In this new episode of Epistémé Entrepreneur, our guest is Dr Tobias Reichmuth, PhD in Business Administration. Dr Reichmuth is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and now Founding Partner and CEO at Maximon, a Longevity Company Builder based in Zug- Switzerland.
Problem
You may think the biggest challenge for Humanity is to find solutions against climate change and pollution.
Know that there is a phenomenon whose apocalyptic consequences for our species will be 1000 times more devastating than climate change!
This phenomenon is the ageing of Humanity.
Imagine a world where 8 out of 10 people are over 80 yo.
Imagine a world where these seniors would be suffering from multiple diseases:
cancers, diabetes, liver failure, hypertension, atherosclerosis and heart attack, stroke, Parkinson, kidney failure and incontinence, lung deficiency, Alzheimer, sarcopenia, dementia, cataracts, malnutrition, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, immune system failure and infections ...
The incidence of all of these diseases increases exponentially with age.
These diseases are the leading causes of what make the last years of your life miserable, and are the leading causes of death in old age.
Imagine yourself in 2050, you are 40 years old and you are surrounded in your home, in your neighbourhood, in your work, in your city... only by bedridden elderly people!
This apocalyptic world is coming. In 2050 years, the old people will outnumber the active people in most Western developed countries. The developing countries are also affected by the ageing of their populations, they follow the same path as the Western countries.
Advances in medicine but also in agriculture, supply chain and logistics have enabled us to overcome infant mortality and increase longevity. But longevity has a cost, beyond 50 years old, appear many diseases caused by ageing (while ageing starts at your conception, it is well fought by your physiology ... until it fails).
In short, the longer is your life expectancy, the more old (senescent) dysfunctional cells accumulate in your body. Senescent cells cause your tissues and organs to malfunction... driving you to certain death!
The main factors accelerating your ageing:
Physical inactivity, poor quality and quantity of sleep, exposure to violent or chronic stress, chronic consumption of tobacco, alcohol, drugs and xenobiotics, chronic exposure to environmental pollution, ultra-processed and junk food.
Current solutions and why they are unsatisfactory
You can to some extent try to change your lifestyle (work out, audit your quality of sleep, change your diet in favour of a healthy diet, stop smoking, stop drinking alcohol and other toxic substances), but it will be more difficult for you to overcome an environment in which you have to live. And you can't fight your genetics with simple changes in your lifestyle.
Modern medicine is based on specialities treating independently each disease. This approach requires many specialities: endocrinology diabetology, gastroenterology, neurology, rheumatology, pneumology, cardiology, psychiatry, nephrology, oncology .... .
Each specialist will try to limit the symptomatic consequences of the cause of causes which is ageing. Medicine based on specialists also leads to a lack of communication between the specialities. When geriatricians enter the scene, their holistic or systemic approach is crucial, but it is far too late.
Ideal Solution
We need to consider ageing as a disease, the mother of all diseases, the cause of causes!
We want a medicine able to slow down ageing or stop it as soon as possible, or even achieve a certain level of rejuvenation at the cellular and molecular levels.
About a decade ago, scientists identified the 9 cellular and molecular reasons for ageing. The rate of ageing is controlled by genetic pathways and biochemical processes in cells. We age, because our cells age and the body systems start to deteriorate.
“The Hallmarks of Aging”
The good news is now that we know the reasons which lead to ageing and science has a good understanding of what needs to be done to tackle the major hallmarks of ageing.
For each of them, there is a specific approach to address the impact on our body's decline. However, while for every one of the hallmarks, theoretical interventions exist, practical interventions are not ready for all of them. Therefore, there is a free space of opportunities for startup companies to bring us new anti-ageing solutions.
What needs to be done to fight ageing?
In this new episode of Epistémé Entrepreneur, our guest is Dr Tobias Reichmuth, PhD in Business Administration. Dr Reichmuth is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and now Founding Partner and CEO at Maximon, a Longevity Company Builder based in Zug- Switzerland.
Dr Reichmuth is building companies since he has been 21 years old. He exited his first start-up in 2003, thereafter built Europe’s leading climate-change infrastructure fund SUSI Partners, cofounded Crypto Finance Group and The Singularity Group and has invested in more than 20 start-ups. In 2020 he has launched the Longevity Investors Conference together with Marc P. Bernegger. Tobias is a “lion” at Switzerland’s TV investor-Show “Höhle der Löwen” (Shark-Tank) and aims at a healthy 120 years of life.
Maximon empowers entrepreneurs to build impactful, science-based and scalable companies providing healthy ageing and rejuvenation solutions.
As a company builder, Maximon identifies the most promising business opportunities in the field of longevity and builds companies from scratch. Maximon provides proven structures, financing, and a unique and inspiring playground for entrepreneurs to build a longevity venture.
With a team of globally successful entrepreneurs and venture investors, Maximon has built a venture building process that bridges the gap between science and business.
Bonus
Ten simple rules for building a successful science start-up by Tobias Reichmuth & Collin Y. Ewald => https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8989209/
10 Golden Rules for Building a Longevity Company - Tobias Reichmuth
E² - Épistémê Entrepreneur