Can Biohacking Make You More Successful? With Casper Co-Founder Neil Parikh

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3:15Have you ever noticed that there is this very bizarre trend? happening in the entrepreneurship space, there is this very specific bro-y entrepreneur that's super into biohacking. And I have a lot of questions. Like, why is this one particular type of person so obsessed with these health hacks? And an even bigger question, are these entrepreneurs onto something? In other words, should we all be biohacking? In order to answer these questions, I'm talking to Neil Parikh, one of the co-founders of Casper, the game-changing mattress company, and a total sleep and health research nerd. We are talking about biohacking.

3:47We also define it. If you've never heard of it, we've got you. And of course, we talk about sleep because we had to. Here's our conversation. Neil Parikh, welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So let's start with the obvious, sleep. Be honest. You co-founded Casper. Was the goal to actually make the world sleep better or did you just see a white space avoid in the market or a little bit of both? I think some things happen by accident and they only make sense in reverse. So with my story, I was in medical school and I hated it and I really wanted to leave. And so I took a year off and moved to New York and ended up in a co-working space with somebody who I met next to me talking about how he used to sell mattresses online from his dorm room.

4:33And I was like, that's a dumb idea. Nobody's ever going to buy a mattress on the internet. But we started talking and we realized it was actually a big opportunity. Now, I hate admitting this, but my dad's a sleep doctor. And so I'd kind of been thinking about this for a while. And so when we put two and two together, we realized the starting opportunity was in mattresses because it was a terrible buying experience. You know, back then you'd have to like negotiate with somebody at a store, like it's a used car or something with these sleazy people with big suits on and other weird things. But the bigger opportunity we saw was like there could be a Nike of sleep, right?

5:07There's no brand that really helps you think about when you want to sleep better, both from products, content, services, experiences and other things. and it makes it cool. And I think we were an era where we're thinking about, you know, now we're finally in rest and relaxation mode where like people prioritize that, right? We sauna and cold plunge and exercise and things, but that era was just starting back then. So I'd say it was a bit of both. What does your dad think about the company? He loves it now. Although when I told him I was dropping out of med school to start it, he thought I was insane, obviously.

5:37Well, thankfully some of this sleep research since then has become more mainstream. I mean, I think we've all heard, don't eat right before bed, don't use your screen right in your eyeball before bed, you know, get eight hours, all that stuff. First of all, are any of those insights correct? Yeah. So I'd say most of them are correct. So here's the thing. The biggest impact to sleep is actually not really what you do at night. There are impact factors like cold temperature, your room should be cold, heat and humidity. You want breathable sheets, that kind of stuff. but a lot of the impact is what you do during the day for me the biggest impact is almost always been caffeine i never realized it that like that three o 'clock cup of coffee that i would have to keep me going i was going to feel it you know all the way until three o 'clock in the morning because i'm a slow caffeine metabolizer and i didn't realize that until i got the genetic testing done so i'd say it's a lot of impact is actually what happens during the day and most people don't really think about that because during the day you're thinking about whatever it takes but the problem is if you don't make the investment during the day, then you get into this like doom spiral of sleep, which is that you're tired all day, which means used.

6:45And then you watch TV at night or you have a few drinks, you stay up late, you don't sleep well, which means that the next day you need more caffeine and you eat like crap and then you stay up late. And so you kind of never break out of the cycle. This is as I'm zipping my coffee. I mean, it's 1.22 in the afternoon. It's not at three, but still. Okay. Two o 'clock. We're done. That's what I got off. There's been a lot of weird stuff though, come out lately, like the mouth tape thing, you know, people literally taping their mouths shut to encourage breathing through their nose, I guess, sleeping better.

7:17When you were doing research for the book that you co-wrote on sleep, were there any tips like that, like weird tips that surprised you? One of the weirdest things is actually sleeping in separate beds from your partner. So it's something that we learned is very common in Germany, for example, where people often will sleep in two twin size beds with different comforters, different beds that are essentially together, but separate, which is weird because I would never do that. But apparently people love it. And it has been shown to improve sleep pretty dramatically because you're not like kicking the other person at night.

7:48You can kind of have your own temperature control and whatnot. What it does for your relationship. I don't know, but it definitely. Honey, did you hear that? Did you sleep well the night before Casper IPO'd? No, terribly. I mean, it's a huge moment. Did you sleep? I think it was, you know, my best analogy was it was like sleeping, like how much I slept the night before I took the SATs, which is going to sound so nerdy, but I was so nervous. How often did you check the stock price? Be honest. The day of every, you know, 10 minutes, because you think about it a lot. And then at some point, you just have to turn it off?

8:25Because the problem is it can become this like obsessive thing where like the hard part is like you work on something for such a long time and then you do it for the mission. But I think most people would be lying if they didn't think about the financial success of it at all. And then all of a sudden it's like all of your life's work has been reduced down into one number, you know, and that number is actually not reflective of all the amazing things that are going on within a company. And so it is a little bit of like a mental twist, you know, and I've talked to many friends who have run public companies and it's definitely stressful to see that because also when you run a public company, you can't really talk about all the stuff that's going on in your company because it's, you know, not, it's non-public information.

9:10And so for all of your friends and everybody that you know, the only thing that people see on the outside world is often your stock price, but all day long, you're living something totally different. And so that was really the adjustment that I had to make. What do you think the most important number is if it's not the stock price? I think the most important number is probably NPS or like, are your customers happy? NPS, just because we're a no jargon zone. Oh yeah. Net Promoter Score. So it's basically, you know, the number that we use to figure out, are your customers happy? The key question is just like, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?

9:43And it's an imperfect measure, but it helps you get a sense of, are you doing a good job or not? Right. That's generally a scale of one to 10. And if you report a low number on that, it's a good proxy for like, I don't like this company. They suck, right? They don't treat me well. The product's not great. But it kind of captures a lot of things into one metric that you can, I would say, softly look at over time. Like, are you trending in the right direction or not? What's the stock price right now? We went private. So that's$0. How nice is that? It's a great day. Yeah. What are the emotions around that?

10:19because it feels like when you're a baby entrepreneur, going public is like the end all be all. And then you get there and you're like, holy shit, this is like a financial colonoscopy every day. I mean, this is what I've heard from other entrepreneurs who have taken their companies public and regretted it and then have potentially gone through similar processes of taking it back public, which can be heavenly in some ways because you don't need to go through said colonoscopy. It's way less fun than people think it is. I think that it's definitely glorified in terms of this is the thing that everybody should be doing and that you should aspire to.

10:58And we see photos of the New York Stock Exchange everywhere and that you want to go ring the bell. And don't get me wrong, all those things are really cool. Taking a photo up there, really cool. Having a stock price, pretty cool. I would say the level of accountability and responsibility that comes to having public shareholders is insane, right? And what it does to change your business, how much you can talk about what you're doing externally changes, your relationships with other people change, your employees start looking at the stock price. And I think also like the cool thing about being private is that like we talked about with the stock price, when you're private, not your entire existence doesn't often get reduced into one number, right?

11:38And there's a much richer story that you can tell about who you are and what you're doing, what your story is and whatnot. And so, yeah, it's not all that's cracked up to be. So entrepreneurs who take sleep really seriously tend to also be interested in biohacking. I've seen some of your musings as of late. First, before we double click on it, can you just define what biohacking means for anyone who might not know? Yeah, so biohacking, it can mean a lot of things, first of all. But to me, it means making changes in your life using either things that you're doing externally or internally to impact your health.

12:13So tactical example, it could range from I'm using red light therapy to either improve the quality of my skin or change something about my circadian rhythm. To some people, it means eating a very specific diet like Brian Johnson, eating a very specific blueprint. Yeah, mush diet. To some people, sauna and cold plunge has become very popular. And so I'd say it's basically any intervention you take that's trying to impact your body somehow. So entrepreneurs are specifically obsessed with this now. You mentioned Brian Johnson, who famously spent two million bucks on medical interventions and all sorts of weird stuff like electromagnetic pulses on his penis to make it younger and all weird, weird stuff.

12:58Um, you know, why do you think entrepreneurs specifically are so obsessed with biohacking? I have a couple of ideas, but I'd love to hear yours. Oh, I think it's control. What I mean by the control thing is that when so much of the world is out of your own control, I think biohacking feels like, wow, I can do something. And then I see a direct input into what's happening into me or at least what I believe. Right. And when you're often running a company, it feels like things are out of your control all the time, right? Like the market could be changing, you have employees or other things. I might be projecting a little bit here, but my hypothesis would be that it's like a very direct thing that people can do and see some output on the other side.

13:39And I think the other thing is, you know, people who start companies are often experimenters. And so we're down to try crazy things on ourselves. And so there's a range of that, obviously, from, you know, sauna to some people injecting themselves with crazy things that come from animals that are probably not FDA approved and whatnot. But we're probably like a little bit more on the radical side than most people. I mean, there's a lot of money going into this with a handful of dudes, for the most part. Oracle's Larry Ellison reportedly spent$330 million on aging and age-related diseases. Bulletproof's David Asprey wants to live beyond 180 years old and is spending all sorts of money to do that.

14:19Matt, what companies do you think are doing interesting things that you would try? Or has any of this stuff been democratized to a place that regular folks couldn't try it? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, my go-to ones are often just around sleep. So the Aura Ring is wonderful. One of the key problems with sleep is, and it's the same problem in business, how can you impact something that you don't measure, right? What we used to do is just wake up and get a sense of, I feel kind of tired. or I feel kind of stressed. And I think what's amazing is that now you can look and see, oh, it's because even though you were in bed for eight hours, you only slept five hours and 32 minutes, or maybe you only got 42 minutes of deep sleep.

15:01And so you can think about, okay, what does that mean? And what should I do about it? The second to that is either getting a gym membership where you can go sauna or getting one of those sauna blankets or doing something. I've seen remarkable results from people using the sauna more frequently. I mean, the studies on all-cause mortality are incredible in terms of the expansion in lifespan for people who sauna multiple times a week. And the other benefit to it is that even if all the science doesn't work about the long-term, most people just feel amazing afterwards. And so I think there's some real value to that too.

15:36And like, you know, what's the cost of heat? There's plenty of ways to get it that's not that expensive. True. You don't need a fancy infrared sauna to do that. You can just go to the desert, go outside on a hot day, take a hot bath, whatever. I am no health expert, but I do want to get your thoughts like bullish or bearish on a couple of things that have gotten some buzz lately. Ambrosia is a company that offers young blood transfusions for$8 ,000. Are you bullish or bearish? Bearish. All right, pass. That's, I think, where they take blood from a teenager or something and then put it in your body.

16:15Here's the thing. It might work. The reality is, I'm sure people feel better, right? The question is, what level of risk do you want to take and how much money do you have, right? We also know IVs, for example, when you get them, are they really doing anything that's different than drinking four Gatorades in a row? not really but it seems like expensive pee yeah but you know the placebo effect is really powerful like if you're really hungover and or you're you know not feeling great that big yellow bag makes people feel somehow better than drinking four gatorades and so like does getting the blood of a a young you know healthy person who hits the gym 18 times a week feel good to some people i'm sure They probably feel superhuman afterwards.

17:00Just like when you put on a pair of Nike sneakers that the marathoners use to run a two-hour marathon, you suddenly feel like you can run faster. Yeah, we're sleeping in a gas for mattress. All right. What about data mining your own DNA? There's a company, Health Nucleus, that will do this for$25 ,000. They'll map your whole genome for early detection of diseases, bullish or bearish. Would you do that? I have done a lot of data mining of my genome. I have not done the Health Nucleus one. but I would say bullish on this idea of using your genetics to impact your life. There's a few other tests that are way cheaper, starting with 23andMe, which most people have done at this point.

17:40You can actually export that data and put it into a bunch of other services. There's one called 3x4 Genetics that I don't have an affiliation with, but it's really cool, where now you can actually start to see, based on your genetics, how should you eat? Now, I think that's super interesting because you can actually make tactical changes. So for me, for example, I've always had high cholesterol. It's run in my family for a long time. And I was always thinking and told by doctors, well, maybe you should try the keto diet. And so I tried the keto diet for a while. And often the keto diet is like, oh, we'll have lots of coconut oil and ghee and other things and cheeses.

18:13But it turned out that from my nutrigenomics panel, for me, saturated fats are definitely, my body cannot process them. And so actually the reason my cholesterol was so high for such a long time was because I was having all these saturated fats, which is what I was told to eat by other people. Yeah. There's some cheaper ones that will do like food sensitivity things. I was really surprised by some of my results. Like I can't have sugar and fruit together or something. And I was like, whatever, I'm not going to have sugar and fruit together. Who does that? But then I was like, I love cobbler and pies.

18:46And like, of course I put sugar and fruit together. You know, a fruit tart. Yeah. All right. Anti-aging super pills. This this interesting because there's a company that will do this for 50 bucks a month, basically, instead of taking a big handful of a bunch of different supplements, they'll consolidate it into one or two pills, bullish or bearish? I'd say bullish if it has the key things that help you actually take it. So the number one thing that makes a difference is adherence, right? Like if you don't take your vitamin D, it's going to have no impact on you. If you don't take your fish oil, it's going to have no impact on you.

19:18And so if it gets you to do it, great. If those pills are just sitting there on the counter because they're still like in these beautifully wrapped one-off packages, but you don't take them, makes no impact. For sure. Brain drugs like nootropics. Very bullish. Yeah. Why? So I take these supplements from thesis all the time, which I love. I'd say that it's one of the few areas where I really do believe you can get impacts to cognition, to focus, to memory. I mean, the nootropics really got popular in the last five or 10 years. I've personally taken them. I have seen huge benefits. And I also think that right now there's this craze where a lot of people are getting diagnoses for things like ADHD or other disorders where the first call to action is often to take stimulants or other prescription medications.

20:07And I actually think that nootropics could be for some people, right, a much easier kind of glide path on the way in to see how you feel versus just jumping onto the more aggressive stuff. How about fasting meal plans like Prolon or just sort of fasting, bullish or bearish? Very bullish. So every year I do a five-day water fast, which is going to sound insane because it is kind of insane, where for the first two days you feel terrible and you're grumpy and you want to, you know, it's awful. And then come days like three and a half to five, it's like you're inside of the matrix. Yeah. You're fucking invincible.

20:47done it and I wanted to kill myself. And then I was like, wait a minute, why do I ever eat food? It's so stupid. Yeah, exactly. You're like, what? I can suddenly speak Portuguese. You know, should you do it for that long? How frequently should you do it? I think those are all things that we have to figure out. I'm probably more bullish on doing extended fasting rather than doing intermittent fasting. Like there was this whole IF craze for a while where everybody was doing like, you know, I only eat in the eight hour window or a four hour window every day. And most recently, a lot of the functional medicine doctors have switched away from recommending that to everyone because of fears of muscle loss.

21:24But look, I mean, there's some ancient science here, right? Like why do most of the world's religions recommend fasting in one way or another, right? I think it's because we've known for a long time it's probably good for us. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab. Well, okay. So you said the main explanation potentially for why entrepreneurs are really, really obsessed with biohacking is control. What was yours? Why do you think we did it? Okay. Yeah. Similar. I mean, Brian Johnson isn't spending millions of dollars to give access to medical interventions to like President Biden or Malala Yousafzai, right?

22:07I mean, these medical interventions are so expensive, but they're out of reach for so many people. And I think there's a little bit of narcissism involved if an entrepreneur is thinking that they can just be one of the few that gets access to this super stellar medical care right now. Okay, I get it. Can I offer another perspective though as well? So I think that's probably true. But I also think that they're the people willing to run the experiments on themselves. And those things end up sometimes trickling down into pop culture a bit more, right? Because the thing is like a lot of biohacking, some of it's very expensive.

22:38Don't get me wrong, right? Right. But like some of these interventions are not that expensive. Right. There are some supplements that can help you that are not that expensive. Going to a sauna like that's been a common part of our culture for a long time. But like the pharma companies that basically and the NIH and like our entire system have oriented basically all of medical care to be either fee for service. I pay for a doctor's visit or I'm taking a drug and there's no other interventions. Right. And so I think what's going to happen is that like, maybe these people are running experiments on themselves because the NIH is not doing tons of studies on like the impact of sauna on, you know, public health.

23:17And maybe we'll get more downstream impacts from those people talking about it more publicly. Like, yeah, the stuff Brian does is crazy. But like, if people eat slightly less meat, for example, like is the blueprint health diet, the perfect diet? I don't know. But do you think if most people ate less fried chicken and slightly more food like that, would they be healthier? I think the most people would say probably, yeah, it's probably good for people. So you're saying there might not be altruism, but there's some good that comes from being a guinea pig for the rest of society. Another explanation potentially is that entrepreneurs are so committed to the optimization of everything, their lives, their businesses.

23:58And so they want optimization with their bodies. as well. I mean, Tim Veras kind of started this fire with four-hour body and four-hour work week before that. What do you think about that idea? I think that's right. Yeah. I mean, especially this whole generation of people, right? So for example, like e-commerce entrepreneurs, what are they really good at? It's like AdWords buying and like optimizing your click-through rates and user flows. And so like, it's a very natural extension that we go from optimizing every part of our business into optimizing ourselves. That makes sense. For sure. I mean, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, you probably do too, who bring optimization to their personal lives.

24:34They use Monday.com project management software to track their mental health trends or OKRs for their relationships. Have you bought into any of those business-y tools or behaviors and brought them over to your personal life? I'd say the biggest impact to me, though, was on my finances, starting to use this app called Copilot. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. So people used to use mint and everybody was like, okay, this is cool. I think the biggest change for me was having a source of truth on what the heck is happening in my life because it's so easy to groundhog and be like, no, I didn't spend$800 on food last week.

25:08Like that's, you know, you could just like forget or like say, you know, crazy things. And then you look at these things and you're like, what? Oh my God. So I'd say that's probably driven the biggest change. Cause I used to groundhog on these things a lot. I would just say like, no, I don't want to look at it. Like I'll just pretend like it doesn't exist. And like seeing it and getting in front of it and planning for it has been a big impact for me. So you've used business tools to get your personal finances in order, like your own spending, saving. Have you automated it? Have you taken control?