Superpower is an advanced digital clinic to help people live longer, prevent disease, and feel their best.
Quitting law school after coming first in your first year in Sydney. Now, 24, you are running a startup in San Francisco. What was the origin story behind Superpower?
From a young age, I struggled with health issues. It would take me hours to fall asleep every night, and despite seeing over 20 doctors, undergoing surgery, and being prescribed lifelong medication, no one could work out what was going on. So, I explored the world of health myself, reading papers and experimenting with tools like the Gen 1 Oura Ring in 2016 and continuous glucose monitors in 2017—at a time when using these devices was considered weird. I realized that healthcare should be used not just for treating illness, but for maximizing human potential. I finally found a doctor who got to the root of my health problems, and in doing so, had an important realization: there’s a huge gap between the cutting-edge healthcare available to the elite, like Jeff Bezos, and what the average person receives. Since then, I’ve believed that everyone, not just a privileged few, should have access to this kind of care, and that’s what we’re building at Superpower.
One particular doctor finally managed to solve your long-standing health issues. How did their approach stand out from the care you had previously received?
I think there are four key differences between ‘10x’ doctors and mainstream medicine.
First, 10x doctors gather way more data on you. They understand your medical history, family history, and perform lots of diagnostic testing.
Second, 10x doctors are far more up to date with research. They are constantly reading, constantly learning, and constantly improving what they know. They are aware of interventions that you can’t find in medical textbooks or on Google.
Third, 10x doctors take preventative action far in advance. The heart disease at 60 starts when you’re 20. The Alzheimer’s at 70 starts when you’re 30. They realize that even though you’re healthy today, it’s important to get ahead of disease early.
Finally, 10x doctors don’t just focus on curing sickness, they also focus on maximizing vitality and human potential. They help someone be optimally healthy and achieve all their personal health goals
Superpower recently raised $6 million and your beta just went live. What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced along the way?
Initially, the key challenge was having enough clarity on what we were building. It takes time to get to clarity, and typically it’s easier to get there with a smaller team. More resources are rarely the answer.
Once we built clarity, the key challenge was speed. Speed comes down to financial capital, talent capital, and culture. We were lucky to be well capitalized, and after some time, we built a super team, where our first 5 core hires were all former exited founders. But hiring and fundraising alone are not enough. Every day I obsess over how to make sure we operate like a well-oiled machine – that means having process but not red tape, empowering others but still being in the weeds, and having a culture that informs behavior and decision-making.
From here, our key focus is growth. We have 130,000 people on the waitlist but that isn’t enough for the size of impact we want to make. Our goal isn’t to impact 10,000 people, rather it's to create a new, better default way people engage with their health, for life. An Amazon Prime for health, if you will.
Could you walk us through what your members experience when they sign up and undergo a comprehensive health analysis?
There are three core parts to our membership. First, we test someone’s whole body in our annual baseline assessment. We’ll send a nurse to your home to measure over 100 blood biomarkers – around five times more than a typical physical. We’ll assess everything from hormones to inflammation to your risk of heart disease and diabetes. We also offer additional tests like microbiome analysis, toxin testing for heavy metals, plastics, and mold, and early cancer screenings. Alongside this data, we’ll integrate your wearables and pull in all of your past medical records – for some people that’s thousands of pages of medical records.
Second, we put you on a call with one of our expert longevity clinicians to step through your data. They’ll score your health across different dimensions and create an annual report for you that summarizes the next steps.
Third, we make it super easy to actually take action on improving your health with an all-in-one ecosystem. We allow you to book consults, get more diagnostic testing, text your private concierge team at any time, and get everything you need – supplements, pharmaceuticals or otherwise – delivered to your door.
With a waitlist of 130,000 people, there is clearly a lot of interest. What are your growth targets, and how do you plan to scale from here?
Our vision is to become the default healthcare system for Americans. Currently, 150 million people in the U.S. have Amazon Prime, and we want at least that many to have a Superpower membership. While our waitlist gives us a great starting point, we are focused on scaling quickly to convert that interest into paying customers. Growth will also determine the size of our next funding round. We plan to raise a large round in Q1 next year, but it all depends on how quickly we can scale. If we grow rapidly, we will secure significant funding to fuel further expansion. Right now, growth and speed are our top priorities, and we are laser-focused on achieving both.
Away from your work at Superpower, are there any clear areas in the health space that you think are exciting opportunities?
So many! I’m always looking for founders creating the future and urge any to reach out. I will do what I can to make their dreams reality.
There are a few areas in particular where I’d love to see companies exist.
First is companies building a model of healthcare focused on performance – think physical and cognitive performance. This was typically within the domain of ‘wellness’ rather than healthcare, but I think there are many potential health innovations in this space.
Second are companies that focus on growing consumer health categories such as gut health, environmental toxins, peptides and exosomes. I think we’re about to be at a tipping point in cultural zeitgeist around these categories.
Third, I think that ‘aesthetics’ is early as a category, and a big part of the future of healthcare is going to be people using health interventions to look younger and feel younger.
Finally, I’m fascinated by companies that blend the startup playbook with the private equity playbook. Private equity is classically great at rolling up existing businesses and inorganic growth, whereas startups are great at category creation, branding, and organic growth. I also believe that many services will be augmented with AI, which can materially improve the margin structure of these businesses.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about Superpower’s future?
There are three things I am most excited about. First, we are working on making parts of our offering free, which will make it more accessible to a broader audience. Second, we are developing AI tools that analyze the health data we collect and connect the dots more effectively than most doctors can. Finally, we aim to build a predictive healthcare model—one that can foresee and prevent health issues before they even arise. This last goal is the most exciting in the long term. With the right data and technology, we can create a new healthcare paradigm that is proactive and personalized. It is going to take time, but that is the future we are building toward.
