March 19, 2025 • 23 mins
Paul Corvino sits down with Chris Mirabile, CEO of NOVOS.
Novos is a company that specializes in anti-aging and longevity products. They offer a range of supplements, tests, and services aimed at slowing down the aging process and improving overall health and well-being.
Novos is a company that specializes in anti-aging and longevity products. They offer a range of supplements, tests, and services aimed at slowing down the aging process and improving overall health and well-being.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is CEOs you should know with division president of iHeartMedia,
Paul Corvino.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Today I'm here with Chris Moraboli, the CEO of Novos,
a public benefit corporation devoted to improving longevity and help.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome, Chris, thank you. It's great to be here Chris.
Before we get started and we learn a little bit
about your journey and your product and your service, I'd
like to do a quick rapid fire Q and A
to get the brain working and mouth movie you ready,
Let's try. Okay, here you go, beat your ski, vacation beach,
Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Beatles, Are Stones, Beatles,
(00:41):
Star Wars or Godfather I'm Italian Godfather, Sean Connery or
Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig. Celebrity people say you remind.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Them of oh boy, Christiano Ronaldo.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've gotten I could see that, okay, which is it's
perfect for the segment that we're going to be talking
about longevity and health products and services and looking at you,
you're the perfect specimen of health and beauty. You can't
see it on the radio, but he's a handsome guy
in tremendous shape, so hopefully we'll get some advice so
(01:20):
that I could try to look closer to what you
look like when I'm done with all of this.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Thank you, thank you. That's very kind of you.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So let's talk a little bit about your journey. Where
are you from? Whid you grow up?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I'm from Long Island, New York. I grew up in
the town called Manhasset. From there, I have new Italians
from New York. By the way, here you are as well, yes,
I am?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Well yeah, So then I moved to New York City
to study at NYU, and I lived in Manhattan for
basically almost twenty years. And then it was during COVID
that I decided to move down to Florida, not too
far from the Miami area. And now I'm back and
forth between the two because I have friends and family
(02:00):
all in New York, but for the most part, I'm
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now, Okay, So you went to NYU, had your first job.
What was your first job, first way in business, and
how did it lead you to where you are today? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Man, I mean my very first job was when I
was twelve years old. My dad got me a job.
It only lasted a week because he had me picking
weeds at a garbage company and he wanted to teach
me that I should work harder in school and that
I don't want to have a job like that, essentially,
and so that got me focused more on school and
(02:32):
academics and so on. And actually, while still in high school,
something that was a pivotal, pivotal event for me that
led to me starting this company was I was on
a school trip in New York City and I suddenly
had a seizure and it turned out that it was
caused by a brain tumor.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
And so give me this again. You were in school
at NYU, and.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
No, this was in high school. So I was sixteen,
Massa High school Manhasset Manhasset High School, YEP. And I
was at the Federal Reserve Bank on the school trip,
listening to someone speak, and I suddenly got dizzy and nauseous.
Next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor
with blood all over my shirt because I had severed
my tongue from a seizure, and they rushed me to
(03:14):
the emergency room. I had had these before, nothing, no
symptoms at all, And that was actually I was very healthy,
physically active. I started exercising and weightlifting when I was twelve.
I was eating a healthy diet by comparison to my classmates.
So it was a total shock to everyone. And I
had to wait for my parents to come because I
(03:34):
was a miner. But eventually they gave me the cat
scan and they found that I had, as the doctor
put it, a large mass above my left ear. It
was larger than the golf ball, and it was a
tumor that had been growing in me for years, and
they had to do emergency surgery and fortunately that surgery
worked out well. Although if I forget someone's name, I'd
(03:55):
just blame it on having half of my brain missing.
But but yeah, it was a life changing experience. It
made me really think about my life, what I wanted
to get out of this life, change my perspective on everything,
and ultimately it eventually blossomed into what is my now
company focused on extending health spend and lifespan.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, yeah, tell us about that. She went to YU.
What did you study? Inn Yu?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I had three majors finance, Economics, and international business, and
I actually my first year out of college went into
yep Stern School Business Yep. My first year out of college,
I spent in private equity in finance, and it was
not for me. Sitting in front of a computer and
doing financial modeling and cap tables and so on. It
(04:42):
just didn't appeal to me. So at the same time,
I began working on a startup concept that I entered
into the Stern Business Plan competition and I became the
youngest winner of that competition, and I went off to
start my first entrepreneurial venture, which I thought I would do,
you know, very well. In the first year or two,
I was looking at people like Mark Zuckerberg, who had
(05:04):
you know, back then, Facebook was relatively new, but it
was value that of billion dollars, and I was thinking, oh,
I'll be the next Mark, and it did not work
out that way.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
What was that first company?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It was called hot List. It was also a social network.
That's part of the reason I was I was looking
at Mark. But Facebook originally was a college exclusive network,
but then they opened up and so we were creating
once again a college exclusive network. But our spin on
it was to focus on real world social life. So
what's happening at the venues nearby and whether the hottest
(05:36):
events nearby and giving giving you it like a virtual
peak into the events and venues in terms of pictures
of the expected crowd, the guy the girl ratio, which
of course is important for a twenty one year old
guy to know. So that was that was the concept.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So from there there it was Okay, that business didn't
work out. What was the next? What was your next adventure? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, in that business, it had a lot of ups
and downs, and like some of the ups included me
opening NASDAC and being all over the billboards of New
York City. And we raised millions of dollars for that
venture and we scoaled to over two hundred and twenty
million people's social plans. But in the ends, you know,
all of the.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Investors, how many years did it last? Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Man, it was I would put it out about five years,
five to six years. Back then investors all said, don't monetize,
focus on user growth only Facebook.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Just get users exactly, figure how to monetize exactly, and.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Which you know, in retrospect, we should have monetize first
because our issue was was was liquidity adequate capital? And
eventually we ran out of it. We had the opportunity
to be acquired, and unfortunately the company that said they
would like to acquire us ended up just trying to
(06:56):
copy us.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So from there this this ends, which is always very difficult.
It was your baby, there was Is there a point
when you're saying, okay, I could put more in you
get so committed to a product I've seen this before,
and to a business that you have that you can't
like shoot the dead horse. Was there a point where
that was difficult and you had to make that decision.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
We had to do it because we ran out of capital.
So we had the choice to make was do we
raise another round of financing to keep the business alive
or do we go for the acquisition. But we couldn't
manage both. It's just two time consuming to do both.
And we discussed it with our board of directors and
investors and we decided that we should go for the acquisition.
And unfortunately that took longer than it should have, about
(07:43):
four months. And at the same time, Hurricane Sandy happened
in New York City. I couldn't stay in my apartment.
I had to move out, and it was a whole
bunch of things happening simultaneously, and ultimately, when they decided
or the potential acquirer said we're going to create our
own version. That was it. We had no money left
and we had to tell our employees at that point.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, and so how did you transition? How did you
wind up getting into the health and longevity business? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So, first of all, like going through that experience was
difficult because my entire identity, my self identity, my ego
was invested into the company. Whenever I would say go
home to my hometown high school, friends would say, hey,
I saw you on television, like, how's your business doing?
I see it's doing great. And the answer was, actually
(08:32):
the company shut down, and it taught me a lot
of lessons and humility. Really, and now I don't I
have more balance in my life than I did back then.
And you know, mind you, I was in my twenties
now I'm forties, so I've learned a lot. But there
was a good amount of time between that company and
(08:54):
starting Novos, which was about five years ago that I
started it. In between I was working on other startup
ventures and consulting other startups as well. But in my
personal time, I was always researching health. It's something that
has been my personal passion since I was twelve, and
started even before that when I was twelve and exercising,
but yeah, when I had the seizure, it evolved. It
(09:16):
went from a superficial interest in health. When I was twelve,
I just wanted to be in good shape and be
attractive to the girls in school. And when I was sixteen,
I realized how delicate life was and the idea of
biological optimization to avoid disease and to feel the best
that I could. And so I started to do a
(09:38):
lot of research, experimenting with supplements and diet plans and
sleep regimens and all of these different things. And I
would go to this website called PubMed, which is the
government listed scientific studies. It's basically accumulating all of the
scientific studies in one database. And I would have questions,
and I would go on PubMed and I would look
for the answers from all of these scientifics studies. Mind you,
(10:01):
I'm not a scientist, but when you start reading enough
of these studies, you start to pick up on it
over years and years and years, and eventually I came
across a scientific study called the Hallmarks of Aging, and
this is now considered the seminal longevity research paper. Like
the world renowned scientists refer to this paper and it's
(10:22):
the Hallmarks.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Of Aging, The Hallmarks of Aging.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It was in a journal called Cell, a prestigious journal,
and it essentially broke down the biological reasons why we
get older in the first place, and at the time
identified nine different reasons, things like stem cell rejuvenation, mitochondrial dysfunction,
are epigenome, which is which genes are turned on and
(10:45):
off and that changes over time, telemere shortening, and so on.
So it was a total of nine of them. And
when I came across this, I had an epiphany. I
came to realize, first of all, that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I had those By the way, right now.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
All of us do to one degree or another. It's
a question of can we slow down the process essentially,
But I came to realize that, first of all, scientists
were deconstructing the reason why we age. I think most
of us, myself included, think of aging as it's just
this inevitable part of life. We almost think it's like
programmed into us. And to some degree it might be
(11:23):
programmed into us, but that doesn't mean that we can't
change that program and actually slow down the process. The
other thing I came to realize was that the number
one risk factor for disease, so that includes brain tumor
and cancer for that matter, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and dementia, Parkinson's, glaucoma.
(11:43):
You go through the list of all of these chronic illnesses,
the number one risk factor is aging. Even more than
cigarette smoke causes lung cancer, Aging does by multiple times.
So the question then evolved, too, Well, if we are
understanding the component pieces of aging, and we're understanding that
aging causes these diseases, what can we do to try
(12:05):
to slow down the degradation of these different mechanisms or
these different causes of aging. And so I started to
network with scientists in the field, and I would go
to these biotech conferences as the only non MD or
PhD there, But I knew enough keywords to be able
to drop into the conversations and ask at least I
thought intelligent questions. And I came to understand that the
(12:29):
scientists were optimistic about natural ingredients that could potentially have
a favorable effect on the aging process. And that was
enough for me to say, there's nothing like this on
the market. All of the research that's being done right
now is really on this really advanced biotech approach to aging,
things like modifying our genes or inventing a new pharmaceutical drug,
(12:53):
and these are things that are unattainable for most of us.
They're either far out into the future or they're going
to be incredibly expensive and they won't be accessible for
the majority of people. So my question was, what can
I do now, What can I get my family and
my loved ones, my friends to use, and then by extension,
what can I share with others? And eventually decided to
(13:14):
start the company and bring a lot of these world
renowned scientists together to help work on the formulation the company.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
At this point, you needed to raise money, get us staff,
find the location, tell us about that process. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So at first, I so I had spent enough years
as an entrepreneur to understand I was proficient in enough
aspects of building a business for me to do it
good enough. So that included marketing and PR and the
even creating the website and the e commerce, the design
and branding, working with the scientists for the formulations. I
(13:55):
at first was actually creating the formulation.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
We did that though you had to raise money.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Nope, I didn't raise money. So I did all of
this on my own. I had a little bit of
money saved from previous you know work, so enough to
support myself. But I was then able to do all
of this stuff on my own, even creating, for example,
prototype formulations in the basement of my parents home. I
(14:19):
would go visit and have everything shipped there, and then
I would create these formulations and then ship them out
to people to.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Tell scientists and families basement.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Right, Yeah, basically, basically I would send it to New York,
but the departments are so small there I didn't want
to clog it up, so so I did that at first,
and I got pretty far with these these prototype formulations
and testing with people and having a website and all
of this stuff, and then that was enough for me
to then start to raise. And I first went to
friends and family and I did a raise of so you.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Had a little track record ar how the product was working, yes,
and did you clinical studies?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
And I also had the top scientists with us as advisors,
so for example, scientists from Harvard Medical School, from MIT,
from the Saul Constitute here in California, and so on.
So I started to build up this momentum and something
that clearly the market was interested in potentially purchasing. And
(15:17):
I put a very professional image behind it and had
the right names behind it, and that was enough to
get friends and family roughly about six hundred K, and
then we started to sell. And once we started to sell, so.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
This is a product more than a service.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yes, at this point, it's a product. We didn't do
clinical studies at that point, but we based it all
on previous scientific research. About five hundred scientific studies went
into the creation of this initial product, and we had
one on one conversations with these scientists, six of them
at the time, to get their opinion on each of
(15:51):
the ingredients that we were including, ingredients that they suggested
we removed from the formula, other ingredients they suggested we
consider adding. And this was therbly valuable because you can
only learn so much from a scientific paper. What I
came to realize building this business is that scientists have
so much more tacit knowledge that's not actually written in
(16:12):
the paper, that they just know from their experimentation or
from talking to each other.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And how long ago was this that you started?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
This is so I founded the company in twenty nineteen.
Twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one was really bringing on
the scientists doing the research, putting together formulations, testing those
formulations and so on. It was in twenty twenty one
January that we first launched the product, and that is
(16:39):
when we sold out in less than two weeks. We
sold out of what we thought would take us six
months to sell out of all of our product, and
the biggest challenge in the first six months was getting
enough product in stock to be able to sell and
that same July of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The product is what tell us exactly what the product is.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Sure So we we have three different formulations, but the
one we're most proud of is called Novo's Core, and
it's called Core because it's the core formulation.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's the one I have right now.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
That's the one that takes.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure it up.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
It's a powder, yes, so I can't take it out. Well,
if you have some water here, you can pour it
into the water and you shake it up. It's got
twelve ingredients in it and it's the equivalent it would
be fifteen pills if it was in pill form, but
most people don't want to swallow that many pills, So
(17:32):
we wanted to make it into something that was tasty
that people could form a habit around, the healthy habit around.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So so it looks sort of like for those listening,
like a thoroughflu packet. But it's it's it looks very nice.
It's nice, really nice packaging on it. And so you
have the powder in here and you mix this with water.
You mix it with water.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yes, we also have an unflavored version, so this is
orange flavored, naturally sweetened with stevia. Those who don't want
the sweetness, they can get an unflavored that has no
sweeten there in it. And for the unflavored, we suggest
people put it in like a protein shake or a
smoothie or a juice, yogurt oatmeal.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
How often do you take it?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I take it every day. I take it with a
meal because it'll be absorbed better if you have fat
soluble ingredients with it. And this is the very first
formula in the world designed to address all of the
mechanisms of aging. So these causes of aging that I
mentioned in that initial paper, there were nine at the time.
That was a decade ago. Those original scientists republished last
(18:32):
year and they added three more, so there's twelve causes
of aging, also known as mechanisms of aging. We're the
first formula in the world to address all twelve of them.
And you asked before about clinical studies and scientific studies.
We've actually been doing those now ever since we launched
the product, and we found, for example, incredible results that
the labs that have run these studies have been shocked
(18:54):
by how good the results have been. For example, the
very first study looked at DNA damage in human cells
from irradiation, so think of like UV rays would be irradiation,
and we reduced the DNA damage the oxidative damage by
as much as seventy seven percent, which was off the
charge for these researchers. They had done seven million dollars
worth of studies on other ingredients, including prescription drugs and
(19:18):
individual ingredients in our formula, and none of them behaved
nearly as well as this combination of ingredients, so that
was a great start. We went on to do additional
studies looking at processes known as, for example, cellular senescence.
These are zombie cells that accumulate in our bodies. It's
one of the reasons our skin wrinkles, and we reduced
(19:38):
that significantly. At the SAL Constitute, we looked at the
cellular inflammatory process known as oxytosis ferroptosis, and we reduced
that by a very significant margin, more than half as
effective as a R and D prescription drug that scientists
are working with. And more recently, we just actually a
(19:59):
few weeks ago published the results of a scientific study
looking at mice. This was done at Newcastle University in
the UK, and we extended the lifespan of aged mice
by more than any supplement ever studied. In fact, we
outperformed a lot of prescriptions. We outperformed the latest.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
How long did you extend their lives on average?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Eighteen percent?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Eighteen percent yes.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And then I think what's most relevant to listeners to
humans right is like, how does it work in humans? Well,
we did a case study, so I just wanted to
emphasize it. It wasn't a clinical trial yet. We're running
a clinical trial but that's not complete yet. But in
the case study, we measured people's rate of aging, which
is actually possible by looking at blood and measuring the
(20:48):
epigenome which I mentioned before, and we can see how
fast or slow you're aging today. And then after six
months of taking our product, what we found was that
nearly three quarters of the participate and slowed their rate
of aging by the equivalent of one month per year.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Where do you do this? Do you have offices?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So we work with an independent third party lab to
run that test for us, so we have no control
over the outcomes. We're not involved in it. I mentioned before,
the studies we've done, we outsource them to universities because
although we have a scientific team and we're a biotech
company at our core, we don't want people to question
(21:28):
the legitimacy of our results. So we outsource it to
academics and to third party laboratories and we let them
then create the studies and provide the results. So in
this case, three quarters slowed their rate of aging by
the equivalent equivalent of one month per year.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So over a period of times do you have to
take this every day? How long for people started seeing results?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So for biological rate of aging, which is really the
foundation of what we're focused on is slow down the
aging process, it took six months for us to see that,
at least on the epigenetic level, which is what we
were measured expensive is the product.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Buy just one month's supply, it's one hundred and nine
dollars per month, but if you commit to a full
year subscription, it goes down to seventy nine dollars per month.
And then it's also HSA FSA eligible, so if you
have a health Savings account, you can buy it with
pre tax dollars and that can bring it down to
less than fifty five dollars per month or less than
two dollars a day.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Tell your audience how you can get.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Novos sure, so if you go to Novoslabs dot com
you'll see our product. But also, since this is a
California audience, we're also in Airwan and some of the
Equinox locations as well.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Chris is the CEO of Novos. Once again, it's a
public benefit corporation devoted to improving longevity and health. I
think we learned a lot today. I'm looking at Chris
who said that he's forty years old and that he
would have told me he was twenty five or twenty six.
I believe it. So I think the product must be
doing something right. So and it's something that I'm I'm
(23:01):
going to actually sign up for and start using again.
This is Paul Corvino from iHeartMedia saying thanks for listening
to another episode of CEOs you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Listen to CEOs you Should Know on the iHeartRadio app
This is CEOs you should know with division president of iHeartMedia,
Paul Corvino.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Today I'm here with Chris Moraboli, the CEO of Novos,
a public benefit corporation devoted to improving longevity and help.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome, Chris, thank you. It's great to be here Chris.
Before we get started and we learn a little bit
about your journey and your product and your service, I'd
like to do a quick rapid fire Q and A
to get the brain working and mouth movie you ready,
Let's try. Okay, here you go, beat your ski, vacation beach,
Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Beatles, Are Stones, Beatles,
(00:41):
Star Wars or Godfather I'm Italian Godfather, Sean Connery or
Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig. Celebrity people say you remind.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Them of oh boy, Christiano Ronaldo.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I've gotten I could see that, okay, which is it's
perfect for the segment that we're going to be talking
about longevity and health products and services and looking at you,
you're the perfect specimen of health and beauty. You can't
see it on the radio, but he's a handsome guy
in tremendous shape, so hopefully we'll get some advice so
(01:20):
that I could try to look closer to what you
look like when I'm done with all of this.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Thank you, thank you. That's very kind of you.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
So let's talk a little bit about your journey. Where
are you from? Whid you grow up?
Speaker 1 (01:30):
I'm from Long Island, New York. I grew up in
the town called Manhasset. From there, I have new Italians
from New York. By the way, here you are as well, yes,
I am?
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Well yeah, So then I moved to New York City
to study at NYU, and I lived in Manhattan for
basically almost twenty years. And then it was during COVID
that I decided to move down to Florida, not too
far from the Miami area. And now I'm back and
forth between the two because I have friends and family
(02:00):
all in New York, but for the most part, I'm
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now, Okay, So you went to NYU, had your first job.
What was your first job, first way in business, and
how did it lead you to where you are today? Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Man, I mean my very first job was when I
was twelve years old. My dad got me a job.
It only lasted a week because he had me picking
weeds at a garbage company and he wanted to teach
me that I should work harder in school and that
I don't want to have a job like that, essentially,
and so that got me focused more on school and
(02:32):
academics and so on. And actually, while still in high school,
something that was a pivotal, pivotal event for me that
led to me starting this company was I was on
a school trip in New York City and I suddenly
had a seizure and it turned out that it was
caused by a brain tumor.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
And so give me this again. You were in school
at NYU, and.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
No, this was in high school. So I was sixteen,
Massa High school Manhasset Manhasset High School, YEP. And I
was at the Federal Reserve Bank on the school trip,
listening to someone speak, and I suddenly got dizzy and nauseous.
Next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor
with blood all over my shirt because I had severed
my tongue from a seizure, and they rushed me to
(03:14):
the emergency room. I had had these before, nothing, no
symptoms at all, And that was actually I was very healthy,
physically active. I started exercising and weightlifting when I was twelve.
I was eating a healthy diet by comparison to my classmates.
So it was a total shock to everyone. And I
had to wait for my parents to come because I
(03:34):
was a miner. But eventually they gave me the cat
scan and they found that I had, as the doctor
put it, a large mass above my left ear. It
was larger than the golf ball, and it was a
tumor that had been growing in me for years, and
they had to do emergency surgery and fortunately that surgery
worked out well. Although if I forget someone's name, I'd
(03:55):
just blame it on having half of my brain missing.
But but yeah, it was a life changing experience. It
made me really think about my life, what I wanted
to get out of this life, change my perspective on everything,
and ultimately it eventually blossomed into what is my now
company focused on extending health spend and lifespan.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, yeah, tell us about that. She went to YU.
What did you study? Inn Yu?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I had three majors finance, Economics, and international business, and
I actually my first year out of college went into
yep Stern School Business Yep. My first year out of college,
I spent in private equity in finance, and it was
not for me. Sitting in front of a computer and
doing financial modeling and cap tables and so on. It
(04:42):
just didn't appeal to me. So at the same time,
I began working on a startup concept that I entered
into the Stern Business Plan competition and I became the
youngest winner of that competition, and I went off to
start my first entrepreneurial venture, which I thought I would do,
you know, very well. In the first year or two,
I was looking at people like Mark Zuckerberg, who had
(05:04):
you know, back then, Facebook was relatively new, but it
was value that of billion dollars, and I was thinking, oh,
I'll be the next Mark, and it did not work
out that way.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
What was that first company?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
It was called hot List. It was also a social network.
That's part of the reason I was I was looking
at Mark. But Facebook originally was a college exclusive network,
but then they opened up and so we were creating
once again a college exclusive network. But our spin on
it was to focus on real world social life. So
what's happening at the venues nearby and whether the hottest
(05:36):
events nearby and giving giving you it like a virtual
peak into the events and venues in terms of pictures
of the expected crowd, the guy the girl ratio, which
of course is important for a twenty one year old
guy to know. So that was that was the concept.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So from there there it was Okay, that business didn't
work out. What was the next? What was your next adventure? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Well, in that business, it had a lot of ups
and downs, and like some of the ups included me
opening NASDAC and being all over the billboards of New
York City. And we raised millions of dollars for that
venture and we scoaled to over two hundred and twenty
million people's social plans. But in the ends, you know,
all of the.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Investors, how many years did it last? Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Man, it was I would put it out about five years,
five to six years. Back then investors all said, don't monetize,
focus on user growth only Facebook.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Just get users exactly, figure how to monetize exactly, and.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Which you know, in retrospect, we should have monetize first
because our issue was was was liquidity adequate capital? And
eventually we ran out of it. We had the opportunity
to be acquired, and unfortunately the company that said they
would like to acquire us ended up just trying to
(06:56):
copy us.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So from there this this ends, which is always very difficult.
It was your baby, there was Is there a point
when you're saying, okay, I could put more in you
get so committed to a product I've seen this before,
and to a business that you have that you can't
like shoot the dead horse. Was there a point where
that was difficult and you had to make that decision.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
We had to do it because we ran out of capital.
So we had the choice to make was do we
raise another round of financing to keep the business alive
or do we go for the acquisition. But we couldn't
manage both. It's just two time consuming to do both.
And we discussed it with our board of directors and
investors and we decided that we should go for the acquisition.
And unfortunately that took longer than it should have, about
(07:43):
four months. And at the same time, Hurricane Sandy happened
in New York City. I couldn't stay in my apartment.
I had to move out, and it was a whole
bunch of things happening simultaneously, and ultimately, when they decided
or the potential acquirer said we're going to create our
own version. That was it. We had no money left
and we had to tell our employees at that point.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, and so how did you transition? How did you
wind up getting into the health and longevity business? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So, first of all, like going through that experience was
difficult because my entire identity, my self identity, my ego
was invested into the company. Whenever I would say go
home to my hometown high school, friends would say, hey,
I saw you on television, like, how's your business doing?
I see it's doing great. And the answer was, actually
(08:32):
the company shut down, and it taught me a lot
of lessons and humility. Really, and now I don't I
have more balance in my life than I did back then.
And you know, mind you, I was in my twenties
now I'm forties, so I've learned a lot. But there
was a good amount of time between that company and
(08:54):
starting Novos, which was about five years ago that I
started it. In between I was working on other startup
ventures and consulting other startups as well. But in my
personal time, I was always researching health. It's something that
has been my personal passion since I was twelve, and
started even before that when I was twelve and exercising,
but yeah, when I had the seizure, it evolved. It
(09:16):
went from a superficial interest in health. When I was twelve,
I just wanted to be in good shape and be
attractive to the girls in school. And when I was sixteen,
I realized how delicate life was and the idea of
biological optimization to avoid disease and to feel the best
that I could. And so I started to do a
(09:38):
lot of research, experimenting with supplements and diet plans and
sleep regimens and all of these different things. And I
would go to this website called PubMed, which is the
government listed scientific studies. It's basically accumulating all of the
scientific studies in one database. And I would have questions,
and I would go on PubMed and I would look
for the answers from all of these scientifics studies. Mind you,
(10:01):
I'm not a scientist, but when you start reading enough
of these studies, you start to pick up on it
over years and years and years, and eventually I came
across a scientific study called the Hallmarks of Aging, and
this is now considered the seminal longevity research paper. Like
the world renowned scientists refer to this paper and it's
(10:22):
the Hallmarks.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Of Aging, The Hallmarks of Aging.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It was in a journal called Cell, a prestigious journal,
and it essentially broke down the biological reasons why we
get older in the first place, and at the time
identified nine different reasons, things like stem cell rejuvenation, mitochondrial dysfunction,
are epigenome, which is which genes are turned on and
(10:45):
off and that changes over time, telemere shortening, and so on.
So it was a total of nine of them. And
when I came across this, I had an epiphany. I
came to realize, first of all, that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I had those By the way, right now.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
All of us do to one degree or another. It's
a question of can we slow down the process essentially,
But I came to realize that, first of all, scientists
were deconstructing the reason why we age. I think most
of us, myself included, think of aging as it's just
this inevitable part of life. We almost think it's like
programmed into us. And to some degree it might be
(11:23):
programmed into us, but that doesn't mean that we can't
change that program and actually slow down the process. The
other thing I came to realize was that the number
one risk factor for disease, so that includes brain tumor
and cancer for that matter, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and dementia, Parkinson's, glaucoma.
(11:43):
You go through the list of all of these chronic illnesses,
the number one risk factor is aging. Even more than
cigarette smoke causes lung cancer, Aging does by multiple times.
So the question then evolved, too, Well, if we are
understanding the component pieces of aging, and we're understanding that
aging causes these diseases, what can we do to try
(12:05):
to slow down the degradation of these different mechanisms or
these different causes of aging. And so I started to
network with scientists in the field, and I would go
to these biotech conferences as the only non MD or
PhD there, But I knew enough keywords to be able
to drop into the conversations and ask at least I
thought intelligent questions. And I came to understand that the
(12:29):
scientists were optimistic about natural ingredients that could potentially have
a favorable effect on the aging process. And that was
enough for me to say, there's nothing like this on
the market. All of the research that's being done right
now is really on this really advanced biotech approach to aging,
things like modifying our genes or inventing a new pharmaceutical drug,
(12:53):
and these are things that are unattainable for most of us.
They're either far out into the future or they're going
to be incredibly expensive and they won't be accessible for
the majority of people. So my question was, what can
I do now, What can I get my family and
my loved ones, my friends to use, and then by extension,
what can I share with others? And eventually decided to
(13:14):
start the company and bring a lot of these world
renowned scientists together to help work on the formulation the company.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
At this point, you needed to raise money, get us staff,
find the location, tell us about that process. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So at first, I so I had spent enough years
as an entrepreneur to understand I was proficient in enough
aspects of building a business for me to do it
good enough. So that included marketing and PR and the
even creating the website and the e commerce, the design
and branding, working with the scientists for the formulations. I
(13:55):
at first was actually creating the formulation.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
We did that though you had to raise money.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Nope, I didn't raise money. So I did all of
this on my own. I had a little bit of
money saved from previous you know work, so enough to
support myself. But I was then able to do all
of this stuff on my own, even creating, for example,
prototype formulations in the basement of my parents home. I
(14:19):
would go visit and have everything shipped there, and then
I would create these formulations and then ship them out
to people to.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Tell scientists and families basement.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Right, Yeah, basically, basically I would send it to New York,
but the departments are so small there I didn't want
to clog it up, so so I did that at first,
and I got pretty far with these these prototype formulations
and testing with people and having a website and all
of this stuff, and then that was enough for me
to then start to raise. And I first went to
friends and family and I did a raise of so you.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Had a little track record ar how the product was working, yes,
and did you clinical studies?
Speaker 1 (14:57):
And I also had the top scientists with us as advisors,
so for example, scientists from Harvard Medical School, from MIT,
from the Saul Constitute here in California, and so on.
So I started to build up this momentum and something
that clearly the market was interested in potentially purchasing. And
(15:17):
I put a very professional image behind it and had
the right names behind it, and that was enough to
get friends and family roughly about six hundred K, and
then we started to sell. And once we started to sell, so.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
This is a product more than a service.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yes, at this point, it's a product. We didn't do
clinical studies at that point, but we based it all
on previous scientific research. About five hundred scientific studies went
into the creation of this initial product, and we had
one on one conversations with these scientists, six of them
at the time, to get their opinion on each of
(15:51):
the ingredients that we were including, ingredients that they suggested
we removed from the formula, other ingredients they suggested we
consider adding. And this was therbly valuable because you can
only learn so much from a scientific paper. What I
came to realize building this business is that scientists have
so much more tacit knowledge that's not actually written in
(16:12):
the paper, that they just know from their experimentation or
from talking to each other.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And how long ago was this that you started?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
This is so I founded the company in twenty nineteen.
Twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one was really bringing on
the scientists doing the research, putting together formulations, testing those
formulations and so on. It was in twenty twenty one
January that we first launched the product, and that is
(16:39):
when we sold out in less than two weeks. We
sold out of what we thought would take us six
months to sell out of all of our product, and
the biggest challenge in the first six months was getting
enough product in stock to be able to sell and
that same July of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
The product is what tell us exactly what the product is.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Sure So we we have three different formulations, but the
one we're most proud of is called Novo's Core, and
it's called Core because it's the core formulation.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
That's the one I have right now.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
That's the one that takes.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sure it up.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
It's a powder, yes, so I can't take it out. Well,
if you have some water here, you can pour it
into the water and you shake it up. It's got
twelve ingredients in it and it's the equivalent it would
be fifteen pills if it was in pill form, but
most people don't want to swallow that many pills, So
(17:32):
we wanted to make it into something that was tasty
that people could form a habit around, the healthy habit around.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So so it looks sort of like for those listening,
like a thoroughflu packet. But it's it's it looks very nice.
It's nice, really nice packaging on it. And so you
have the powder in here and you mix this with water.
You mix it with water.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yes, we also have an unflavored version, so this is
orange flavored, naturally sweetened with stevia. Those who don't want
the sweetness, they can get an unflavored that has no
sweeten there in it. And for the unflavored, we suggest
people put it in like a protein shake or a
smoothie or a juice, yogurt oatmeal.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
How often do you take it?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
I take it every day. I take it with a
meal because it'll be absorbed better if you have fat
soluble ingredients with it. And this is the very first
formula in the world designed to address all of the
mechanisms of aging. So these causes of aging that I
mentioned in that initial paper, there were nine at the time.
That was a decade ago. Those original scientists republished last
(18:32):
year and they added three more, so there's twelve causes
of aging, also known as mechanisms of aging. We're the
first formula in the world to address all twelve of them.
And you asked before about clinical studies and scientific studies.
We've actually been doing those now ever since we launched
the product, and we found, for example, incredible results that
the labs that have run these studies have been shocked
(18:54):
by how good the results have been. For example, the
very first study looked at DNA damage in human cells
from irradiation, so think of like UV rays would be irradiation,
and we reduced the DNA damage the oxidative damage by
as much as seventy seven percent, which was off the
charge for these researchers. They had done seven million dollars
worth of studies on other ingredients, including prescription drugs and
(19:18):
individual ingredients in our formula, and none of them behaved
nearly as well as this combination of ingredients, so that
was a great start. We went on to do additional
studies looking at processes known as, for example, cellular senescence.
These are zombie cells that accumulate in our bodies. It's
one of the reasons our skin wrinkles, and we reduced
(19:38):
that significantly. At the SAL Constitute, we looked at the
cellular inflammatory process known as oxytosis ferroptosis, and we reduced
that by a very significant margin, more than half as
effective as a R and D prescription drug that scientists
are working with. And more recently, we just actually a
(19:59):
few weeks ago published the results of a scientific study
looking at mice. This was done at Newcastle University in
the UK, and we extended the lifespan of aged mice
by more than any supplement ever studied. In fact, we
outperformed a lot of prescriptions. We outperformed the latest.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
How long did you extend their lives on average?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Eighteen percent?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Eighteen percent yes.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
And then I think what's most relevant to listeners to
humans right is like, how does it work in humans? Well,
we did a case study, so I just wanted to
emphasize it. It wasn't a clinical trial yet. We're running
a clinical trial but that's not complete yet. But in
the case study, we measured people's rate of aging, which
is actually possible by looking at blood and measuring the
(20:48):
epigenome which I mentioned before, and we can see how
fast or slow you're aging today. And then after six
months of taking our product, what we found was that
nearly three quarters of the participate and slowed their rate
of aging by the equivalent of one month per year.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Where do you do this? Do you have offices?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So we work with an independent third party lab to
run that test for us, so we have no control
over the outcomes. We're not involved in it. I mentioned before,
the studies we've done, we outsource them to universities because
although we have a scientific team and we're a biotech
company at our core, we don't want people to question
(21:28):
the legitimacy of our results. So we outsource it to
academics and to third party laboratories and we let them
then create the studies and provide the results. So in
this case, three quarters slowed their rate of aging by
the equivalent equivalent of one month per year.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So over a period of times do you have to
take this every day? How long for people started seeing results?
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So for biological rate of aging, which is really the
foundation of what we're focused on is slow down the
aging process, it took six months for us to see that,
at least on the epigenetic level, which is what we
were measured expensive is the product.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Buy just one month's supply, it's one hundred and nine
dollars per month, but if you commit to a full
year subscription, it goes down to seventy nine dollars per month.
And then it's also HSA FSA eligible, so if you
have a health Savings account, you can buy it with
pre tax dollars and that can bring it down to
less than fifty five dollars per month or less than
two dollars a day.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Tell your audience how you can get.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Novos sure, so if you go to Novoslabs dot com
you'll see our product. But also, since this is a
California audience, we're also in Airwan and some of the
Equinox locations as well.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Chris is the CEO of Novos. Once again, it's a
public benefit corporation devoted to improving longevity and health. I
think we learned a lot today. I'm looking at Chris
who said that he's forty years old and that he
would have told me he was twenty five or twenty six.
I believe it. So I think the product must be
doing something right. So and it's something that I'm I'm
(23:01):
going to actually sign up for and start using again.
This is Paul Corvino from iHeartMedia saying thanks for listening
to another episode of CEOs you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Listen to CEOs you Should Know on the iHeartRadio app
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