#505 - Max Marchione, Co-Founder at Superpower

Max, great to have you on the Slice of Healthcare podcast. How are you today?

Jared, excited to be here. I'm really amazing.

I'm, I'm so pumped for this. Uh, let's just dive right in. So would love if you could start things off. I doubt this is the case, but let's assume there's people that are hearing about you for the first time. Give us a quick snapshot of what, uh, Superpower does and what makes it unique.

We are building a healthcare super app. Um, we believe every single person will have an AI doctor on their phone. That is the first place they go to, to access care. Now, the starting place is an annual membership today, $42 a month or $499 a year, which gives people 100+ blood biomarker tests twice a year, around 5 times more comprehensive than an annual physical. We'll pull in all of someone's other data as well, their past medical records, their wearables. We'll connect the dots, see what's going on at the root cause, and then make it really easy to take action, right? The goal is within the— when you have— when you're a Superpower member, or when you're within the ecosystem, we want to try to do as much as possible for you. We really want to put healthcare on autopilot. And the goal isn't just treating sickness. The goal is how do we prevent disease as early as possible, and how do we go beyond that and use healthcare to actually enhance, enhance human performance?

I like companies and ideas that seem like it's, it's, it's obvious we should have this, right? And whenever companies like yours come around, I get really excited and I want to interview them. So I'm, I'm excited for two, two things. I've been reading a lot about you, wanted to have you on, thought it'd be great to have you as a guest. Also, I'm interested in learning about, uh, Superhuman so that I can think about becoming a member. And I'll, I'll share with you, you and I were chatting a little bit before. Recently, I, I tore my calf playing pickleball of all things. And I went down a spiral of ChatGPT and like Grok conversations about what was happening with it. Um, when I first got hurt before I went to like the ER and it was just, I mean, there's a reason why you probably shouldn't use those for, for your healthcare, like to try to identify something because it was like, it made me like worry completely on what was happening. And it turns out I went to the ER and It was torn, but they did nothing for me. Who, I mean, without sharing personal details, like when you look at your user base, like who do you see using Superpower the most?

We want to reach every single American, right? 150 million Americans have an Amazon Prime membership. We want there to be a health membership that the majority of people own. And that will happen when that membership is as close to $0 as possible, right? This should be something that costs people nothing, um, either because the marginal cost is lower, insurers and employers pay for it, and what that health membership has is annual preventative testing, all your data in one place, access 24/7 to a medical team that can take action, refer, prescribe, and deliver holistic care. So that, that's where we're going today. Um, we, we have quite a broadly distributed, um, group of people across ages, across male and female is quite evenly split. Um, and, uh, that said, what we think a lot about is who do we target first? Who do you want to win the hearts and minds of first? And for us, that is who we call the tastemakers, the people who define culture. A big belief is that we want to create a, a generational brand, right? There aren't brands in healthcare. No one's walking around wearing like One Medical t-shirts, no one, or like Hims hoodies. Um, and I think part of creating a brand is defining culture. And culture tends to start with, um, uh, tastemakers, uh, fashion and finance in New York, wellness and media in LA, and technology in SF.

If you had to bucket Superhuman into like a particular category, like, could you put it obviously like in longevity?

I don't think longevity is really a category. I think this is a word that is thrown around that is awfully imprecise. And, um, I think that people call any company that is doing consumer healthcare that is preventative and focused on human performance rather than just sickness. Longevity— I don't really know what longevity means, um, so I, I prefer to think that we are at the intersection of, of health and wellness, um, and, and doing healthcare the way it should be done.

I like that way better. That's a, that's a great breakdown. Um, I, I like to— when I have people come on the podcast, especially for the first time, I'm sure you get this all the time, right? Like, where did the idea come from? I don't care about that. I care about the final domino that got you to start the company. Everyone has that, okay, here's the story of when I had the idea and what I, what was the final domino that took it from an idea to, no, I'm gonna do this and do it right now.

Um, yeah, that's weird. I'm trying to think about the point in time where I'm like, I'm doing this. I don't think there was a final domino point in time, basically in around August 2022, I was thinking what I wanted to commit to the next 30, 40, 50 years of my life to, and I decided that it would be healthcare. Healthcare done better, built the way it should be built, knowing everything we know about the latest technology. And it took a year of experimenting and learning and forming theses and meeting people to actually say, okay, this is the thing I'm targeting. But I was quite resolute from early on that I would, I would build in healthcare.

Okay, that's— I mean, that's, that's— there's no wrong answer either. That was great. I would love to hear a little bit maybe about— doesn't have to be the challenges, but I guess challenges, lessons in running a company like this, right? It can't be easy. This is a huge problem to solve. You said it yourself, when you were thinking about it, you wanted to see like, what were you going to do? Like, what, what area were you going to focus on the next 30, 40 years? So what's been the biggest challenge so far? And I guess what lessons have you learned along the way?

The hardest thing was all the advice that you get. And I think the role of a founder is to discard 50 to 90% of advice you hear, because most of it reasons from the past. And the most insidious form of advice is the one that comes from industry insiders. Right? Because insiders always reason from the past and think about the challenges and everything that can go wrong rather than the future and everything that can go right. Um, the reality is the future is going to be very different from the past, and therefore it's hard to generalize, um, our past learnings. So that was tough. Um, it psyched me out for 6 to 12 months where I didn't stand by my convictions. And then after 6 to 12 months of of seeking advice, I realized that a lot of it could be discarded, and I came full circle to where, where I started.

When, when you look at, uh, thank you so much for sharing. When you look at your kind of day-to-day, right, what does a typical day look like for you? I know it probably can change quite rapidly, but, um, what does that typical day look like? And then are there any rituals or habits that help you kind of stay on top of your game?

I get up too late at the moment, say around 9 AM, um, and I will more or less work from 9 AM through to roughly 1 AM. And is that health optimized? No, but I joke that sometimes I'm unhealthy so that other people can be healthy. The reality is company building is very brutal. When I wake up, I have green tea. I'm off coffee at the moment. I don't like the impact it has on a bunch of different systems. I take supplements. I have like an oral hygiene protocol that I'll follow in the morning, which includes oil pulling amongst other things. And then I start the day. I'm normally— I'll sometimes get sunlight, I'll sometimes go for a walk, but to be honest, I'm normally at my desk within 15 to 30 minutes. I think that we've entered this era of I do my morning routine for productivity, and 2 fucking hours later, people are still doing their morning routine. I think often the best morning routine is to be like, yeah, I feel amazing. I don't have to check my Oura Ring. I don't have to externalize how I feel. I can just choose to feel amazing, maybe get outside and get a little bit of sunlight, then just start and get into things. So that's what I do. I try not to eat anything until 1:00 PM. If I do eat something at 1:00 PM, I try to stay away from carbs in particular. I find that they mess with my metabolism. They cause brain fog, they cause afternoon fatigue. Um, um, and the— as, as often as possible, I try to make the first meal of the day a smoothie, which is a hack. It has— the way I'll make a smoothie has 60 grams of protein, uh, 20 of fiber, um, all sorts of micronutrients and minerals, and probably only like 300-400 calories, right? So it's something that fills you up like a 1,000-calorie meal whilst only taking 300-400 calories in. And is good for metabolism as well as all sorts of other facets of health. And then to our— I'll typically on an ideal day exercise around 5 PM. A lot of days are not ideal because founder life can be disruptive. And then I'll eat dinner around 6:30 PM right after exercising. That tends to be my post-workout meal. As a result, I can eat as many carbs as I want at dinner and I don't feel guilt because carbs are good following exercise. And then it comes time bed around 1:00 AM, 30 minutes before I'll supplement glycine, theanine, magnesium in particular. Sometimes I'll add a few other things. I'll brush my teeth and I'll hop in, I'll hop into bed. I try to dim all lights and all computers and the rest at least 1 to 2 hours before going to bed. I do stay on my laptop up until 15 minutes before. Is it optimal? No, for health. But I find that my health is good in spite of that positive attitude.

It can, can make, uh, you feel great, right? All the time. So I just actually switched to the blue blocker glasses late at night, at least. And although it's very, sometimes it doesn't make working on your computer ideal, especially if like I'm doing something, if I'm doing a design, um, but hey, if, if so, if anyone sees anything that's awfully colored because I was, uh, doing designs too late at night. Um, I need to, I want to go back quickly to that smoothie because I've been trying to do more smoothie. What do you put in it usually? So you said protein. But what other stuff are typically in it?

I'll go 3 different kinds of protein: goat, organic goat whey, collagen, and a vegetable, like, I think it's a pea protein or some sort of vegan protein blend. I find if I do too high a dose of any one of them, it causes a tiny bit of brain fog. I also like the balanced amino acid profile of mixing them up. I will also add a berry base, typically strawberry, blackberry, or blueberry. Blueberry is the most common because I like the, the cognitive benefits and it's higher in antioxidants than some of the other berries. I will add fiber either as flaxseed or a fiber powder. I will add maca powder. I'll sometimes add cacao powder. I'll sometimes add ginger powder. I will add some sort of antioxidant powder, either acai berry or dragonfruit. And I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but then I'll add phosphatidylcholine as well because I want to get choline up. And occasionally if I want it to be a tiny bit sweeter, I'll add some manuka honey. And that is very nutrient-dense, very metabolically safe, a fast way to get protein in and fills you up. So, so that, that's my go-to at the moment.

I'm making a protein as soon as we get off this. I mean, a smoothie as soon as we get off this. That sounds amazing too. Like, it sounds like you're not sacrificing also taste. That sounds like a very tasty smoothie as well.

Yeah, I believe, I believe I've got the recipe at maxmarchione.com/protocol where, where I break out my whole health protocol. That site's a bit, a little bit dated, but it's quite, quite, quite accurate.

I'm checking that out after this as well. Okay, really cool. Thank you for sharing. Um, Max, I'd love to kind of shift focus just a little bit here to maybe some advice for the entrepreneurs that are out there listening. Um, you know, what's one key piece of advice you'd share about building a business in today's landscape?

I think that it's important to ask the question, assuming AGI is here, what still matters? Very few things matter. Um, so work on something that is robust to AGI. Two things are things in the real world and human health, I do think they will continue to be important. The next thing is, even if you have that big vision about what matters post-AGI, find— ask yourself what's going to be the path to revenue in the first 1 to 2 years, right? Like, like, I think that the reality is, if you get revenue, you get funding. With funding, you can attract talent. With talent, you can build a lot of things. So I think people should be very long-term patient and very, um, um, very short-term revenue obsessed because of how it unlocks lots of other things. Um, I think part of how to be revenue obsessed is being customer obsessed because you understand what people want. I think that it's just as important to have a hypothesis around how the thing will grow as it is to have a hypothesis around what the product is. I'd almost contend that in the early days, starting with a distribution hypothesis can be more robust than starting with a product hypothesis. There are thousands of products that are good that do not grow. So there, there are a few of the things I think about.

I love it. Um, one or two, like one more question and then a quick rapid fire. What's on the horizon for Superhuman? Are there any exciting updates or projects that we should be watching out for?

We want every single person to have an AI doctor on their phone. So that's, um, something that, that we're building towards and that I think done right can completely change the way the way health is understood and delivered.

Love it. Um, real quick, because I know this is something a lot of really health tech founders kind of run into, what's, what's been the most frustrating part of building in healthcare for you?

Uh, again, probably all the people who— all the insiders and experts who give advice, and, um, the, the pessimism healthcare. I was, I was in New York on a panel, and they, they— the questions were like, so what are the challenges? How do you think about trust? How doesn't regulation get in the way? And I'm like, yeah, but hold up, like, if you're NSF on a tech panel, they say, what's the vision? What could this be at its best? Not all the, the pessimistic things and the problems and the challenges. So I think the culture of healthcare is very challenge optimized. And I think that we should be thinking about what, what, what can this be rather than, rather than everything that gets in the way of getting there.

Yeah, it's all doomsday. Like everything is like just talking about how bad it is. I agree with you. Yeah. All right. Quick rapid fire and then we're done. What's one app you can't live without?

Carabiner. It allows me to map on my computer every application to a keyboard shortcut, and as a result, I never navigate my computer. It's all just on my keyboard, which makes it very easy to find whatever I need.

I'm gonna look that up after. Really cool. Uh, one book or podcast that's influenced you lately?

Let's go AI 2027. It's an article, um, about AI in 2027, and it's the one of the most thoughtful and well-reasoned pieces prediction pieces in AI. So I recommend folks read it. ai-2027.com, I believe, is the URL.

Uh, if we find that too, we'll put it in the, in the notes. Uh, last question for you: what's your go-to mantra or phrase when things get tough?

I think that we can respond to just about anything with good, and our, um, subjective perception of things modifies the objective world, right? And I think as a result, reality is largely determined by how we perceive reality. And when things are tough, good.

I love it. Max, it's been a real pleasure having you on. Can't wait to continue to follow along with Superhuman and your journey. And I was a fan before, I'm an even bigger fan now. We'll continue to follow along, like I said. And thanks so much for joining me here today.

Thanks, Jared. Great chatting, man.