Spotlight: Superpower
Learn about what it's like to work at Superpower.
What is it really like to work at the fastest-growing companies?
We try to answer that question in the Next Play Spotlight. In particular, we try to find interesting companies and highlight what makes working at them unique. Our hope is that documenting these sorts of behind-the-scenes details (which never make it to press releases) can help you a) discover more interesting opportunities and b) inspire you to think creatively (for your own endeavors).
Spotlight: Superpower
This spotlight is on Superpower. Thanks to the Superpower team for sharing behind-the-scenes details and supporting next play.
If you were to rebuild the US healthcare system ($5 trillion) today, how would you do it? What would the patient experience feel like? How would technology play a role? What would the brand represent? What would happen if you really rethought _everything_?
Jacob Peters and team try to answer these questions and more via their company: Superpower. Superpower’s vision is to build the world’s first all-in-one digital clinic to bring preventative and longevity focused healthcare to every human. Their offering combines whole-body testing, concierge clinicians paired with AI, and an ecosystem of treatments to hopefully become a person’s health partner for life.
Much of the inspiration behind Superpower is personal. Three years ago, Jacob (CEO, co-founder) nearly lost his life. “I believe that the many months in the hospital, multiple surgeries, and endless medications I was subjected to could have all been avoided if I had had something like Superpower to test my whole body beforehand and take better control.”
Their product, today, is the “world’s first all-in-one health membership” that lets you:
Test your whole body and visualize all your data: Across hormones, thyroid, heart, toxins, genetics, microbiome, cancer risk, health trackers, & more.”
Get an annual roadmap so you know exactly where your health problems are and what to do: we’re making it easy to show you how to improve every aspect of your health.
Access a private concierge clinician: Text your health concierge at any time, from help with orders and scheduling to questions and coaching.
Order everything you need in one place: easily order the best health products, tests, & services at insider prices from Superpower’s curated marketplace
Superpower either sends you to a local lab or a nurse to your house to test your full body. then they help work with you to improve all aspects of your health! Here's a story from Zack, one of their founding members.
Every decision at Superpower is oriented around their mission of “empowering every person with personalized, preventative, and performance-enhancing healthcare.” Aligned to this, they have two primary cultural values:
“Mission obsession: We are all in. We are all patient zero and are building the health system we want for ourselves and our loved ones. We live and breathe what we preach, prioritize personal health, and make decisions that genuinely improve the health of our members.”
“Superpower your health: Live the ethos and superpower your personal health. Peak performance starts with peak health.”
This commitment shows up across the company. You can hear the passion in talking to people on the team:
“I was blown away by the founder's 50+ supplement stack whereby they knew what each chemical compound was and did and how it affected their health, the usage of the office redlight therapy machine, comparing Oura ring sleep scores for fun, seeing people on IV drips, dozens of olive oil brands at the HQ each with different benefits, a kitchen intentionally void of teflon pans, PFAS-lined cans, and plastic packaging.”
“The most remarkable part of the culture is that EVERY one of the core team members is constantly superpowering their health. They walk the walk and talk the talk. It's probably the coolest part about our team.”
“Anyone can contribute to any part of the company at any time. And this is strongly upheld throughout the company and I absolutely love it. SOOO different than traditional healthcare environments.”
“I felt called to join forces and work together after getting the chance to angel invest in Superpower's pre-seed. I was living the superpower life on my own since I was a kid. I was optimizing for my 100 year old self. I know that on my death bed I will want to be proud of how I spent my time, be surrounded by a family I love and know I planted seeds in a garden I may never get to see but one that transforms the way future generations “harvest”. Ever since my journey of being HGH deficient, breaking my back twice and tearing both of my hips (labrums) in my tennis career, as well as the countless out of pocket trips to the doctor to uncover more about why I am the way i am, I’ve been convinced this is the most important problem facing civilization. I wanted to work on a team with mission driven, empathetic, kind, ambitious people that want to dare to be exceptional. I wouldn’t have shut my VC backed startup down if I didn’t think this enormous risk would be worth it.”
“When I was in university, I took this seminar class called Intro to Nutritional Genomics. They were talking about how our genes can give us insight into how we should be eating, but the game-changer for me was the idea that we could modify the expression of our genes through our lifestyle choices like food and exercise. This felt so incredibly empowering. Not only did I not have to wait for symptoms in order to treat something happening in my body, I could take steps to mitigate my genetic risks before they were ever expressed! So I dove into the healthcare field, so excited for the old paradigms to be revolutionized by all of the amazing bio and tech advancements that I was reading about in the research. As you might expect... I was more than a little disappointed. After a few years in the traditional sick care system, only being allowed to help people after they had the sufficient number of insurance approved diagnosis codes... I started my own dietitian practice, hoping I could at least be an advocate for preventative care and longevity to my small patient population. That was still tough since my hands were tied by what insurance would cover and what doctors would order. Now enter Superpower by way of its CEO Jacob Peters... it was like living in a country where you don't speak the language and running into someone who finally understands you. Superpower was doing what I've always dreamed healthcare would do, and they were making it accessible to everyone. Finally a company brave enough to revolutionize the system and there was no way I was missing out on that. So I joined the team less than a week after that first meeting. When you know, you know :-) ”
“Our office has the world’s most advanced water filter.”
They’ve assembled a team that blends passion, ambition, and experience:
Jacob Peters (Co-founder, CEO)
Co-founder @ Commsor ($68m raised) – a CRM and data analytics platform for b2b community team
Co-founder @ Launch House ($15m raised) – a community hold co + venture fund for startup founders (750 co’s incubated, $1.5B+ private market cap, 50 investments)
Kevin Unkrich (Co-founder, CTO)
1x exited YC-backed founder, former Amazon Web Services, programming for 15+ years
Dr Anant Vinjamoori MD (Chief Longevity Officer; Medical Board)
Director of Product at Virta Health ($3b)
Chief Medical Officer at Modern Age (raised $30m for longevity clinics)
Harvard MD/MBA; Stanford BS
Max Marchione (Co-founder, COO)
Previously Goldman Sachs, two VC funds, two tech startups from 0 to $20m ARR
Founded a global talent network at age 19 and VC fund at age 20
Ranked 1st at the country’s top law school, then dropped out to study mathematics and biomedical engineering
Ustin Zarubin (Senior founding engineer)
Former YC founder & CEO; coding for 20 years; founding team at community.com
And several others…
As they scale, they are focused on finding people who share their passion and commitment to the vision:
“If they are not obsessed with the mission of what we're trying to achieve, then nothing else matters.”
“The most memorable part of the interview process was that it didn't feel like a traditional interview with the traditional questions. Everyone I met throughout the process lived and breathed what Superpower is all about... and they wanted to make sure I did too. All of the questions were focused on how I approach building relationships with my patients, how did I prioritize my own health and longevity, how interested am I in the field, how open-minded and knowledge seeking am I... they were looking for passionate people who wanted better... better for themselves, better for their patients and community, better for the system as a whole.”
In addition to caring about (more accurately: obsessing over) their mission, the team cares about doing great work.
“Our standard isn’t good. It isn’t even great. It is insanely great. This might seem contradictory to speed. But it isn’t. Speed is what allows us to get to insanely great. We don’t reach insanely great by theorizing. We reach it it by doing. By experimenting. By shipping. We are constantly pursuing excellence and pushing to be better.”
“We start every project by aligning on the definition of done. We fight to avoid expanding the definition during the project without reason. This allows us to effectively scope projects, understand the requirements, and close the loop.”
“There is a tendency to get to 95% done instead of 100% done. This creates ongoing project debt and mental overhead. It means that projects extend for longer than necessary. The DRI fights to avoid this by closing the loop.”
And they’ve tried to build a culture that supports top-performers doing their best work:
“On Wednesdays meetings are banned within the company. This is a day for us to do deep work. As much as possible, this shouldn’t just apply to Wednesday. We should aim to minimize meetings and do deep work multiple days a week. In particular, we also try to avoid all meetings after 1pm on Monday & Friday. It is encouraged for you to close Slack, block notifications, and enter deep work.”
“We’re excited by the idea of building a great company with a small A+ team. For this to be possible, it’s essential that the entire team operates with a lot of freedom. The corollary, is that with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom means that you define your work as much as your manager. And that means you must be proactive with defining your work and getting ahead of your work, often getting ahead of the roadmap weeks in advance. Freedom means that anyone within the org can be a DRI with ownership over a project. And that means that it’s your responsibility to ensure the project gets done. Freedom means that you don’t have to wait for permission. And that means we assume positive intent, we support not reprimand, and we don’t implement red tape as a reaction to one thing going wrong one time. “
Jacob and team, having built startups before, know they want to do something different. It’s not enough for them to just want to have a good outcome—they want to build a great company:
“The leadership team is great at inspiring a vision for what is possible while also laying out the path to get there. They are also very conscientious about the fact that the process of building is itself just as important as what you are building, and give a lot of thought to how they are building, not just what they are building.”
“We started Superpower because we believe if you improve your health, you can improve every other part of your life but mainstream medicine hasn't helped many of us do that. It is often years behind the latest science, ignores red flags, reacts too late, and misses the full picture. Our vision for the future is a system where health is proactive, personalized, and performance-enhancing. Where it is normal to live past 100 and where everyone is able to reach their peak potential.”
Superpower is well-funded by investors like Susa Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, Cyan Bannister, Arielle Zuckerberg, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Dr. Jordan Shlain (Founder of Private Medical, Silicon Valley’s top concierge medical company), Justin Mares, the Founder of Doordash and others.
They recently emerged out of stealth, and have been all over X and Linkedin.
They are hiring for several roles (including a growth leader, software engineers, physicians, and dieticians). You can learn more here and email team@superpower.com.
Superpower currently has over a 100,000 person waiting list. We worked directly with Superpower to give people in the next play network early access, so for $499, you get the following: 100+ lab tests covering your whole body, an hour-long consultation to review your results, and unlimited messaging with your private concierge clinician throughout the year.