Breaking the Mold in Material Science With Seth Casden

Seth Casden is the Founder and CEO of Hologenix, a material science company known for its innovative product, CELLIANT, designed to amplify human potential and overall health. Hologenix’s innovative textiles, which harness the power of infrared for enhanced performance and health, have led to partnerships with renowned brands such as AEON, Bear, Decathlon, DFND, Medline, and Under Armour.

Seth has a degree from Pepperdine University and frequently speaks at industry conferences. Under his leadership, Hologenix has been named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the US for three consecutive years, showcasing his ability to drive impressive growth and innovation.


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Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • [2:31] Seth Casden talks about childhood business games that shaped his entrepreneurial mindset
  • [3:46] How working at a law firm set the foundation for Hologenix
  • [6:45] The science behind infrared technology and its benefits
  • [10:57] Challenges faced in partnering with major brands
  • [13:26] Conducting clinical studies to validate product effectiveness
  • [14:39] What led Seth to step into an operational role?
  • [16:32 Influence of private equity experience on company strategy
  • [24:12] Handling the 2008 financial crisis and its impact
  • [28:49] Infrared technology’s impact on agriculture

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how to turn innovation into profit and sell it to other companies? In a constantly transforming economy, excelling with innovative technological solutions is crucial. Could there be an intersection of technology and the textile industry?

Seth Casden faced these questions head-on when he helped develop CELLIANT, a performance textile designed to improve circulation through infrared energy. He explains how his company created a textile embedded with infrared-emitting minerals that enhance circulation and aid recovery. Despite the initial challenges, including skepticism from major brands like Under Armour, his team substantiated their claims through rigorous scientific studies. Seth emphasizes the importance of long-term vision and patience, investing in studies and product development that may take years to bear fruit but ultimately establish credibility and market demand.

Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Seth Casden, Founder and CEO of Hologenix, about the intersection of textiles and technology. They discuss how working at a law firm laid the foundation for Hologenix, the impact of private equity experience on company strategy, and overcoming challenges to partner with major brands. He also emphasized the importance of long-term vision and scientific validation.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

Special Mentions

Related episode(s):

Quotable Moments:

  • “Our bodies are like machines, we’re inefficient… there’s an incredible amount of heat that goes out into the environment.”
  • “Infrared is another energy source, another food source, for the body.”
  • “Traditionally, Western medicine is usually taking a pill for something… but infrared can have a powerful effect.”

Action Steps:

  1. Consider innovative materials for everyday products to enhance performance and health. Embracing this approach can differentiate products in the market, as evidenced by Hologenix’s success.
  2. Invest in research and development for longstanding, impactful results. Long-term R&D fosters significant advancements, such as the scientific validation of CELLIANT technology.
  3. Educate the market on the benefits of novel technologies to increase consumer adoption. Increased awareness can drive consumer demand and market growth.
  4. Explore partnerships with established brands to gain credibility and scale. Collaborations, like that with Under Armour, can validate and accelerate market acceptance.
  5. Stay open to diverse applications of your technology to expand its impact. Hologenix’s foray into agriculture with Celliant demonstrates the value of versatility in innovation.

Sponsor: Rise25

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Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRx BarsYPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk,  and many more.  

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

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Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

Episode Transcript

John Corcoran 0:00

All right, today we’re talking about how to monetize innovation in a changing world and economy and sell that to other companies. We’ll explain what we mean by that in a moment. My guest today is Seth Casden. I’ll tell you more about him in a second. So stay tuned.

Intro 0:18

Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran 0:34

All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, I’m the host of this show, and you know if you listen that every week we get to talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. We’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, gusto, Kinkos, YPO, EO activation, Blizzard. Go check out the archives, and you can check out those great episodes. And of course, this episode was brought to you by our company Rise25 and podcast co-pilot where we help B2B businesses get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with podcast and content marketing. You can learn more at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]

All right, my guest here today, first of all, quick shout out to Anna Redmond, who is a past guest on this show. Introduced me to today’s guest. His name is Seth Casden. He’s Founder and CEO at Hologenix, and Hologenix is a material science company which you might not have heard of before, but their product CELLIANT you may have heard of before. In fact, if you’ve ever seen an Under Armor shirt, maybe salinity went into it. So it’s a company that has really innovated with materials science and textiles, and they put that product into other companies, like I mentioned, like Under Armor, which we see here in Seth shirt that he’s wearing here today. 

But Seth has an interesting background, having worked first in private equity equity, then gone into running this company. Usually it’s the other way around. People start a company, build it up, sell it, and then they go into private equity. He did it a bit backwards, but he’s got a degree from Pepperdine University. He’s a frequent speaker at different industry conferences and Seth, it’s a pleasure to have you here today, and I love to you know, know a little bit more about our guests and their background, what they were like as a kid. And you said that as a kid, you and your brother would play business. Your mom would give you voided checks, which I think is the first time I’ve heard before kids playing with voided checks. Usually it’s toys, maybe remote control cars, but okay, voided checks, tell us a little bit about that.

Seth Casden 2:31

Yeah, thanks, John. Thanks for the incredible introduction and for having me on your show. And yeah, you know, growing up, my brother and I kind of geeked out on staplers and receipts and wrote each other bad checks for buying the bed or the bike, and it’s just a lot of fun. I think the idea of having a transaction and being able to buy something and resell it for more garage sales were a big event for us, we’d always be begging our parents, can we have a garage sale? Can we have a garage sale? And, you know, get everything out and get our cut. So just kind of born innately with this idea of, like, Let’s make something happen and be a mover and shaker.

John Corcoran 3:17

Yeah, that’s great. And tell me then you you actually had a stepfather who had a law firm, and I guess, continuing with the theme of writing checks to one another, you went into billing and filing, which I’m a recovering lawyer, so I can say this, but usually that ends up people, they don’t go to law school, which I see you didn’t, so probably have the desired effect. You were scared enough that you were like, forget this, but tell us a little bit about that experience working in the law firm. 

Seth Casden 3:46

Yeah, yeah. Just enough. So my summers in high school were spent working at my stepfather’s law firm and kind of doing all the paperwork and the billing. And I think the highlight of that was once I had my learner’s permit, I was able to drive him in and be the chauffeur. So at least I had a couple hours a day where, you know, I was doing something really fun. Probably ran a few red lights, but always got there safely, without any incidents. You know, from that, having a business degree, and just trying to understand the value of money and economics, I was able to interview, and actually, through the relationship with my stepfather, start working at colony capital and understanding how deals are evaluated. 

They have a mandate for anything that is real estate backed. So you know how to value assets, and looking at just so many different opportunities really sparked a fire for me to create my own and you know, that was a great window into looking at a diverse set of investments. But at the end of the day, you know, climbing the corporate ladder and just sort of going through that was not really what drove me. I really liked working with small teams and, you know, finding a concept and idea, and my first few companies really didn’t amount to anything, but just kind of stuck with it and landed on Hologenix. 

John Corcoran 5:23

And, you know, tell us the origin story behind it, because you somehow met the guy who had the idea behind Hologenix.

Seth Casden 5:30

Yeah, so David Hornik, the inventor and founder. I was introduced to him through my father, and just really connected with what he was doing. And the idea is that there’s a lot of ways to affect healing and recovery in the body. And you know, traditionally, Western medicine usually have to take a pill for something, although now you know physical therapy and rehab and understanding movement calisthenics, and you know how to rehab muscle groups, but if you hurt your shoulder or your hip, it’s not the same as like your arm or your leg, where they put it in a cast. And so David’s grandmother was having a bad shoulder, bad hip, didn’t want to get the replacement surgery, and we started experimenting with infrared and many minerals and how you can support and augment healing, really just through wavelengths of light. You know, infrared is beyond the visible. We don’t see it with our eyes, but it can have a powerful effect on how our bodies respond to healing and circulation. 

John Corcoran 6:37

So help me, as a non technical person, how does that translate to a textile that helps with that and with recovery?

Seth Casden 6:45

Sure. So if you think of our bodies as actually like a machine, we’re really inefficient. Our core temperature is 98.6 so we’re eating and supporting our lifestyle through our diet that allows our body to maintain that temperature. But there’s an incredible amount of heat that goes out into the environment. Most of you know, most of our life is spent in a temperature below 98.6 and so there’s about 100 watts or 100 joules of energy that’s being given off at any given second, and that energy just dissipates into the environment. And there are certain minerals, silicon, quartz, as examples, that absorb heat the way a sponge absorbs water and convert the heat into infrared. And infrared is this usable form. It’s basically another energy source for the body. 

Traditionally, we think of, you know, what we eat and what we drink as our fuel, but your body also makes vitamin D from sunlight as an example. And infrared is another energy source, another food source, for the body. And so what we do at selling it is we take really literally, millions of minerals ground to a micron. So the width of your hair is about 100 microns. So 100 the thickness of your hair is a particle size. And fun fact, polyester, nylon, viscose, start out as a liquid, so we add the minerals into this liquid mix like adding sugar into a cake. Once you bake the minerals in the fabric, it’s permanent. It doesn’t wash out. It can’t wear off. As long as I have the shirt, it’s going to be working. The minerals absorb the heat from the body and convert it to infrared and put it back in, which causes this increase in circulation.

John Corcoran 8:37

Ah, got it. Okay. And so you, just, you connect with this founder who has this idea, and is it a classic case of a technical founder who has an idea, doesn’t really appreciate the value of it, doesn’t know how to market it. What was that? What were the initial meetings like?

Seth Casden 8:58

Yeah, you know, it’s been a journey. David was selling shirts basically out of his car that had this technology into it. And when we got together, we talked about, like, what’s the long term vision? Like, do we want to try and compete with under armor and be another Under Armor, or would we rather partner with them and leverage their brand and their reach? And so ultimately, we landed on this model of licensing the technology to brands and not trying to reinvent ourselves. You know, the need for innovation is basically built into every company that’s out there. And how do they differentiate themselves? 

And so we provide an option for brands to really stand out amongst their peers. And so when David and I got together, we said, you know, what is a kind of long term vision? How do we grow this? And we really saw the, you know, the first opportunity on athletes and weekend warriors and people that are just looking to be less sore on. Sunday morning, less aches and pains, but the idea that you could improve your performance, you know, just by boosting circulation, was one that, you know, really resonated with me and and I kind of latched on to, and, you know, was on board from the beginning.

John Corcoran 10:15

And was that a hard sell for a company like Under Armor or other big companies. I mean, I can think of so many different objections, like one, they’re a much larger company. So, you know, why wouldn’t they just develop these types of technologies themselves? And then, you know, also, why are they, you know, why would they want to partner with a small company like you, can you provide enough, I guess, volume? I don’t know if you’re manufacturing it for them. What were the objections, like, you know, what did they say when you came to them with this idea, you know, you’re basically reinventing something like a shirt that has existed for a long time?

Seth Casden 10:57

Well, those are great questions. And you hit on two of the objections, you know, right out of the gate. And, you know, my naivety in my 20s, I’m like, Oh, this is great. It’s gonna work. Everyone’s gonna love it, you know. Oh, so and so Bob bought a shirt and ran the best marathon of his life. You know, you’re not gonna sell to these brands on user testimonials. So there’s a lot of science that’s gone into it. But I think, frankly, like Under Armor, is a brand, you know, using them to continue this analogy that needs to deliver a performance product to the consumer. And so it’s in their best interest to find out who’s the best in this space to do that. 

And so, you know, for us, I think, you know, being able to deliver a proven science and a proven claim set is really what differentiates us. And so, you know, the objections are, you know, does it really work? It’s invisible, like, how do I know it’s working? And so, you know, we’ve addressed those systematically, and really, I think, done a good job of solidifying the science. You know, infrared has been around as long as the Earth’s been here. These minerals have been in the ground. The understanding of it and the validation is taken. You know, time and honestly, in the last 20 years, has made a lot of progress. Infrared Saunas are now, you know, used pretty widely, if you’re a yoga practitioner, they have infrared lamps a lot of times in the hot yoga setting, and we’re understanding that infrared, it’s not a heating effect. It’s not about just making you warm. 

It’s actually about boosting your circulation and helping your body thermoregulate itself. So, you know, depending on the brand and the company, the objections could be anything from legal to does it work? To the manufacturing. It’s very hard to make a product that has minerals embedded in it, but we’ve been able to really overcome those challenges one at a time. 

John Corcoran 13:01

And did you, this seems funny, considering, you know, it’s ultimately selling a shirt product or, you know, or a performance, like shorts or something, but did you, like you say, develop the science? Did you fund, like, double blind clinical studies, and in order to provide, you know, proof, how did you demonstrate that it did, what you say it does?

Seth Casden 13:26

That’s exactly what we did. And our largest study is on 153 people. And what we’re measuring is tissue oxygen levels, and that’s an indirect measurement of circulation. So the thinking goes, the more oxygen in your tissue, the more blood circulation going to that area. And in our study that I mentioned, we had over an 8% average increase. 

John Corcoran 13:52

So, you know, we really that’s a measurable that’s got to be a meaningful difference. When you’re running a marathon or you’re competing in the Super Bowl or something.