Thomas Bacon
31 Oct 2025Legora $150M Series C, 1X NEO Robot, NVIDIA $5T, Vesence $9M, Lovable Launched Ambassador Program
Thomas Bacon: Building Lolu, the Sauna & Cold-Plunge OS
After a streaming mix-up in which Thomas accidentally joined another conversation on air, he explains that Lolu is building the operating system for contrast therapy — sauna and cold plunging — an industry dating back 10,000 years with almost no purpose-built software. Lolu offers operators an all-in-one stack from compliance, planning and licensing through to the end-user experience, starting with partnerships with sports and paddle clubs. The company is also physically building its own sites — three open by December and half a dozen by end of February — to be profitable this year and dogfood the product; the software is sold to businesses, with a consumer-facing app layer for wearable tracking and social features. The hosts also reference Lolu's tongue-in-cheek launch video.
Sauna as a Feel-Good Social Ritual, Not Biohacking
Asked whether the youth health boom inspired Lolu, Thomas says sauna's health benefits are 'massively secondary' to simply how good it makes you feel, which hooked him while living in Finland. The host riffs on cold exposure's outsized and long-lasting dopamine spike, but Thomas says he avoids getting deep into the biology, positioning sauna instead as an inclusive social ritual that improves mood and sleep, complements rather than replaces things like the pub, and offers a small haven amid a mental-health crisis — in contrast to brands leaning into biohacking or mindfulness extremes.
31 Oct 2025etn. Episode 6
Thomas Bacon, Lolu — the sauna OS + show outro
Thomas Bacon joins (after accidentally wandering into the wrong call) to explain Lolu as the operating system for contrast therapy — an all-in-one toolkit for sauna operators covering compliance, licensing, manager tooling and an end-user app with wearables and social features. He details a go-to-market of building and running Lolu's own sites (Wandsworth open, with Kentish Town, Ilford and Shepherd's Bush following) to be profitable by year-end and eat its own dog food, argues sauna's real draw is how it makes you feel and its community rather than biohacking, and outlines marketing via athlete investors and low-budget iPhone content. The show closes with sponsor reads and a wrap-up congratulating Lagora.
31 Oct 2025Legora $150M Series C, 1X NEO Robot, NVIDIA $5T, Vesence $9M, Lovable Launched Ambassador Program
Lolu's Go-to-Market: Athlete Investors, iPhone Content, £10 Sessions
On growth, Thomas says Lolu will lean on partnerships and influencers, noting several pre-seed investors are pro athletes who will appear in polished content around the end of the year, while most content will be low-budget iPhone footage to keep sauna feeling normal rather than aspirational. He criticizes UK sauna and cold-plunge pricing of £20–40 per session as prohibitive, positioning Lolu around the £10 mark, and lists London sites open or opening in Wandsworth, Kentish Town, Ilford and Shepherd's Bush, directing people to lolu.com and the Lolu Instagram.
Outro: Lagora Congrats & Sponsors
The hosts wrap the show, thanking Thomas Bacon and pointing viewers to lolu.com for updates on the new sites. They congratulate Max at Lagora, the episode's earlier exclusive guest, then read sponsor spots for Jack & Jill (jackandjill.ai) and Fora workspaces (foraspace.com) before signing off.