100 million Americans are pre-diabetic.
Diabetes is a growing epidemic in the United States, affecting more than 29 million people in our country.
Testosterone is chronically low for men. Progesterone is often low for women. Thyroid hormones are often out for women as well, right? And heart disease is the number one killer in the US. I had a host of health problems, many of them just culminating in not being able to sleep. Had surgery, was told to medicate for life. No one knew what was wrong. It made me realize that there are genius doctors out there, and they practice a model of medicine that is really advanced.
Why Americans are paying dramatically different prices for the same medical procedures.
The problem is that that model of healthcare typically costs around $100,000. So I've been really obsessed with how do you take that kind of healthcare and make that accessible to everyone. I didn't think it was possible until November 2022, and ChatGPT came out and started to show us that AI actually would provide a path to replicating and surpassing human cognition, and the AI is far better than our team of doctors taking several hours.
Max, thank you so much for joining me in the studio today. I am so excited to hear about your company. We have some mutual friends, I guess, folks on your cap table. I think I missed you in 2022. But you started Superpower back in 2022 with two co-founders, and I believe all of you had some sort of health crisis at a certain point that led to starting this business. So I candidly need to sign up for it and get moving because I did all my research today and was like, I need this. But give us sort of the founding story, like where did this all begin back in 2022?
Yeah, for the past decade or so, I've been really obsessed with this idea of how do we bring high-end healthcare to everyone? And I remember when I was 15 years old, I even emailed Peter Attia saying to him, 'Can I work for you?' And when I was 15, no one knew who Peter was, right? He was some like esoteric internet personality.
But I think the real catalyst for me to become interested in health was going through a challenging personal health experience. Basically from age, call it 10 to around 18, I had a host of health problems, many of them just culminating in not being able to sleep. So it would take me around three hours to get to sleep every single night. I would sleep through half of my high school classes. I used to sprint semi-professionally, play competitive soccer. I'd be asleep literally like 15 minutes before a sprinting race in the corner of a tent, right? And I had chronic migraines, chronic sinusitis. I saw over a dozen doctors, had surgery, was told to medicate for life. No one knew what was wrong. And when that happens, you start to become a health geek, right? I tried and tested everything. I remember wearing this big fat Gen One Oura ring, taping my mouth when mouth taping was not a thing. And everyone thought I was kind of psychopathic. Right now, everyone's starting to do this stuff. 10 years ago, not really.
And I ended up solving my health problem by finding someone I call a 10x doctor. And it made me realize that there are genius doctors out there, and they practice a model of medicine that is really advanced compared to what most people have access to. The problem is that that model of healthcare typically costs around $100,000. So I've been really obsessed with how do you take that kind of healthcare and make that accessible to everyone. And that was the, I guess, initial idea. And I didn't think it was possible until November 2022, and ChatGPT came out and started to show us that AI actually would provide a path to replicating and surpassing human cognition. And I think the only way we actually create a health system that pushes the world forward is we move to a world where AI is delivering care rather than humans.
Yeah. So you and your co-founders, like, how did you meet them? And then were they all kind of on their own journey as well that led you guys to doing this?
Yeah, I was living in London for a short period, and I hosted some tech event there, and one of the guys I met at the event is like, 'You have to meet my friend.' And this was what — and he puts me in touch with one of my co-founders today, and he says, 'You're the two most health-obsessed people I know.' So I met Jacob, one of my co-founders, and we just bonded over health trauma and just shared philosophy over where the world is going. And the really interesting thing is Jacob and I both knew that we were obsessed with the space and wanted to start a company. We started separate companies in the space, and then a couple of months in we're being a little coy to each other. So he says, 'Kind of what I'm working on,' and we're like, 'We're going to join forces.' So we teamed up, and then I met Kevin, now our third co-founder, through Jacob.
That's awesome. And did all of you have operating experience prior at some tech company?
I didn't. I moved to the US when I was 22 years old. I didn't really know what I was doing. And I'd started a handful of things. I'd probably started 10 small businesses before that. Two were doing reasonably well. My brother's the CEO of one, and my friend runs another. But I knew not that much about tech. I'd spent a bit of time in VC. I ran my own fund, but I still didn't know much about tech, and I knew no one in the US. This is the first time I'd been to the US. So I guess at the time I thought I knew more than I did, and I was like naively optimistic. And then I look back in retrospect and I'm like, 'Holy — 22-year-old me knew nothing.' Kevin and Jacob had a bit more experience. Jacob had started two companies. Kevin had gone through Y Combinator. Kevin in 2018 or '19 went through YC, and he wanted to create AGI. And he said to Y Combinator, 'I want to do this.' And they're like to him, 'No, AGI is impossible. Build enterprise SaaS instead.' So he built enterprise SaaS. He couldn't sell said enterprise SaaS, so he exited the company for a small amount.
Okay, that's amazing. So it's 2022. You're starting this company. You want to solve these challenges for consumers. Let's fast forward. I mean, what the product does now — was the idea when you started to do blood tests but run many more labs and do like, you know, 100 different types of tests? Versus now I feel like — correct me — but you go to a doctor, you say you feel iffy, and they'll run some tests, and maybe you get your iron results back because you say, 'Hey, I'm super tired,' and they check for iron. But right now what you guys do is largely try to get a really full picture of how — like just through blood work. Is that correct? You do that annually, and then you can create this kind of holistic profile on a consumer, where it seems like table stakes to do that, but you really don't get that if you go to the doctor. They try to narrow it in and say, 'Well, let's start here and run a few tests, and then let's start there,' and no solution.
Yeah. Well, the initial idea was how do we create a new healthcare system. Right. Right. And the belief was that if we're creating a new healthcare system, it should sit in front of the existing system, and it should help people be their best selves, right? It should help people. Our belief was that health is how you feel. Health is energy levels. Health is sleep. Health is how you look. Health is being happy. That is what health should be. And the challenge I had was that the healthcare system was not helping us do any of those things. Right? If you go to your doctor and say, 'I want more energy. I want to look younger. I want to prevent a heart attack in 20 years from now,' they're like, 'I don't deal with that. I just do sick care.' So that was the initial belief. And then the question is, how do we actually make that come to life? And the way we make it come to life today is we have an annual membership that's $199 a year.
And at that price point, we try to create a protocol that tells someone, here's exactly what you should do. And the first part of that journey is testing someone's whole body. So we'll send the nurse to your home, and they'll collect over 100 plus blood biomarkers, and that's around five times more than the annual physical thing. Hormones, gut health, inflammation, liver health, different toxins — all of that will be in the blood test. We'll pull all of someone's past data in as well. Really important, because when AI delivers care, it needs context, and that's the starting point. The reason we do that is so that we can connect the dots across all of this data to build this protocol for someone. And when we started, our protocols took a team of doctors around three or four hours to create. Now the AI does it, and the AI is far better than our team of doctors taking several hours.
And we recently put a survey out to our members, and we said, 'How does this protocol compare to your primary care doctor?' And 93% said it's far better or life-changing, which is crazy, right? So we'll give someone the protocol, and then the goal is — the protocol will bear in mind someone's preferences, budget, the areas and goals they have, what they want to achieve. And we'll give someone that protocol, and then rather than saying go off, do it yourself, we'll say let's make it really, really, really easy to take action. And we'll say, here's exactly what you need. You can get it all as a Superpower membership. Anything someone buys as a Superpower member is 20% cheaper than it is elsewhere. GLP-1s 20% cheaper. Supplements 20% cheaper. Hormones 20% cheaper. Gut microbiome testing cheaper.
So if someone, let's say they have super high cholesterol, the first time they're finding out — maybe they've never really had blood work in five years — is that something that you say, 'Here's the solution,' and then they get a 20% discount? Could that be connecting them with another doctor maybe in your network? Do you have folks that are sort of in-house, or is everything a partnership?
We don't refer out today. Right now we do it in-house. Now there's some things we won't do, right? Like let's say someone has a chronic disease — we'll say the healthcare system's pretty good at handling that. We'll leave that to the healthcare system. If someone has problems today that could result in something downstream, that's when we'll kind of step in and do stuff. Yeah. So anyway, that all comes together: annual membership, $199 a year, all testing, all data, protocol, and then the action layer as well.
That's super interesting. So are you finding — like, are there any commonalities between, like, I don't know, maybe people's age group and then the most common things that get flagged that you find that you're working on? Like I'm assuming just even more broadly that even fit people — like I've tried GLP-1s like off-market just to see like how they operate. Like it was hard for me to believe that you just don't have cravings. So is it sort of tied to maybe trends in what's going on in the world right now? Are you noticing that a lot of folks hit a certain age and here are the three big things that usually get flagged that you can help with?
Yeah, there are probably around three things we always see that are out of balance. One is metabolism. So a lot of our members are pre-diabetic. 100 million Americans are pre-diabetic, and 80% don't know it, which is crazy, right? Because that results in so many diseases downstream.
A1C, fasting insulin, fasting glucose.
Yeah. There's a couple of other markers as well we'll test for as well. The second thing we see often is hormones out of balance, particularly amongst men and women between the age of 35 and 50. Testosterone is chronically low for men. Progesterone is often low for women. Thyroid hormones are often out for women as well. And we have so many stories of customers who come to us. They're like, 'I'm feeling low energy. I don't feel like myself. I'm putting on a lot of weight. I have a lot of brain fog.' We solve hormones, and they've changed their lives. So that's probably the second thing we see. And then the third thing that is really common is — honestly, there's a lot of other things that are common, but — seeing ApoB and Lp(a) being elevated. These are two lipids, lipoproteins, that give us a really good sense of your risk of cardiovascular disease, right? And heart disease is the number one killer in the US. And if you go to just your average doctor, they'll just test cholesterol, and cholesterol doesn't actually give you much of a sense of your heart disease risk. We'll test ApoB and Lp(a). And when we see they're high, we can start educating someone on the actions they can take.
That's super interesting. I also saw that you do — you're not trying to do everything, like create, you know, the Oura ring as well, or maybe you are in the future, but like there's CGMs — I have one in my arm right now. You know, like, are you ultimately trying to get folks to just integrate with that other data so that it can layer onto their profile and then create something more holistic? So like if I am tracking my blood sugar every single day, you can leverage that, or any of those, or my activity all day long.
