Most productivity advice skips right past the most obvious lever: sleep.

In this episode, JR speaks with Nathalie Walton who leads growth at Better Sleep, the app that’s become the go-to sleep tool for 65 million people around the world.

Nathalie’s path here wasn’t linear. It started with her own experience during pregnancy where she came to realize that there was a frustrating gap in support for women’s health. That led her to found Expectful, a platform for fertility, pregnancy, and early motherhood, and eventually to Better Sleep, where she’s helping scale something that genuinely changes how people feel day to day.

JR and Nathalie get into:

• Why sleep isn’t something you can bank or borrow against
• How Better Sleep built real trust with its users in an era when most health apps cut corners
• Why expanding access to care (especially for women and underserved communities) is one of the most important problems anyone in healthcare can be working on right now

If you’re interested in health, startups or optimizing your performance at work and in life, you don’t want to skip this episode.

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Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/nathalie-walton/

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Why Rest Is the Original Performance Tool, With Nathalie Walton

Sleep is crucial to our well-being, and yet more people than ever are struggling to get the rest they need. Researchers increasingly recognize that sleep is not just about feeling rested. It is deeply connected to our mental health, physical health, and productivity, which is why we are covering it on a show about careers and professional development.

Sleep has also become one of the fastest-growing areas in digital health, with companies racing to build tools and technologies to help people sleep better. Our guest is at the forefront of that movement. Nathalie Walton is a leader in the sleep and digital wellness space and is currently helping guide the growth of BetterSleep, the world’s leading sleep wellness app, now serving an astonishing 65 million users worldwide.

Previously, Nathalie founded Expectful, a platform that supported women through fertility, pregnancy, and early motherhood with meditation, evidence-based content, and mental health tools. In our conversation, we are going to be talking about the growing importance of sleep, what it takes to build a trusted consumer health brand, and how mission-driven founders are expanding access to healthcare.

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Nathalie, welcome.

Thank you so much. I am so excited to be speaking with you.

I am looking forward to the conversation as well. Let us get right into it. You are focused on sleep. Why has sleep become such a major focus in the health and wellness space?

Over the last few years, sleep has no longer been seen as a luxury. It is the core pillar of health because it influences our mental clarity, emotions, resilience, immunity, and even long-term health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Finally, fortunately, people are starting to understand that improving sleep is one of the most effective ways to enhance their overall wellness and longevity.

Some Of The Biggest Misconceptions About Sleep

What are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about sleep?

Some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about sleep are that you can just catch up on sleep over the weekend. Consistency is critical. I have been in many environments where the attitude is “sleep when you are dead.” That is not really an option because if you do not sleep, that could lead to premature death. While others focus on quantity rather than quality, having fragmented or restless sleep could be just as harmful as not getting enough hours. What people really underestimate and what they get wrong is how poor sleep affects their mood, focus, and decision-making in daily life. Particularly as you are thinking about your career and how to be at your best, it can have a very negative impact.

How BetterSleep Uses Technology To Help People Sleep Better

Obviously, there has been a lot of change in the space with new technologies, particularly wearables and mobile apps. How is that changing how people approach their sleep monitoring and sleep improvement?

It is actually a wonderful improvement. Technology is giving people insight into their sleep patterns in ways that have not existed before. I am wearing one right now and running a company that helps people track their sleep. What is great and something we do at BetterSleep is that we help provide actionable guidance. Technology is only effective when it is paired with thoughtful, human-centered strategies. Data alone is not going to help your sleep. You have to know what to do with it.

What are some of the things that you would suggest to somebody who is struggling with sleep using your app or something else and is realizing that they are not getting the quality of sleep that they need?

We have some fantastic advisors on our board at BetterSleep, and I speak with them regularly for this type of advice. They have shared that you start with consistency. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. That really puts you in a state to be able to get the right sleep that you need. Additionally, there are other things that you can do. You can reduce your screen time. You can reduce blue light before bed and create a cool and dark sleeping environment.

One of the most important things is taking care of your mind because Better sleep does not start right before you go to bed. It starts during the day. Something that I have done for the last ten years is meditate during the day. I just found some time to calm my brain. Research shows that finding some way, whether it is meditation or breathing practices, that you can implement during the day, helps you get better sleep at night. I would say consistency and good sleep hygiene in terms of a cool, dark room, but also taking care of your mind and stress throughout the day.

Where does your company, BetterSleep, fit into all of this? What do you provide? How does the business model work? What is the experience like for an individual using it?

BetterSleep is a subscription app. Most of our downloads happen between 10:00 PM and 3: AM. People either cannot sleep, or they are waking up in the middle of the night and say, “What do I do?” We have incredible content that enables people to get back to sleep or get to sleep. We have the military method, which is a counting method that helps you get back to sleep. We have a lot of breathing exercises, but one of our most beloved features is this custom sound mixer, so that you can create the right sound mix to get your best sleep.

Maybe this is a little bit odd, but I find the sound of a drying machine very soothing. My custom mix is a dryer going off, and then I have fire crackling in the background. I do not even know where that comes from, but you can create an infinite amount of sound mixes, whether it is white noise, blue noise, or green noise. That is what we do in terms of helping people get to sleep. In terms of helping people understand their sleep, we have a feature where you are able to record your sleep.

Let us say you or your partner is a snorer, and you want to see if something is happening in the middle of the night. Do I have a lot of disturbances? You can come to our app, press record, and in the morning, we will share with you what sleep disturbances you have had. What I love about this feature is that you do not have to pay several hundred dollars for a wearable. It is immediate.

It is the content to help you sleep, it is insights, and we are starting to connect you to medical providers to help you understand your sleep. If you used a recorder and we saw that you are snoring or that you are gasping in the middle of the night, we can then connect you to providers who can help you understand whether you have sleep apnea, and all of this is covered by insurance. Ultimately, we are creating this sleep ecosystem to help you get your best night’s sleep forever.

Sounds like a lot of different things coming together to provide a comprehensive individual customer experience.

Yes, because ultimately that is what you need, as no two people have the same sleep issues. There is no generic solution, and that is why it has to be customized for the individual.

Sleep: No two people have the same sleep issues. There is no generic solution, and it has to be customized for the individual.

How Nathalie Used Real-Life Challenges To Build Companies

I know this is not your first dive into the health space. You were running a women’s health company focused on helping people through pregnancy that was inspired by your own difficult and life-threatening pregnancy. Can you share that story and how it has affected your path as a founder?

In 2020, I had my son, and I had a challenging, high-risk pregnancy. I was in the hospital multiple days a week and had a very complicated birth. I found that to be a harrowing experience because it was isolated, and mentally it took a serious toll on me. I was not sure if I was doing everything I could for my baby. There is a certain burden that I hope very few people face, but unfortunately, I know many women do face, where you have this responsibility of keeping someone alive and keeping yourself alive.

My experience exposed that there is a large gap in maternal care, particularly around postpartum and mental health support. Going through that vulnerable period made me understand how women are underserved and how critical access is, particularly from that empathetic support. It was that lived experience where I realized, “I have the power to solve this challenge.” It is a big challenge because statistics show that over 50% of women struggle in postpartum. Not only did I have that lived experience of solving a problem, but I knew that it was a big problem that was worth solving.

Why do you think this is still the case? We have been talking about this for a long time, that there are gaps in women’s health care relating to pregnancy and postpartum. It feels like we talk about it, but it has not really gotten to where it needs to be. I am curious to get your view on why.

There are many nuances as to why we have not gotten to the root cause yet, and it is very frustrating. Personally, I was very surprised by how fragmented the care is. We do not have anyone responsible for looking at it holistically. On the mother’s side, you go to the OB, and everything is about the baby. Is your baby healthy? Is your baby safe? That is critical and should not go away. At the same time, you want the mother’s doctor to look at how she is doing on a mental health level.

That is just separated from the entire process. You have people solving for one area when this requires a holistic solution. Some companies are starting to solve this, but they are small. There are a couple in Portland, some in LA, and in San Francisco, but at least on the national level, healthcare is fragmented. That is how the system is incentivized right now. It is a shame because many women slip through the cracks, and it does not need to be that way.

It really does not. How did that shape the mission and design of Expectful?

Everything that I have done previously is that, together, in the community, you can solve systemic gaps. Expectful was built around community and sharing stories. If you think back six years ago in 2020, so much of pregnancy on social media and in blogs was just the rosy picture of a new mom with a bundle of joy. We were one of the first platforms to start talking about the realities of motherhood, like the mental challenges, and making it acceptable to say, “I am struggling, and I need support,” or “I have had a harrowing pregnancy and how do I survive?” or “I have postpartum depression and thoughts of harming myself or the baby.”

At the time, that was not really discussed. How I have thought about improving healthcare, particularly those that can be stigmatized, is by being vulnerable and sharing the reality of what it is like. That is something that I did at Expectful, and it is something that I am doing now at BetterSleep by talking about what it is really like to struggle with sleep problems or mental health in pregnancy. I believe that the more that you share these stories, the more you help people realize they are not alone. This is a large problem, and there are other people facing this. When you help educate people in that way, it helps give them tools and create resources to solve the problems. In that sense, it is through community and vulnerability that you solve these massive issues that people are facing.

Building Credibility With Your Customers

Every company that starts out has to work on building credibility, but it is especially important to build trust when you are operating in the health and wellness space. How do you focus on building credibility with your customers?

This is a core pillar of how I lead companies, particularly in the health and wellness space. Many companies are not built on credibility. I think about doing this from a scientifically evidence-backed approach. How I got that credibility is that I partner with experts in the field who have medical degrees and are scientists. When it is applicable, I do research. At Expectful, we ran multiple research studies with tier-one research institutions that showed using our product led to decreased episodes of postpartum depression and increased milk production. At BetterSleep, I am working with two incredible doctors, Dr. Shelby Harris, who is a women’s health sleep specialist, and Dr. Aric Prather at UCSF.

Building credibility involves bringing in evidence-backed approaches and building a board of people who have been in the space longer than you have to help guide the creation of products. As I am thinking about the evolution of BetterSleep, I have weekly sessions with our advisors where I get their feedback. It’s like, “What do you think about this approach? Is this out there? Is there evidence for this?” It is through their lived experience in supporting thousands of patients that I can take that learning and build it into a commercial product.

Sleep: Building credibility involves bringing in evidence-backed approaches and gathering a board of people who have been in the space longer than you have.

Dealing With Regulatory And Insurance Issues In Digital Health

What are some of the other challenges that you face in building a digital health company relative to the normal things you encounter when starting a firm from scratch?

I would say the biggest challenge I face in this space is regulation. There are regulatory issues, privacy standards, and medical accuracy. At the same time, you are addressing behavioral change. That combination is inherently difficult. Unlike other startups before this, I spent a lot of time in commerce. Trust and safety in your health is non-negotiable.

You can get someone a sweater that does not look good, but you cannot give them medical advice that does not make sense. Every feature, every message, and every interaction that you build needs to meet the highest standard and be evidence-based. That is the biggest challenge I find in building a digital health company. Yet it is still so rewarding, and I would choose to do so every day.

What lessons from Expectful have you brought into BetterSleep?

Expectful was a community of the most vulnerable population, new moms. What I am bringing to BetterSleep is empathy and personalization. I learned the experience of building supportive experiences, listening to users, and integrating community and education alongside technology to improve health outcomes. I am fortunate that I had that experience at Expectful to bring to BetterSleep as we are scaling the company.

I know you have spoken about democratizing healthcare. What does that mean in practice?

This was core to my mission at Expectful and is core at BetterSleep. It is about access and making sure that everyone, regardless of income levels, gets access to the same tools that everyone else gets access to. Not everyone can afford a wearable, but everyone should have access to insights into their sleep to understand. Do you have sleep apnea, which can have many detrimental effects on your health?

What I love about building digital tools is that you are providing access at scale because the cost of subscription is very reasonable compared to a wearable or a concierge service. We are truly building for the masses. People use us in the US, India, and other countries. What I love about this digital health lowers the bar for access, and you can get the same data. Maybe you do not get as many insights, but at the highest level, you get what you need to know to help you make better decisions. Ultimately, that is what is helpful.

Here in the US, it really feels like people will not do anything that insurance does not cover unless it is an emergency. Are you getting any traction with insurance companies in terms of their willingness to cover the costs of something like BetterSleep?

There is a long process to get something covered by insurance. In order for it to be covered by insurance, it needs to be a digital therapeutic. We are not necessarily going down the pathway of becoming a digital therapeutic. That being said, we are owned by Betterhelp and Teladoc, which do offer products that are covered by insurance and are rapidly increasing their growth. It is through our relationship with our parent company that we are giving other tools that are critical to sleep, like mental health support.

They go hand in hand. We have partnerships with our parent companies to enable people to get access to other solutions that support their sleep, including our Sleep Apnea partners that are covered by insurance. As a consumer app, we cannot be covered by insurance by our nature. Our ecosystem enables us to get people to connect with the products that will help them sleep better. Those are covered by insurance. That is critical to our mission.

It seems paradoxical. It is the same thing with exercise. Sleep is critical to your health. Exercise is critical to your health. Eating well is critical to your health. Yet it feels like our entire system is built around expensive reactive things rather than preventive things.

You are 100% right. Our healthcare system is sick-based, and because of that, you have tremendous costs. Healthcare costs are so high because many doctors are afraid of medical malpractice and running tests that are not necessary, which spikes costs. You create this vicious cycle of a healthcare system that does not work for its people.

How Education Can Level The Playing Field And Change The Narrative

What are some of the other barriers that you think need to be removed to return to this idea of equitable access to health care, irrespective of income level?

A big part of it is education. That is one of the tools that can really level the playing field. That is something that we aim to do at BetterSleep. When I look at sleep in particular, there has been a narrative in the press of, I do know, probably since I started working almost twenty years ago, this warrior person grinding it out. Now you have everyone talking about 996, which is working nine hours a day, six days a week. That is unhealthy.

You have people saying that is the path to freedom and the way to go. When I think about it, that is a really dangerous narrative. When I think about how we prove outcomes, it is about education. It is about education from the same population that is sharing these difficult messages of 996 and the warrior mentality. The more that we can equip influencers, executives, and celebrities about what good health actually looks like, the more we can slowly start to change the narrative.

As more people continue on the path of living this unsustainable life and see the dangerous repercussions, where behavior leads to an unhealthy outcome, perhaps some type of disease, that is when we will probably start seeing the narrative and the education shift. We should not wait for that to happen. We should get ahead of it and help with it now.

Social media paints a picture of extremes, irrespective of the space that you are in. It is not helpful when it comes to things related to your health, whether it is mental health or beauty. I think the startup community has always been a bit extreme in terms of its expectations. Tech has had some extreme expectations, but then it grows.

You see a big company like Google that probably had that mindset in the beginning, now turning into any other big company where employees want to work 40 hours a week. There are certainly things that are working against the idea of getting good, healthy sleep. Hopefully, more and more people will start to recognize it and actually take action toward it.

That is my sincere hope.

The Role Of Founders In Closing Gaps In Healthcare

There is so much money going into this space from the venture capital community, and some of it is around longevity, the idea of the hundred-year life being the norm. What role do you see startups and entrepreneurs playing in closing some of these gaps in the healthcare space?

Founders can solve problems around issues that we have seen personally. That is really important because I am a woman and a woman of color. Certain health conditions impact me and my population in ways that do not impact the rest of the population. I hope that founders can take the problems that they have faced that VCs might not be aware of, and help educate them.

For instance, when I was fundraising for Expectful, I raised $4.2 million in my first 90 days on the job after I took over the company. I will never forget some of the calls that I had with prospective venture capitalists who would say, “Moms are fine after birth. What are you talking about? This is not a problem.” What worried me was that some of these VCs had partners who were about to give birth. I cannot really think of many women who would say that mothers’ mental health is great.

It is just not. When you have people who have lived this experience, and they have a conviction and a point of view, they have the ability to tell a story and help everyone understand what the problem is. If they have the capacity to get capital and build a solution for it, I think we are going to start to see many challenges that have been underserved being served. That is a beautiful thing. It is an exciting time to be alive, and we are able to solve some of our most challenging problems.

Sleep: When you have people who have lived this experience and get capital to build a solution for it, we will start to see many underserved challenges being served.

Areas Of Women’s Health That Require More Attention And Investment

What are some of the areas of women’s health that you think still need more focus, innovation, and investment?

There are many. Maternal mental health is an area that continues to be underserved. There is menopause support, hormonal health, and chronic conditions like PCOS. These are really large problems. There is also room for products that integrate behavioral, physical, and emotional well-being. We are just at the very beginning days of solving for women’s health. I am grateful that there are companies like Maven that have paved that path.

Women make up 50% of the population. When you think about things like menopause and perimenopause, I recently saw a statistic where 60 million women are going to go through that in the US, and we are not building for that. That is a large TAM and something that people go through for many years. I am grateful that there is a light being shone on it and that we can start innovating in that space more.

Back to the question I asked you earlier in the conversation about why it is still like this? I guess it is just because historically, the medical profession doctors were men. The researchers whom people listened to were men. The people making investment decisions were men. Men can only empathize and relate so much. There is no substitute for actually experiencing some of these health challenges. It takes women pushing for this and having to yell louder to get the investment in the areas you are talking about. Everybody goes through these changes, whether it is pregnancy or perimenopause. They have been areas of underinvestment historically.

They have. One thing that people forget, even though it is frustrating, and I do not want to say this as an excuse, but change does take time. If I look back ten years ago, a lot of these companies that were solving women’s health issues did not exist. Over the last six years, even since I started building Expectful, I have seen a huge growth in these companies. Change takes time. I understand the historical barriers, but we are making progress, and that is something that we should celebrate. We have to just continue to do this. Great companies are not built overnight. They take decades to build. With patience and continuing to advocate for the problem, I think we will start to see change.

More generally, what do you think the future over the next 5 to 10 years looks like in the digital health space?

It is undeniable that AI is going to have a large impact on the health and wellness industry. What I worry about in terms of AI is that people start to treat AI as a substitute for actual care. That becomes very dangerous. Going to ChatGPT or Claude for all of your answers can yield good advice, but sometimes it cannot. Over the next several years, we are going to see many companies go out of business because they might not stay relevant with the innovation in AI.

I hope that, despite this, builders continue to layer on an empathetic human-led layer and connect to actual practitioners. That is going to be the differentiator. While I have a gloomy outlook of the future, I am also hopeful that we can leverage AI to improve human-led empathy and connection to care providers so that people get better care at a more accessible price point. Our overall health continues to improve. That would be my hope.

Why You Should Prioritize Restorative Sleep

My hope too. Last question. Bringing it back to your customers and my audience, what is one thing that you would suggest to people that would have an outsized impact on improving their health?

From my vantage point of running a sleep company, I would prioritize restorative sleep. It affects every part of your health. Your mental clarity, mood, immunity, and long-term disease risk. Improving your sleep is one of the fastest ways to see meaningful improvements in overall wellness. On top of that, it helps you stay away from sugary snacks, which lead to other challenges. Prioritizing restorative sleep is one of the most effective things that you can do to prioritize your health and well-being.

We will leave it with that. Thank you for sharing your story and your insights, and for the work that you are doing to make health and wellness more accessible to people everywhere, and for the focus on women’s health as well.

Thank you so much, J.R. I really enjoyed this conversation.

I did as well.

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What do I want you to take away from my discussion with Nathalie? First, sleep is foundational to our health, whether physical health, mental health, wellbeing, performance, or productivity at work. It is not something that you can catch up on. Consistency is a key part of the equation, and small changes to sleep habits can have a large impact on how we feel and function. Not just in our personal lives, but at work too.

Second, and I think you heard this from her story, some of the most meaningful professional journeys start with personal experience, and what Nathalie went through while pregnant highlights how identifying a problem and experiencing it firsthand, especially one that affects your health or your wellbeing, can lead to building solutions that really resonate with millions of people. They’ve got millions of people using the BetterSleep app every day.

Third, especially in the space of digital health, trust is essential. You cannot take a cavalier attitude that is frankly happening in a lot of other companies towards your consumers. You really have to combine evidence-based information, thoughtful design, transparency, and relatability to earn that trust. It’s funny and interesting that the most beloved feature is the sound mixes that can help people fall asleep. Obviously, that’s a way that BetterSleep has built trust.

Finally, expanding access to healthcare, particularly in areas like women’s health or for those who are low-income or in remote areas. To me, it’s one of the biggest opportunity areas in the healthcare space today. I remain hopeful that through things like telehealth, which we’ve all gotten used to since COVID, wearables, apps, and other things, we will improve people’s ability to monitor and manage their health with help from a medical professional without having to go to an emergency room or urgent care.

Thanks again to Nathalie. I invite you to subscribe to career sessions on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you found this discussion enlightening, please sign up for the Pathwise membership community and for our newsletter, which is called PathWisdom. Thanks, and see you next time.

Important Links

• Nathalie Walton on LinkedIn
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• Expectful
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About Nathalie Walton

Nathalie Walton is a consumer technology executive, founder, and investor working at the intersection of health, wellness, and modern family life. She is currently a General Manager at BetterSleep, where she leads a multi-million-dollar subscription business focused on sleep and mental wellness. Previously, Nathalie was the CEO and Co-Founder of Expectful, a leading mindfulness platform for fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood, which was acquired by Babylist. Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles at Google, eBay, and Airbnb. Nathalie’s work and perspective have been featured in Vogue, Forbes, and Fortune. She holds an MBA from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.