• Deal Lift
  • Posts
  • Superpower Turned Personal Health Trauma into a $300M Bio-Age Startup

Superpower Turned Personal Health Trauma into a $300M Bio-Age Startup

From life-threatening misdiagnoses to a 150,000-person waitlist and a $30M Series A — this is how three founders transformed trauma into one of the fastest-growing health-tech companies of 2025.

Author

Deal Lift
October 24, 2025

In partnership with

🧬 Welcome to Deal Lift

Where we don’t just tell founder stories — we decode the growth algebra behind them.

Today’s teardown: Superpower — The Startup That Turned Pain into Product

💥 Part 1: Trauma as a Founder Moat — The Origin Energy

This story isn’t your standard SaaS founding tale.

  • Kevin Unkrich lost his best friend to a brain tumor → pushed him toward biomedical engineering.

  • Jacob Peters went through $2M+ worth of misdiagnosed healthcare chaos.

  • Max Marchione got dismissed by 20+ doctors, living years in a health fog.

These weren’t market research founders.
These were mission-possessed founders.

That matters. Because founders driven by pain don’t pivot out when it gets hard. They double down.

Founder Energy Formula:
Vision is overrated.
Personal unresolved pain = long-term execution fuel.

🧪 Part 2: The Scrappy Service Phase (Early 2023)

They didn’t start with an app.
Or a pitch deck.
Or even a clear product roadmap.

They started by doing everything manually:

  • Coordinating lab tests

  • Designing personalized nutrition stacks

  • Sending one-on-one supplement plans

  • DM-based consulting and voice notes with early users

It was unscalable and messy — and that’s why it worked.

Because doing things that don’t scale gives you:

  • Raw voice-of-customer insight

  • Direct understanding of emotional triggers

  • Real conversations → not data dashboards

Insight:
When founders skip the high-touch phase, they optimize for scale before understanding pain.

Startups who switch to Intercom can save up to $12,000/year

Startups who read beehiiv can receive a 90% discount on Intercom's AI-first customer service platform, plus Fin—the #1 AI agent for customer service—free for a full year.

That's like having a full-time human support agent at no cost.

What’s included?

  • 6 Advanced Seats

  • Fin Copilot for free

  • 300 Fin Resolutions per month

Who’s eligible?

Intercom’s program is for high-growth, high-potential companies that are:

  • Up to series A (including A)

  • Currently not an Intercom customer

  • Up to 15 employees

💰 Part 3: Demand Validation → $4M Pre-Seed (May 2024)

By mid-2024, without ads or product UX polish, demand was undeniable.

That’s when Susa Ventures led a $4M pre-seed.

Notice: The product-market fit checksum wasn’t ARR. It was raw desperation from users wanting control over their health metrics.

Investor Pattern Recognition:

  • High emotional utility ✅

  • Low trust in incumbents ✅

  • Founder story aligned with problem ✅

  • Organic demand without paid ✅

This is the holy grail signal early-stage VCs look for.

🚀 Part 4: Brand → Community → Waitlist Engine (Late 2024)

Most health startups burn cash on ads.
Superpower did the opposite.

They engineered socially shareable identity loops:

  • A 150,000+ waitlist built via referral stacking.

  • People could jump the queue by inviting others — “growth loop via status unlock.”

  • They launched a Bio Age metric — a gamified health score people wanted to screenshot and post.

Growth Hack Insight:
People don’t share products. People share status signals about themselves.

Bio Age = Social flex disguised as health data → instant virality.

🧠 Part 5: April 2025 — Product Launch + $30M Series A Valuation at $300M

Then came the official public launch:

  • Comprehensive biomarker testing

  • AI-generated supplement + nutrition protocols

  • Founder-trauma-backed mission baked into UI copy (“Take control. Don’t wait for the system to fix you.”)

🔥 Forerunner led a $30M Series A.
Valuation? $300M+.

This was more than a raise — it was mission validation at venture scale.

🍽️ Part 6: Strategic Acquisition — Buying Base (May 2025)

Superpower then acquired Base, a “food-as-medicine” startup.

Why this move is genius:

  • It extends the bio-feedback loop from diagnose → treat → monitor → adjust

  • It adds recipe intelligence + lifestyle layer on top of biomarkers

  • It transforms Superpower from a diagnostics platform into a full-stack health operating system

⚙️ Part 7: The Superpower Flywheel — How It Compounds

Trauma Story → Trust → Manual Personalization → Insight → Productization → Community Status Loops → Bio Age Sharing → Data Flywheel → Acquisition Expansion

Stage

Lever

Outcome

Founder Story

Deep trauma-driven mission

High resonance + trust

Unscalable Service

1:1 personalization

Accurate pain map

Pre-Seed

Capital to transition

First scalable product layer

Waitlist Loop

Referral-based queue hopping

150K community before launch

Bio Age Metric

Gamified health identity

Viral sharing without ads

Series A + Acquisition

Scale resources + vertical integration

Build category dominance

🔍 Deal Lift Playbook — Founder Lessons Worth Copying

Principle

Founder Play You Can Steal

1. Build from pain, not opportunity maps

Trauma roots your mission. Markets follow obsession.

2. Do things that don’t scale (on purpose)

Manual insights → irreplaceable positioning clarity.

3. Don’t sell product. Sell control

Their marketing isn’t “health optimization.” It’s “Take your power back.”

4. Engineer status-based referrals

“Jump the waitlist” > “Invite your friend.” Humans trade effort for perceived status.

5. Wrap data in identity

Bio Age isn’t information. It’s a shareable health flex.

6. Raise once belief is undeniable

Money after mission traction is fuel, not crutch.

7. Acquire to complete the loop

Diagnostics without lifestyle advice = half value. Base makes it whole.

📌 Sources

  • Susa Ventures deal memo insights (2024)

  • Forerunner Capital Series A announcement (2025)

  • Public waitlist & referral data (Superpower Launch Page)

  • Founder interviews + Base acquisition coverage

🧠 Final Thought

Superpower didn’t just launch a product.
They launched a revolt against passive healthcare.

Founders who solve pain can build products.
Founders who solve their own pain can build movements.

And movements? → They get funded, followed, and defended like personal revolutions.

🎧 That’s today’s teardown from Deal Lift.

If you want the next breakdown — reply “Lift More” — and I’ll load up another $100M+ operator playbook waiting to be decoded.