The SymbionIQ Foundation is, basically, to put it simply, “Linux for health” or longevity. What we want to build is a way for people to have an ecosystem that is data-centric, with the user in control and ownership of their own data. We want to empower users with a data lake of all their information, traversed by AI, which gives some sort of “health co-pilot” advice on how to defeat aging and live a longer, fuller life.
Why should organizations become Vitalist?
We truly believe in our mission. I coined the tagline for the company to be “augmenting life.” This is central to what we do. The Vitalist organization resonated with me when I looked at many other groups working on longevity or transhumanism. The Vitalist Foundation was the one that felt most aligned with our vision and mission. It is the most realistic in its approach in terms of timeline and goals. We believe you can’t solve aging without a moonshot—it’s that simple. Language around death, war, and apologetic messages dilutes the overall effect of things. The Vitalist Foundation is clear in stating that the goal is to defeat aging and death, and to live as long as possible.
So, this “healthspan versus lifespan” dilemma, and people saying, “Oh, it’s okay because death is inevitable,” is just not for us. We don’t accept that language. Of course, we are realistic and understand that things don’t happen overnight, but we believe in calling things for what they are. Accepting fate won’t lead us anywhere.
Do you think we are on track to solve aging in your lifetime?
I certainly hope so, because I intend to live as long as possible. I’m a little late with everything I do—I have two kids, the youngest being three and a half, and my wife is currently four months pregnant. So, if I don’t solve aging, I’m not going to get to enjoy this as much. (Laughs.) But seriously, I think progress is fantastic. We are on a “hockey stick” curve. If we put the right effort into solving aging and stop making excuses, we can make a significant difference within our lifetime.
There’s so much that can be done today with existing technology to help people live healthier, longer lives, although that’s not enough. From a biotech perspective, there’s immense progress happening around DNA, organ growth, and replacing body parts with either electronics or biological material. The key is bringing all these advances together. We believe that understanding ourselves through data is essential. Discovering things at the intersection of different disciplines is crucial, but the problem is that too many people are doing research in silos.
Aging is a holistic problem. When you start looking at the data and the intersections between data points, you can find solutions. That’s our main thesis for building Symbiont and our project. We think that if we can crowdsource data from the ground up and become the biggest biobank in the world, covering data from active users, we will provide the information needed to crack this research problem.
What are some key achievements and future plans?
We’re still in the pre-seed stage, building our stack, but our goal is to provide crowdsourced data from the ground up for decentralized science research around aging and longevity. We believe that the biggest thing missing right now is holistic data on fully active and healthy individuals. The best biobank today is in the UK, but it’s still not representative of the global population—it’s biased in terms of initiatives and gender concerns. We know this. We think one way to solve this problem is by crowdsourcing data from individuals around the world. That’s our mission: solving aging with data.
If you had unlimited resources, what dream project would you embark on?
The project I’m currently working on already needs unlimited resources, so I wouldn’t do anything different. A lot of younger founders embark on startup projects with the idea of making one exit after another, but I’m approaching this project with the idea of leaving a legacy. This is my last project, after which I intend to travel the world and be an ambassador for longevity and reducing aging.
I want to set up the stack and continue to evangelize it for as long as possible. We all have many other things we want to do in life—other lives we want to live, right? Whether it’s thinking about our family, kids (as is the case for me), or the contributions we can make to society. It’s a shame that we accumulate all this wisdom and then just die. What if we could accumulate this wisdom and transfer it to others, increasing the global wisdom of people? We talk about AI and augmenting ourselves and things like that, so I believe we’re living in exciting times. I want to live as long as possible. Realistically, if we crack aging in this lifetime, like I certainly hope we will, I’ll become a traveling salesman evangelizing longevity to everyone. (Laughs.)
How long do you want to live?
Forever, I guess, is the automatic answer to that. You never know what future you’ll want, but I can’t imagine ever not wanting to be alive. Life is fun, and being dead means you don’t even get a chance to have fun. Life isn’t always perfect, but even when it’s not, you can hope for improvement and work toward it. So, I don’t see why anyone would want to die, although the option is always there. But yes, I would say “forever” is my simple answer to that.
