Death Clock launches free nationwide blood testing to democratize longevity health data

Speaker 1: Let me tell you about Public, investing for those tickets seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries, and more with great customer service. Our next guest is Brent Franson from DeathClock. He's the founder and CEO. To the show, Brent. How are you doing? I'm well. Thanks for having me. Please introduce yourself and the company. Tell us a little bit about DeathClock.

Speaker 9: Yeah. We trained in AI on 1,200 longevity studies to predict how long you're going to live originally, and then the model was predicting the exact day you would die. We started sharing that and people either love it or hate it. Want to see the exact day they'll die. But more importantly, the model builds a plan, you know, to live longer. It's not just about when you're going to die. Is this

Speaker 1: a nod to metalocalypse from Adult Swim?

Speaker 9: No. It's not. Although, that's one of the most the most common questions the most common responses on social about metalocalypse Yeah. And then just about the, like, religious, you know, only God can tell you when you're gonna die. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Is this rage bait? Are you intentionally framing this? Because you could have called it like like the longevity optimizer. But death clock, it I don't think they would have gotten nearly as many users. I agree. But what are what what are your opinions about? I mean, I've literally, like, lived this as well. So I'm not I'm not actually, you know, saying that this is bad or anything, but I'm just wondering about how conscious the decision is to to use a word like death because liquid death, same thing where it's this aggressive name. It draws an attention. What are your thoughts on that as like an attention mechanism?

Speaker 9: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a stoic component to it. And so I do think that there is, I don't know, some good reason to be honest with ourselves about the fact that we're gonna die. But the real answer is, I don't know, distribution really matters. It's hard to make noise. And so we wanted to be really provocative. So our goal is very much, you know, I don't know, the Howard Stern ilk of look, love us or hate us, just don't be apathetic about what we're doing. No, no, I think it's a good strategy for the modern era. Talk about the new launch. You launched free nationwide

Speaker 2: blood testing. Sounds good. Too good to be true.

Speaker 9: What's the catch? Yeah, it's not. People are really concerned about their data and I get it. We don't do anything with the data. We don't share or sell the data. But I think what's happened is we have a lot of these blood testing companies that do all of this kitchen sink blood testing and they charge you a lot of money. And the reality is blood testing is commoditized. LabCorp and Quest have existed for a long time. These tests are not that expensive. And the set of tests that you really need to understand heart health, metabolic health, inflammation, those are pretty inexpensive tests. And so from an acquisition perspective for us, it made sense to say, look, let's give away a test. You can get a sense of the platform and how good the plan that it generates for you is. And then we think you'll do more testing and you'll go deeper and you'll convert to premium, but giving away a basic test, it's in the tens of dollars. This stuff is not as Okay, expensive as people

Speaker 2: and how many biomarkers does the free test give you?

Speaker 9: The free test gives you about 50, but this whole number of biomarkers thing, it's the wrong way to think about this kind of testing. And so I think we've gotten into this place where we think, okay, you know, 150 biomarkers is better than 50 biomarkers. And that's not necessarily true. I mean, when you run these blood tests, they've got about a ninety five percent accuracy rate. So when you start just testing for everything, even asymptomatically, you're cranking up the odds of a false positive that you've got to go chase down with your doc. Then you're in some diagnostic process that actually carries some risk. So it's 50, you can do all of that testing with us, but it's more about getting the right tests. I mean, really understanding the right things about your heart health, your metabolic health, making sure you're doing the right cancer screening.

Speaker 1: I wouldn't get you caught up. There's like a power law in efficacy of biomarkers and there's also probably a lot of correlation between some of those longer tail biomarkers.

Speaker 2: Okay, so someone comes in, technically you're having to fork over tens of dollars to get them a free test, and you're betting that some meaningful percentage of them will be like, this service is cool, I'll stick around and access other services. So it sounds like as close as possible to a free lunch, which I like.

Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean it really is free. There's no gotcha in it. I mean you do have to say, no, I wanna take an Alzheimer's, I don't wanna look for the Alzheimer's gene. I don't wanna do more advanced cardiac testing. All of those things require you to upgrade. But I think the future is one in which we're kind of acting as our own personal doctors. We've got an AI that's got all of our health data. And then we order the tests very surgically that we need at the times that we need them. We're not just kitchen sink doing 15 vials you know, every six every six months. Like, okay, I should go look at my liver health because of a medication I'm taking and you shouldn't need a doctor to do all of that. And so that's what we're trying to make available mass market. We're not going to be the high end solution.

Speaker 1: What legally can only a doctor do these days?

Speaker 9: Well, medications, cancer screens, but I mean, testing. So there is a But

Speaker 1: I mean, obviously blood testing happens with labs, so those are licensed. But then in terms of the interpretation of the tests, that can sort of be democratized with AI and individual self serve products?

Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, we have to disclaim that we're not a doctor and you need to speak to your doctor about any of these results, but the barriers are coming down in lab testing. I mean, so every lab order that goes through DeathClock, it has a doctor's name on it. It goes through an approval process, but it's very fast and you don't need to speak directly to the doctor because there's really no risk for most of these tests. What were you doing before this? I was the CEO of a company called Euclid Analytics, a benchmark and NEA backed business. Was acquired by WeWork about six months before WeWork imploded. It was a crazy, crazy ride. It's wild. Well

Speaker 2: I'm so curious what Adam Neumann had in store.

Speaker 9: WeHealth maybe? Oh, yeah. I don't know. He was a he was a he was a crazy charismatic guy. He was one of those guys He's he's still alive, by the way. Yeah. Well, yes. He's still in. Like, he's dead. You would go sit and he would talk for two hours in these all hands. Wow. And it would feel like it was fifteen minutes. But the day he showed up to an all hands in a suit, we all looked around like, oh, we're screwed.

Speaker 2: That's on the show. Talk to him. Question. Biological age. How should consumers read into it? It seems like there's this race to the bottom in biological age where the platforms have an incentive to rate someone as a lower biological age because they're more likely to flex it on social media or to their friends. And then the other question I have is, is that just comparing your labs to the average American? And we know the average American is deeply unhealthy. So is it even when if I'm like I'm 30 years old, if my biological age is 25, is that basically just saying like you are healthier than the average American who is deeply unhealthy?

Speaker 1: Recently did one of those tests and it said I have the mind of a five year old biologically. We probably do this joke about it. It's funny every time. It time. Gets Every time.

Speaker 9: So it is gamed and I think there are some companies that are pretty reckless with that. They're telling you that you're younger than any real, it's called a phenotypic age is what would be kind of the fancy name for it would actually tell you. And so I think that's a little concerning that people are doing that. Where it comes from, there's a researcher at Yale who produced the most valid calculation of biological age and it takes nine biomarkers. And it's a little bit fancier than just comparing you to average. But I think that's directionally right. And so I wouldn't put too much stock in biological age. I would take very seriously heart health markers, metabolic markers, inflammatory markers. And these are the basics. It's like know what your LDL is, know what your hemoglobin A1c is, know what your HSCRP is, C reactive protein is going give you a sense of inflammation. If you're paying attention to those things, you're going to do way more than caring too much about a biological age.

Speaker 2: What's your date?

Speaker 9: Oh, yeah. How long have you been? My date is Yeah. So mine's at 78. It's like 02/16/2065. I mean, it's weird to get an actual date, but the average user has ten to twelve years that they can add. So the model's also producing how much longer it thinks you can live. And then anytime your health data is updated, the calculation recalculates. So my date changes every day. But when I started, it was '78. I partied a little too much. How do you pitched a partnership with Nas Daily? Are you familiar with this YouTuber?

Speaker 1: Facebook creator? He wear he's obsessed with this concept. He wears a t shirt that has a percentage loading bar for how far he is through his life based on life expectancy. And it's all a message about, you know, like, every day. But he gets, like, hundreds of billions of views or millions of lots of views. Very, very popular creator. Would be a very logical sponsorship maybe one day.

Speaker 9: Yeah. We should talk to them. I mean, I think the the reality is is, like, we're all gonna die,

Speaker 1: and we're gonna just be Not me. Built different, but continue.

Speaker 9: We're we are all gonna die no matter what people are gonna tell you, and there are things you can do to live longer. But

Speaker 2: No. Sorry.

Speaker 9: We're having too much fun. Bonnie never sleeps. You shouldn't either. I I hope you're right, actually. I really, really hope you're right. Say you're not AGI pills. Yeah. Not AGI pills. We're

Speaker 1: going to cure everything. No, I think you're right. I think just reframing mentally around what it means to be healthy, giving people another visualization on what is typically just a bunch of random nanometers to deciliters. Like it's a bunch of random stats. Also why people are getting

Speaker 2: health information constantly, at least I am. Take this somewhere. Do this or that. I've always been into experimenting with different protocols and things like that, but sometimes you need to kind of jolt people. Yeah. You know, so Well, I think it's fine if you're experimenting so long as you're

Speaker 9: getting the basics right. I mean, I think if you're getting a full body scan but not getting colonoscopies, that's wrong. I wish I could throw, you know, throw the X up. But if you're like, you've done the colonoscopy and you've done the mammograms and you've done everything, then like, okay, fine, maybe get the full body scan. And then on the experiment, you got to be careful. You know, the story of thalidomide, the doctors were prescribing that off label to pregnant women and then the babies were being born with like hands on their

Speaker 1: stomachs. Really, really gross.

Speaker 3: Yeah. So you gotta, you know, the experimenting

Speaker 9: can be a little bit, I think we're a little casual about the experimenting. I'm not saying don't do it, but Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time Very chat with us fascinating. Thanks for

Speaker 2: for filling filling us us in, in, bud. Fascinating company. And, yeah, free free blood tests out there. Go go. Death

Speaker 1: potentially a skill issue. Don't do it. Anyway, thank you so much. We agree we we all agree to disagree on that. Thanks, guys. We'll see if we die or not. I hope you're right. Yeah. See you back here in seventy years. Goodbye. Cheers, Brent.