🩺 Superpower: $Trillion Health Dream

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Read time: 3 mins 23 seconds

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Three founders. Three health nightmares. One ambitious dream of building a health superapp.

Max Marchione, Jacob Peters, and Kevin Unkrich, the founding team behind Superpower, are looking to turn their trauma into a trillion-dollar mission to give everyone their own AI doctor.

This massive bet just attracted $30M from Forerunner and a waitlist of 180K+ people.

Let’s get an inside look at Superpower and how they attempt to build the next $$trillion startup… and my hot take on their strategy 🌶️.

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Turning personal scars into a health superapp dream 

The health system failed Jacob, Max, and Kevin. Like really…

Jacob, CEO of Superpower, almost lost his life from healthcare failures three years ago. He spent 4 months in a hospital due to Crohn’s Disease, permanently lost 3 major organs, and got stuck with a $2M hospital bill. He was undiagnosed for years and could have avoided this tragedy if he had known and intervened earlier.

Similarly, Max endured a decade of misdiagnosis leading to various health issues, while Kevin lost his best friend to a brain tumor two days before the scheduled MRI scan.

Max and Jacob were introduced as “the two most health-obsessed people” a mutual friend knew. Kevin met Jacob at Launch House, a startup community and incubator started by Jacob.

Together, they landed on a big idea: healthcare isn’t working, and there needs to be a better way to help people understand what’s going on in their bodies before something goes wrong.

More specifically, they are trying to build a health super-app that combines deep lab testing, personalized insights, and always-on medical support to help people actually stay ahead of their health.

Product evolution: $20K concierge service to a diagnostics-focused health superapp

1/ MVP = Concierge Medicine Services

In the beginning, the Superpower team wanted to democratize high-end concierge medicine. 

Jacob eventually got the right diagnosis due to his access to concierge medicine. He discovered what health looks like on the frontier. However, there is a BIG gap between the best of healthcare and what most people have access to.

They first built a medical service with real clinicians. They started by charging $5,000–$20,000 a year for a highly personalized, tech-enabled concierge medicine experience.

This included extensive diagnostics and consultations with doctors. It looked more like a luxury health service than a tech startup.

2/ From Concierge to Scalable Diagnostics

As the team iterated, they realized scaling a service-heavy model wouldn’t lead to systemic change. Doing all of the concierge medicine was also too broad.

They needed to narrow down and productize the experience. So, they stripped away live doctor consults and focused on data, specifically diagnostics.

Blood tests became the entry point, unlocking clinical insights and trust. Over time, they expanded to include gut microbiome, genomics, toxicology, and wearable integrations.

Their focus shifted from delivering healthcare to delivering understanding: the foundation for AI-driven care. 

3/ Product Today: Moving Downmarket

From $5k-$20k, they went to an $800 annual plan, then to the current $499/year membership with three pillars:

1. Data Collection: A nurse visits your home and collects 100+ biomarkers, or you can go to a partner lab for testing. You also upload wearables and past medical records.

2. AI-Led Analysis: Their proprietary system connects the dots across diagnostics to uncover root-cause insights, going far beyond a 10-minute doctor visit.

3. Action Layer: Superpower wants to make it easy to act on the insights. This includes follow-up tests, supplements, meds, plus text access to a real concierge physician team and 24/7 AI-enhanced guidance.

By building a vertically integrated diagnostic → insight → action engine, Superpower aims to become the "AI doctor", not through biotech innovation, but by collecting and aggregating all health data of a patient and helping them deeply understand their health and what they can do to improve them.

Superpower’s superpower: branding

From the start, Superpower took a brand-first approach, instead of treating it like a luxury.

Max, the cofounder, describes their Superpower brand as their best investment so far 💰. It amplifies everything they do: building trust, hiring great people, and getting organic reach.

While many startups treat branding as something to figure out later, Superpower leaned into it early, using brand to signal credibility in a space like healthcare, where trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.

1/ The Founder Health Coalition

One of their first brand-building moves was launching FounderHealth.com, a coalition designed to promote better health among tech founders. 

The move made sense strategically. 

It helped them align with their early adopters (many of whom are founders themselves) and gave them a clear point of view. Rather than trying to speak to everyone, they focused on one audience they understood well.

Susa Ventures recently joined the coalition and pledged to cover the first-year membership for all its portfolio founders. 

This is an interesting play as it almost resembles selling into enterprise as an employee benefit.

2/ The Hoodie Drop

They also launched the “World’s Healthiest Hoodie”, a piece of branded merch made from organic cotton and non-toxic dyes. It wasn’t just swag; it was meant to reflect their philosophy around health and attention to detail.

The hoodie got traction on social media and among influencers. According to Max, it became a conversation starter and helped with hiring, awareness, and partnerships. It didn’t drive significant direct revenue, but it became a brand asset that kept paying off over time. 

Everyone that wears the hoodie is now a moving billboard for Superpower.

3/ Current Traction

Most of Superpower’s growth has been organic to date. They have built a 180K+ people waitlist, with much of that coming through word of mouth, social media (especially Twitter), and referrals. This momentum led them to a $30M series A, led by Forerunner.

My hot take on Superpower 🌶️

Hot take: Superpower isn’t super differentiated yet, but they’re still in the running to build something huge.

Right now, it feels like every founder with a Shopify login and a wellness obsession is launching either an at-home test kit or a personalized health dashboard. The market is noisy, and Superpower’s signal isn’t screaming category-defining just yet.

They’re also up against giants. Take Function Health, a $2.5B juggernaut that offers 100+ lab tests, co-founded by top health influencer Dr. Mark Hyman. While Function isn’t currently pushing the “AI doctor” angle, you just know it’s in the works. Even a16z is whispering about it.

Plus, Superpower isn’t developing any new diagnostics. They're remixing existing tests and focusing on interpretation—how clearly and usefully they can explain what’s going on in your body and what you can do about it. That’s a tough moat to defend. If someone else nails the UX, builds more trust, or moves faster, the whole thing could turn into a health-tech Thunderdome.

That said... the timing is immaculate.

Preventative care is having a moment. People want to optimize before they’re hospitalized. If Superpower can truly deliver on the “AI doctor that talks to you like a smart friend, not a confused PDF” promise, making it dead simple to know what’s happening and what to do, they could carve out a powerful niche.

I also LOVE their branding and the marketing drops strategy (e.g. World’s Healthiest Hoodie). They’re building with personality, trust, and actual taste, which is rare in a sea of sterile dashboards and Helvetica-powered health apps.

I'm rooting for them. If they crack the AI doctor game, this won’t just be another blood test startup. It could be a company that actually moves the needle on our broken healthcare system.

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See you next Tuesday,

Leo

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