ALESSANDRO TAULA
Alessandro is the founder of resit, a smart posture technology company building the first chair-based sensor that tracks your sitting behavior. He's from Sardinia and spent time building in both New York and San Francisco before moving back to Italy.
Before Resit, Alessandro worked in FinTech, sitting 10+ hours a day. A knee injury while training for a marathon led his physiotherapist to trace the problem back to his sitting habits: specifically, crossing his right leg every day for years without realizing it. That imbalance, compounded over time and amplified by running, contributed to an injury he still deals with today. His experience and growing obsession with longevity and wearables after moving to San Francisco led him to build resit.
HOW HE OPERATES:
How Alessandro manages his health and energy while building a company:
Rebuilt his health from scratch after NYC and San Francisco
When he started resit last year, his lifestyle was at its worst: no exercise, only fast food, always running between meetings
Came back to Italy and took his first complete blood panel
Got a personal doctor to create a protocol with one goal: be at 100% of his energy every day
His reasoning: "If I have a team, I want to convey all the energy to my team. That's key in a startup."
Says he's never felt this healthy in his life
Sell before you build
Biggest mindset shift coming from Europe to the US: European founders build first, then try to sell. The strongest founders he met in San Francisco sell first, then build
Before moving to the US, he was only building products on the side without telling anyone.
With resit, he started with people and feedback before building anything, and even got validation before having an MVP
Their original idea was a full smart chair. User interviews killed it: "I already spent my budget on a Herman Miller. I'm never going to buy another chair." So they pivoted to a sensor add-on
Still working on closing the gap between decision and execution; there's a perfectionist in his head that wants more information, and a builder that knows speed is everything
"Keeping momentum in a startup is vital. Without momentum, it's so hard."
Switched from sweet to savory breakfast
Classic Italian breakfast was a croissant and cappuccino (pure sugar)
Noticed it gave him a crash of energy in the middle of the morning
Switched to avocado, eggs, and balanced savory meals (but limits red meat)
Energy is now more consistent, and he can maintain focus for longer stretches
Morning yoga and stretching
15 minutes every morning: a mix of yoga and stretching focused on his legs and activating his cardiovascular system
Not intense. Just enough to start the day with movement
Gym four times a week
Mix of strength training and cardio
Didn't exist in his routine six months ago
Built a sleep routine from nothing
In New York, couldn't sleep without melatonin
Now uses red-light glasses 30 minutes before bed
Reads books instead of screens, noticed that watching exciting videos before sleep tanks his REM
Uses the Sleep Cycle app to wake up at the optimal point in his sleep cycle
Keeps a consistent sleep window within 30 minutes, noticed this matters more than total hours
Complete darkness: eye mask and earplugs every night
Wired his brain to notice posture
From building and testing Resit, his brain now self-checks his posture every 10 to 15 minutes, even when he's not using the product
Also noticed that upright posture changes how he perceives himself, more confident, more present
Mindfulness when he needs it
Not a daily routine, does it when he feels overwhelmed
Especially useful at night before bed when his mind is racing
Slouching and cognitive performance
Depending on the degree of slouching, you can reduce your lung capacity by up to 30%
Less lung capacity means less oxygen to your brain
Directly correlated with brain fog, reduced focus, and lower cognitive performance
One of the most practical health insights that nobody talks about
Autopilot posture when hyper-focused
From user interviews and personal experience: when you're 100% focused on a screen, your posture goes on autopilot
You can sit in a terrible position for an hour without noticing
This is why data matters, so you have the information to decide if you want to change
Constantly building tools to understand himself
Noticed he was spending a lot on eye drops because his eyes were always dry, so he built a web app that uses your webcam to track your blink rate in real time
Discovered his blink rate drops from 32 per minute (in conversation) to 4 per minute when deeply focused
Fell into a rabbit hole: blink rate is also correlated with dopamine levels and cognitive focus
The app now estimates focus score and cognitive fatigue based on blink patterns
Now getting his full DNA sequenced with the goal of running it through AI to find personalized insights on diet, health, and performance
“We have information about everything about our health, especially about the active part. Steps, training, workout. But we have zero data about your posture, and we basically spend 40% of our lifetime sitting.”
MY TAKEAWAY:
I am literally the hunchback of Notre Dame and have had bad posture since I was young, so this was another wake-up call. Especially because I track and optimize everything and never really associated posture with that. But the posture-to-cognition connection was the insight I didn't expect. Slouching reduces your lung capacity by up to 30%, which means less oxygen to your brain, which means more brain fog and less focus. I've never heard anyone frame it that way, and now I can't stop thinking about it every time I catch myself slouching.
Also, huge insight on how your city shapes your health more than your routine. In NYC, he was always rushing, never cooked a single meal in a month and a half; in San Fran, he started cooking but the quality and cost of fresh food made it harder; back in Italy, he has access to fresh, high quality food at a fraction of the price. Three completely different health outcomes and lifestyles based purely on location. This is exactly the point of Move the Needle: it’s not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to habits and routine, and environment/lifestyle matter more than you think.
Lastly, I think when you’re a builder, it shows in other areas of your life. Alessandro is the kind of founder who builds an app to track his blink rate because his eyes are dry. That curiosity is what makes resit exciting to follow along with, it's not a wearable for the sake of being a wearable. It exists because there's a genuine gap in how we understand our health.
WHAT MOVES THE NEEDLE (From Alessandro):
Fix your sleep first: consistent sleep timing (within a 30-minute window), complete darkness, eye mask, ear plugs, no screens before bed.
Then fix your breakfast. Switching from sweet to savory in the morning eliminated his mid-morning crash and allowed him to focus longer.
STEAL THIS:
Actions you can take right now
Set a timer every 30 minutes while you work. When it goes off, check your posture. Are you crossing your legs? Slouching? Leaning to one side? Just noticing is the first step
If you eat a sweet breakfast, try switching to savory for five days. Eggs, avocado, whatever works. Notice if your mid-morning energy crash disappears
WHAT HE IS BUILDING:
resit - the first smart posture sensor designed for your chair.
Instead of a wearable you put on your body, the technology lives in the chair itself, tracking your sitting behavior, posture patterns, and imbalances throughout the day.
The insight behind resit: we have data on our steps, our sleep, our heart rate, and our workouts, but zero data on the 40% of our lifetime we spend sitting. And the chair itself hasn't fundamentally changed in 200 years.
The MVP starts with data capture, understanding your baseline sitting patterns and giving you information to decide what to change. Long-term, Alessandro envisions an active chair that physically follows your posture and gives you real-time nudges. Beta pre-orders are open now, with the consumer launch planned for end of 2026.
CHECK OUT RESIT:
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Thank you for reading!
