becoming an “extra expert” on his clients, quickly moving from one client to another. He was able to get to know the fundamental dynamics of the company, which ultimately gave him the big picture training to become more strategic in the long run.
Lurth bounced around from multiple financial leadership roles, before ending up as Chief Financial Officer at Natural Partners, a supplement company, now known as Full Script. It was in this executive role, where he familiarized himself with the dietary supplement and nutraceutical industry firsthand. Lurth quickly noticed there are a lot of questions floating around about the efficacy and sourcing of these ingredients. “The fundamental questions are, is it safe, and does it work. I could see the big players or companies all tried to make claims about ‘we have the best ingredients, it comes from this place or this place,’ but there’s no evidence to back it up.” With all of these claims, he saw there was no proof provided, even though customers wanted to know what they were putting in their bodies.
After seeing a huge lack of transparency, he decided to meet with his now co-founders, who he calls blockchain experts. “I actually hired them to do a pilot project or proof of concept at Natural Partners. They’ve launched a couple of blockchain projects and I thought this might be something that could cover the industry… Blockchain is the technology that underlies cryptocurrency. It’s what makes the new way of recording and transferring data from one party to another. It’s a common, or rather, single source of truth, where the data is not controlled by one entity, but you have multiple contributors and nodes that are on a system that all give consensus to the updating of new records.” Providing a secure, trusted and easy platform with accurate information about products, HealthLoq allows consumers to scan the barcode of any product to receive complete genealogy information.
Lurth received lots of advice when he was starting his entrepreneurial journey, but he didn’t quite understand the magnitude of it. Getting started will take longer than expected, and will cost more than you think… he cannot stress this enough. Embracing the problems and bumps in the road can help provide valuable feedback that will ultimately improve your product in the long run.
There may be times that are discouraging and hard, but as long as you don’t give up and keep fighting, you will get there and the hard work will pay off.
Lurth is focused on health and wellness at large. His mission is to convey a sense of security and strength, so consumers can make better health-related decisions. For Lurth, it’s not just about making a profit, but for people to have access to a platform that contributes to a bigger cause of health and wellness. “Success for us is seeing more people make better decisions and we’re all about bringing better information to customers.” Giving customers the confidence that products have been vetted and are of good quality, is the biggest achievement for Lurth. He truly loves being able to wear different hats in his entrepreneurial role and will continue to be a person that wants to change the world to make it a better place.
Founder Bio
Derek Lurth is a graduate from BYU. Lurth spent the first part of his career working at Deloitte & Touche LLP in auditing prior to co-founding Healthloq in 2019. Connect with Lurth on LinkedIn.
