'Hugs only', peptides and blood pacts: Inside Superpower's $51m bet your doctor is obsolete
Australian Max Marchione runs one of Silicon Valley’s hottest AI health startups and greets everyone with a hug. He also regularly injects his employees with experimental compounds.
Max Marchione greets me with a hug in the lobby of an elegant Art Deco building in downtown San Francisco. “Hugs only” over handshakes is company policy.
“Hugging has proven health benefits,” Marchione informs me.
Marchione, an Australian entrepreneur in his 20s, is the co-founder and chief executive of Superpower, a fast-growing health technology company betting the future of medicine will be built not by hospitals or doctors, but by algorithms, biomarkers and a class of experimental compounds known as peptides.
When I visit, he has just come from a meeting with Alby Churven, a 14-year-old fellow Australian who went viral after applying to Y Combinator with a video.
Marchione is energised.
"He's treating it like a learning experience," he tells me. "I told him — 'no. Treat it like a serious opportunity. Go for it'."
