You're not going to be able to raise a ton of money out of the gates. It's pretty rare. What you can do is you can think about, okay, I have this big lofty vision, right? And that's fine, but how do I simplify that into the smallest incremental milestone? And the incremental milestone can look very unambitious. It can actually look very boring, but the unambitious incremental milestone earns you the right to get to the next one.
Welcome back to FOMO Sapiens, the show for bold thinkers who want to turn their FOMO into focus. I'm your host, Patrick J. McGinnis. Today, I am joined by Max Marchione, founder of Superpower, a fast-growing preventive health platform rethinking how people understand and manage their health. The company has attracted massive attention, a huge wait list, serious funding, and a big ambition to make proactive health accessible, affordable, and data-driven. And all of this with a first-time founder who's 24 years old. So, a lot to talk about here today. Welcome to the show, Max.
Patrick, I'm excited to be here. I'm unfortunately 25, which is traumatizing because I'm getting older, man. I don't like to be older. I haven't done enough yet. No, no, like I actually feel that. Like I will wake up some days, and if I'm a little bit slow to get out of bed, the main thing I think about is that I'm turning 26 this year. And that makes me jump out of bed.
That's a good one. I think that you can do that every year of your life, by the way. And the older you get, the more you're going to jump. Unless you're mean.
So, your company is called Superpower. Everybody starts a company for a particular reason. You started it based on your own lived experience. So, what gave you this idea to start your first company?
I have always been of the view that when I find the one thing I want to do, I want to do one thing for a very long time. And until I was 22 years old, I experimented with everything. I learned, I worked over different jobs. I started lots of small companies. I started a small venture capital fund, but I was really in learn mode. I was in explore mode rather than like double down on the one thing mode. Then three or so years ago, I was sitting there thinking, I feel like now is the right time to find the one thing I want to commit my life to. And there are very few things that satisfied three criteria. One was personally meaningful to me. Number two, it would matter for the world, right? It would matter post-AGI. There are very few things in that category. And then three, could support 100-plus billion-dollar companies. And there are two big ideas that I was debating between. Do I start a new city or do I start a new health care system? And I decided the health care system came first.
And what was it about health care? I mean, yeah, big impact, right? But like what was it about that particular answer that got you most excited?
So, it was deeply personally meaningful to me because I'd been through this 10-year period of misdiagnosis. I had tested and tried everything in health. I'd been to dozens of doctors who couldn't solve my problem despite telling me to medicate for life and performing surgery. Nothing worked. And when that happens, you become jaded with the system. You realize that doctors only have a silo of all there is to know in their brain. They don't test enough. They don't see the full picture. They misread flags. They react way too late. So, I became very frustrated with my experience of the system, which I thought was very inadequate. At the same time, I'd always been obsessed with how to use health to improve our life, right? I'd always used health to try to make — not for the purpose of health — I'd used health to try to make me smarter or more physically performant or more energetic or happier. And I've always believed that is the purpose of health. And that's not what the health care system thinks is the purpose of health. The health system says, 'When you're sick, we fix you.' I say, 'When you want to improve your life, we use health.' So, health was personally meaningful to me.
It also matters for the world, right? Post-AGI, assuming AGI is here, few things still matter. And one thing that still matters is human evolution or human progress or human persistence. And we can think of that as health at the core. So, those were two of the themes that made health for me a really interesting thing to focus on. And the final thing is you have this deca-trillion-dollar industry with no innovation, no technology, no change. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is changing. We have freaking driverless cars, and we still go to the same doctor that does the same annual physical they did 50 years ago. So, something has to change.
Yeah, it's absolutely right what you say, which is that we live in a world where so many things have gotten so much easier, whether it's buying stuff, whether it's like obviously with generative AI, just like doing your daily tasks is so much easier, right? With all these digital solutions, yet health care outcomes largely have not improved. You see actually in the United States of America that lifespan is shrinking, and that there are all these challenges that are not being addressed. And people who interact with the health care system, even people who are sophisticated, have a horrible time trying to get what they need out of that system. And so, there's a tremendous amount of issues with the system globally, but particularly in the United States. So, you identify that opportunity, and then tell us about what was the solution that you came up with to be the backbone of the business model of Superpower?
Well, the big idea for us is what does it look like to create a new health system, right? The current health system is good when you're sick. It's good at surgery. It's very bad at preventing things, and it's very bad at improving human life. So, it started with saying where do we have the best health care, right? If we're trying to create a new health system, at least the starting point is looking for where is the best health care and saying, 'Let's start with that. Let's start by replicating that.' And the best health care is often in these high-end concierge medicine clinics, right? If you're a billionaire, you have a concierge doctor who you pay $100,000, $500,000 a year to, and you go to one of these concierge clinics. It's a great experience, but it's very, very inaccessible.
So, we started by saying, 'Let's take that high-end concierge medicine experience that today costs $100,000 and let's make that cost a couple of hundred dollars.' And right now we're $199 a year, and we start by testing someone's whole body. So, we test over 100-plus blood biomarkers that used to cost $1,000 to $5,000 in a hospital. We pull all of someone's data in as well — past medical records, wearables, personal history, family history, everything — to build what we call a digital twin. It's a digital replica or simulation of you. And that's what these concierge doctors do. They spend hours and hours and hours aggregating your data because until we have data, we don't actually know how to take action. We don't know what to do. That's where we start.
Now, if you look at these concierge doctors, these high-end doctors, what they do is they spend hours pouring over that data, analyzing it, thinking about it. We said we can do the exact same thing better with AI. So, that's what we do. We take all of this data and we say, 'Here's what we know. Here's what you need to focus on. Here's what's actually going on at the root of your health.' And we started doing this with a team of doctors. Now, we just do it with AI. We put that in front of our members, and we surveyed them recently and we said, 'How does this compare to your doctor?' And 93% said we're far better or life-changing compared to their doctor. And it's fully AI. And then the final thing that these high-end clinics do that we want to do as well is we hold someone's hand throughout the journey. We ship them what you need. You shouldn't have to hunt around to a pharmacy and a supplement store and Amazon and such. No, we just do everything for you, and we'll guarantee it's only the best, and we'll guarantee it's the cheapest — cheaper than Amazon, cheaper than Hims, cheaper than your pharmacy — and we'll do that. So, we test everything, we tell you what to do, and then we make it easy to take action.
And this is all AI. Do you actually have doctors on staff as well? How does that work?
Yeah, we do. So, if you want, you can pull out your phone, you can message your medical team at any time, and that's the clinical team. That said, most people now just message the AI because it's pretty good.
Yeah, I mean, listen, what's very interesting in US health care is that the role of the doctor, at least when you think about like Hims and the Ro's of the world, like you can get a million different drugs without ever talking to anybody except through an app, right? But you still need a doctor to be able to actually legally prescribe things, I would imagine. But it is true that people want a 24-hour experience, and many of the things that you're talking about do not require human intervention in order to get the person the right answer. So, I get this. Does this sit alongside somebody's existing primary kind of health physician, or is this really meant to replace the doctor that you're working with right now?
Right now, we want to sit alongside.
That said, most of our members don't have primary care doctors. 65% don't have a regular primary care doctor, which is becoming quite common in America, right? Instead, people are using AI and then buying their pharmaceuticals and their diagnostic tests online. Over time, we will do more and more and more of the stack until we replace many of the things that you used to go to your primary care doctor for, but we'll actually do it well, right? Like there are so many problems that happen in primary care that come from doctors not having enough time, from the medical education system being flawed, from there being perverse incentives, from billing codes that incentivize per consult versus keeping people healthy. And we won't have a lot of those muddy incentives, so we're able to deliver a high quality of care. Over time, I suspect we become someone's primary relationship with the health care system.
And how does it work? I imagine there are guardrails where you will say, 'Hey, you know what? We know we're really good at these certain things. These other areas, not there yet. And so, we want to make sure that we kind of stick to our knitting and don't get over our skis' — I'm using a lot of analogies today — 'helping people in areas where we're not quite there yet.' Like, where are those guardrails for you?
There are lots of things we can't do. And when we can't do something, we say, 'Here's where we recommend you go and see them, right?' If someone comes to us and they have four different chronic diseases and they're managing 10 different medications and titrating between them and understanding interaction effects, we don't do that today. We will eventually, but not today. So, we'll say, 'Okay, here's who we recommend you go and see.' If someone comes to us and has prediabetes or like early diabetes, we'll be like, 'We can reverse that.' If someone is like a chronic diabetic, A1C of 12, we say, 'Go see the endocrinologist.' They're the specialist, they understand insulin. We're not going to handle that complex case yet. Again, though, over time, we bring more and more into Superpower.
Got you. And so, let's talk about — so, you come up with this idea, you want to go after it. Like, how does one go from, you know, you're living in Australia, you come up with this idea, to now you are sitting in San Francisco? How many people on your team?
Core team is 45. Whole team is like 100 or so.
Okay, you got 45 to 100 people. You have raised, you know, you're coming up on $40 million. Like, what were the steps that you took to go from the kid with the idea to the CEO with, you know, a big team and like real capital?
I think the first thing is it's probably like two simultaneous threads in here. One is obsessively learn and earn the right to do something. I've always been of this view that to get what you want, you need to deserve what you want. And my view through life has not been let's get this job because it looks good in the resume. I've never thought about that. My job has always been get this job because I think the learning per unit time is going to be the highest. And my view is if you take the long-term view, not the short-term hacky how-do-you-game-the-system view, but if you take the long-term view, if you know the most, if you have learned the most, if you're the most capable, you're able to do good things.
So that was the starting point. I've been obsessed with learning and leveling up for most of my life. I don't have much of what most people would call a life, and that's because I love what I do, which is learning and trying to get better. At the same time, you need to take massive, massive, massive action. A lot of people get in their heads and they prematurely optimize. They say, 'Oh, I need to do these five things and then I can finally do the thing I want.' But I think honestly, the fastest path between A and Z is typically to go straight from A to Z. Like just see the thing you want and go after it. Be in the arena, be taking action, and you're going to fail. Things are not going to work right away, but so long as you're taking action, you tend to end up in the right direction.
And like frankly, 6 months ago, 8 months ago, I don't think I knew what I was doing. I still didn't think I knew how to build a company. Probably wasn't until maybe September, October this year where I thought, 'Okay, I actually think I kind of know how to build a company now.' Kind of. I might realize October next year — or I guess later this year now — that I still don't know how to build a company. Who knows? But what I do know is that I'm taking massive action in the right direction, and action produces information, right? The fastest way to learn for us right now is to take action and accept the fact that there are going to be mistakes we make when we prioritize speed rather than certainty, but by doing that, you get to where you want to go far faster.
Yeah, let's talk about some of those actions, right? So, what were the things that really moved the wheel for you? Like really pushed you ahead when you're going from A to Z? I'm going to say A to Z because I know that's what Australians say. So, what were a couple of those really critical things?
Yeah, so I get the kind of premise in the question, which is this idea that there are like steps in the ladder. And people love hearing me say, 'Here are the five things you need to do,' because everyone wants that here-are-the-five-things answer. And the reality is the answer is like learn as much as possible, take maximum action. And there's never going to be the five steps. People seeking the five steps are going to be the ones who don't actually take action. They're going to be the ones who are like, 'Oh, you know, I haven't done the thing I need to do because I'm going through these stages first.' That said, I'll give the five steps, cuz I know people love those steps.
I mean more thematically, if that's helpful. Like less about a sort of step-by-step approach, in terms of just like what are the big things you need to be spending your time on?
Totally. So, I think the first thing is your environment matters a lot. If there's one variable — one modifiable variable — which predicts your outcomes the most, it's your environment, what you're around. And I think if people want to start what they hope to be a generational technology company, they need to be in SF. So, like get to SF, right? I have friends who started a company in Australia. I'm like, 'The second you move to SF, I'll invest. I don't care what you tell me Australia says. It doesn't matter. You need to be in SF if you want to start something.' So, environment is a modifiable factor that can materially change your odds of success.
Second thing is obsess over meeting people. I think most things in the world are mediated through people, right? Now, you can't meet people in a vacuum. If you meet people and you've done no learning and you have no ideas and you're boring, you're not going to get anything from meeting the person, cuz they're just going to be like, 'Who is this dud?' But you can't just be learning. So, I think meeting people is very essential. Most of the time when I see someone do something great when they're young, it's because they've met certain people. They've met certain investors. They've met team members who you end up hiring. They've met people you end up partnering with. So, a lot of the world is mediated through people. So, it's probably the second thing.
The third thing is get clarity. A lot of people, I don't think, have clarity. And it takes a long, long, long time to get to clarity. Before starting Superpower, there was a 1-and-1/2, almost 2-year period where I was just like fumbling around, stumbling around. Everyone kind of laughed at me. They were like, 'He quit his job at Goldman. What's he doing with his life? He's kind of failing.' I was running out of money. I was sleeping on my friends' couches. And the reality is it takes time to get to clarity. There's no shortcut. You just have to realize that it takes time and you need to get there. If I jumped into something too early, I probably would have focused on the wrong thing. I would have been in a local optima, and I would have realized that oh, hold up a second, this isn't actually going to work. So, that's probably the third thing I'd say.
And then the fourth thing is if you're a first-time founder, you're not going to be able to raise a ton of money out of the gates. It's pretty rare. What you can do is you can think about, okay, I have this big lofty vision, right? And that's fine, but how do I simplify that into the smallest incremental milestone? And the incremental milestone can look very unambitious. It can actually look very boring. But the unambitious incremental milestone earns you the right to get to the next one, which then earns you the right to get to the next one. So, I personally still continue to hold two views in my head, which is here's the big grand thing we're doing, and let's ignore all of that. Here's the lowly ambitious small thing we need to do today.
Yeah, you know what's funny about that is like the big vision is what creates the FOMO, but achieving the milestones is what converts people to believe in you. So, you kind of need them both if you want to do something kind of scaling. For you, like what were those — I mean, we talked about the big vision and you really lay that out. Like what were the little things that you could say to people like, 'Look what we achieved. We're not just like a PowerPoint.'
So, I don't think we did it the best. We got like semi-lucky in the sense that we had a very beautiful and viral brand and website, and we built this wait list, and we had hype, and we had a good story, and because of that we were able to raise capital to then get to the milestone. I don't think that was — I think that's a high-variance approach. It's risky. It doesn't work a lot of the time. I think the better approach is often saying, okay, well here's the small initial product I can start with, and here's how I can get it to revenue. And look, if you've got $2 million in revenue, you can raise money. $2 million in revenue, as long as you have $2 million, and then the big grand vision.
So I would actually recommend people not do what I do, which is this big build and lots of capital before doing anything. Instead, I recommend people to say what's the fastest path to getting to revenue, right? Honestly, you're probably not going to love what you build. It's probably not going to be a product for everyone. It's definitely not going to be the product you have in 10 years' time. But when you have revenue, you can hire a team, you can raise capital. It's a very unambiguous proof point. Story is ambiguous and high variance. Revenue is like unambiguous and low variance. So I'd recommend people find the fastest path to revenue with a small niche product.
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, and I want to go back to some of the things you said because I love — I super agree about location. You know, I see founders in a small country and they're like, 'I want to build a big company,' and I'm like, well, you know, you should be at the airport right now, because there's nothing wrong with building in a different place, but the ability to raise capital, to meet the people, to hire the people, to the market, all those things. If you're not there, it happens not — it's not that it never happens, and it will happen more now probably in different ways, but it is much harder. Meaning people agree with that as well. The clarity point is really interesting, and I like what you said about the fact that like you kind of have to suffer for that a little bit, like you kind of have to live with a lot of uncertainty and it doesn't feel good, and your parents are like, 'What the hell are you doing,' right? Did you have a moment where you kind of hit bottom and then turned around, or you saw the flywheel start to move and you're like, 'Oh, okay, this is it.' Was it like that, or does it just — when you look back, you sort of like it slowly ramped? How do you experience that clarity?
I think that if someone's waiting for this singular moment, it's unlikely going to come, which means that even before you get clarity, you need to take action because you get clarity through action, right? You don't get your clarity through twiddling your thumbs. You get it by doing things in the world. So, it slowly ramped. I would contend that we still don't have enough clarity, right? Clarity is like one of these perpetual things that you can keep doing.
Human condition, my friend.
