Precision Health, Built on Precision Hiring

Through venture studio Goodness Labs, Kanetha Phon builds health brands powered by biomarker and DNA data, helping people understand their own biology and make better decisions about nutrition and supplements.

“Upwork has been my secret weapon,” Kanetha said. “When you're an entrepreneur, it's 24 hours — sometimes we need people around the clock. Upwork really helps us with that.”

The challenge

Goodness Labs incubates precision health brands including KetoPal and Femmy Health. The studio’s biggest constraint isn’t ideas, it’s having the talent to move fast without building a big team too early.

Kanetha brings in specialist talent as the business needs it: engineers during product development, creative strategists during expansion, and customer support as retention becomes a bigger priority.

This way, each new concept gets the expertise it needs to prove itself while Goodness Labs protects capital and keeps payroll lean.

“Companies tend to associate innovative app development projects with high costs and high failure rates,” Phon said. “But Upwork is helping us experiment with ideas more quickly — so we can fail faster, if we need to, or find success faster. It gives us the confidence to launch low-fidelity solutions quickly, and innovative ones too, because we’re accessing all this amazing talent.”

Most recently, Kanetha worked with Ashley de Souza to build an AI-driven nutrition application in just six weeks. Hiring locally would likely have taken several months and increased fixed employment costs.

The solution

Kanetha hasn’t relied on one key hire. She’s built a repeatable system to hire freelancers at the right moment. That approach paid off when KetoPal scaled from $60,000 in monthly revenue to $1 million in under two months.

Social media advertising rewards speed and experimentation: the more creative variations you test, the faster you learn what converts. 

With only one in-house creative, Kanetha knew she needed more ideas. Through Upwork, she built a global bench of performance creatives across the US, UK, and Australia, including Marco Rodriguez and Florian Nicolai. More creatives meant more concepts to test, stronger data, and better-performing campaigns across markets — helping to fuel the 16x surge in revenue.

“When you realize there’s something missing in your business, you can just jump on Upwork and say, ‘I think I need this.’ And experts from around the world will flock,” she said. “Having that at the tip of your fingers is amazing.”

Being able to post a job with Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI™, has reduced the friction even further. “Even if you don't know what the job title is, if you know the problem you can put it into the AI tool on Upwork.”

Over time, that approach has become operational infrastructure. For growing businesses looking for the same precision and speed, Upwork’s Business Plus offers AI-guided shortlisting and access to pre-vetted expert talent.

Kanetha has also accelerated how Goodness Labs tests potential offerings, making each iteration quicker without increasing risk. 

Each idea for a product line or brand runs through a defined cycle: identify a gap, build a minimum viable product (MVP), launch, measure response, and refine. 

The cycle runs within a tight budget. If customers respond, she pursues it further. If not, she moves on.

The results

Upwork underpins how Goodness Labs builds, tests, and scales its early-stage ventures. 

Operationally, the impact shows up in efficiency and momentum. Strategically, the shift has been even larger: “It's really unlocked me as an entrepreneur.”

With confidence that she can access talent, Kanetha plans to keep expanding her portfolio in the same way — activating specialized expertise whenever the business needs it. 

“I'm excited to use Upwork for the future.”