Aging: the Trillion-Dollar Problem
Investors are looking for founders in the ‘longevity’ space. Here’s how you can start a startup in this growing field.
Want to build a unicorn startup? According to ex-President of Y Combinator Sam Altman and billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya, you need to tackle huge problems.
Here is a lesson from Altman:
The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one.
The reason? It is easier to inspire people to work on something meaningful than on another photo-sharing app. Not only that, Palihapitiya adds that the returns are also superior:
If it works, it is where all the money comes. If you talk about where all of the gains, where all the value will be created over the next 50 years, it will be in those hard things. And the reason is because those white spaces are so wide open. The competitive pressures are non-existent.
For myself, I identified three such huge problems. I previously wrote on education. Climate change is another big one. Today though, I would like to talk about the problem that barely gets any attention while being as big as education and climate change: aging.
Why aging is a big opportunity
Already back in 1825, it has been established that mortality increases exponentially with age.
Whatever you personally believe about living a longer life, don’t you think you wouldn’t find a bunch of billionaires ready to pay crazy amounts to live longer?
Even if you take a return on investment approach to life, people like Warren Buffett have shown that compounding interest is bound to bring most returns at the end of the compounding period.
Moreover, we have solid numbers to back this up. A recent scientific paper by the top aging researcher David Sinclair and his team showed that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion.
Is 1-year increase realistic? The scientists estimate that Metformin, a cheap diabetes medicine could extend lifespan by more than 2.6 years.
The timing is now
Less than a month ago the US military announced the anti-aging drug trial. Why does this matter? A recent documentary about Amazon revealed that the first contract with Pentagon was a huge milestone for Amazon. It created trust in the eyes of potential clients. Being the pickiest client the US military can put a stamp of approval on aging research.
Not only the military, the governments are jumping on the bandwagon too. The UK government announced just a few weeks ago that they prioritized the biology of ageing in their life science sector’s plan. At the same time, India is launching the world’s first Longevity Finance Hub backed by the India’s prime minister.
Another sign of the space getting ripe is the arrival of longevity accelerators like that of Foresight Institute and On Deck. Especially the On Deck program looks inspiring because On Deck built a successful brand recognized by founders in Silicon Valley and beyond. Many of their founders include the fact that they participated in the On Deck program on their Twitter bio, which is incredibly short as is!
Aging is also surfacing in the popular media. Top aging researchers like Aubrey de Grey and David Sinclair can count several appearances on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Sinclair’s book “Lifespan” debuted at #11 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list in 2019.
The aging space is heating up with very ambitious projects that go beyond just pharmaceutical interventions. Jean Hebert from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is working on replacing the aged brain cells. Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Bryan Johnson’s Kernel companies are aiming at digitizing the brain and potentially merging with AI.
The best news is that there are dedicated longevity VCs like the Longevity Fund led by Laura Deming and Longevity Vision Fund led by Sergey Young. Top-tier VCs like Andreessen Horowitz are also backing a bunch of longevity tech companies.
How to start a startup in this space
Here is the good news: investors are looking for founders like you. Laura Deming, the managing partner of Longevity Fund, told that coming into this space she thought funding was the problem. She changed her mind and thinks instead that it is the talent that is missing.
Obviously, there is no one path. But here is how I would approach it:
- Acquire the knowledge you need. I recommend taking free online courses on biology at MIT, and reading up on aging online. Also, the Foresight Institute and On Deck might provide you with the needed knowledge. You don’t need to earn a PhD in the field, but you need to know enough to develop your intuition so you can know what solution you want to bet on.
- Build the network. The niche is still very small but fast-moving and very exciting and it pays to be connected and be in the know of the most recent advancements. Here you might again find value in the Foresight Institute and On Deck programs as well as in participating in the Longevity Hackathon.
- Start building. I recently co-founded and invested in the Longevity Hackathon with the first event on September 24–26 specifically to provide you the space to meet others in the space, build, and experiment.
Longevity Hackathon is bringing together aging researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs to build new tools, raise awareness, and attract talent to the field. LongHack is looking for sponsors. We are offering awareness, talent, deal flow, solutions to your challenges: [email protected].