This Startup Plans to Save a Million Lives Using Your Toilet | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E7
July 29, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readScott Hickel is the co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, a company that builds a wearable for your toilet—a small, clip-on device with a camera and microphone that tracks gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and, for men, prostate health. Every time you use the bathroom, the device identifies you via Bluetooth, records what happens in the bowl, and sends a report card to your phone. The hardware costs $400, plus a $6 monthly subscription, and the company’s ultimate mission is to become the first continuous cancer screener, detecting microscopic blood in stool and urine as an early warning for colon and bladder cancer.
From Poker Joke to Pivot
Throne started as a joke at a poker night. Hickel’s co-founder Tim pitched “smart toilets” as the startup idea you’d love to start but wouldn’t want your name associated with. Hickel named it Throne on the spot. Two years later, after launching a nurse-staffing marketplace during the tail end of COVID, they realized the market was evaporating. Six weeks in, they shut it down, returned money to investors who asked for it, and spent two months exploring 30 other ideas. Throne wasn’t even on the list. Hickel’s key learning: “The size of the mission is directly proportional to the quality of the people you’re able to attract to the team.” When they committed to Throne, investors who had been skeptical of a nurse-staffing platform bec
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Problem: Colorectal Cancer and the Smart Toilet Concept** - Scott introduces Throne Science as a wearable for your toilet that tracks gut health, hydration, and bathroom habits, with a vision to become the first continuous cancer screener.
- 2 (03:06) **Business Model: Hardware + Subscription** - Throne uses a hybrid revenue model similar to Oura, charging for both the device and a monthly membership.
- 3 (03:47) **How Throne Works: Tech and User Experience** - Scott walks through the device’s hardware, identification system, and the frictionless data collection process.
- 4 (05:48) **Current Capabilities: What Throne Measures Today** - Four categories of health data are tracked: gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and prostate health for men.
- 5 (08:06) **Cancer Detection Vision and the Scale of the Problem** - Scott explains how Throne aims to detect early signs of cancer through pattern recognition of microscopic blood.
- 6 (15:42) **Overcoming the Taboo and Privacy Concerns** - Scott discusses the cultural embarrassment around poop and how Throne aims to normalize the conversation.
- 7 (21:41) **Origin Story: From a Poker Night Joke to a Pivot** - Scott shares how the idea for Throne started as a joke at a poker night and later became the pivot from a failed nurse staffing startup.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Scott Hickle built Throne Science around a startup idea most investors thought was too unconventional: a device that transforms your toilet into a health tracker, monitoring your health as effortlessly as a smartwatch. After nearly 100 investor rejections, he and his team kept refining the product, driven by a mission to detect early signs of diseases like colorectal cancer before symptoms appear. That persistence helped them raise $4 million in seed funding. In this episode, Scott shares how entrepreneurs can validate unconventional products, raise capital despite rejection, and build demand in a market consumers don't yet understand.
In this episode, Hala and Scott will discuss:
(00:00) Introduction
(01:27) How Throne’s Smart Toilet Device Works
(07:56) Throne’s Mission to Detect Cancer Early
(17:22) Launching Throne in a New Product Category
(23:55) Pivoting Away From a Failed Nurse-Staffing Startup
(32:27) How Scott Raised Millions After Pivoting
(42:35) Marketing a Product Customers Don’t Understand Yet
(49:46) Lessons From Scott’s Costliest Business Mistakes
(1:00:03) Throne Science’s SWOT Analysis
(1:08:37) Smart Toilet Costs, Pricing, and Margins
(1:13:14) Building a Mission-Driven Hardware Startup
Scott Hickle is the co-founder and CEO of Throne Science, a health technology company building a device that attaches to a toilet and tracks gut health, hydration, bathroom habits, and prostate health. Before Throne, Scott and his co-founder, Tim, built a nurse-staffing marketplace called Pineway before pivoting into consumer health hardware. Throne’s long-term mission is to develop technology that can help detect early signs of colon cancer, bladder cancer, and other cancers of the lower gastrointestinal and urinary tracts.
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