Test, Don’t Guess: Superpower’s Max Marchione on Labs, Testosterone & HRV

One of the most powerful things someone can do for their health is lab testing, because the second you see what is going on, you become motivated to take action. You start to realize there are things going wrong that you weren't aware of.

Max Marchione, the CEO of Superpower.

There are all sorts of chemicals in our environment that never used to exist, and many of these chemicals are called endocrine disruptors. In other words, they disrupt our hormones. BPA is a classic one. I thought I avoided all BPA. And my BPA levels when I tested were in the 99th percentile.

That's crazy for a guy who works— you said 110 hours a week?

Probably 100. Yeah, sometimes 100.

100, still a lot. How do you manage your stress? Let's start there.

One is make sure the foundations of health are solved. If your metabolism is out of whack, your diet's out of whack, you're not sleeping, your hormones are out of balance, your HRV is shot, they need to solve that first.

So you said you meditate every time you're in an elevator for 15 seconds.

I love this idea of passive optimization, and the idea is we don't actually have a lot of time to all of a sudden add 20 hours of an hour of exercise a week or an hour of meditation a day. Most of us don't have time for that. How do we take the things we're already doing and turn them into moments that are more productive?

A lot of men have very low testosterone in this country right now. Let's start with the basic question, which is why.

Let's look at what men do now compared to what men did hundreds of years ago. Men 1,000 years ago used to go to war, used to fight, used to be out in nature, used to be touching grass, used to be hunting for food. Men today Wake up, watch porn.

For guys in their early to mid to late 20s, why the fuck aren't they going out and doing the thing, taking the chance?

I think it's really hard in a culture that has been structured to not facilitate that, right? This is also heavily influenced by our parents. So parents try to minimize downside. Let's get a safe job, become a doctor, become a lawyer, become some sort of corporate professional. It's very rare that parents are like, you know what, I'm willing for you to actually risk kind of failing multiple times to maybe find something that works.

Work on something that you're passionate about or like find things that doesn't feel like work. Yeah, of course. That's what we all want. Where do you start?

One is—

What do I need to understand about who you were as a teenager to understand who you are today as the CEO of Superpower?

Oh, this is such a good question. So probably 3 things. One is always rule breaking and pushing the needle. I've always hated arbitrary rules. My general view of rules is that sometimes they're useful because they drive a certain outcome. A lot of the time they're kind of arbitrary. So I would not listen to half of my teachers. I put headphones on and just did my own work. I would sneak out of class. And the reason I did this wasn't to not study. It was because I thought there were more effective ways of studying. The second thing that comes to mind is Well, always being entrepreneurial and like trying new things. I've started probably 5 to 10 businesses between the age of, call it, 5 and 15. And then maybe the third thing is grappling with health challenges. I would take 3 hours to get to sleep every night. I would fall asleep through a third of my high school classes. I used to sprint competitively and I'd be asleep 20 minutes before a race. And when you have health challenges and can't sleep and see doctors and have surgeries and get told to medicate for life, you start to become curious about what's going on and very frustrated that the system isn't doing much about it.

How old were you when you were dealing with the health issues?

Uh, basically 10 to around 18.

Okay, and you're 25 now.

Oh yeah.

By the way, you've come a really long way.

Oh man, I, I feel way too old. Don't rub it in.

So how's your skincare routine?

Uh, it's really funny, like I had never thought about skin or skin health until maybe a year ago.

Okay.

Because I think until you're maybe 23, 24, you don't notice anything. No wrinkles, nothing.

Yeah.

And now I'm like, fuck, I'm starting to look old.

Sure. And the world's probably telling you, like, if you don't start this now, in 10 years you're going to regret it.

There's a version of that. There was this article published by the SF Standard that called me baby-faced, and all the comments were saying, what do you mean? He looks 35 years old. He's not baby-faced. Like, oh shit.

Did you think baby-faced? Were you like flattered by that?

I was like, I don't know. I think this is the irony, right? Like when I was baby-faced, I was like, no, what do you mean? I look old. And when when people told me I look old, I'm like, what do you mean? I don't look old. So I don't know, man, maybe just never happy.

So the story that I've always latched onto with you is from 10 to 18 years old, you dealt with a bunch of health issues and you cured them yourself. Then you went to med school, is that right?

I never went to med school.

You didn't go to med school?

No.

So, but this is like, you're a child and you're figuring out what the heck is wrong with me. Where did you even start with that?

Yeah, sadly I didn't have ChatGPT because that would have solved things, or Superpower, which would have solved things even more effectively. I started by trying to read everything I could and test everything I could. I remember hustling, like haggling doctors to let me test my gut, the gut microbiome. And most of them said the gut microbiome is not a real thing.

How did you even know at that age that that's a test you should run?

I was just reading online, reading forums, reading research papers, trying to, reading textbooks. I remember getting a Gen 1 Oura ring. It was this big fat device at the time. I remember buying a CGM. I wasn't able to procure one because there weren't companies like Levels out there, and I had to convince the pharmacist to give me one illegally. I'm just like, oh, look, I just want to test it. And he gave me, he didn't even charge me. Great guy. And I would do this with everything. I remember similar story trying to get the doctor to let me test mercury. All the doctors were like, no, you don't need to test mercury. I got my test results back and I was in the 99th percentile, right? So it was this journey of reading things, having hypotheses, haggling doctors to let me test things. And being frustrated when they often said no. And I think in many respects, uh, Superpower is kind of in antagonism to that. We say let's actually give consumers power to make choices, right? Let's not assume the consumers need to be mollycoddled. Instead, here's information and here's the ability to take action.

Okay, so I'd love to dig into a lot of today's conversation around stress, anxiety, all that stuff. I know you guys are moving in a direction of working with, with companies, helping them provide benefits to their employees. You work a lot. You grew up struggling with health, figured it out. How do you manage your stress? Let's start there.

One is make sure the foundations of health are solved, right? If you do not have the foundations in place, if your metabolism is out of whack, your diet's out of whack, you're not sleeping, your hormones are out of balance, no matter what you do to manage stress, it's going to be really hard, right? I see a lot of people who have anxiety or are depressed, and the modern world says, meditate or take this medication. I think often the more accurate answer is fix your gut health. The number of people I've seen fix their gut who end up fixing them, their, their— what's going on in their brain is crazy. So the first thing is solve for the foundations of health. The second thing is work on something that is actually meaningful and authentic to you and brings you energy. Um, for me, I work 110-hour weeks, but it doesn't feel like work, right? I wake up and I'm so excited to get to the office and spend time with the team and work on interesting and fun problems and push health forward and push technology forward. And then, uh, probably the third thing is knowing that the world is going to have so many exogenous stresses, right? Seeing what are the small things I can do to drive an outsized result. Unfortunately, I don't have time to just like take a week off. I don't have time to like meditate for an hour each day. So those things aren't really options, but I ask what are the small things I can do? And the small things for me look like every time I go up and down an elevator, I meditate for 15 seconds. Small, but I'm going to go up and down that elevator anyway. Let's use that moment for something useful. A small thing is supplementing, right? L-theanine, magnesium, PharmaGABA at night reduces stress. Um, another small thing is when I'm in meetings, just trying to breathe 5.5 seconds in, 5.5 seconds out. That's the breathing frequency that maxes heart rate variability, and it calms the nervous system. So what are the small things I can do to reduce stress?

Yep. For the everyday guy lives in the United States, he hears something like, oh yeah, just like work on something that you're passionate about or like find things. It doesn't feel like work. Yeah, of course. That's what we all want. You know, guy works 9 to 5, maybe he's blue collar, whatever it might be. Where do you start? Like, how would you make it so damn simple for this guy to understand? Like, where do you start here?

Yeah, I think two things. One is Information, right? Spend time on the internet, spend time reading, spend time on YouTube. Try to understand what are the set of options out there, right? Information is education. When you have information, you can understand the set of options. When you know the set of options, you can take better action. So that's number 1, get information. Number 2 is just explore different things, right? Uh, I love this idea of explore before you exploit. Try everything, taste test everything, try to observe your nature. So that's kind of number 2. And then maybe number 3 is observe who you are and who you have been for a lot of your life. What are the things you like doing on the weekend? What are the rabbit holes that you go down? What did you do as a little kid? What did you want to be as a little kid? What are the kinds of things— if you look at your calendar over the past year, what are the moments where you found energy? And I think those three things— get information, explore lots of things, and observe who you are— allow you to get towards this, this work that feels like play idea. Sure.

And I'd love to really dig into the, the reality of the situation, which is going out and getting tests, figuring out what's going on with you, even like being able to diagnose something that you may not even know that's going on in the first place is so hard, especially in the US right now. Obviously, enter Superpower, right? Making it easier. But in general, what do you want someone to understand about what they think their options are versus what their options really are?

Yeah, in terms of career, in terms of health.

Health.

Health. Okay, so one of the most powerful things someone can do for their health is lab testing, because the second you see what is going on, you become motivated to take action. The other reason that's really powerful is you start to realize there are things going wrong that you weren't aware of, right? Uh, maybe you're not feeling Are you feeling a little bit tired? That often shows up in your blood biomarkers. Maybe you're putting on weight, often shows up in your blood biomarkers. Maybe feeling a little bit depressed or down shows up in your blood biomarkers.

What are the super common things that are showing up in people's blood biomarkers today, um, that are just like, where it's like, ah, it's just like where we're at in America, but they're actually a problem? What are you seeing a lot?

Over 90% of our members are vitamin D deficient.

Why?

Uh, the modern Lifestyle is indoors all day behind laptops, right? The modern diet is very vitamin D depleted, uh, compared to our ancestors who are out in nature. The second thing we see a lot of is, uh, high, uh, lipid burden. So high ApoB and Lp(a). These are two biomarkers that are way better than cholesterol to give you a sense of your risk of heart disease. Heart disease is the number one killer in the US, and I would contend no one should die of heart disease. We can genuinely take steps early to prevent it. The third thing we see a lot of is around a quarter of our members are pre-diabetic. And honestly, that doesn't— that makes a lot of sense. One in—

they know it, they're coming to you and they're like—

and something like 80% don't.

Probably 80 to 90% do not know it because there are no symptoms or they just never went to go figure out.

They just don't realize that even if they seem healthy and exercise, they could be pre-diabetic. I was pre-diabetic, right? I exercise often, I ate healthily, but the modern lifestyle is really, really hard metabolically. And they might have symptoms, but they're not aware of those symptoms. They might say, oh, at 2 PM I get really tired. I eat a meal and I feel fatigued afterwards. That shouldn't happen. If you're metabolically healthy, that doesn't happen. If you're metabolically unhealthy, which is a lot of people— 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy— if you're metabolically unhealthy, then you eat a big meal and you feel and they're dead after.

At what point is it too big of a battle for you?

Uh, never, right? Like, like, we're here because the health system is, is not working.

Yeah.

And until that is fixed, someone has to solve that problem.

Do you think this would have worked like 3, 4 years ago?

Yes, but not to the same extent it does today. I think we're at a real turning point in terms of health, consumer health fervor. If I look 3 years ago, uh, look, 6, 7 years ago, people laughed at me for wearing an Oura Ring. If I look 3 years a year ago, people laughed at me for like taping my mouth to sleep, to sleep at night and to nose breathe. Uh, I was in Australia around 3 months ago, is where I'm from, and I was sitting at a cafe, and then the table next to me, though, there were 3 girls probably in their 20s, and they were talking about their biomarkers. They were talking about their progesterone levels and their estrogen levels. That is where the world is at now. That would not have even happened a year and a half ago. So I do think we're at a turning point in terms of timing, but I also think that, uh, it's incumbent on founders and individuals to create that turning point as well. Yeah.

I mean, a couple years back, you know, like I've been in venture since I was 18 and startup world since about the same time. And it's always just been the topic of like, oh, health is just too hard. It's too hard. Like do something easier, lower hanging fruit. And, and now it's like, is it that hard anymore? It's still really hard, but it's not as, it's not as impossible as it used to be. Were you, were you receiving similar messages in your You were just getting going.

Oh yeah. I remember when I moved to the US, I was 22 at the time. I was naive. I didn't really know what I was doing. And I used to say to people, I want to start a new healthcare system. And I want this new healthcare system to actually prevent disease and largely be driven via AI.

And what kind of responses would you get?

Every—

By the way, and the fact that you threw the word AI in there 23 years ago.

This was pre-LLMs. I was hardcore of the view that AI would replace doctors in And everyone I said this to was like, no, this is never going to happen. What about the human touch in medicine? Technology is not that good. What about the risks? It's too hard to build a new healthcare system. This is naive. How do you start? There were so many naysayers. And that was really hard because I think I internalized some of that. I didn't internalize it to the extent of I can't do something, but I internalized it to the extent of I can't do something that ambitious. And I think I started looking at, oh, how do I find some sort of like business model arbitrage? Or how do I look at the history of what has worked and like map what I'm doing to that. And that was the wrong decision, right? A year later, when starting the company, I'd come full circle and back to where I started, which was, you know what, we can build a new healthcare system, or at least one in front of the existing one. We can prevent things. People do care about prevention. People do care about optimization. And we can use AI.

I think when any founder would probably understand this situation, certainly been there myself, whereas you start something, It's growing. And then you get to a point where you're like, all right, it's at a certain scale now where there's, there's real impact. There's real consequences. There's, there's real money. There's just realness to it. And now you have to start making either little pivots or little decisions or sometimes big decisions that could go against what you initially set out to do in small ways or big ways. Have you dealt with anything like that before with Superpower? And if so, what?

Two moments come to mind. One was in the early days, we tried doing everything, right? We started with this view of let's start by charging $10,000 per member per year.

That was, that was the price to be—

that was the price.

$10K a year.

Now we're $200 a year.

$200 a year. What's the percentage decrease on that?

Oh, it's big. Yeah. Yeah. This is very big.

Okay.

Um, and I contend that what we do today is better than what we did for $10K, but when we were building the $10K product, we said we have to do everything. And it was really, really hard to do everything when we were just getting started. And there was this point, maybe a year into the company, where we're like, you know what, let's cut 90% of what we're doing. And we massively scoped back. And that was a tough decision to make. It's hard to kill something that you've spent a year working on. But it was a really, really important decision because then we could focus on doing the first things right, nail them, and then move to the incremental. The second big moment for us was reducing our price from, call it, $500 to $199. And that was a big bet, right? But the fundamental belief here is that what we set out to do is create a membership the majority of Americans own. And the membership price that the majority of people own is like Amazon Prime, $200, Netflix, $200, Spotify, $200. And we said, well, surely there has to be some membership for health. What is that for health? And we said, well, let's start by saying it's $200, $17 a month, right? That feels like price someone would pay for a membership. And the reason that was a really powerful decision for us is the second we fixed today, the constraint we would have in the limit, we were forced to make decisions with that constraint in place. We were forced to hold up, we can't have humans in the loop anymore, we need to build technology and add AI. Hold up, we can't do this thing we're doing, we need to do it slightly differently, we need to automate all of these processes. So that was a really big decision for us, risky because we risked our revenue going backwards, right? We risked no longer having the contribution margin to pay back CAC. But in retrospect, one of the best decisions we made.

You clearly have balls of steel. I'm going to hit you with a weird one, which is when I ask you this question, what initially comes to mind, which is what moments in your life in the moment made you question if you have balls of steel for yourself?

I don't know if I have balls of steel. I think I just assess risk differently to other people.

Okay.

I actually don't think I take much risk. I just think most people are not good at pricing risk. And I think I'm slightly better at pricing risk. I don't know. I think it's like, assume this goes to the worst case situation. How bad can it actually be? It's often not that bad. I think it's also, if you actually extend the time axis and we assume we've got multiple shots on goal, is it actually that risky? So I think that's part of it. That said—

Can we double down on that for a second? Yeah, yeah. What did you have to lose?

I don't think of it that way. Like, the worst case is that I would run out of money. I'd go get a job or I'd find a way to make money and then I'd try to start the same company again. That's the worst case, right?

When you look around at the world and, you know, especially for, for guys in their early to mid to late 20s, maybe even in their early 30s, why the fuck aren't they going out and doing the thing, taking the chance and like looking at it that way?

I think it's really hard in a culture that has been structured to not facilitate that, right? Like the culture we grew up in is you go to high school. High school is about preparing you for university. University/college is about preparing you to get a professional job. That is the socialization and the culture we have around us. This is also heavily influenced by our parents. Often our parents are not thinking how to maximize upside, they're thinking how to minimize downside.

Right?

And this is very biologically primitive. When parents had children back in ancestral times, we would think about how can this child not be eaten by the lion, right? So parents try to minimize downside. And the minimize downside socialization that the parents introduce into their child is, let's get a safe job, become a doctor, become a lawyer, become some sort of corporate professional. It's very rare that parents are like, you know what, I'm willing for you to actually risk kind of failing multiple times to maybe find something that works. So we have a societal pressure with the education system, we have a nurture pressure in terms of how we're brought up, and then we have an extra cultural pressure that comes from not wanting to be a failure. Everyone loves to laugh at you if you fail. I'm sure if we failed, everyone would love— there'd be a portion of the population that would say, yeah, they failed. I told them this wasn't going to work. And that's the society we're in. We don't celebrate failure. I think when someone fails, I remember when Forward Health failed, everyone was like, yeah, I knew that was going to fail from the start. My response was, thank God they tried. Right? We need more people trying and it's fine they failed. Like, they took on the right level of risk. They tried to change the world. It didn't work this time and now they can do it again.

So what were your parents like? They got this 11-year-old kid who's trying to figure out his own health stuff. How did they frame everything for you?

They always gave me a lot of leeway to explore what I was interested in. They were hands-off at the level of just like letting me be me and then hands-on with the small things that mattered, such as being strict around in particular who my friends were. And they, uh, always exposed me. I remember when I was younger, we would have friends over for dinner, and my brother and I were always invited. My family had friends over there, my brother and I as little kids were invited to the dinner table.

Older, younger brother?

Uh, younger brother.

So you're the oldest?

Uh, yeah. And yeah, any family conversation my brother and I were involved in, we felt complicit in decision-making. So we were empowered to actually entertain ideas bigger than what children were typically exposed to. And I think that was really powerful.

Were you guys doing family dinner regularly?

Uh, every night. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

That's lucky. That's special.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah.

So you're at these dinner tables. What were some of the questions and conversations that would come up from, from your parents?

Uh, we would all just debate things, right? I don't think it was them intentionally sparking, bringing up a certain topic. I think it was more that they would have the conversation they would have with each other, and then my brother and I would be involved.

Anything inappropriate? Why are we having No, no, not really.

No. And I think the other thing is that debate was normal in my household. Like, we could spend an hour just like yelling at each other and debating ideas, and that was fine. And I think that's really important because it means that you don't develop a fear of conflict. Conflict is just normal, and you develop an obsession with trying to get to the truth, and you develop an ability to articulate your reasoning and your points. And I think all of those things are important.

I'd like to do a wild shift of gears if you're open to it.

Let's do it.

I want to talk to you about testosterone.

Okay.

It's no secret that a lot of men have very low testosterone in this country right now. Let's start with the basic question, which is why?

Let's look at what men do now compared to what men did hundreds of years ago.

I'm fascinated that you're going straight to what we do versus like what we consume or something.

Yeah, well, I think this is actually a really interesting way to start, right? Because I think a surprising amount of testosterone is not just an exogenous chemical. It actually is in— is part of the fundamental nature of what we do. Men 1,000 years ago used to go to war, used to fight, used to be out in nature, used to be touching grass, used to be hunting for food. Men today wake up, watch porn.

Yeah.

Sit behind the desk.

Yeah.

Type away at a laptop all day. Don't see sunshine. If they exercise, it's maybe in a highly structured class in the gym. That fundamentally is not biologically primitive for us, right? It's actually very subversive. Then we go to all of the things the modern world layers on top that downregulate testosterone. Our soil and food is mineral and micronutrient depleted. You need nutrients like boron and selenium and, and magnesium and potassium and vitamin D to synthesize testosterone. And most of us are deficient in, in those, those nutrients and minerals. We then go to all of the harmful things in our environment, right? A lot of people are overloaded with toxins. That puts our liver on overdrive. That downregulates testosterone, right? We can— BPA decreases testosterone. Wearing polyester decreases testosterone. So many of these things now in environment decrease testosterone. So then we take this like set of facts and we live in this world where testosterone for men, say my age, used to be 800 to 1,000. and now it's 300 to like 400, right? And the impact of that is people get less done, they have less drive, they do less in the world. So I think a lot of people think of this testosterone thing as this hyper-masculinized bro culture, but I actually think that the more subtle implication is that, uh, men used to go to war, we used to create cities and big buildings, and now we like type 140 characters.

Why do you think war is always the comparison? Like, it's even funny around the Bay Area, you hear a lot like, oh, they're coding away in the, they're in the war room and like all the funds, they're like, oh, we have the war room. It's like the war room, really? Like you're talking about your upcoming Series B round, like big deal, but it's not fucking war, guys. Why do we go to war? Like in this, why do we talk about that as the comparison?

Humanity evolutionarily is a story of survival selection and sexual selection, right? Survival selection meaning, do you survive the war, the battle, and do you reproduce? Are you high status? And that has been the story for most of human existence. We've been around, let's say we've been around around 60,000 years. For 59,800 of those 60,000 years, we used to war. Now we don't. And there's an interesting question of, has humanity all of a sudden changed? Has 200 years been the fundamental shift in in psychology and biology, or have we had to create some sort of like modern warfare? And I'd contend the modern warfare is typing on Twitter or sitting behind a keyboard or sitting in a room and creating a company.

Because we need it. Like we created it.

Yeah, I think it's like in certain respects a Darwinistic need.

That's fascinating. Okay, so we used to go to war. I really love your framing of like we used to create things and put ourselves out in the world and we'd be in nature and we'd touch grass. We just don't do that anymore, and now your testosterone is low. Okay. So then there's the toxins piece, the diet piece. Let's talk about that a little bit more. What are the just most common, what's going on here?

Yeah, so, uh, we can start with toxins, right? There are all sorts of chemicals in our environment that never used to exist, and many of these chemicals are called endocrine disruptors. In other words, they disrupt our hormones and they're ubiquitous. Uh, BPA. Is a classic, classic one. I thought I avoided all BPA. I didn't take anything from— drink ever from a plastic water bottle. I never heated anything up in plastic. I avoided it like the plague. And my BPA levels when I tested were in the 99th percentile. Now, the percentiles were determined 20 years ago, so I might not be the 99th percentile today, but I was the 99th— higher than 99% of people with my BPA load than people 20 years ago, and I avoid all plastic. Plastic. That is crazy.

Do you know where it came from for you then?

It's hard to say, but when you look at it, it's in everything. You get something at Sweetgreen full of plastic. You get a Fairlife thing full of BPA, PFAS, all sorts of other chemicals. You get a coffee in a hot cup, well, you're basically melting the sides of a plastic chamber. You get a tea bag, it's made from, it's made from plastic, right? So you get receipts, receipts are printed on, on thermal paper, which is plastic. So we really have it everywhere. And that's one toxin. We have other toxins. We have mercury in fish. It's very hard to avoid mercury in fish now. We have arsenic in salt. We have arsenic in cacao. Um, we have mold in modern buildings. We have mold in coffee. We have mold in oats. Um, uh, we have air quality that's far lower. You're in the middle of the city and there's fumes everywhere. There's rubber and dust coming off the tires of all these cars around us. So there are so many of these things now in our environment that never used to exist. And every year that goes by, we start to understand the effects. And one of those effects is on testosterone.

So, all right, let's fast forward a few years. Every American has Superpower membership. Then now they know their levels. Okay, so it's one thing to like know your numbers, where you're at, which is already a huge step forward, but then how do we actually make some real change and help people fix everything. It's a good problem for you guys to have.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I think a big part of it is get someone to care, and that starts by when you see what is going wrong and you understand the implications. Yeah, that's step one.

What, what do you do with the fear of that? So I can give a backstory. I signed up for Function Health, your competitor, about a year ago. And I had met them at some of their, the founding team and some of their investors since the beginning. And I was like, oh, this is great. This is so cool. This is right up my alley. I would love to like finally a cool product where I can go test and get my numbers and it'd be like easy on my smartphone. And I waited, I think over a year to do it just because I was too afraid of potentially getting some bad news and the feeling I would have the day I would get that bad news. It was almost like ignorance is bliss. That's a problem, and I can't imagine I'm alone in that. And then I finally did it one day, and turns out everything was fine.

Okay, but what is the problem if you don't have the steps to change it? And the reason we started the company is not to test someone. The reason we started the company is to improve their health, to make them feel incredible, look younger, have more energy, sleep better, and live longer, right? That's why we're here. And what that means is the only reason we do a test is so that you can understand how to do those things.

Yeah.

So a big part of it has to be this idea that people understand, which is we do this so you can start taking action, so that you can actually achieve all these things you want to achieve in— for your health and your life.

Okay, so you get your numbers, it's time to take action. What do you do next?

Yeah, for us, that comes together in what we call the protocol, and this is the, like, centerpiece of the Superpower experience. And the protocol takes into account your preferences, your, your budget, your health goals, the things you care about, how long do you want to live, uh, how often do you exercise, and all of your data, right? Your, your wearable data, your blood test data, and all of your past data. And all of that comes together to create a protocol. And the idea of the protocol is we want to say to someone, health is really hard, there's so much out there, it's hard to know what to do. Let's simplify it for you. That's actually— and we'll structure it. We say, here's goal 1, here's goal 2, here's goal 3. And we'll choose 3 to 5 key goals. We'll say, here's what you do to solve this So let's say your goal is I want to increase testosterone, going back to that point. We'll say, here's what you can do then, and do you want to do these things? And you choose to add the items to your protocol if you want to do those things. We might go to gut health next, we might go to heart disease prevention next, and we'll say, here's what we recommend, here's why, here's the risk, here's the time to heal based on this protocol. Do you want to add them? And a lot of people add these items to, to their protocol and start taking action.

What was the moment that something happened with a user of Superpower and you heard about it and thought, this is why I'm doing this?

Yeah, honestly, man, like, like every day. Um, but one of the, one of the recent stories that comes to mind was actually someone at our team, and he wrote this, uh, really long blog post about his health journey and his before and after. And his before photo, he was really obese, and he was struggling with work and had brain fog all the time and didn't feel that alive or that energetic. And his after photo, he's like really fit, really healthy, tanned, happy, smiling. Um, and he discovered one main thing, which was that his testosterone was low. There are a handful of other things we had to do, but that was the one main thing he discovered. And it's crazy how he wouldn't have otherwise discovered that. And now his life has like changed for the better. Mm-hmm. That's one example. Every day we, we see stories of, oh, I discovered I had prediabetes, or I discovered I had a high genetic risk of heart disease. Now I'm taking this thing to prevent it, et cetera.

What's it like for you hanging out with other 25-year-olds? Just normal 25-year-olds.

I don't do much hanging out in general. Like I, I mainly just work.

Yeah. For the sake of just general health and longevity, how important do you think social, your social life is?

I think it's really important. Um, I think that that comes about in different ways, but the key thing is, yeah, you go around people who care about you, um, and who you feel comfortable with and who you can be yourself with. Yeah.

Do you ever listen to Simon Sinek or any of his work?

I have before.

Yeah, he talks a lot about how the number one predictor for longevity and health is actually how vibrant your, your friendships are, your close friendships. I may have over-paraphrased that, but that was pretty shocking to me when I heard that. You know, he'll ask like, what do you think is the number one indicator of long life? And I'm like, I don't know, not eating sugar or like not getting cancer or don't get hit by a car, whatever it is. Like, he's having close friends. I was like, no fucking way, that's crazy. What do you think of that? I mean, sure, there's like the statistic to it, but I don't want to totally frame it as like you just say you're a 25-year-old, you don't spend much time hanging out with people.

No, I spend a lot of time hanging out with people. Yeah.

And it's such a—

I don't arbitrarily hang out with just like other 25-year-olds.

Any random people. And it's certainly not an element of like, well then prove to me how you're prioritizing your social life. But I'm more just curious around, that's really fascinating. And I think it's starting to come out in the topic of the loneliness epidemic, which shares a shelf with the suicide rates. And then that leads to a conversation about men's mental health because it's like 80-something percent, I think, of suicides are men. So when it comes to the conversations you're having internally in your war room or with your engineers, when you think about what you're building or when you're laying in bed late at night thinking about like the future of the product and all that, where does social fall into this for people?

Yeah, I think there's two parts to it. One is help someone understand that social matters, right? A lot of people probably don't even realize it matters. And then the second thing is, how do you start to allow someone to socialize and spend more time socializing? And I think there's like two parts to that, at least for us, right? There's other companies that probably solve that more effectively than we do. I don't think it's the main thing we solve. Part one of how we will do that is actually just solving someone's health. Like you don't want to socialize if you're kind of anxious or feeling down or you don't have energy or you don't feel full of life or you're tired the whole time. Right? It's hard to socialize when you feel that way. It's far easier to socialize when you're energetic and happy. One of our, um, the guy who runs product for us, he works 100 hours a week and he probably socializes for like 20 hours a week. Uh, he doesn't sleep much. He doesn't need to. He's got that gene. Um, and that's because he's got so much energy and so much vibrance the whole time.

Yeah.

The second thing we do, and I don't think we're amazing at moving the needle on it, but the second thing we do is try to create moments of community. Like, what does it look like for people to identify with being a Superpower member and come to our run club or like meet others who are part of the community? Because I do think social is a big part of health. Yeah.

So for a guy who works, you said 110 hours a week?

Uh, probably 100. Yeah. Sometimes 110.

100, still a lot. What is your advice to the next workaholic whom you don't know yet? Who's burning the fuck out?

Uh, try to understand why you're burning out. Uh, is it because your biology is on unstable foundations? Is it because you don't have much meaning in your work? Is it because, uh, you're not doing the right things to recover in between? I think a big part is like, why are you burning out? Because I don't think it's that working inherently causes burnout, because we're doing Yeah. So, so, so I think that that's the right starting point. I think for some people they might realize their health foundations are out of whack. Their HRV is shot. They need to solve that first. Some people might realize—

Talk about HRV.

Yeah.

We did an episode on HRV a while back with, um, Saleem Najjar, the HRV guy.

Mm-hmm.

Awesome episode, but still wildly misunderstood. How do you tell, tell people what's HRV?

The simplest way I, I think about it, so it's a, it's a biomarker, uh, that stands for heart rate variability. And as a single biomarker, It's probably the best one we have to give us a sense of day-to-day readiness and the resilience of our body. And it's really interesting because if I ever meet someone who works really, really hard, nearly always their HRV is really high, which is the opposite of what you'd think. You'd be like, wait, if you're working really hard, that's going to tank your HRV. But actually what is happening is when someone's healthy, their HRV is high and they can work hard, they can exercise hard, they can go to the gym often. So it's an overall like biomarker of recovery and it's a great catch-all because Everything we do, the amount we sleep, the amount we exercise, what we eat, our age, all of that is going to likely show up at the level of HRV. So you want it as high, basically as high as possible, right?

Yeah. So I hired Saleem and we did a couple months of coaching. I'll give him a little shout out here. And the whole premise was help me raise my HRV. And I was, I don't know, maybe like 3 or 4 months after a pretty tough breakup. I was like in fucking locked in mode, founder mode, building the company. I was just starting to train for a big endurance insurance event, and my HRV was shot. I think my lowest was like, like a typical night, and you get it when you sleep, it was like 25 or 30. And I wanted up in the 80s and above, over 100 if I could. And I was like, okay, cool, Salim, like, let's get to it. Like, how do we, how do we raise my HRV? Like, let's go, come on, give me the fucking prescription. And all the work we did was actually around meditation breathwork, journaling, and various gratitude practices. And at first, I'm just kind of like, I didn't hire a meditation coach, I hired an HRV coach. And I'm just like, all right, whatever. I did the thing. Every morning, he made me meditate and then check in with him on a voice memo. Throughout the day, as things would come up, I'd again check in on voice memos. It was like a really strict thing. What happened? HRV skyrocketed.

Wow. What did it get to?

I think my highest was like 135.

That's crazy, man.

And then we finished the coaching and I just kind of fell off. I stopped, plummeted again. And I looked at it on a year on my Garmin data tracker, like over the course of one year, how's my HRV change? And then I'd match it up with my Eight Sleep mattress, same data, and it just like clearly shot up, dropped, and then balanced out again when I realized this shit actually does really work. And then to couple it with like, well, HRV is basically the number one measurement to your overall health, aka are you going to die? Like the number one measurement for stress, and stress is the number one cause of death. So I'm like, oh shit, all right, maybe meditation will actually save my life. Like very logical way of getting there. So you said you meditate every time you're in an elevator for 15 seconds. Tell me more about that.

I love this idea of passive optimization. And the idea is we don't actually have a lot of time to all of a sudden add 20 hours of exercise a week or an hour of meditation a day. Most of us don't have time for that, right? So how do we take the things we're already doing and turn them into moments that are more productive? How do we passively optimize? And for me, I look at all the moments that exist throughout my day and I say, how can I add the healthy version of that behavior? Now, The example you gave is when I'm in the elevator, I go up and down the elevator probably 10 times a day, maybe more. So 15, 20-second ride, I will meditate for 15 to 20 seconds, close my eyes, I'll breathe deeply, I'll pay attention to what's around me, and I'll downregulate my nervous system. Uh, another form of passive optimization for me is I'm in a meeting and I'll try to breathe in for 5.5 seconds, out for 5.5 seconds. That increases your HRV. It's actually if you wear a little device to measure your HRV, you can wear it on your ear, you'll see why your ear— I don't know, it's just where many of these devices exist to continuously measure HRV. And you can see the sinusoidal curve of— I think it's your HRV that it's showing. And your curve goes from very jagged and like, uh, different amplitude when you're doing that, to very smooth like a sine wave when you practice gratitude. You also enter that sine wave. When you're in anger or frustration or anxiety, your curve's all over the place. Other forms of passive optimization are when I'm standing at my desk, under the desk I've got two lacrosse balls and I'll sometimes stand on them and roll my feet. I've got some like gripper things for my hands. I've got bands, like resistance bands, and I'll do band pull-aparts sometimes on a call. So I try to find what are these moments where I can take something I'm already doing and make it more productive.

Massive. And at what point is it— because my gut reaction to these is like, I think anyone would probably be in the same boat. It's like, there's such small things. How could that make an impact? The truth is it actually makes a massive impact. It's kind of like if you just do 10 push-ups every day, that's it, 10 push-ups every day between, you know, while you're waiting for your coffee to heat up in the morning, fast forward 3 years, like life has changed. Like, eh, it's little micro things. What are your thoughts on the micro pennies in the, in the jar?

I love this idea that the small things done consistently are the big things. If you do the micro and you turn them into habits, they add up because there are dozens of micro moments every day. Every time you're walking is a micro moment. Every meeting is a micro moment. Every time when you're making food is a micro moment. In the shower is a micro moment. Brushing teeth is a micro moment. There are so many moments that are micro moments. And if we're consciously having to think about how to use them, That's hard. If we build the habit of doing something productive in that time, all of a sudden we're passively optimizing our health. We don't add any extra mental burden, any extra time, and we become a lot healthier as a result.

All right, I'm gonna play a little bit of a game/scenario with you. Think about your ideal work environment. You're the leader, which you are. How do you lead and inspire and set up a team from a health standpoint. How do you make sure everyone's healthy and why does that matter?

The first thing is being in a space that's conducive to health, right? I toured 30 offices to find our office.

Yeah.

And for us, conducive to health meant lots of natural light, high ceilings, open space, no mold in, in, in the space, no volatile organic compounds, uh, that start— that's a good way of— it's a good starting point.

It seems like that's the opposite of every single corporate environment.

Totally, right? Like, the corporate environment is like small, claustrophobic, low lighting, artificial lighting the whole day, tons of mold, tons of dust. Um, totally.

Yeah.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is hiring people who are going to get on with each other and are a culture fit. We will say no to someone who's really great because we don't think they're a cultural fit.

How do you assess culture Ah, it's more vibes.

Yeah. Like we try to get a sense of someone's personality, how friendly they are, what they're passionate about, how they communicate, how authentic they are. And that's important, right? Because if you're around, you, I said that I don't hang out with a bunch of people randomly, but everyone on my team are friends, right? I'm always surrounded by friends and that's really energizing every day to be in an environment like that. I think the third thing is making sure that you're working on something that's like meaningful and fun. All right, like we try to make the office as fun as possible. We have like— I was walking through the office last time getting shot up with a Nerf gun, right? There are all sorts of little moments of delight we try to create, uh, because when you're laughing and playing around and having fun, that's great for health. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And then how does that impact your bottom line?

Uh, well, most of the— half the team's there on Saturday and Sunday. Half of the team is there past 8 PM at night. And we don't say to anyone, you have to be there. People are there because they like being there. It's genuinely fun. People like having dinner with the team. So that, I believe over time, flows down to the company doing greater things.

When you mentioned this, I can't stop thinking about all my friends in New York who are in investment banking. How would you describe that culture?

Oh, I spent a bit of time doing it. So I saw it firsthand. It is very performant. You have people who are very driven. It's reasonably political. People don't feel like they're doing meaningful work. It's— there's quite high fear. If you have one full stop out of place, you kind of get yelled at. There's not that much fun. There's a lot of pressure to be the same. It's very conformist. If you don't like the things other people want, like, you're kind of out of there. Uh, quirkiness, idiosyncrasy isn't really like appreciated and recognized. Um, there's a bit of like a laugh at culture if someone doesn't fit into the mold.

Literally all this sounds horrible.

Uh, yeah, it sucks. Yeah. But, uh, the flip side is people learn a lot. You're around very smart people, uh, and that's powerful.

Okay. Contrast that with the ideal culture. Ideally the one you're building.

Yeah. The ideal culture is you wake up and you want to get into work, right? You walk into the building or the office or the lobby and you feel inspired. When we're choosing an office, we— the thing I was paying attention to was not what do I think about this space, it was when I walk in, how do I feel? And I used to bring different team members along with me to tour offices, and I wasn't looking for what they said. I was just looking for their emotional reaction. Did they smile and did their eyes light up? Or were they like, oh yeah, this is cool? When you get in, people should be friendly. They should say hi. There's probably something fun going on. Maybe people are meditating in the corner. Maybe there's a mobility session. Maybe there's like a breakfast being set up. Maybe people are hanging from a pull-up bar doing like a pull-up competition. It should be kind of fun when you get in.

What do you think, looking around Silicon Valley, and we're here in a nice building, literally looking over Silicon Valley right now, what is your message for all these founders and VCs out there in that regard?

I think that the more that fun is an input into companies being able to do great work. It's very hard to have people working 6 to 7 days a week, 10 to 14 hours a day, unless they enjoy it. And there's ways to create that in all different ways. Performance is a big part of it, right? Fun goes up for us when every single person you're working with is incredibly talented. But it's really important people have fun finding meaning, um, otherwise it's going to be hard to actually get them in the office.

Yep. All right, well, as we start to wrap up a bit, I'm going to ask you the question that every guest gets asked on this show towards the end. We didn't really even touch on it a whole lot, so really curious where we would go with this. What do you think it means to be a man nowadays?

That's a hard question. Um, I think that nowadays is the wrong frame because I think we have to go back to what it has always meant to be a man, which is have convictions, um, stand by what you believe, don't be afraid to authentically express. A lot of masculinity is suppressed because the world has made it scary for men to be men. I think it's being willing to be, like, being grounded, uh, not avoiding conflict, um, standing up for what you believe in, uh, and then also making sure your health is intact because we slowly decrease our manhood biologically when things are dysregulated.

Yep. Okay, what would be the question you would ask 16-year-old Max, if you were sitting at this table with him instead of with me?

I would say, if you look back at your entire life to date and you look at the most authentic expression of where you want, of what that would mean for the rest of your life, what do you think that like dream fictional life would look like?

Same question, but what would be your, what would your question be for 35-year-old Max Marchione, if you were sitting at this table? So you in 10 years.

Uh, what do you wish you knew and did 10 years ago when you were 25, uh, that you now know today?

What comes to mind?

Um, the things I still say, which is like, take more risk, dream bigger, be authentic, put yourself out there.

Yeah.

Um, do something you genuinely care about. Um, follow your intuition. So the same things I know, but I think it's one thing to kind of know something and another thing to truly, truly live it.

Yeah. All right. Now the last question for you Fast forward to the end of 2026, a little over a year from now. If you were sitting at some sort of fireplace or dinner table or something, you're reflecting on 2026. What would've had to happen in 2026 for you to say that was the freaking greatest year of my life?

We have executed insanely quickly. We have done more in a year than most companies do in 5 years. And I think that is imperative, right? Because one way to actually extend our lives is to just get more done, right? Life is pretty short. And I think that every day we need to remind ourselves that life is short because we need to make the most of today. So at the end of 2026, I want to be like, we've done what most companies would do in 5 years. We've done that in 1 year.

Nicely done. How can people find you online?

Uh, maxmarchione.com is my website and, uh, same handle on Twitter and Instagram.

Perfect. Thanks, man.

Thanks, man.