Photo credit: Petro Stelte, Koroneiki Olive Tree. Sitia, Lasithi, Crete. Creative Commons license.

We can break this down a little further, and if you are a food scientist, please feel free to skip this next section.

Fats 101

Contrary to common sense, fats don’t necessarily make you fat. In fact, we cannot live without fatty acids. However, how healthy fats are for you will entirely depend on the types of fat you eat.

Saturated fatty acids are found in red meat, dairy, palm oil and coconut oil. They are more solid and have higher shelf lives. However, they are known to raise your Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels.

On the contrary, unsaturated fats are found mostly in plants and fish. More common unsaturated fats in our food are known as polyunsaturated fats, which are found both in fish and many plant-based oils. These are much healthier than saturated fats. Some of these, like oily small fish, flaxseed and rapeseed oil, contain omega-3, which is used by cell membranes and helps neurotransmitters and hormones work effectively. Put bluntly, it’s great stuff.

Most processed cooking oils consist of a blend of different fats, including both saturated and unsaturated varieties. The rise of these processed oils in cooking and food products, the so-called “trans fats”, from the 1950s onwards, is arguably one of the leading causes of heart disease in the West. Thus, the oil you choose to use in your food is hugely important to your health.

Back to EVOO, and its health impacts are astounding. In a landmark study from over a decade ago, EVOO was thought to have cut the risk of heart attacks and stroke by about 30 per cent in those most at risk.

The study, dubbed PREDIMED, was first published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013. It consisted of 7,447 participants, a selection of whom received one litre of EVOO a week. Principally, they were told to use at least four tablespoons of EVOO a day. The results were so overwhelmingly in favour of the olive oil group that the trial was actually broken off less than five years after it was launched, because the organisers could not ethically justify the other group not receiving the oil. Imagine that.

The study was so consequential that it developed a life of its own. A few years after its publication, methodological flaws were found in the way the data were taken. The creators then corrected the data and found very little variation in the conclusions (see The New York Times. For a full summary of the flaws and corrections, see also the NYT here).

Due to its scale, the study is still the bedrock for our understanding of the health benefits of EVOO today. A 2023 Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) review further confirms these benefits. Moreover, our growing understanding of EVOOs’ health impacts seems to be expanding even further, including by reducing cancer and dementia risk, as per a journal taken from the National Library of Medicine and The New Scientist.

What’s holding back EVOO

Many households still do not use EVOO as much as they could because of some entrenched cooking myths. “You cannot fry with EVOO” is a falsehood, as the simple chemical structure of monounsaturated fats makes them more resilient. The only thing one should not do is heat EVOO to its smoke point. Heating to the smoke point is largely unnecessary, even for Asian dishes. Yes, my signature Pad Thai and legendary Gung Bao Chicken are fried exclusively with olive oil. Try it, I challenge you. Deep-frying, however, likely destroys some of the beneficial properties of EVOO.

The venture-capital-financed US startup Graza, known for putting olive oil in a squeeze bottle, has tried to address the limitations people perceive when cooking with olive oil by producing different types of EVOO for different cooking methods. Graza Frizzle, for example, is a neutral-flavoured, high-heat cooking oil made from a blend of olive pomace oil and extra virgin olive oil. It is designed for searing, stir-frying, grilling, and deep-frying. Notable investors include Brand Foundry Ventures (BFV), who lead Series Seed and Series A financing rounds, writing checks anywhere between $500,000 and $1.5m. Launched in 2022, the brand has grown in value to $240m, expanding into over 13,000 retail doors, including Whole Foods Market and Wegmans.

Graza tries to combat price through scale. But even still, EVOO remains out of reach for many ordinary people. A bottle of Graza starts at around $14 for 750ml, this is the oil used for cooking. Glass bottled, higher end oils from Graza are more expensive. It’s important here to note that the PREDIMED trial distributed one litre of olive oil to study participants each week.

If there is one company that has done the most to produce EVOO at the lowest possible price, it is the Tunisian CHO Group. Founded in 1996, they have grown their production steadily to ten million gallons of EVOO a year, produced by 6.9 million trees. They started as a bulk production supplier for some of the larger Italian brands and later launched their own brand, Terra Delyssa, with its characteristic horse logo. It is now one of the top EVOO brands in the USA and Canada.

Tunisia not only produces low cost EVOO, but it also leads in organic. North Africa’s climate is apparently perfect for olive growers, since they face fewer pest threats and have less need for pesticides. According to olive oil expert Isabel Putinja, two-thirds of Tunisian olive oil is organic. In fact, Tunisia has produced olive oil for over 3,000 years, associated with the proud heritage of the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage.

Newer brands emphasise the importance of quality. They focus on fastidious sourcing from selected, smaller producers, careful logistics and perfect packaging, all to retain the valuable polyphenols found in EVOO. A former German model, Elena Carrière, sells high-quality EVOO by vintage, in portions she calls “drops.” Customers are encouraged to drink 10ml of oil daily in a glass, according to her, and her co-founder Nick Mulder’s brand, Solio. The oil costs €29 for 250ml. While quality is undoubtedly important to retain some of the superpowers of EVOO, this approach does little for its democratisation.

In the UK, Citizens of Soil, another VC-financed olive oil startup, is similarly focused on quality, but at a fraction of the price. DTC subscriptions allow Citizens of Soil to make high-end oil more affordable. £15 per month buys you one 500ml pouch of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) delivered through the letterbox. Its founder, Sarah Fulton Vachon, sources her oil from responsible, small batch producers, many of whom are female farmers. In a recent article in The Grocer, Fulton Vachon describes how she carefully selected her packaging to combine cost, shipping and preservation considerations. Citizens of Soil is backed by a group of impact-oriented VCs and family offices focused on changing consumer habits. Amongst them is FIGR, the same fund that has backed Allday Goods, a startup which turns plastic waste into kitchen tools for chefs and home cooks.

There is no doubt that EVOO is incredible. And more importantly, it should be within reach for everyone. Startups and companies are following different strategies to democratise the liquid gold. Graza has pioneered convenience in squeeze bottles, paired with specialised oils at different price points. The idea of mixing and matching different oil qualities with different price points for different purposes is sound. The no-nonsense approach of the Tunesian CHO Group, a huge agricultural producer of organic EVOO at scale, has done a lot to achieve lower prices in many retail markets. However, high quality oils that are sourced in smaller batches do better on polyphenol content. Citizens of Soil’s smart approach using a subscription DTC business model balances cost with quality. And don’t forget, even Pad Thai tastes great when made with EVOO. Regardless of the brand you use.

I just arrived at The Longevity Show, and it’s huge. Almost 4,000 people are braving the heatwave in London to explore healthspan from every angle, Peloton, Lululemon and TechnoGym sessions, deep dives into health systems, on-site longevity clinics, and - my focus today - a startup pitch contest.

Twice as many people signed up than the exhibitors, the same group publishing Longevity.Technology, originally estimated. That tells you something: Responsibility for health is expanding beyond the medical establishment to individuals themselves. Medicine’s role isn’t diminished, but people now have more knowledge and tools than ever to choose healthier lives. That shift is what this show is really about.

At the pitch contest, the top five finalists — selected from roughly 100 applicants — will battle it out live in front of a judge panel of eight international longevity investors. The question: which startup is best placed to scale longevity and make a meaningful impact on healthspan?

The five could not be more different, yet each tackles a real piece of healthspan. Loosely, they split into two camps: Startups pursuing breakthroughs in serious chronic diseases tied to aging and longevity, and startups making incremental contributions that could reach many people at scale.

On the breakthrough side: OvartiX is tackling ovarian health and female reproductive aging and Anyo Labs is going after inflammaging through AI-driven drug discovery. On the incremental side: Enbiosis is applying AI-designed microbiome nutrition to chronic conditions like dry eye disease; The Protein Brewery has built a new, sustainable protein source with particular relevance to aging and Zuri Health is expanding digital healthcare access across Africa.

I have no idea how we’ll pick a winner from this group. But I couldn’t ask for a more qualified, more international panel to take on the challenge. From London: Max Gottschalk, Partner at the Longevity Fund by Clinique La Prairie; Paolo Pio, Co-Founder and General Partner of Exceptional Ventures and Pooja Sikka of Meridian Health Ventures. Two Canadian funds are represented: Brenda Irwin of Relentless Ventures, and Lyne Landry of AgeTech Capital. Abby Levy, Founder of Primetime Partners, flew in from New York. Alexandra Bause joins from Berlin-based Apollo Health Ventures. And I’m rounding out the panel myself, from GMPVC.

A few years ago, an event like The Longevity Show wouldn’t have been possible. Longevity was a niche topic, the medical underpinnings were often missing, and there was little entrepreneurial or startup interest. Today’s show proves that has changed.

Two things stood out at DLD Health. One, hearing first-hand from Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz explaining the aim of his ambitious project in preventive health. Nothing less than the democratisation of preventive health insights to fight the biggest non-communicable disease killers, with a convincing rationale to invest.

Second, the usual DLD magic of multimedial, cross-pollination of different, sometimes eclectic programme elements that make the whole more powerful than any component part. The courage to veer away from the expected and to include seemingly unfitting components is something I miss in many conferences.

Let’s start with the second reason for the success of this 2026 DLD Health. Who in their right mind would start out a conference at 9 AM — most barely had their first coffees — filled with very serious health professionals with a punk rock interpretation of Goethe’s Erlkönig? Performing in front of an incredibly beautiful graphical backdrop of what looked like microscopic cell structures, the singer laments the death of the child in his father’s arms. The same child who had warned of the dangers ahead, only to be dismissed. Maybe a warning sign for our current times, is it not, commented Steffi.

The whole day featured unexpected treats like this one, including the potential of organoid systems as a cure for pancreatic cancer — the most deadly cancer of all — all about brain-computer interfaces (including their ethics) and Google’s Fitbit-enabled capability to shift data collection from patient-measured to patient-collected. I appreciated Alessia’s comment in her introductory speech that human and planetary health go together, that fits nicely to the premise of the Black Coral Club. Also, it was an incredible treat to see one of the founding fathers of AI, the legendary Jürgen Schmidhuber, now based in Saudi Arabia, talk optimistically with a slightly mischievous grin about the magic that will happen once AI masters not only information, but the physical world, and breaks out of the computer screen to start to build things.

Ferenc Krausz presenting at DLD health today

Ferenc Krausz used the event to launch the website of an ambitious three-country predictive health research project: Protecting.Health. I did not expect a Nobel laureate’s next breakthrough to be grounded in such a deceptively simple idea. The hypothesis is the following. Most markers related to non-communicable diseases can be found in one’s blood, sometimes months or years in advance of the outbreak of the disease. The way to detect them is to take longitudinal blood samples, for example every half year, and to compare the results, not with a set of deemed “healthy” population data, but with one’s own lab result history. The underlying premise is that individual data collected over time is a much more powerful predictive indicator of disease than comparison to general population data.

The project is massive. Originally, the project started in Hungary in 2019, but it was now expanded to include institutions in Germany and Hong Kong. These institutions will collect longitudinal samples over time from 40,000 people. It is a public-private partnership, and funds investing in the project will be able to benefit from the commercial potential inherent in this huge dataset.

The original project from 2019 already resulted in initial findings:

• A case of thyroid disease showed up 2.4 years earlier than clinical diagnosis.

• A cardiovascular condition was visible two years before the actual condition was diagnosed.

• A marker for type 2 diabetes appeared 2.3 years before diagnosis, at a stage of pre-diabetes when the disease is still reversible.

What impressed me the most is Krausz’s focus on affordability. The prediction of cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic and neurogenic disease is to be made available for all.

This is the spirit. A spirit that was felt all day long at DLD Health.

Known scientifically as Antipatharia, they unfurl from the seafloor in curling spirals and intricate branches, resembling underwater orchards suspended in the dark. Despite their name, black corals are rarely black at all.

Living colonies glow in shades of orange, pink, yellow and ivory. Their colour stems from the tiny animals that build the colony: coral polyps. Like the better-known reef-building corals, black corals are not individuals but communities, consisting of hundreds of filter-feeding animals that work together to create something much larger than themselves.

While stony corals build pale limestone skeletons, black corals construct skeletons from chitin, the same material found in insect shells. Hidden beneath their vibrant exterior is a dark, obsidian-like framework that lends them their name.

Black corals are astonishingly widespread, stretching from shallow tropical reefs to abyssal depths approaching 8,000 metres. In these deep-sea landscapes, where life can appear sparse and scattered, they become architects of complexity.

Much like ancient trees in a forest, their branching forms create shelter, structure and an oasis.

They transform space into habitat, supporting diverse communities of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and countless other invertebrates. Wherever black corals grow, life gathers around them.

Black coral hosting an abundance of other organisms including flytrap anemones and squat lobsters. (Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Windows to the Deep 2019.)

The deeper you descend into the ocean, the more demanding existence becomes. Sunlight fades to darkness, temperatures plummet, and pressure steadily mounts. In response, many deep-sea organisms adopt a slower rhythm of life, conserving energy in an environment where little can be wasted.

Take the Greenland shark. Thought to be the slowest-moving shark in the world, it is also among the longest-lived vertebrates, surviving for centuries.

Black corals share this same relationship with time.

Some species grow by only eight to 22 micrometres each year. At that pace, it can take a decade to add the thickness of a single human hair. Their growth is almost imperceptible, but their longevity is anything but.

Using metrics such as growth rings, like those found in trees, alongside radiocarbon dating, scientists have estimated some colonies to be more than 4,000 years old. One specimen is thought to have begun life around 2239 BC, when pyramid building was flourishing in Ancient Egypt. While civilisations rose and fell, black coral simply continued growing.

Yet the story behind this organism is not only scientific. Long before researchers began ageing black corals or mapping their role in deep-sea ecosystems, indigenous peoples and coastal communities were already recognising their significance.

In Hawai‘i, black coral has long been used in medicinal and cultural practices, often harvested with great care and respect. Along parts of the Red Sea, it has inspired both reverence and caution, finding its way into prayer beads and local traditions.

Even the scientific name Antipatharia traces back to the Greek anti pathos — “against suffering;” — reflecting centuries-old beliefs in its protective qualities. Today, this cultural knowledge sits alongside a growing scientific appreciation for what black corals can teach us.

Growing more slowly than a human hair thickens and living for millennia, they reveal an ocean governed by a different clock. Their colonies quietly build habitat for generations of marine life, asking for little attention and demanding no urgency.

Remarkably, their story is not one of speed, but of endurance.

As we venture further into the deep ocean, black corals offer a gentle corrective to our modern obsession with the fast-paced way of life. They remind us that some of the most important things in nature are built slowly, that resilience often appears unremarkable in the moment, and that longevity is rarely dramatic.

Protecting these environments requires the same mindset. Long-term stewardship, patience and care. By learning from these ancient animals — and from the communities that have valued them for generations — we may develop a deeper appreciation for the timescales on which nature operates. Perhaps that is why black coral feels such a fitting emblem for the Black Coral Club. Not because it grows quickly, but because it endures.

We humans have seemingly lost that ability. Almost all of us are tracking ourselves electronically to guide ourselves to live healthier lives. This comes with clear benefits for our longevity.

Indeed, we try to get our steps in and most of us drink far less than we used to because we are more attuned to see how even a single glass of wine can disrupt our sleep. Tracking even removes the need for medication for some people altogether. Take Type 2 diabetes, with strict glucose monitoring and healthy lifestyle changes, some people have been able to reduce or come off their meds entirely.

One of the recurring themes of my posts is how we can live the good life by adopting habits that literally last a lifetime. Tracking can help us form lifetime good habits. For example, a Polar tracker has been part of my runs for at least two decades and now I track a whole lot more.

But for some people, tracking also causes stress. There are numerous studies showing the adverse effects on mental health that tracking can have, as highlighted by National Geographic.

“Orthosomnia” is a form of insomnia caused by sleep tracking. Users can develop anxiety, guilt or obsession over unmet goals from fitness trackers. These people develop numbers-driven health expectations and stop listening to their own bodies altogether.

This poses the question as to whether technology can effectively help with the awareness of our body without prompting stress from continuous tracking, information and data. This was Swedish founder Johan Matton’s vision when he created the Pulse Ring, a mindful ring that purposely tracks nothing. Sounds odd, right?

What the ring does is as simple as it is genius. The ring subtly vibrates to gently bring the wearer out of autopilot and ‘stay present’. This can be anything. A reminder to breathe deeply, a hint to get up from one’s desk or a prompt to think about the beauty in life.

The Pulse Ring, image used with permission by Pulse Mindfulness Inc.

I spoke to Matton about his ring, which registered over 14,500 advance orders before its release.

“Some people need some external pressure, but real change doesn’t actually come from information, it comes from experience,” he said.

“We have plenty of tools that measure us, but very few that remind us to actually feel. We can monitor our sleep, but can we truly rest? We can track our heart rate, but can we slow it down? That is why we built something different. Not more data. Not more dashboards. But a shift toward well-being that you can actually feel. The Pulse Ring doesn’t track you, instead, its main job is to bring you back to the present moment without asking for your attention first”.

The ring is the kind of device Steve Jobs would have approved of, simple and minimal. The investors backing Pulse Mindfulness Inc., the startup behind the ring, have definitely made the right move. They are led by The Inner Foundation, a specialised fund for inclusiveness and mental health associated with Northzone. Additional backers include a handful of Swedish angel investors and Heartfelt, a first ticket fund from Berlin. In fact, it’s Heartfelt which kindly introduced me to Matton.

Moreover, I’m convinced the Pulse Ring is just the beginning. The device allows us to glimpse into the future. Pushing even more data and performance into apps is likely a dead end. We are already overtracked. Some of us are hooked, and for many, this is stressful - even if we don’t realise it. Yet there is no doubt that technology can help guide us because, unlike my dog, we are no longer in tune with our bodies. Innovation will happen not only regarding better metrics, measurement and biomarkers, but also in how tech interfaces with the human body - and I am convinced there are many more undiscovered and less intrusive paths.

Experimentation time. While working on this post, I decided to test to what extent I am compulsively hooked to my tracking.

I decided to stop tracking my steps, fitness, weight and calories for one week. What a disaster that was! It started with the rowing machine on day one. I had a strong urge to secretly turn the tracker back on, just for the rowing exercise, so that I would capture the effort I put in. When I realised this would mean breaking my plan to stop tracking for a week, I then turned my thinking around. My impulse then shifted to ‘maybe I don’t have to row then’. My logic was, if the tracker won’t capture my rowing, then I don’t really have to do it. Regardless, I pushed past that and ended up rowing without my tracker. This did not feel great. Quite the opposite, it felt like wasted work. I went to sleep that evening, still without my tracker, and woke up without any sleep data. That was the end of the test.

One week of no tracking turned into a singular day and night of no tracking. This failed test was quite enlightening for me and I recommend you try the same.

Now I know that I am truly tracking-obsessed. It’s a strange realisation, but tracking still keeps me on the honest path regarding exercise, sleep, nutrition and cardiovascular health.

The challenge for entrepreneurs and scientists is obvious. We do not only need technology to adapt more to our bodies, but we also need the technology to be more subtle and less addictive - in order to make the real benefits happen.

In the long term, Matton’s Pulse Ring is just the start – let it inspire us.

Yet, it was only when I stumbled upon a new German-language documentary about Succow’s life that I truly began to understand how extraordinary his achievement was and how close it came to never happening at all. The odds were pitted so badly against him.

Succow was born in 1941, so at the creation of the German Democratic Republic, he was a young child. He grew up under the communist regime of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and lived in the GDR until its disintegration and reunification with West Germany.

Indeed, there are two important things one has to know to understand Michael Succow. Firstly, he was always an outsider to the system, and second, he was a devoted lover of nature. The regime continually tried to entice Succow to join their side, attempting to recruit him to spy on his fellow students while at university (in vain) and later by trying to force him to enter the party (in vain). He was such a talented biologist and fervent nature activist that he grew to become too important to ignore and, frankly, impossible to sideline. One pivotal research trip to Mongolia, where he witnessed first-hand the deep respect that local communities had for the natural world, left a lasting mark on him.

During most of the existence of the GDR, Michael Succow worked tirelessly with his peers to protect the natural world, but their real influence was limited. This photo shows Michael Succow in 1984 in Plagefenn, a peatland which would later become part of a biosphere reserve he would help to create. Photo credit: Archiv Michael Succow Stiftung.

In the 1980s, he was part of a group researching the extreme damage that Eastern German industry was having on nature (while the official government line maintained that only capitalist systems polluted the environment). The group did what they could, but their real influence was limited. The dream was always to create national parks, where nature would be untouched.

Ultimately, there was no way that this would happen for as long as the SED was in power.

In early 1990, everything changed. As the regime collapsed, Succow was chosen to be vice minister of environment by the democratic movement, precisely because he was an outsider with impeccable credentials. He realised this would be his one chance.

He set out to establish several national parks by law before a reunification with West Germany.

Once the laws were enacted, they would be impossible to reverse and would automatically become embedded in the statutes of the Federal Republic.

But if he was too slow, the project would fail. He knew there were powerful interests in the West that would seek to prevent any such large-scale environmental initiative, namely, the federal transport ministry and industrial lobby groups.

The task was not trivial. Creating entrenched laws required perfectly crafted legal texts and clearly defined borders, setting the national parks and conservation zones. It was round-the-clock work in a small team who were also frantically travelling to locations to ascertain the right demarcation points.

Succow and his friends made it happen, but only just. Reunification came much faster than anyone expected. Western interests had already tried to block him before it occurred, but others, such as the West German environment minister Klaus Töpfer, supported him. The GDR’s national park program, which designated 5% of the GDR’s land mass into five national parks, six biosphere reserves, and three nature parks, was one of the final formal acts of the East German cabinet. Succow’s dream had come true.

Michael Succow (on the left, holding maps) touring the prospective national parks with West German Environmental Minister Klaus Töpfer, shortly after reunification in 1991. Photo credit: Archiv Michael Succow Stiftung.

This is an extraordinary story of an individual succeeding against the odds. It also reminds us that single people can and do change the course of history, even when powerful forces are up against them. The fact that Michael Succow’s story is not more widely known is a puzzle to me. Perhaps the film and his recent autobiography will change that.

“Age” is a demographic category after all, and is always sensitive, often bound up with stereotypes and clichés. Fintech and Proptech, for example, refer to segments being improved or fixed with technology. Why did I even call it that then? Convenience and vanity.

Let’s start with the issue of convenience. A label for an investment category is convenient in so many ways. In the first instance, it helps with group investment themes and creates visibility for a brand. When I launched “All About Agetech,” I wanted to address the gaps I saw in the space. There are not enough actual investments happening on the ground, and there is not nearly enough interest shown by founders.

This seemed all the more surprising to me, given not only the massive business opportunity that demographic change represents, but also the pressing issues that need to be addressed, and are only set to get worse. Our seniors already face health issues, loneliness and financial uncertainty.

Indeed, my column was never intended to be only about problems; rather, it was aimed at showcasing startups that offered solutions. From the get-go, the column celebrated founders innovating for the “Good Life”, and it’s this style of life that I feel truly passionate about.

There are many examples of those leading by example with the aim of the “Good Life”. For example, I previously featured the Japanese company WHILL, the inspirational creators of supercool wheelchairs. Or Koite Health, a medically developed new system for gum health that simultaneously has a positive longevity impact on the whole body.

Founders wishing to retire want fair value for the company they built, but many also want it to pass down to someone trustworthy and dedicated to building it up for the future. I also wrote about novel funds and platforms supporting generational transfer in the US, Japan and Europe. Moreover, sustainability matters for the “Good Life,” too, and this is where my recent column about the Japanese art of forest bathing and the importance of healthy, resilient and biodiverse forests is useful.

This is all important stuff, and it’s very convenient to call it “agetech.” Yet, I was already overusing the convenient “agetech” definition and adopting it for similar topic areas.

Longevity and sustainability are equally intertwined with the Good Life. All three themes overlap strongly, and this is certainly present in my previous columns. Gum health is something all of us need to monitor, not just the elderly. And healthy forests are beneficial to the wider ecosystem, not only the Japanophile nature lover. As we already know, innovation occurs through interdisciplinary skills and by looking beyond the conventional.

This is true in a personal sense, too. As some of you know, through my consumer fund, GMPVC and as an angel investor, I have invested for over fifteen years into startups innovating for the Good Life. Agetech is one pillar of our investment strategy, but we invest in longevity, too. I am deeply involved in regenerative agriculture, biodiversity and climate change as the co-founder of the peatland startup ZukunftMoor and a small angel investor in the sustainable fertiliser company Cascadia Seaweed, which partners with Indigenous communities on Canada’s west coast.

Maybe I knew all of this already when I called my column “All About Agetech.” One of my first columns already reflected my doubts. Maybe I was too swayed by vanity, by the need to rank higher in an organic online search and by trying to be the go-to source for that one category.

These revelations emerged successively over time. When they all came together, it was clear. A new name was going to be required. A name that was less restrictive, more encompassing, and allowed for innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. I wanted something that captured more meaning than a trendy label, and centred around the long term, resilience and interconnectedness. Something that most people wouldn’t immediately recognise.

Then I stumbled upon a curious deep-sea creature… black coral.

Revered by Pacific cultures and the longest living organism on earth, living for thousands of years, it’s a deep-sea coral that creates irreplaceable structural habitats consisting of fish, molluscs and a whole lot more. Most crucially, it thrives in communities, but is at the same time vulnerable, especially to deep-sea trawling, and needs to be protected.

Here’s a fun fact: Black coral is not itself black when alive, but is vibrantly colourful. In fact, its exoskeleton is black.

The timescales associated with black corals are mind-blowing. A single Black coral colony off the coast of Hawaii has been filtering water and sheltering marine life for a long time, even predating the Roman Empire. Importantly, though, timescales are also what link agetech, longevity and sustainability.

What’s the link between demographic change, ageing and planetary change? All three are slow-moving. But like a grinding glacier, the power of these changes is immense, and almost irreversible if not addressed with the same steady, long-term hand as the change itself.

Startups providing long-term solutions in different areas, agetech, longevity and sustainability, face similar challenges. For one, innovation takes longer to demonstrate, more funding might be required, and new KPIs need to be developed. For consumers, long-term habits need to be formed. It’s not easy, but cracking it is hugely rewarding.

Thus, many startups in these overlapping areas are concerned with what Richard Thaler, who was awarded the Nobel prize for behavioural economics in 2017, called “investment goods.” These are goods such as exercise, diet or savings, where costs are born immediately, but the benefits are delayed.

So, to come to a progressive close, Farewell, “All About Agetech,” and welcome the “Black Coral Club.” Renaming was the right move. By being broader, this column will be both more relevant to me, and I hope to you, too, startup investors and founders.

Change your perspective to the very long term and join me at the Black Coral Club.

(Image credit: Downtown Milan Michigan, by Notorious4life, Creative Commons Public Domain Licence.)

However, this phenomenon is not limited to the US. A recent analysis by Eilla, a sell-side broker based in the UK, shows that Germany will be one of several European countries to be hit the hardest. Staggeringly, 2.5 million SMB owners are over 55 today, and KfW, the federal development bank, warns there are nowhere near enough younger buyers ready to take over.

Japan’s business transition is impacted even harder, with 2.5 million business owners being over 70 - half of whom have no identified successor.

The challenge presents itself both in quantity and in quality. For many owners, the knowledge that their company is left in good hands matters just as much as the price they receive. Having children does not guarantee a willing successor, and many senior owners find themselves without one.

In a Substack post I suggest everyone should read, 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale and Denis Aven consider different approaches to the Silver Tsunami. In the last few years, and I have extended their analysis a little, we have seen three approaches that enable generational transfer. Yet all three are just partial solutions. In their eyes, there is a different solution, but first, let’s break it down.

Roll-ups

Private equity is normally too large for a single small business, but not if dozens are combined into one. The combination creates synergies, which in turn creates better margins and roll-ups are getting a great deal of attention right now. I hear about someone in my network launching one almost every week now, but they are not a universal solution for generational transfer. They only work in specific segments where scale and synergies can be readily created, and some owners do not want their business absorbed into a larger entity. They want to preserve an owner-led, local identity.

Search funds

In the case of a search fund, an entrepreneur receives funding to find, acquire and run a single company, even before the target is identified. It is a really cool model with roots going back to Harvard and Stanford business schools in the 1980s. It is inherently relationship-based and difficult to scale. It cannot, on its own, address the thousands of retiring owners seeking successors.

Marketplaces

Today, there is an array of online marketplaces available. Web 1.0 gave us BizBuySell, a site founded in 1996, which is still active with 100,000 completed sales and 15 million monthly page views. European equivalents include DUB.de in Germany and BusinessesForSale.com in the UK. These platforms use blind listings to protect sensitive information, but a marketplace alone can only go so far. It provides data, but does not facilitate a direct transfer.

Selling a business is not like selling an item on eBay. A successful sale requires months of preparation: Structuring liabilities, negotiating earn-outs, managing employee transitions and much more. Finding a price both parties can accept is often the least complicated part. Without expert guidance on both sides, the process can be fraught.

Many advisors and funds are working to address this gap in innovative, scalable ways. Eilla AI supports sell-side advisors with AI-powered capabilities. In Japan, whose society is furthest along the generational curve, M&A Research Institute, a listed company generating over $100 million in annual fees, is scaling the broker model through a large team, advanced processes and AI, facilitating transactions on businesses with revenue as low as half a million dollars. In Germany, KERN operates similarly, with more than 40 offices across the DACH region. On the buy side, American Operator, backed by 8VC, is a marketplace that connects prospective business owners with locally sourced acquisition financing.

Kodiak Holdings, also backed by 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, takes a different approach. It builds on the search fund model but replaces its relationship-driven, one-at-a-time character with a more efficient, process-oriented structure. There is no “secret sauce,” but instead a whole lot of process, tech, AI and data optimised to make a difference. Kodiak raises capital from LPs like any other equity fund, then deploys it across a portfolio of operators, each seeking to acquire an SMB.

“The key to our fund model is to tap into the supply of experienced operators and provide them with the funding they need to acquire their businesses. Our focus is on process and efficiency. We are adapting the search fund model to make it scalable. With our first fund, we aim to have dozens of companies in our portfolio.”

— Denis Aven, Founder, Kodiak Holdings.

Kodiak is just getting started, and if they execute well, their model could solve for the limitations of previous approaches and make a meaningful dent in one of the most important and most overlooked economic challenges of our ageing societies.

The decline in forests’ capacity to effectively capture carbon is one of the many reasons why Earth will breach 1.5 °C warming a decade early, a stark warning that came just days into 2026.

A production forest in Northern Sweden used by the timber industry, September 2023.

But how can this be? Unfortunately, forests are not a failsafe carbon capture solution, and as it turns out - quality matters. The timber industry has contributed to a surge in tree monocultures that are easily stressed by drought and infestations. However, when healthy, forests can resist droughts and are effective habitats for a wide variety of species, an essential component to the overall resilience of the global ecosystem.

There is more. Inside each tree trunk are vast numbers of microorganisms making up a microbiome, very much like in our gut, the New Scientist reports. The soil beneath our trees contains an important network of fungi. Their symbiotic relationship is something we are only beginning to understand. This is the subject of one of my favourite nature books of all time, Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree. In this memoir, the Canadian scientist details how she challenged the establishment by researching how fungi connect with trees to create mutually beneficial systems.

In recent years, we have gained a more fluid understanding of how holistic value is tied to our natural systems, not just forests, but across all habitats. Indeed, our narrow focus on greenhouse gases and climate change must shift to planetary resilience as a whole. Emissions are an important part of the story, but they are only one piece of the puzzle. Though this does not make the task of saving the planet any easier.

Recently, a private equity executive shared with me his dream to acquire degraded land in Europe and reforest it. I am a huge fan of people taking things into their own hands and seeking to make a positive impact. Anyone doing this, regardless of the dimension, deep pockets or not, should be supported. In this case, much of the property offered to him was a mix of degraded land and forests. He expressed disappointment to me that here, in the forested parts of the land, he would not be able to make any considerable impact, as he perceived forests to be positive climate contributors. He did not realise that there are healthy forests and damaged forests, which have lost their ability to support the planet. Given the location of the land, it was not likely that this specific forest was healthy. Indeed, forests can be massively upgraded with diverse growths, by leaving deadwood, reducing logging pressure, improving soil quality and creating improved habitats for insects and other wildlife. In the UK, there is currently an initiative to reforest vast tracts of land, which also includes soil quality and fungus growth upgrades.

The point which the executive missed is that forest quality matters. Maybe he should have spent more time bathing in the forest. Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese forest bathing movement, is about experiencing the forest as a whole: Its sounds, scents, light, and air together. And when you truly immerse yourself, you begin to feel the health of the forest itself. In Japan, millions of government dollars have been poured into scientific research to better understand the effects of nature therapy, mostly via stress reduction and the implications of this on immunity, the nervous system and cardiovascular health.

The geography of Japan plays a role. In fact, 93% of its population lives on just 33% of the land, which is scrunched up and crammed into sprawling megacity corridors. Forests and mountains blanket the rest. Remarkably, among industrialised nations, it is only Finland that has a higher forest density than Japan. The government encourages forest bathing to improve the overall well-being of its citizens, many of whom are seniors.

I love Walking in the Woods, Yoshifumi Miyazaki’s book on forest bathing, because of the respectful reverence it attributes to forests. For those who can’t easily meander in a forest, Miyazaki advises that even just looking at a Bonsai tree or touching a piece of wood can have a calming effect and lower stress. He even advocates the act of soba noodle making in the forest. Miyazaki reinforces all of his nature tips with scientific research that has delved into the stress reduction effects of forests. It’s honestly what makes this book so wonderful and a little quirky.

While Japan was the first nation to get the ball rolling, there are other nations starting to follow suit by handing out “nature prescription programs” today. These are formal schemes where doctors, nurses, or social care professionals prescribe time in nature for patients, just as they might prescribe medication. PaRx in Canada is the most developed state program; over 5,000 healthcare professionals now use it, and the Canadian Medical Association has officially endorsed it.

The link between a person’s healthspan and planetary health should not come as a surprise. We are part of nature, too. Don’t get me wrong. The forest’s role in slashing emissions is essential and should be supported with investments via voluntary carbon markets and other means. Yet, I also think we need to adopt a more holistic view of forests. Our perspective needs to include biodiversity and resilience, because we don’t just need forests, we need healthy forests.

Some investors are recognising just this. There are numerous VC funds focused on climate change. Now there are specialised funds with a mission to improve biodiversity. In January 2026, Superorganism, a San Francisco and New York-based fund founded by Tom Quigley and Kevin Webb dedicated exclusively to biodiversity, completed its fundraising. Another notable initiative is the Switzerland-based venture builder Brainforest, which focuses its interests on forests, fungi and the soil microbiome.

Superorganism has already invested in several startups whose mission is to increase the quality, not just the quantity, of our forests. They invested in Foray Bioscience, an MIT startup pioneering seed fabrication to ensure more biodiverse forests. Another startup, Funga, restores the forest soil microbiome to create healthier ecosystems, faster tree growth and additional carbon capture.

Returning to the private equity executive with his forest dilemma. I connected him to a very knowledgeable forest ranger. As far as I know, they already have a concrete piece of land in consideration, with a sizeable amount of forest. I am sure there is a lot that can be done to upgrade the health of that particular forest and their plans include this now, too.

Mild panic ensued. The pills were explicitly labelled “for animal treatment only”. To make matters worse, I’m an efficient pill taker, so that pill was gone with no chance of retrieval.

Instinctively, I called my doctor on his mobile. He was mid-consultation and, understandably, had no expertise in canine heart medication. His advice: “Check ChatGPT.”

I looked up the medication, and my AI agent concluded I’d be fine, as the dosage was too small for any effect. Fortunately for me, AI was right.

Today’s AI models are incredibly effective for medical advice. I’m sure most people use them in this way. While it still seems slightly awkward today that a doctor would recommend an AI consultation to a patient, in a few years, it will seem awkward that we even considered this awkward.

Recent data from Canada and the UK confirms that many people are now turning to AI for medical information. Importantly, though, people are sceptical. A recent survey illustrates this, as roughly half of all Canadians were found to turn to AI for health information, but only 27% trusted its accuracy, according to a report by the Canadian Medical Association featured in The Globe and Mail. In addition, a Guardian report reinforced what we already know - that AI-generated summaries, specifically on health information, can be factually incorrect or even harmful.

My pill episode shows that in certain moments, AI can provide valuable instant guidance. My doctor, had he not been in a consultation, most likely would have looked up the medication in his own AI platform as his first step. Obviously, there’s a big difference between a trained physician interacting with AI-generated information and consumers doing the same without medical training.

This is where startups and innovation come in. Several companies now build on top of general AI models like ChatGPT, adding medical knowledge and safety guardrails. ChatGPT itself is doing this, with the launch of ChatGPT Health in the US just last month, which involves connecting with fitness and health data to provide more personalised advice.

Doctronic, launched in 2023, is one such startup. Built on LLM models and focused on primary and urgent care, it offers free AI consultations plus video visits with licensed physicians for a fee. The startup has raised $20M+ from top-tier VCs, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures and already has over 1 million users.

I used Doctronic to simulate my dog-pill incident. The difference from my actual experience with a general LLM was significant. Doctronic’s questions were more pointed and precise, and it was noticeably more careful about addressing risks like drug interactions. At the end, it offered to connect me with a doctor if I was concerned (not surprising, that’s their monetisation model). Overall, it was a great experience.

Something interesting is happening here. Even the LLMs recognise that medical advice can be improved with specialised data and processing layers. So who will win this battle: Health-focused startups sitting on top of LLMs or the LLMs themselves with health-specific add-ons?

I’d place my bets on the startups and their entrepreneurial power. The only way startups survive is by doing one thing exceptionally well. Doctronic will either get this right, or it will fail. What’s happening in AI-powered medical consultation is tremendously exciting, and I’ll certainly know what to do if I accidentally swallow our dog’s pills again.

(Image credit: Glass DNA by Gringer, Creative Commons Public Domain Licence.)

Delve even further, and research reveals that the 67% statistic is actually plausible. In fact, health consciousness has flooded the mainstream, and many of us now see health as something we can actively influence, a notion supported by Pew Research survey results in November 2025. Health is no longer dependent on fate or a doctor’s abilities. According to Pew, 78% of Americans are “actively taking steps in their daily life to improve their chances of ageing well.”

Additional evidence confirms this. Take alcohol consumption, it’s plummeted in western markets, especially amongst younger consumers. The UK, for example, is experiencing record lows in consumption, with the average UK adult consuming 10.2 alcoholic drinks a week in 2024, the lowest figure since data collection began in 1990, according to figures published in the FT from research company IWSR.

But there’s a flip side to this healthy trend. In the same Pew survey quoted above, wealthy respondents had a much higher perception that they would live longer and well (37%) compared to those who had lower incomes (26%) - a disparity that is both important and concerning.

For startups, accessibility to longevity solutions remains high on their agenda. Clinic startups like Function Health or Neko Health make comprehensive biomarker testing accessible at $500 rather than $5,000. While $500 is still a high cost for most, it shows that subsidised solutions are being considered.

But what about risks? Biohacking involves dabbling with different approaches on one’s own body, trialling techniques outside of established medical practice. The 1980s “White Hat” software hackers, for example, and the legendary “Chaos Computer Club,” worked outside of the establishment, risking a lot to improve the resilience of communications and software systems. But they happened to be an elite bunch who apparently knew what they were doing.

The overwhelming majority of those who call themselves biohackers today are probably not too experimental in their choices. Most people are probably more like me. I track my activities, my sleep and exercise regularly. My most radical intervention is harmless oil pulling for gum health.

I would never take unprescribed medications that we know very little about or use my body as a testing ground. A close, older relative tried this in the 1960s and suffered a heart attack as a result. He survived, but his life thereafter was never the same again.

This is somewhat of an opportunity for startups. They can learn from the research of elite biohackers who undergo expensive experimentation, and can transform this into developing the safest and best interventions for everyone else, using evidence-based and medically grounded processes. Entrenched, consistent and clear metrics to regulate these new technologies should also follow.

Equally, the next big challenge I expect to see is the issue of timescales. A biohacker’s goal is longevity and an improved lifespan. Therefore, we will only be able to gauge the effectiveness of these hacks on our lives in years to come, perhaps even decades. What will really work and what is bogus?

Consistency is also a challenge, too. For example, is everyone really going to cold plunge for the next twenty years? How can we persistently maintain these hacks for such long time periods? These challenges are a rallying call for large companies to select the right techniques based on science and accurate data. This will make techniques workable over longer time periods.

Indeed, the most consistent rituals can become an almost invisible part of our lives. Maybe they are something we don’t choose to do, but just do without a second thought, whether it’s as simple as getting up from your seat on the hour, every hour, as the smart watch ruthlessly instructs.

In Dan Buettner’s Netflix series “Secrets of the Blue Zones”, I noted that many of the longevity habits of superager communities were not based on choice, but on geographic constraints. Take the rugged hills of the Greek island Ikaria, which simply had to be climbed every day, or the healthy (mostly vegetarian) diets of Okinawa, which were normalised because there wasn’t much else.

Innovative startup founders carving out trends need to ask themselves, ‘How do we create healthy habits in a Western world of overconsumption and almost limitless possibilities?’

Gentle nudges and community spirit could be the answer. The VC-financed startup Hinge Health, backed by Coatue, Tiger Global and Atomico, has a platform for musculoskeletal therapy and chronic pain management based on device monitoring of daily activities. It comes with a live coach consultation to make sure the activities are actually maintained. Additionally, it provides actionable data that makes long-term trends evident daily - many trackers do this effectively, and people enjoy seeing the fruits of their labour translated into health data.

The startup Levels Health provides continuous glucose monitoring with clear, immediate feedback. Pod sleep system, Eight Sleep is a completely passive invention that requires zero daily willpower. You simply sleep on it, and it optimises your temperature, tracks recovery biomarkers, and compounds benefits nightly for years.

Other approaches will surely be pioneered by startup founders in the future. Increasing health consciousness is a huge opportunity that will pay off for startups willing to create affordable solutions.

One source of inspiration will be the techniques pioneered by elite biohackers outside of the establishment. The biggest test for these startups won’t be coming up with “out of the box,” new ideas, but whether they can solve what the Blue Zones solved through environmental constraints: ensuring healthy habits are consistent. That’s the challenge that will determine whether mainstream “biohacking” becomes a lasting transformation or just another trend with a supercool name.

It certainly explains why sleep tracking is all the rage.

Another fix should be dental and gum health, as poor oral care has been linked to a broad set of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes, and osteoporosis, according to a journal in The Lancet. Contrary to common belief, dental plaque (residue) on teeth and gums harbours chronic inflammation, an immune response that prompts a set of problems in the body and has been identified as a contributor to ageing.

Unlike sleep, the link between oral health and longevity is less well known - but why? The Washington Post highlights that in the U.S., around 20 per cent of people over 65 have untreated tooth decay and over two-thirds have gum disease, according to research from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. It was also raised recently, in The Japan Times, via two pivotal studies on the topic, yet we are nowhere near the level of awareness this topic warrants. So why has this been a background topic? Dental health is often seen as elective, rather than an essential part of one’s healthcare. Many insurance plans (including Medicare in the U.S.) exclude comprehensive dental coverage.

With my fund, GMPVC, we recently invested in a company called Koite Health, an agetech and longevity startup that promotes light-activated antibacterial solutions for treating and preventing oral disease. Koite’s founder, Sakari Nikinmaa, believes one of the reasons people have thus far been largely unaware of the link between oral health and longevity is because of the ‘working in silos’ type approach, which often results in dental care being understood as an entirely separate practice to general medicine.

Nikinmaa says that dental plaque contains one of the densest bacterial compositions in the body. These bacteria can cause chronic inflammation, as aforementioned, with many different and possibly adverse outcomes. The OHSAKA Study, mentioned in The Japan Times, establishes that people without teeth have an 1.7 times higher likelihood of death compared to those with 21 or more teeth. Nikinmaa comments this is remarkable, since people with high cholesterol stand at an 1.4 times higher death rate than the average.

The problem is widespread amongst elders. As mentioned, two thirds of all people above the age of 65 have gum disease. Most don’t know this. Regular brushing and flossing is a great way to improve the situation, Nikinmaa says, but he and his co-founder wanted to take this further with an innovation that would elevate beyond brushing and flossing and move the needle on longevity.

In 2016, Nikinmaa, an engineer by background, was part of Biodesign Finland, a 10-month full-time medtech entrepreneurship training program for talented professionals with engineering, IT, design and business backgrounds. Biodesign Finland applies the “need-driven” medtech innovation process, created at Stanford University, and emphasises the requirement for multidisciplinary teams and evidence-based work.

At the program, Nikinmaa met a cardiac surgeon, Tommi Pätilä, who was interested in the correlation between oral health and coronary artery disease. Together, they developed an innovative mouth rinse activated by light which kills bacteria. In 2018, they founded Koite Health and launched the home-use medical product “Lumoral” - a product that is only accessible in Europe at the moment.

This is exactly what the program Biodesign Finland was created for. Talented founders with different backgrounds who get together to develop innovative solutions to health challenges and bridge medical disconnects, like dental and general medicine.

Our body is complex but interconnected, and interdisciplinary work will undoubtedly lead to many more unexpected insights and innovations, allowing us to not only increase the length of our lives but, most importantly, live the good life.

“It’s given me the freedom to do my favourite things back. Plus, I feel super cool in it.” - WHILL customer review.

Founded in 2012 by three innovators based in San Francisco and Tokyo, and backed by significant private equity investment, WHILL is considered the coolest electric wheelchair on the market.

The engineering trio, CEO Satoshi Sugie, CDO Junpei Naito, and engineer Muneaki Fukuoka have impeccable credentials, stemming from the likes of Nissan, Sony and Olympus Medical Equipment.

Woven Capital, the growth-stage corporate venture capital fund of Toyota, Daiwa Corporate Investment, Tokio Marine Holdings and the global investor Eight Roads (formerly Fidelity Ventures), amongst others, all own a stake. They are joined by the Cool Japan Fund, a public investment fund set up to promote exciting entrepreneurs pumping the Japanese economy (and yes, that’s their name).

Recently, the brand has expanded beyond devices into services by adding autonomous driving capability. WHILL power chairs have been spotted roaming airports from Miami to Munich, at the helm of AI. In total, over 700,000 autonomous WHILL rides have so far been completed at airports.

I spoke to Yuki Ban, WHILL’s VP of Strategy & Operations, to understand how the company pulls it off in creating a “super cool” brand in a distinctively senior product space.

He tapped three important brand and design considerations that he says are ingrained in WHILL’s product philosophy.

1. Communicate the solution, not the problem.

WHILL’s brand messaging is distinctively different from that of many agetech brands. It focuses on the solution, not the problem. In short, WHILL provides mobility; it does not “solve” disability.

Their website says: “Explore the world effortlessly with WHILL’s durable, easy-to-use electric power chairs.”

WHILL has also successfully shifted its brand positioning from a medical device to a lifestyle product. This takes guts. It is much easier to be part of an established sector, like medical, than to move the goalposts as WHILL has managed.

2. There is no explicit targeting of seniors.

Not only does the brand focus on the solution (mobility) rather than the problem (disability), but they also refuse to define their customers by age or limitation. As Yuki says:

Age is certainly not ignored in the promotional material WHILL puts out, not at all - it’s just not the defining characteristic. This is a fine, but critical detail.

At the same time, WHILL focuses on authenticity in its marketing material. Yuki adds that WHILL’s promotional images always show real customers, not models. These customers appear to show genuine confidence and joy, not the cautious, medical imagery visible in traditional wheelchair adverts.

The result is imagery that feels inclusive and authentic, showing people living the good life rather than managing their limitations.

This inclusive approach translates into everything WHILL does. At Japanese airports, everyone can use the WHILL Autonomous Service, even a business person in need of quickly finishing a presentation on the laptop while rushing to a gate.

3. Design counts, even for the senior generation.

It is mental to imagine, but some agetech founders believe that if they add some big buttons on a device, prestó! Of course, seniors will love it.

While I am not saying that big buttons don’t sometimes have a time and a place, however, if this is your big idea of an innovative design for seniors, you have already failed.

You are more likely to turn away your target group than get them excited about your product.

WHILL thinks about their design in a very different way. Yes, their products are easy to use. But devices should always be easy to use, regardless of target group demographics. WHILL’s product design is focused on conveying enjoyment and happiness.

WHILL power chairs and scooters can be used in forward-leaning, active positions, not just in a recline. The devices are inspired by bicycles, scooters, and skateboards, and importantly, not by wheelchairs.

The company has managed to pull off what many agetech brands have not. WHILL focuses on solutions, not problems. It is a brand used primarily by seniors, but it does not stigmatise age. The designs are empowering and fun to use. Executing this and sidestepping industry norms requires courage. And if wheelchairs can be super cool, so can many other things.

Kahn fell while downhill skateboarding a few years ago, broke his arm and relayed that his doctor said “he was too old to be riding a skateboard.” Instead of being defeated by the advice, he took up skateboarding again a week later and simply added more knee pads.

The 90-year-old’s home is filled with skateboards and all types of basic strength training equipment like pull-up bars and dumbbells. If he ever has a spare minute, he gets going with a few weights, pullups and planks while at home. He competes in the Dipsea, the oldest trail race in America, and self-brands as “the USA’s only 90-year-old Swiftie.” Check out Kahn’s Substack Live from California for more interesting insights into his lifestyle.

In the articles and posts, Kahn never once mentions any high-tech gadgets like wearables or nutritional supplements, except for one post where he rewards himself with a milkshake after a cold water swim.

That’s interesting, but it’s not the most interesting part of his story. In fact, I almost missed it initially. Kahn mentions that he became obsessed with fitness in his late 50s and early 60s and was in his best possible shape exactly then.

He notes, “I was in my best shape, when you consider age along with strength, flexibility and cardiovascular condition - at ages 55-65 or so. Part of this is certainly that [...], but I also published fitness books and hung out with a world-class runner, a bodybuilding legend, and the world’s foremost stretching authority.”

It was in 1979, when Kahn was a publisher in his late forties, that he discovered a relatively little-known book about stretching by Bob Anderson (today he would certainly be an influencer) and decided to promote this approach and make it a fitness trend.

Khan went on to publish his own series of fitness books in the subsequent years.

This was a pivotal moment for Kahn, he recalls, when he surfed, swam and stretched regularly. Then, Kahn ran his first Dipsea race in 1987 at the ripe age of 52.

Arguably, he is an exception. However, the 50s and 60s are commonly when most people believe they should start to wind down. But this is where Kahn ramped things up a gear and really took being fit seriously. Instead of slacking off, he really took off.

Moreover, it’s not just Kahn. In my research, I found that Natalie Grabow, an 80-year-old Ironman champion, learned to swim at 59 and started triathlons only then. This led me to find Ironman participant Hiromu Inada, who was 85 when he raced in 2018. Like Grabow, he started training in his early 60s.

Therefore, it’s never too late to start getting super fit. This is what these superager stories are screaming at us.

So, what does this mean for agetech and longevity founders? I see a profound lesson here.

Many fitness and health startup initiatives for those over 50 are focused on frailty and preventing falls. A perfect example of this is Bold. The startup is successfully financed with around $27m by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and agetech specialist Primetime Partners.

Bold is big. The platform offers thousands of “age-friendly” exercise classes, “healthy ageing” educational resources, access to licensed doctors, as well as therapists and nurse practitioners who specialise in “healthy ageing.”

This is all perfectly valid and important. I absolutely embrace the idea. These programs are also financed by healthcare providers, and Medicare members get free access.

Yet, the point I make with superagers like Kahn, Grabow and Inada, however, is that the focus of an active life in one’s 50s and 60s does not have to be limited to addressing frailty.

In fact, for all three, this time was the period when they were at their healthiest, strongest, and most active. Having platforms like Bold as a facility is great, but so are, for example, pickleball and padel platforms, which encourage all ages to be maximally fit by playing sports.

Note: Do not be put off by the athleticism of those in their 20s and 30s; instead, ask your children if they fancy a rally?

It seems unlikely, but even skateboard brands love and embrace the over-50s crowd. Skateboard legend Tony Hawks still skates at 57, and thinks it’s more fun than ever. Then there’s this guy, “the Dude.”

In All About Agetech, we have spotlighted the Spanish padel mega platform Playtomic. Over in the U.S., there is also Pickleheads, much smaller, but also VC-financed. Both platforms boast over a million participants who can book facilities and connect with other players - regardless of age.

Fitness and sports for the over 50s, I stress, should not only be about frailty. There is a role for that, and this is important and valuable, but there is also a whole other dimension. This period can be the exact time to get really, really fit. Skateboard brands know it. Khan, Grabow and Inada proved it.

She is described as the morbid version of Marie Kondo, a woman famous for her own decluttering technique and the star of a Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. But Magnusson is more than just a darker Kondo. By thinking about what to leave behind after death and what to get rid of, she makes her reader think about death in a less confrontational and intimidating way.

In the act of death cleaning, we are encouraged to think about our possessions not from our own perspective, but in terms of a gift to the next generation, whether they can get any use from the items and if they will find them important later down the line. The rest, what we don’t want to give, is only a burden for the next generation. It falls on us to clean up our act.

For Magnusson, leaving and giving are deeply intertwined. This becomes even more evident in her sequel, The Swedish Art of Ageing Exuberantly. On the surface, the book is a good-natured and humorous set of stories from her life, but it is actually centred around the pragmatic anecdotal wisdom of an 88-year-old, and includes phrases like, “Take care of your hair - if you have any.”

When I read the book, I realised that the sequel is all about giving. “Listen to the younger generation”, Magnusson says, “give them your undivided attention”, “volunteer as much as you can in the community”. She encourages the idea of nurturing a living being, and if it cannot be a pet, then it should be a plant.

Moreover, one frustration Magnusson had to grapple with was when she was forced to use a chunk of her bestselling book earnings to pay for a health care emergency, when she had planned to leave the money to her children.

Part of leaving is giving, not only possessions, but also many other things, such as time and attention. When I categorise agetech startups, I combine “giving and leaving” into one category for this very reason. Read up on this in my post “Agetech everywhere.”

Magnusson focuses on possessions. Indeed, there a lot of other stuff that Magnusson left out of her books, which we have to consider when preparing to leave. In fact, wills, taxes, inheritance, insurance and much more can often become extremely overwhelming for a bereft family to manage.

Many elders want to prepare for their departure ahead of time, and with intention - this is why Magnusson’s books resonate so deeply. Startups are now catching on to this and are offering services to make these preparations easier.

The startup Empathy began as a digital service focused on “post-death” services to help families manage bereavement strife. Today, the company is one of the top five agetech startups in the U.S. according to the data platform Tracxn. Agetech fund Primetime Partners was an early investor. In total, $162m was invested in total by top-tier funds such as Index, General Catalyst and Aleph. Then, an alliance of insurance groups invested too, becoming what has been dubbed the “Emphathy Alliance.”

In 2024, three years after the company was launched, Emphathy launched “LifeVault,” a service which allows elders not only to write their will but also to document and organise their financial assets. I believe this tool will prove to be extremely popular with the elderly generation.

On a more personal note, one of my best friends from college is Jana Magnusson, Margareta’s youngest daughter. She is the one who, in Magnusson’s sequel, fell off a horse at four years old in an era where parents were apparently not so paranoid about child safety as they are today.

When I asked Jane what her mother would think about using a platform to carry out digital “death cleaning,” she laughed and said her mother would probably just use the “delete” button a lot.

It is worth highlighting that the disconnect between 70m and 20m is nothing short of what can only be deemed a “Silver Tsunami”.

On the one hand, this represents a huge business opportunity. Given its size and importance, far too few entrepreneurs are focused on it, as I wrote in a previous post.

On the other hand, this Silver Tsunami will create huge tensions. Many elders will face serious challenges, including economic insecurity and loneliness. More than 40% of elderly households currently lack sufficient resources to maintain their living standard in retirement, according to the Wall Street Journal. What is paradoxical is that baby boomers are not necessarily healthier than their predecessors, despite having higher levels of education. Although they smoke less, many are suffering from obesity, notes Jacobsen.

And this is not all. Younger generations will be impacted strongly by the coming Silver Tsunami, creating intergenerational friction. Meanwhile, a high proportion of the working population’s taxes goes towards supporting the elderly. Younger generations are not seeing the benefits of their tax payments, housing is unaffordable, and more students are relying on loans. In an op-ed in the New York Times last year, two experts, C. Eugene Steuerle and Glenn Kramon, both in their seventies, pointed out how unfair the U.S. Medicare and Social Security system is towards young people.

The situation is similar in many countries. In Canada, the Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre calls younger Canadians “generation screwed.” The situation in Italy, Japan and South Korea is even worse than in the U.S. or Canada, but it’s only a matter of time.

The Times’ piece proposes some solutions but they are painful: a) raise the retirement age, and b) cut costs in health care and the pension system.

However, the authors are missing something important. The power of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is not a zero-sum game. Here are just three examples of innovation areas, which lead to lower health care costs, lower care and living costs and better-suited job opportunities for the elderly.

Health innovation is shifting from treatment to prognosis and prevention. This will ultimately lower the costs for the system substantially. Traditionally, the system is geared towards trying to fix problems at a huge price tag.

One of the most well-known startups in this area is Neko Health, the body scan clinic focused on mole mapping, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Behind it: Spotify founder Daniel Ek. The Stockholm-based company received $260 million in funding earlier this year, and Neko Health is not the only player focused on holistic health scans. Its competitors include Function, Prenuvo, and Fountain Life, which have all raised significant capital. According to CB Insights, $643m of VC funding went into these four companies alone. Alas, many of these services are still out of reach for all but the richest seniors. However, costs will fall.

Care tasks and living spaces can be shared amongst the generations, providing a win-win for everyone so that nobody has to be “screwed.” Several initiatives have developed around this concept, for example, the Brooklyn-based social enterprise Nesterly.

This company operates in a couple of US cities and is explicitly focused on intergenerational living. Through “task sharing,” younger tenants and lodgers can reduce their rent substantially. Another player, a little different, is HomeShareOnline. These are all wonderful concepts pushed by entrepreneurs. Not every startup requires $260m to jump-start its vision.

Our elders are yearning to contribute to society, and many actually want to work longer but find the job market skewed against them. Thus, part of the solution is also about how to make work better suited and more welcoming for seniors, not just by extending the pension age.

In my previous post, we already mentioned the Australian jobs site Maturious.com. In German-speaking countries, there is Seniors at Work, and in the US, the AARP Jobs Board is huge.

Innovation in each of these areas will reduce pressure on the system and lower friction between the generations. But there are not nearly enough agetech moonshots out there, and as the silver tsunami approaches, we are certainly going to need more.

Insights on the growth market:

• By 2030, according to the WHO, 1 in 6 people globally will be aged 60 years or over.

• In many markets, seniors own a large part of the wealth and consumer spending. According to AARP, the 50-plus population already accounted for half of global consumer spending ($35 trillion) in 2020, and by 2050, this figure will reach nearly 60% ($96 trillion).

• Elders are more digital than ever before. For a start, 75% of all people 65+ now use the internet in the U.S, according to the Pew Research Centre. On all counts, including smartphone and social media use, seniors have caught up in the last years.

• Seniors are more active than ever before. Although many still do not engage in physical activity on a regular basis, even if the trend is upwards. Rankings by the United Health Foundation show a year-by-year increase; currently, about 29% of the population age 65+ meet federal physical activity guidelines.

Given this massive demographic shift and the opportunity it creates, there aren’t nearly enough founders focused on agetech.

According to data provider Tracxn, there are only 354 venture capital-funded companies in the U.S. in the agetech space. A contrast compared to the 44,783 fintech startups in the U.S.

Part of this problem is because many agetech startups are “undercover” or “partial,” and don’t fully identify themselves as an agetech startup. Also, the sector is a horizontal category that cuts across other verticals, such as fintech or healthtech.

Nonetheless, there is more that can be done, and shining light on agetech is exactly what this site intends to do.

Many agetech commentators and influencers have created their own categories. While I have been inspired by them, I formed my own, simply because I found no categorisation to be resolutely perfect. Several had too many categories, which diminished their usefulness.

I am quite proud of the categories, because I have thought long and hard about what to include in one group and what to exclude. I hope you will find the four categories useful.

1. Health, Nutrition and an “Active Lifestyle”

The first step to living a good life comes by living a healthy life, which should, in turn, minimise the jeopardy of sickness, even though some illnesses are naturally unavoidable. This comes down to the powerful idea of “prevention,” which I grouped alongside prioritising nutrition.

Examples:

• RetiSpec, a Canadian startup commercialising an eye test to detect Alzheimer’s.

• NourishedRx, a platform that creates individualised food plans for elderly people.

• Playtomic, Europe’s largest racket-sports app, which facilitates court bookings for paddle, tennis, and football, and enables players to connect through a social community.

2. Care, Love and Community

Care is one of the most obvious categories associated with agetech startups. These companies are focused on improving care in care homes, providing in-house care and offering at-home visits. And obviously, this makes sense, because better and more affordable care is a big challenge in most societies.

We have broadened the care category, however, to include community, family, and dating because we believe it is incredibly hard, and not very useful, to separate “formal” and “informal” care.

According to the National Institutes of Health, formal care refers to paid care provided by medical institutions or medically trained individuals, while informal care is unpaid care provided by family, close relatives, friends, and neighbours.

In a similar vein to the way a healthy life starts with nutrition and lifestyle, care can come in many guises before professional care is required; therefore, addressing the challenge of loneliness is hugely important.

Examples:

• Pear Suite, a tech platform powering community health workers in the U.S.

• Papa.com offers “Papa pals” - freelance helpers - to support elders and fight loneliness.

• Klup, a popular app in the Netherlands, now launching in the UK, connects seniors and helps them get together to plan social activities.

• Intuition Robotics, an Israeli startup, has developed an AI-powered robot, EliiQ, to fight loneliness and improve health routines in elderly people’s homes.

3. Independence, Finance, Jobs, Home and Safety

This category is all about the elderly being able to live without dependencies. This includes financial security, but can also refer to independence - for example, this can be in the form of a bathroom accessibility refurbishment. In some ways, this category is the opposite of the “care” category; but it’s like yin and yang. If care is about providing for our elderly, independence is about the elderly taking care of themselves. Elderly people want and deserve both: To be part of the whole picture and to be able to live independently.

Examples:

• Maturious, an Australian employment platform fighting ageism in the workplace.

• Nestimate, a retirement income management software tool for companies and employees.

• Rest Less, a UK media group for 50+ with coverage of health, travel, jobs and dating.

4. Giving and Leaving

This goes beyond legacy and end-of-life planning. Here we have stretched the boundaries of the category. For example, generosity does not have to begin after one’s death. In fact, it can be non-material, as allowing elders to share their experiences and insights with younger people is of huge importance, and we should be finding ways to prioritise this more than we currently do.

Examples:

• Empathy is one of the most successful recent U.S. startups in the agetech space. It helps people plan for leaving and loss, supported by AI.

• Storii allows elders to capture their life stories for their family over the phone.

It would be a mistake to assume that longevity is all that the elderly want. Life should be about quality, not just quantity. It’s about living the good and most fulfilled life.

There are many positive developments which have increased the quality of life for our elders.

Moreover, our elders are far healthier and more active than previous generations. But they are also more isolated and distanced from their families, prompting loneliness and a wider disconnection with society and the workplace.

While many of those who use the term “longevity” bring factors such as well-being and happiness into the equation, the label still falls short because of its emphasis on a long life. This is why I emphasise a much broader focus on the good life.

Loneliness and isolation are huge challenges for many of our seniors. In an op-ed for the World Health Organisation (WHO), Belgian physician Etienne Krug cites that 25% of older people worldwide experience social isolation and loneliness, at similar rates across all regions.

In fact, two substantial reports, both from 2025, one by the WHO and another by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, highlight the importance of the topic, especially for younger men and older people.

Remarkably, progress to combat loneliness is especially evident in countries with ageing populations like Japan, which, since 2021, has created a Minister for Social Isolation and Loneliness. The UK created the world’s first “Loneliness Minister” in 2018.

One of the driving forces behind our platform is to encourage agetech entrepreneurship and a broad agenda. It’s about entrepreneurs focused on the good life, and they can really make a difference.

It is not a vanity thing that our seniors don’t like to be called “old.” Nobody wants to be stigmatised. And ageism is a serious problem. Fortunately, initiatives such as the UK Centre for Ageing Better are pushing back against ageism in several ways, for example, by promoting its “Age without Limits” campaign in the workplace.

Moreover, many of our elders don’t actually feel old. In many countries, seniors are, on the whole, able to live much healthier lives than in previous generations; they are more active and able than ever before.

The fact that older people don’t like to be called out in marketing is a challenge for agetech entrepreneurs and marketers in general. Founders who are developing products and services for the elderly realise they have to be savvy about how they address their target audience. The UK’s most popular content site for those over 50 is called “Rest Less” and plays on exactly this sentiment. The mantra being that “Restless” is a state of mind, not a state of body.

Additionally, the challenge is not only the brand name and marketing, it’s the imagery, customer service, the whole pie.

One way to address this is not to directly market to the elderly generation, but to their children or caregivers. Or alternatively, for B2B startups, care companies or health plan providers. This approach is often perfect for startups focused on specific challenges for older people which impact care, health, independence or loneliness. NourishedRX, which provides meal plans for elders, is an example, but there are plenty more.

Another way to address this challenge is to avoid an exclusive focus on age, while being mindful of it. The average age of the VRBO (HomeAway) - a holiday provider - user is 58, but you do not see this being reflected in their marketing. In fact, there are images of people of all ages on their website. We view these companies as “undercover” agetech.

It gets even more hazy when startups, like the VC-financed startup David Protein, which as a protein supplement also helps older people retain muscle mass, are genuinely relevant for everyone seeking additional protein, regardless of age. Or Playtomic, a hugely popular padel booking platform sweeping up popularity in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Are David Protein and Playtomic AgeTech companies? In a way, yes. They are startups which develop services and products to help older people live a good life. Both startups know how important this customer group is. An increasingly important part of many organisations’ customer base is the elderly - they are all “partially agetech.”

In a nutshell, then, an agetech startup is any company innovating for the good life for our elderly population, through an array of different but interconnected areas. And agetech startups can come in three varieties:

• “Full agetech,”

• “Undercover agetech”

• and “Partial agetech.”