#139: 🧬 What Would I Invest in? My Longevity Thesis

My Two Cents on Investing in Healthspan, Longevity Tech, and the Future of Aging Well

Hey Friends,

Every week, I write about the science of longevity. But this week, I want to flip the script:

What would I invest in if I were building a longevity portfolio?

I’ve been asked this question by scientists, founders, and fund managers alike.

Not because I run a fund but because I sit at the intersection of research, entrepreneurship, and real-world impact.

Here’s how I think about it.

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💬 In this note:

• 🧬 What Would I Invest in? My Longevity Investment Thesis

• 📚 Elsewhere

• ⚡️ FedEx

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#139: 🧬 What Would I Invest in? My Longevity Investment Thesis

By 2050, over 2.1 billion people, more than 20% of the global population, will be over 60.

That’s a seismic shift with enormous implications.

Aging populations bring rising healthcare costs, labor shortages in elder care, and mounting pressure on pension systems.

Governments and policymakers are taking notice.

The challenge is clear: ensuring that these extra years are filled with vitality and independence rather than illness and dependency.

I don’t believe in silver bullets. I believe in systems and the tools that nudge them toward resilience.

If I were investing in the future of longevity, I’d look for startups that:

1. Prioritize healthspan

   I care about making 85 feel like 45.
   

2. Have a reasonable druggable approach to lifespan extension

   Taking a drug every day of your life with the promise to add a few more years to your life is daunting. If the science backs short-term interventions, or the intervention can be in on/off cycles, I’m listening.

3. Focus on upstream prevention.

   That means earlier detection and better diagnostics before decline sets in. Even better backed by a healthcare and governmental system which incentives prevention.
   

4. Integrate neuroscience and metabolic health.

   This is the decade of the brain. It’s the last organ in our body that is truly unknown.

   The interventions we can develop to influence the brain are not just limited to pharmaceutical interventions, non-pharma interventions like VR, AR, robotics, visual and auditory stimuli, can all influence the brain.

   Furthermore, the brain and body are a feedback loop. I’d invest in tools that protect both, think cognitive biomarkers, neuroplasticity diagnostics, nutrition & gut-health platforms.

5. Bridge hard science with real behavior.
   It’s not enough to publish a paper. Can you translate it into a protocol someone actually follows?

   That’s where tech, UX, and narrative medicine come in. And this is something I’m personally really passionate about. :)

6. Are built with trust, not hype.
   Longevity is becoming a buzzword. I’m looking for founders who respect complexity, not just chase valuations.

   TBH, I am skeptical when I see an ex-Uber, ex-Amazon, ex-banking app founder announcing they are working on the next microbiome/longevity/biotech company. Yes, they’ve brought in a scientific co-founder, but….biotech companies are complex, and slower to build than SaaS and other technologies. Do they have the stamina for it??

   I’m looking for founders that know what they are getting into and not just riding the hype train when it comes to longevity.

🔍 Where I’d Place Bets

If I had a fund, here are the categories I’d be bullish on:

• Small Molecule Lifespan Extension Drugs

  • Think small molecules that can enhance DNA error correction, repair telomeres, boost ribosome activity.

  • My PhD & background studied small molecule drug discovery - if you have something here, I’m always keen to chat.

• Elderly Care

  • Companies focused on improving mobility, hearing, seeing and communicating for older adults

• Financial Planning / Future of (elderly) work / Lifelong learning

  • With extended longevity, people must rely on retirement savings and pensions longer. This makes financial planning, later retirement, lifelong learning, career switching inevitable realities that need solutions.

• Next-gen at-home diagnostics

  • Biomarkers that go beyond blood

• Psychedelics for trauma + aging-related cognition

  • Especially those focused on female biology
    

• AI-driven personalization of health protocols

  • Yes, including nutrition - but no more fake wellness dashboards, please
    

• Social tech that reduces isolation

  • Because loneliness is a mortality risk factor too

  • This can be social infrastructure that gets us connecting IRL and not just online

• Neurotech for performance and prevention

  • Think stroke recovery meets healthy aging
    

Let’s talk about it in more detail

1. Small Molecule Lifespan Extension Drugs

I'd put a number of bets on small molecules where druggability meets proven biology and regulatory pathways already exist - Autophagy Enhancers, Epigenetic Reprogramming Molecules, and Senolytics.

And then I’d place some more farfetched bets on small molecules targeting Genomic Instability, Epigenetic Alterations, and maintaining healthy and functional proteins.

2. Elderly Care

While the longevity sector is about expanding healthspan and lifespan, we cannot forget that even if these tools become available to live in better health for longer, there may still be a portion of the population that will spend a portion of their lifetime in poor health.

Therefore, companies that aim to improve the quality of life for older adults are a worthwhile investment.

Specifically, I will place bets on companies focused on improving mobility, hearing, seeing and communicating for older adults will be essential.

Why?

Ageing includes a progressive decline in cognitive and physical functions. Until we solve the decline, there will be a percentage of the population that will need assistive technologies.

Beyond assistive technologies for medical needs, these technologies can improve or enhance the senses of healthy adults too.

A few personal reasons why I am convinced.

I’ve been following a former mentor of mine’s substack, The Open Eyed Man. Chris Mairs is a blind entrepreneur, technologist and investor.

His new substack focuses on how inclusion of blind people in technology has been terrible in his lifetime. His stories are insightful about the possibilities for the future of AI to help the blind navigate the world, and this can extrapolate to the aging population as they lose their ability to navigate the world.

Chris recently mentioned a stealth company, Hobson, a mainstream digital assistant, highly optimised for use without a visual interface with great memory and assertive potential.

As many of you who have read this newsletter for a while and saw when I dropped this reel explaining the origin of the Nina’s Notes podcast.

My father has diabetic retinopathy and is losing his vision, watching him lose his sense and ability to interact with the world has me curious about the tools out there that can act as his eyes.

I’ll be watching Hobson with the hope this could be an early answer for seniors losing their eyesight.

3. Financial Services / Future of (Elderly) Work / Lifelong Learning

Insurance and pension models will have to adapt. Should a 40-year-old with a biological age of 25 pay the same life insurance premiums as someone whose biological age is 60?

If people remain healthier for longer, retirement ages may shift. Companies might need to rethink workforce policies, reskilling initiatives, and even the traditional career arc.

How can we reskill and upskill at 65? How can we keep the wisest members of society engaged and productive through their later years?

We also need to fight ageism. If lifespan extends to 120, retiring at 65 is completely unreasonable. How are companies adapting their retirement policies and plans to accomodate a population who wants (and needs) to continue to work?

4. Next-gen at-home diagnostics

I’m a big fan of at-home healthcare. I believe that our current healthcare system is bulky and disjointed which creates alot of frustrationg for th patient, doctor and everyone in between. Getting the tests you need requires visiting multiple clinics and testing centers. The system doesn’t work smoothly, and oftentimes the patient has call to ask for their results.

The more info we can gather on our health from home, track and monitor, I see as a positive. This can be in the form of wearables, scans, smart toilets you name it.

However, the diagnostics need to not stand alone in a silo.

To integrate with the healthcare system is absolutely essential, and to have doctors wanting to see this information from patients.

5. Psychedelics for trauma + aging-related cognition

I believe that psychedelics can influence healthspan and lifespan by boosting neuroplasticity, and by alleviating trauma and pain which can affect overall health, wellness and longevity.

For example, I recently covered a study which found that psilocybin helped reduce movement symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease in Nina’s Notes #134.

I also covered psychedelics for women’s health a while back and believe the opportunities here to heal PTSD, trauma and related women’s health issues that are rooted in these issues has huge potential.

We are only beginning to scratch the surface here, and I will be keeping my eye on the clinical trials in this space.

6. AI-driven personalization of health protocols

There are a handful of stealth companies that are nailing the connective tissue bringing together the provider, payer, patient and doing so with full data privacy and proper AI-regulation, which I am keeping my eye on. However, for those that are out of stealth I’m yet to be blown away - but I know someone is going to nail it.

7. Social tech that reduces isolation

Can someone please make the anti-TikTok / anti-instagram? In a world where we feel more connected than ever, we are actually in a world of lonliness, comparison and self-isolation.

As children we have endless social activities to be a part of - sports leagues, dance classes, girl/boy scouts, a club for any activity or interest we can dream of, and the in-person infrastructure to support it.

However, as we age, these things become harder to find, or harder to participate in, or don’t exist at all.

I’d like to see a platform for activities for adults - not just fitness, but much beyond that. Think MeetUp meets ClassPass.

8. Neurotech for performance and prevention

• I’m keeping my eye on the following:

  • Closed-Loop Neuromodulation

  • Digital Therapeutics with Gaming Mechanics

  • Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Platforms

• Also, companies starting with clear medical applications (stroke, epilepsy, ADHD) where they can establish safety profiles and clinical evidence that can later support wellness applications, much like how continuous glucose monitors moved from diabetes management to metabolic optimization - and then we can move into cognitive optimization.

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📚 Book of the Week

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Rating: ★★★★☆

This is a story of the place where you go when you die, and what happens there.

Heaven, or in this case - Elsewhere. Is where humans, and animals, go.

It’s a world where you age in reverse, and have a chance to meet people you never would meet in Here in the living world.

Elsewhere follows Liz, a recent victim of a hit-and-run bicycle accident and her journey down the nile river into Elsewhere.

At first I was irritated with Liz. It took her a long time to realize that she was dead. Then she spiraled into a depression, spending too much time watching her family on Earth, and trying to make contact with the living.

My favorite part of the book is when Liz asks “How can Earth be so close? How can we watch them” and a Elsewhere resident tells her that Earth is like a tree, the leaves as rarely concerned with that is happening in the roots, but the roots and branches are firmly connected.

To think that death and life are connected by the strong trunk of a tree is very moving, with unlimited paths in life and in death to experience.

This one is definitely written for young adults, and at times is a bit frustrating in the character development. But, after time, you warm to Liz and the family she makes in Elsewhere.

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⚡️ Check This Out

Photo by Bannon Morrissy on Unsplash

Fred Smith, the absolute genius behind FedEx, passed away a few weeks ago at 80.

And honestly? His story is wild.

It’s a story I share often being a Vegas local.

Picture this: you're a college student at Yale, and you write a term paper about time-sensitive shipping. Your professor gives you a mediocre grade. Fast forward to 1971, and that same "mediocre" paper becomes the foundation for a company worth $54 billion.

In the early days, FedEx was hemorrhaging money. Down to their last $5,000.

Smith was so dejected by investor rejections that he did something absolutely bonkers: he flew to Las Vegas, hit the blackjack tables, and won $27,000.

What did he do with his Vegas winnings?

He put it straight back into the company.

Sometimes I wonder if that Yale professor ever realized they'd graded what would become one of the most transformative business ideas of our time.

Smith didn't just build a shipping company.

He created an entire ecosystem that touches millions of lives daily.

That package at your door today? There's a good chance it traveled through the network that started as a college term paper.

What an incredible reminder that sometimes the ideas that change the world don't look impressive on paper.

P.S. Have you noticed the arrow in the whitespace between the Ex in the FedEx logo? You’ll never be able to unsee it now

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🗣️ Looking for the Nina’s Notes Podcast?

It’s available on: 🟢 Spotify, 🟣 Apple Podcasts, 🟠 Substack Podcasts

On the Nina’s Notes Podcast I interview entrepreneurs who are building products based on the science that I write about in the Nina’s Notes Newsletter.

You’ll also find voice overs of all the weekly Nina’s Notes.

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