The End of Aging
The mega-trend that will change our lives forever
If I had to pinpoint the first time the definition of aging shifted in my mind, it would be J.Lo and Shakira’s halftime performance at the 2020 Superbowl. When the pair stole the show looking and performing like they were far from “middle aged”, Twitter was in shock at how growing old was apparently optional.
Of course, the fascination with defying age is nothing new. From donkey milk baths to vampire facials, people have been looking for ways to stay young for thousands of years.
Growing up in the 90’s and early aughts, I remember wrinkles being tackled with anti-aging products like L’Oreal’s Revitalift, and growing waistlines addressed with deprivation plans like The Atkin’s Diet and Slimfast. Later came the selfie, curated feeds and Facetune’s day in the sun. In 2017, Allure announced they would no longer be using the word “anti-aging” and challenged the rest of the industry to follow suit. In 2021, interest in “body positivity” peaked.
Fast forward to 2023: Body neutrality became the new body positivity, and though the messaging changed, the anti-aging products market hit over $50B. Dr. Peter Attia’s book “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity” sold over 1 million copies. Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast, “Huberman Lab”, was the #3 global podcast on Spotify. “Live to 100” was the #8 most popular docu-series on Netflix.
Covering topics like alcohol’s effect on the brain and body, preventative measures for heart disease and what the longest living people on earth do differently from the rest of us, these are just a few signs of a new mega-shift in how we age — from denying the passage of time to defying it from the inside out.
Longevity, aesthetics, accessibility and elder care will define the shift when we look back on it at the end of the decade, and there is already a lot of startup and investment activity around these themes today.
Longevity
The average lifespan around the world is increasing, projected to hit 81.4 in the U.S. in ten years. With this, people are getting curious not just about lifespan, or living longer, but also healthspan — feeling younger for longer. (The most curious are perhaps the rejuvenation olympians on this epigentic leaderboard, but I digress…)
Alex Glover, Senior Nutritionist at the British-based multinational chain of health food shops H&B, said in their recent report that they’re seeing concepts like “reducing biological age” and “age reversal” appearing, and that people are interested in taking the aging process into their own hands with longevity-based diets.
On the nutrition front, there are startups like Elo Health, which raised a Series A last year. The startup offers dietitian coaching on their app paired with personalized “smart gummies” matched to your exact longevity-promoting nutrition needs.
In wellness TikTok, #ashwagandha #lionsmane and #supershrooms were some of the most viewed topics in 2023. Athletic Greens is just one of many companies capitalizing on the functional mushrooms craze, with celebrity endorsements from the likes of Tim Ferris and Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Interestingly, though the $4 trillion wellness industry has mostly been driven by women over the last decade, the longevity subset has skewed male with its focus on performance. But the subset is starting to move to parity with messaging about preventative health, healthspan and the most unique to women, menopause.
One unpleasant side effect of menopause that has implications for longevity is sleep disturbance. Poor sleep is connected to major killers like heart disease and Alzheimer’s, and more women experience insomnia than men. Lisa Health offers a solution to employers through their app, Midday, to help female employees understand what’s happening physically and emotionally during menopause and manage symptoms including sleep disturbance.
Other startups like Oviva Health and Gameto are working to give women more control over their biological timelines by extending ovarian lifespan.
Beyond preventative approaches to aging are startups creating the re-do button for age, like Brian Armstrong’s New Limit, which is inventing medicines to restore youthful function in old cells by reprogramming the epigenome and Retro Biosciences, whose mission is to add 10 years to human life starting with cellular reprogramming, autophagy and plasma-inspired therapeutics.
Longevity solutions have a unique opportunity to create daily rituals and long lifetime value (i.e. sticky customers). Also for CPG, when function is expected, there is more room for multi-platform approaches and partnerships like Elo’s partnership with Imaware, an at-home health testing company, to identify biomarkers that factor into their personalized formulas. I think we’ll also see more lifespan and healthspan solutions catered to women as we’re brought into the fold, and opportunities for B2B plays here as there are now 41 million women over 40 currently in the labor force.
Aesthetics
In recent years, after Novo Nordisk started promoting Ozempic and Wegovy very successfully as weight-loss drugs by boosting the GLP-1 gut hormone, startups followed suit. Even though medical weight loss for obesity falls into the longevity / overall health category for many, there has been an undeniable aesthetic message to the public about GLP-1 drugs ever since (non-obese) celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Delores Catania started endorsing it.
Everly Health, for example, started offering GLP-1 drugs and their bread and butter, at-home lab tests, as support.
As new theraputics develop to help people appear younger, I think we’ll also see “lite” versions of those products that are (or at least appear to be) more “natural”, more accessible and coming with fewer unwanted side effects. One such startup, Supergut, sells what they call “nature’s Ozempic” in a powdered pre-biotic fiber blend. Then there are the pick-and-shovel approaches; to treat “Ozempic face,” people are turning to noninvasive medical-aesthetics procedures like dermal fillers.
Less than a decade ago, dermal fillers and the like were not as widely accepted, but with social media’s shift toward openness on the topic, things are changing. A 2022 market report by Allergan revealed that 81 percent of consumers are more accepting of noninvasive aesthetic treatments than they were five years ago.
Most people seeking medical aesthetics procedures go to med spas and aesthetic clinics. Of this group, most are women aged 35-54, though a growing number of younger women (now 26%) are becoming med-spa patients. In 2019, a survey for the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that 74% of facial plastic surgeons reported an increase in minimally invasive procedures (neurotoxins, fillers, skin treatments) in patients under age 30 (+32% since 2016). These are the kinds of procedures the AAFPRS calls "prejuvenation," which refers to the growing emphasis on minimally invasive procedures as a preventative approach to signs of aging.
Startups in the medical aesthetics arena like Upkeep and AEDIT are educating and connecting consumers to medspas, and the later even has a virtual “try on” app for aesthetic procedures. And companies like Skinclique and The Aesthetic Concierge bring neuromodulator injection, fillers and more to the home.
Even though medical aesthetics are on the rise, the market remains underpenetrated. Medical aesthetics is still largely a mom-and-pop industry; the vast majority are med spas are small practices with single locations. There is more opportunity for subscription models, especially with the “prejuvenation” customers who are being introduced to aesthetic procedures at a younger age.
Interestingly, though med spas and aesthetics clinics have most of the medical aesthetics market share, dermatologists are the stickiest.
Perhaps we’ll see more vertical SaaS plays targeting solo practitioners who have the customer’s trust. I think we’ll also see proliferation of convenient at-home solutions and lighter topical alternatives like OneSkin, a skincare company that developed the first molecule to reverse the skin’s biological age.
Coming next: Accessibility and elder care will play major defining roles in what aging looks like for us in the decades ahead. What levers are being pulled to make lifespan and healthspan more accessible to everyone (not just the ultra wealthy)? Where is elder care failing now and what are the opportunities to improve it for when we finally do get old? Hit Subscribe to get Part 2 when it’s hot off the press!