Can Biohacking Make You More Successful? With Casper Co-Founder Neil Parikh - Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin

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[00:00]
Nicole Lapin
If you take only one thing away from today's episode, Money Rehabbers let it be this in my not so humble opinion, Public is the best brokerage for investing in bonds, stocks, ETFs, options and even crypto. You can try it out for yourself and see why I love it so much. @Public.com MoneyRehab Public is legit, the only platform I use to buy bonds. Before public, I used to buy government bonds the hard way. Slow websites, confusing interfaces, website designs straight.
[00:26]
Neal Parikh
Out of the early 2000s.
[00:28]
Nicole Lapin
Just picture where fun goes to die.
[00:30]
Neal Parikh
But that was it.
[00:31]
Nicole Lapin
And then I found Public about five years ago and I have not looked back. I can now finally buy bonds without.
[00:38]
Neal Parikh
Wanting to rip my hair out.
[00:39]
Nicole Lapin
Public makes it so easy to buy bonds. Whether you're into Treasuries or corporate bonds, you can browse thousands of options right from your phone. But like I said, Public isn't just all about bonds. You can also find stocks and ETFs and they offer a high yield cash account with a 4.1% APY, which is higher than the national average. They even have retirement accounts. You can now open a traditional or Roth IRA or both right on public.
[01:05]
Neal Parikh
So your future self covered.
[01:07]
Nicole Lapin
And for a limited time you can earn a 1% match on all your IRA deposits, IRA transfers and 401k rollovers. If you want an investing experience that's both smart and simple, head to public.com money rehab one more time. Public.com money rehab this is a paid endorsement for Public Investing. Full disclosures and conditions can be found in the podcast description. You guys, we gotta talk about the Skims Fits Everybody bra and underwear line and they do mean everybody. I have been wearing skims for over a year now. They came in so clutch when I was pregnant and all fabric felt so uncomfortable.
[01:43]
Neal Parikh
Honestly.
[01:43]
Nicole Lapin
Except for skims, the Everybody line is buttery smooth. It's gonna feel like you're wearing basically nothing. It's somehow stretchy and supportive at the same time. I don't know how they pulled it off, but they did. Skims Fits Everybody line comes in tons of shades and styles so you can find something that works for you without.
[01:58]
Neal Parikh
Feeling like you're sacrificing comfor coverage or cool factor. They are definitely very cool. I thought they were too cool for me.
[02:05]
Nicole Lapin
But no. Skims Fits Everybody is available now@skims.com believe me, your top drawer will thank you. Shop Skims Fits everybody collection@skims.com and after you place your order be sure to support the show and let them know we sent you select podcast in the survey and then select Money Rehab in the dropdown menu. I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert. You don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some Money Rehab.
[02:35]
Neal Parikh
We have.
[02:38]
Nicole Lapin
Have you ever noticed that there is this very bizarre trend happening in the entrepreneurship space? There is this very specific broy entrepreneur.
[02:46]
Neal Parikh
That'S super into biohacking.
[02:48]
Unnamed Guest
And I have a lot of questions.
[02:50]
Nicole Lapin
Like why is this one particular type.
[02:52]
Neal Parikh
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 Neal Parikh, one of the.
[03:04]
Nicole Lapin
Co founders of Casper, the game changing mattress company and a total sleep and health research nerd. We are talking about biohacking.
[03:11]
Neal Parikh
We also define it. If you've never heard of it, we've got you.
[03:14]
Nicole Lapin
And of course we talk about sleep.
[03:15]
Neal Parikh
Because we had to. Here's our conversation.
[03:19]
Nicole Lapin
Neal Parikh, welcome to Money Rehab.
[03:21]
Neal Parikh
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[03:23]
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?
[03:35]
I think some things happen by accident and, you know, 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. And 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 back then. You'd have to 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? There'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 in 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 other things. But that era was just starting back then, so I'd say it was a bit of both.
[04:53]
What does your dad think about the company?
[04:54]
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.
[05:00]
Well, 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?
[05:18]
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, you know, breathable sheets, that kind of stuff. But a lot of the impact is what you do during the day. For me, the biggest impact has 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 3 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. And 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.
[06:20]
This is as I'm zipping my coffee. I mean it's 1:22 in the afternoon. It's not yet three, but still.
[06:25]
Okay, 2 o', clock, we're done.
[06:28]
Unnamed Guest
That's my cut off.
[06:29]
Neal Parikh
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 when 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?
[06:47]
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, you know, 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. You can kind of have your own temperature control and whatnot. What it does for your relationship, I don't know, but it definitely.
[07:17]
Honey, did you hear that? Did you sleep well the night before? Casper IPO'd?
[07:22]
No, terribly. I mean, it's a, it's a huge.
[07:26]
Unnamed Guest
Did you sleep?
[07:28]
Neal Parikh
I think it was, you know, that my, my best analogy was it was like sleeping, like how much I slept the night before I took the SATs, which is gonna sound so nerdy, but I was so nervous.
[07:38]
How often did you check the stock price? Be honest.
[07:41]
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. Because 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, if they didn't think about the financial, you know, 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, 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. And so for all of your friends and everybody that, you know, the only thing that people see on the outside world is your stock price. But all day long you're living something totally different. And so that was, that was really the adjustment that I had to make.
[08:45]
What do you think the most important number is if it's not the stock price?
[08:50]
I think the Most important number is probably NPS or like, are your customers happy?
[08:53]
Nps just because we're a no jargon zone.
[08:56]
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? And it's an imperfect measure, but it helps you get a sense of, are you doing a good job or not?
[09:12]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[09:13]
Neal Parikh
That's a generally a scale of 1 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.
[09:20]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[09:20]
Neal Parikh
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?
[09:31]
What's the stock price right now?
[09:33]
We went private, so that's $0.
[09:37]
Unnamed Guest
How nice is that?
[09:39]
Neal Parikh
It's a great day.
[09:40]
Yeah. What are the emotions around that? Because it feels like when you're a Bibi entrepreneur, going public is like the end all, be all. And then you get there and you're.
[09:49]
Unnamed Guest
Like, this is like a financial colonoscopy every day.
[09:53]
Neal Parikh
I mean, this is what I've heard from other entrepreneurs who have taken their companies public and regretted it and then have, you know, 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.
[10:10]
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. And we see photos of the New York Stock Exchange everywhere and that you want to go ring the bell. And like, don't get me wrong, all those things are really cool, right? 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.
[10:39]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[10:40]
Neal Parikh
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, like we talked about with the stock price, when you're private, not your entire existence, doesn't often get reduced into one number.
[11:01]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[11:01]
Neal Parikh
And 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 it's cracked up to be.
[11:09]
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?
[11:24]
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. So tactical example 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.
[12:05]
So entrepreneurs are specifically obsessed with this. Now, you mentioned Brian Johnson, who famously spent 2 million bucks on medical interventions and all sorts of weird stuff like electromagnetic magnetic pulses on his penis to make it younger and all weird, weird stuff, you know. Why do you think entrepreneurs specifically are so obsessed with biohacking?
[12:28]
Unnamed Guest
I have a couple ideas, but I'd.
[12:30]
Neal Parikh
Love to hear yours.
[12:30]
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.
[12:45]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[12:46]
Neal Parikh
And when you're often running a company, it feels like things are out of your control all the time.
[12:50]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[12:51]
Neal Parikh
The market could be changing. You have employees, you have 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. And 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.
[13:22]
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. Bulletproofs. David Asprey wants to live beyond 180 years old and is spending all sorts of money to do that. 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 can try it?
[13:53]
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, my go to ones are often just around sleep. So you know, the aura ring is wonderful. Like one of the key problems with sleep is how. And it's the same problem in business. How can you impact something that you don't measure?
[14:07]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[14:08]
Neal Parikh
What we used to do is just like wake up and get a sense of like, 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. And 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, 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. And like, you know, what's the cost of heat? There's plenty of ways to get it. That's not that expensive.
[15:07]
True. You don't need a fancy infrared sauna to do that.
[15:10]
Unnamed Guest
You can just go to the desert, go outside on a hot day, take a hot bath, whatever.
[15:15]
Neal Parikh
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?
[15:30]
Unnamed Guest
Bearish.
[15:31]
Neal Parikh
All right, pass. That's, I think, where they take blood from like a teenager or something and then put it in your body.
[15:38]
Here's the thing, it might work. The reality is I'm sure people feel better.
[15:43]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[15:44]
Neal Parikh
The question is, what level of risk do you want to take and how much money do you have?
[15:47]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[15:47]
Neal Parikh
Like 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.
[15:57]
No, it's like expensive pee.
[15:59]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[15:59]
Neal Parikh
But, you know, the placebo effect is really powerful. Like if you're really hungover 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.
[16:22]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[16:22]
Neal Parikh
They probably feel superhuman afterwards. Just 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.
[16:32]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, we're sleeping a Casper mattress.
[16:34]
Neal Parikh
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?
[16:47]
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. You 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 is 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. But it turned out that from my nutrigenomics panel, for me, saturated fats are deathly. They're like my body cannot process them. And so actually the reason my cholesterol was so high for all 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.
[17:53]
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.
[18:07]
Unnamed Guest
Cobbler and pies and like, of course I put sugar and fruit together.
[18:11]
Neal Parikh
You know, A fruit tart.
[18:13]
Yeah. All right. Anti aging super pills. This is interesting because there's a company that will do this for 50 bucks a month. Basically, instead of taking, taking a big handful of a bunch of different supplements, they'll consolidate it into, into one or two pills. Bullish or bearish?
[18:28]
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.
[18:35]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[18:36]
Neal Parikh
Like if you don't take your vitamin D, it's gonna have no impact on you. If you don't take your fish oil, it's gonna have no impact on you. And 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.
[18:53]
Brain drugs like nootropics, very bullish.
[18:56]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[18:57]
Nicole Lapin
Why?
[18:57]
Neal Parikh
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 ten years. I've personally taken them. I have seen huge benefits. And I also think that like 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. And I actually think that nootropics could be for some people a much easier kind of glide path on the way in to see how you feel versus just jumping onto the more aggressive stuff.
[19:41]
How about fasting meal plans like Prolon or just sort of fasting? Bullish or bearish?
[19:47]
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.
[20:09]
Yeah, you're fucking invincible.
[20:10]
Unnamed Guest
I've done it and I wanted to kill myself. And then I was like, wait, a minute. Why do I ever eat food? It's so sad.
[20:16]
Neal Parikh
Exactly. You're like, what, I can suddenly speak Portuguese or so you know. 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 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. But 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?
[20:55]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[20:56]
Neal Parikh
I think it's because we've known for a long time it's probably good for us.
[20:59]
Nicole Lapin
Hold onto your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. So one of my girlfriends fell in love with this house and she was.
[21:06]
Neal Parikh
Sure she could afford it.
[21:08]
Nicole Lapin
She had the down payment, she had the income. But when it came to pull her credit for mortgage, oh, it was a.
[21:15]
Neal Parikh
Brutal wake up call.
[21:17]
Nicole Lapin
It sounds so obvious, but it hadn't really hit her until that moment. Her day to day spending habits weren't just keeping up with the Joneses, they.
[21:25]
Neal Parikh
Were affecting her future.
[21:27]
Nicole Lapin
So she came over, we talked about.
[21:29]
Neal Parikh
It, we did some credit hygiene and.
[21:31]
Nicole Lapin
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[22:14]
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[22:28]
Nicole Lapin
And now for some more money.
[22:29]
Neal Parikh
Rehab. Well, okay, so you said the main explanation potentially for why entrepreneurs are really, really obsessed with biohacking is control.
[22:40]
What was yours? Why do you think we do okay, yeah, similar.
[22:44]
I mean, Brian Johnson isn't spending millions of dollars to give access to medical interventions to like President Biden or Malala Yousafzai. Right. I 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.
[23:05]
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.
[23:19]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:19]
Neal Parikh
Because the thing is, like a lot of biohacking, some of it's very expensive, don't get me wrong.
[23:24]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:25]
Neal Parikh
But like, some of these interventions are not that expensive.
[23:28]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:29]
Neal Parikh
There are some supplements that can help you that are not that expensive. Going to a sauna, 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.
[23:49]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:50]
Neal Parikh
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. And 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.
[24:25]
So you're saying there might not be altruism, but there's like some, 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, and so they want optimization with their bodies as well. I mean this, the Tim Ferriss kind of started this fire with 4 hour body and 4 hour workweek before that. What do you think about that idea?
[24:54]
I think that's right.
[24:55]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[24:56]
Neal Parikh
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.
[25:15]
I mean, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, you probably do too, who bring optimization to their personal lives. They use Monday.com production 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?
[25:33]
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. Like 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 would say that's probably driven the biggest change because 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 be a big impact for me.
[26:16]
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? Like when you first made real money, did you just think, like, I've got money, like, I'm never going to run out of money, we're cool. And then not pay attention?
[26:35]
No, I did the opposite. Personally. I went and did two things, one of which I'd recommend and the other I would not recommend. So I aggressively angel invested. I've made like 200 investments into other companies, which is cool. And part of it's like you get to learn a lot and you get to support other entrepreneurs and it's awesome. But the liquidity on angel investing is really, really long. And I think you kind of. You don't really think about that, that when you write a check to invest into a company, first of all, most likely that money's never come back.
[27:06]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[27:07]
Neal Parikh
You don't really think about that. And then secondly, if it ever does, the first companies that I backed like 10 years ago are starting to exit.
[27:15]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[27:15]
Neal Parikh
And so, like, that's a long time to wait to get access to your money again. So that's the one where, like, if you're really into it, that's great. But I think the fact that, like, everybody wants to, you know, do angel investing, I'd probably think about it. The one I do recommend is just investing into yourself. Like, I spend a lot of money on coaches and, like, therapists and learning of all different sorts. Like, I'll hire people to teach me. I don't know anything I can think of. And I think for me, that has had the biggest impact. And that's usually what I recommend to most people. Because it's like, if your life is like an exponential curve, small changes at every point can dramatically impact you, like, you know, slightly further and further out. And so, like, if there's anything you're going to invest in, it's probably much better to invest in yourself and go long on yourself versus going long on just the S&P 500, you know.
[28:07]
Yeah, you've been listening to money rehab. Investing in yourself pays most dividends later on. Duh. Neil, you then went back into the entrepreneur game after that. You then predicted that a bunch of startups and VCs are going to go out of business. Why did you say that? And what do you see for the year moving forward?
[28:26]
Okay, so we're in a liquidity crunch. And the problem is that we had a historic amount of venture capital that entered the ecosystem over the last five years. Like, everybody's cousin has a venture fund. You know what I mean? Like a 10 to $50 million fund where they're investing in something or other. So what's amazing about that is that every, you know, a lot of people were able to start companies because you could raise 500k to 2 and a half million dollars from people. But the problem is that, like, if you hadn't figured out your business model and we've gotten to today, the thresholds for Series A's and Series B's are way higher than they used to be. And so what ends up happening is that there's just like, not a lot of Money left for those companies that are doing okay but not amazing. Unless you're an AI. If you're an AI, all bets are off, Right? But for a lot of these companies, the second thing is that we were sold a bill of goods by investors that ended up often not being true, right? Like, oh, I'm always going to be there for you. I've got your back, I've got more money, et cetera. But I think the reality is, like, most of them investors aren't your friends, right? Like, it's your job to manage your business. It's your job to think about liquidity. And it was like a little bit of a series of unfortunate events, like when the SBB collapse happened.
[29:38]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[29:38]
Neal Parikh
Now, all the people that took venture debt from them are struggling because there's no more money to come. You know, how do you. One, how do you repay that venture debt? And two, who's inheriting and collecting that money? Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of a painful year. That said, I've shut down companies before and it was really hard. And the reality is, I think this is just like, part of the ecosystem, right? Like, a lot of companies just should shut down. And I think we should think about them like projects, not like forever entities where, like, if it's not a thing to be ashamed of that you shut something down, right? It's more of a sign of, like, if you see the writing on the wall, you have to decide, am I going to pound the pavement for the next 10 years to make this happen because I'm willing to do anything, or do I want to go work on something else? And I don't think there's anything wrong with either way.
[30:23]
I don't either.
[30:24]
Nicole Lapin
I shut down a company.
[30:25]
Neal Parikh
It was a financial smartwatch.
[30:26]
Unnamed Guest
I thought it was brilliant idea and it was so stupid and I.
[30:31]
Neal Parikh
And it was painful, but you have.
[30:32]
Nicole Lapin
To shut it down.
[30:32]
Neal Parikh
And that is the financial circle of life. We end our episodes, Neil, by asking.
[30:38]
Nicole Lapin
All of our guests for one money.
[30:39]
Neal Parikh
Tip listeners can take straight to the bank. What's just one thing that you would leave listeners with about saving, investing, budgeting.
[30:46]
Nicole Lapin
Running a business, shift a business down, anything?
[30:49]
Neal Parikh
The biggest tip I have is set aside money to invest in yourself, you know, and think about, okay, 10% every month I'm going to spend on myself, Whether that means going to the gym, hiring a trainer, going to therapy, saving up for school or something. The compounding gains for that in your life are going to be enormous. And most people never think about it, right they just think, I can't afford it. But, like, if you save for vacations, you should save to invest in yourself.
[31:13]
Nicole Lapin
Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some Money Rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions moneyrehaboneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one on one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagramoneynews and TikTokoneyNewsnetwork.
[31:39]
Neal Parikh
For exclusive video content.
[31:41]
Nicole Lapin
And lastly, thank you.
[31:43]
Neal Parikh
No, seriously, thank you.
[31:44]
Nicole Lapin
Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary: "Can Biohacking Make You More Successful? With Casper Co-Founder Neil Parikh"

Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin hosted by Money News Network delves into the intersection of biohacking and entrepreneurial success in this engaging episode featuring Neil Parikh, co-founder of Casper. Released on August 12, 2025, the episode explores how biohacking practices can enhance personal and professional performance, particularly for entrepreneurs.

1. Introduction to Biohacking and Sleep

Nicole Lapin introduces the topic by highlighting a growing trend among entrepreneurs: the obsession with biohacking. She poses critical questions about the necessity and effectiveness of these health hacks in achieving greater success.

Neil Parikh responds by sharing his journey from medical school to co-founding Casper, emphasizing an accidental yet insightful discovery of the significant opportunities in the mattress industry. He attributes some of his passion for sleep research to his father, a sleep doctor, which influenced Casper's mission to revolutionize sleep health.

Quote:

“We realized the starting opportunity was in mattresses because it was a terrible buying experience back then.”
— Neil Parikh [03:35]

2. The Impact of Daily Habits on Sleep Quality

The conversation shifts to the factors affecting sleep beyond nighttime routines. Neil underscores the importance of daytime habits, particularly caffeine consumption, in determining sleep quality.

Neil shares a personal anecdote about being a slow caffeine metabolizer, which led to disrupted sleep patterns due to late-afternoon coffee intake. He explains how neglecting daytime health investments can create a "doom spiral" of fatigue and poor nighttime habits.

Quote:

“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...”
— Neil Parikh [05:18]

3. Unconventional Sleep Hacks and Their Effectiveness

Nicole brings up trendy sleep hacks, such as mouth taping to encourage nasal breathing, and asks Neil about surprising tips from his research.

Neil discusses the unconventional method of sleeping in separate beds, a common practice in Germany, which can significantly improve sleep quality by reducing disturbances and allowing personalized temperature control. He reflects on the cultural differences and psychological impacts of such practices.

Quote:

“Sleeping in separate beds from your partner... has been shown to improve sleep pretty dramatically.”
— Neil Parikh [06:46]

4. The Psychological Toll of Taking a Company Public

The dialogue shifts to Neil's experience with Casper's IPO. He candidly shares the anxiety and relentless focus on stock prices that accompany running a public company. Neil contrasts this with the richer, more meaningful metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), which better reflect customer satisfaction and company health.

Quote:

“The problem is it can become this like obsessive thing where... your life's work has been reduced down into one number.”
— Neil Parikh [07:26]

5. Defining Biohacking and Its Appeal to Entrepreneurs

Nicole seeks Neil's expertise to define biohacking for the audience. Neil explains biohacking as making intentional changes to one's lifestyle or body to enhance health and performance, ranging from dietary adjustments to advanced technological interventions.

Neil hypothesizes that entrepreneurs are drawn to biohacking for two main reasons: the desire for control in an often unpredictable business environment and their inherent inclination towards optimization and experimentation.

Quote:

“Biohacking feels like, wow, I can do something... and see some output on the other side.”
— Neil Parikh [12:30]

6. Evaluating Popular Biohacking Trends

The discussion progresses to specific biohacking practices:

Young Blood Transfusions by Ambrosia: Neil expresses skepticism, deeming it a high-risk, expensive procedure with questionable benefits, likening it to "expensive pee."
DNA Data Mining: He advocates for genetic testing to inform personalized health decisions, sharing his own experience where genetic insights redirected his dietary choices to manage high cholesterol effectively.
Nootropics and Brain Enhancers: Neil is bullish on nootropics, citing personal benefits in cognition and focus. He suggests they can serve as a gentler introduction for those considering prescription stimulants.
Fasting Meal Plans: He supports extended fasting, sharing his positive experiences and the profound mental clarity it brings, while cautioning against extreme intermittent fasting due to potential muscle loss.

Quote:

“If you save for vacations, you should save to invest in yourself.”
— Neil Parikh [30:49]

7. Investment Strategies: Angel Investing vs. Investing in Oneself

Neil contrasts his aggressive approach to angel investing with his recommendation to prioritize self-investment. He underscores the limited liquidity and high risk associated with angel investments, advising listeners to focus on personal growth through coaching, education, and mental health initiatives for long-term benefits.

Quote:

“If there's anything you're going to invest in, it's probably much better to invest in yourself.”
— Neil Parikh [27:07]

8. The Future of Entrepreneurship Amidst a Liquidity Crunch

Addressing the current economic climate, Neil predicts a challenging year ahead for startups and venture capital. He attributes this to an oversaturated VC market and higher funding thresholds for subsequent investment rounds. Neil encourages entrepreneurs to view business closures as natural parts of the ecosystem rather than failures, emphasizing adaptability and resilience.

Quote:

“We should think about them like projects, not like forever entities.”
— Neil Parikh [30:23]

9. Final Takeaway: Investing in Yourself

As the episode concludes, Neil imparts a pivotal piece of advice: allocating funds to personal development yields substantial, compounded returns over time. Whether it's physical fitness, mental health, or education, prioritizing self-investment fosters sustained personal and professional growth.

Quote:

“Set aside money to invest in yourself... The compounding gains for that in your life are going to be enormous.”
— Neil Parikh [30:46]

Conclusion

This episode of Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin offers valuable insights into how biohacking can serve as a catalyst for entrepreneurial success. Through Neil Parikh's experiences and expertise, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of various biohacking practices, the importance of personal investment, and the realities of navigating the entrepreneurial landscape in a fluctuating economic environment.

For more actionable financial tips and personal development strategies, consider subscribing to Money Rehab and engaging with its community.

Loading summary

Transcript167 lines

[00:00]
Nicole Lapin
If you take only one thing away from today's episode, Money Rehabbers let it be this in my not so humble opinion, Public is the best brokerage for investing in bonds, stocks, ETFs, options and even crypto. You can try it out for yourself and see why I love it so much. @Public.com MoneyRehab Public is legit, the only platform I use to buy bonds. Before public, I used to buy government bonds the hard way. Slow websites, confusing interfaces, website designs straight.
[00:26]
Neal Parikh
Out of the early 2000s.
[00:28]
Nicole Lapin
Just picture where fun goes to die.
[00:30]
Neal Parikh
But that was it.
[00:31]
Nicole Lapin
And then I found Public about five years ago and I have not looked back. I can now finally buy bonds without.
[00:38]
Neal Parikh
Wanting to rip my hair out.
[00:39]
Nicole Lapin
Public makes it so easy to buy bonds. Whether you're into Treasuries or corporate bonds, you can browse thousands of options right from your phone. But like I said, Public isn't just all about bonds. You can also find stocks and ETFs and they offer a high yield cash account with a 4.1% APY, which is higher than the national average. They even have retirement accounts. You can now open a traditional or Roth IRA or both right on public.
[01:05]
Neal Parikh
So your future self covered.
[01:07]
Nicole Lapin
And for a limited time you can earn a 1% match on all your IRA deposits, IRA transfers and 401k rollovers. If you want an investing experience that's both smart and simple, head to public.com money rehab one more time. Public.com money rehab this is a paid endorsement for Public Investing. Full disclosures and conditions can be found in the podcast description. You guys, we gotta talk about the Skims Fits Everybody bra and underwear line and they do mean everybody. I have been wearing skims for over a year now. They came in so clutch when I was pregnant and all fabric felt so uncomfortable.
[01:43]
Neal Parikh
Honestly.
[01:43]
Nicole Lapin
Except for skims, the Everybody line is buttery smooth. It's gonna feel like you're wearing basically nothing. It's somehow stretchy and supportive at the same time. I don't know how they pulled it off, but they did. Skims Fits Everybody line comes in tons of shades and styles so you can find something that works for you without.
[01:58]
Neal Parikh
Feeling like you're sacrificing comfor coverage or cool factor. They are definitely very cool. I thought they were too cool for me.
[02:05]
Nicole Lapin
But no. Skims Fits Everybody is available now@skims.com believe me, your top drawer will thank you. Shop Skims Fits everybody collection@skims.com and after you place your order be sure to support the show and let them know we sent you select podcast in the survey and then select Money Rehab in the dropdown menu. I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert. You don't need a dictionary to understand it's time for some Money Rehab.
[02:35]
Neal Parikh
We have.
[02:38]
Nicole Lapin
Have you ever noticed that there is this very bizarre trend happening in the entrepreneurship space? There is this very specific broy entrepreneur.
[02:46]
Neal Parikh
That'S super into biohacking.
[02:48]
Unnamed Guest
And I have a lot of questions.
[02:50]
Nicole Lapin
Like why is this one particular type.
[02:52]
Neal Parikh
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 Neal Parikh, one of the.
[03:04]
Nicole Lapin
Co founders of Casper, the game changing mattress company and a total sleep and health research nerd. We are talking about biohacking.
[03:11]
Neal Parikh
We also define it. If you've never heard of it, we've got you.
[03:14]
Nicole Lapin
And of course we talk about sleep.
[03:15]
Neal Parikh
Because we had to. Here's our conversation.
[03:19]
Nicole Lapin
Neal Parikh, welcome to Money Rehab.
[03:21]
Neal Parikh
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[03:23]
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?
[03:35]
I think some things happen by accident and, you know, 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. And 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 back then. You'd have to 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? There'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 in 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 other things. But that era was just starting back then, so I'd say it was a bit of both.
[04:53]
What does your dad think about the company?
[04:54]
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.
[05:00]
Well, 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?
[05:18]
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, you know, breathable sheets, that kind of stuff. But a lot of the impact is what you do during the day. For me, the biggest impact has 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 3 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. And 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.
[06:20]
This is as I'm zipping my coffee. I mean it's 1:22 in the afternoon. It's not yet three, but still.
[06:25]
Okay, 2 o', clock, we're done.
[06:28]
Unnamed Guest
That's my cut off.
[06:29]
Neal Parikh
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 when 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?
[06:47]
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, you know, 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. You can kind of have your own temperature control and whatnot. What it does for your relationship, I don't know, but it definitely.
[07:17]
Honey, did you hear that? Did you sleep well the night before? Casper IPO'd?
[07:22]
No, terribly. I mean, it's a, it's a huge.
[07:26]
Unnamed Guest
Did you sleep?
[07:28]
Neal Parikh
I think it was, you know, that my, my best analogy was it was like sleeping, like how much I slept the night before I took the SATs, which is gonna sound so nerdy, but I was so nervous.
[07:38]
How often did you check the stock price? Be honest.
[07:41]
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. Because 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, if they didn't think about the financial, you know, 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, 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. And so for all of your friends and everybody that, you know, the only thing that people see on the outside world is your stock price. But all day long you're living something totally different. And so that was, that was really the adjustment that I had to make.
[08:45]
What do you think the most important number is if it's not the stock price?
[08:50]
I think the Most important number is probably NPS or like, are your customers happy?
[08:53]
Nps just because we're a no jargon zone.
[08:56]
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? And it's an imperfect measure, but it helps you get a sense of, are you doing a good job or not?
[09:12]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[09:13]
Neal Parikh
That's a generally a scale of 1 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.
[09:20]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[09:20]
Neal Parikh
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?
[09:31]
What's the stock price right now?
[09:33]
We went private, so that's $0.
[09:37]
Unnamed Guest
How nice is that?
[09:39]
Neal Parikh
It's a great day.
[09:40]
Yeah. What are the emotions around that? Because it feels like when you're a Bibi entrepreneur, going public is like the end all, be all. And then you get there and you're.
[09:49]
Unnamed Guest
Like, this is like a financial colonoscopy every day.
[09:53]
Neal Parikh
I mean, this is what I've heard from other entrepreneurs who have taken their companies public and regretted it and then have, you know, 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.
[10:10]
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. And we see photos of the New York Stock Exchange everywhere and that you want to go ring the bell. And like, don't get me wrong, all those things are really cool, right? 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.
[10:39]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[10:40]
Neal Parikh
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, like we talked about with the stock price, when you're private, not your entire existence, doesn't often get reduced into one number.
[11:01]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[11:01]
Neal Parikh
And 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 it's cracked up to be.
[11:09]
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?
[11:24]
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. So tactical example 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.
[12:05]
So entrepreneurs are specifically obsessed with this. Now, you mentioned Brian Johnson, who famously spent 2 million bucks on medical interventions and all sorts of weird stuff like electromagnetic magnetic pulses on his penis to make it younger and all weird, weird stuff, you know. Why do you think entrepreneurs specifically are so obsessed with biohacking?
[12:28]
Unnamed Guest
I have a couple ideas, but I'd.
[12:30]
Neal Parikh
Love to hear yours.
[12:30]
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.
[12:45]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[12:46]
Neal Parikh
And when you're often running a company, it feels like things are out of your control all the time.
[12:50]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[12:51]
Neal Parikh
The market could be changing. You have employees, you have 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. And 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.
[13:22]
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. Bulletproofs. David Asprey wants to live beyond 180 years old and is spending all sorts of money to do that. 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 can try it?
[13:53]
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, my go to ones are often just around sleep. So you know, the aura ring is wonderful. Like one of the key problems with sleep is how. And it's the same problem in business. How can you impact something that you don't measure?
[14:07]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[14:08]
Neal Parikh
What we used to do is just like wake up and get a sense of like, 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. And 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, 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. And like, you know, what's the cost of heat? There's plenty of ways to get it. That's not that expensive.
[15:07]
True. You don't need a fancy infrared sauna to do that.
[15:10]
Unnamed Guest
You can just go to the desert, go outside on a hot day, take a hot bath, whatever.
[15:15]
Neal Parikh
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?
[15:30]
Unnamed Guest
Bearish.
[15:31]
Neal Parikh
All right, pass. That's, I think, where they take blood from like a teenager or something and then put it in your body.
[15:38]
Here's the thing, it might work. The reality is I'm sure people feel better.
[15:43]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[15:44]
Neal Parikh
The question is, what level of risk do you want to take and how much money do you have?
[15:47]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[15:47]
Neal Parikh
Like 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.
[15:57]
No, it's like expensive pee.
[15:59]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[15:59]
Neal Parikh
But, you know, the placebo effect is really powerful. Like if you're really hungover 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.
[16:22]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[16:22]
Neal Parikh
They probably feel superhuman afterwards. Just 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.
[16:32]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, we're sleeping a Casper mattress.
[16:34]
Neal Parikh
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?
[16:47]
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. You 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 is 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. But it turned out that from my nutrigenomics panel, for me, saturated fats are deathly. They're like my body cannot process them. And so actually the reason my cholesterol was so high for all 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.
[17:53]
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.
[18:07]
Unnamed Guest
Cobbler and pies and like, of course I put sugar and fruit together.
[18:11]
Neal Parikh
You know, A fruit tart.
[18:13]
Yeah. All right. Anti aging super pills. This is interesting because there's a company that will do this for 50 bucks a month. Basically, instead of taking, taking a big handful of a bunch of different supplements, they'll consolidate it into, into one or two pills. Bullish or bearish?
[18:28]
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.
[18:35]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[18:36]
Neal Parikh
Like if you don't take your vitamin D, it's gonna have no impact on you. If you don't take your fish oil, it's gonna have no impact on you. And 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.
[18:53]
Brain drugs like nootropics, very bullish.
[18:56]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[18:57]
Nicole Lapin
Why?
[18:57]
Neal Parikh
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 ten years. I've personally taken them. I have seen huge benefits. And I also think that like 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. And I actually think that nootropics could be for some people a much easier kind of glide path on the way in to see how you feel versus just jumping onto the more aggressive stuff.
[19:41]
How about fasting meal plans like Prolon or just sort of fasting? Bullish or bearish?
[19:47]
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.
[20:09]
Yeah, you're fucking invincible.
[20:10]
Unnamed Guest
I've done it and I wanted to kill myself. And then I was like, wait, a minute. Why do I ever eat food? It's so sad.
[20:16]
Neal Parikh
Exactly. You're like, what, I can suddenly speak Portuguese or so you know. 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 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. But 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?
[20:55]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[20:56]
Neal Parikh
I think it's because we've known for a long time it's probably good for us.
[20:59]
Nicole Lapin
Hold onto your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. So one of my girlfriends fell in love with this house and she was.
[21:06]
Neal Parikh
Sure she could afford it.
[21:08]
Nicole Lapin
She had the down payment, she had the income. But when it came to pull her credit for mortgage, oh, it was a.
[21:15]
Neal Parikh
Brutal wake up call.
[21:17]
Nicole Lapin
It sounds so obvious, but it hadn't really hit her until that moment. Her day to day spending habits weren't just keeping up with the Joneses, they.
[21:25]
Neal Parikh
Were affecting her future.
[21:27]
Nicole Lapin
So she came over, we talked about.
[21:29]
Neal Parikh
It, we did some credit hygiene and.
[21:31]
Nicole Lapin
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[22:14]
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[22:28]
Nicole Lapin
And now for some more money.
[22:29]
Neal Parikh
Rehab. Well, okay, so you said the main explanation potentially for why entrepreneurs are really, really obsessed with biohacking is control.
[22:40]
What was yours? Why do you think we do okay, yeah, similar.
[22:44]
I mean, Brian Johnson isn't spending millions of dollars to give access to medical interventions to like President Biden or Malala Yousafzai. Right. I 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.
[23:05]
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.
[23:19]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:19]
Neal Parikh
Because the thing is, like a lot of biohacking, some of it's very expensive, don't get me wrong.
[23:24]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:25]
Neal Parikh
But like, some of these interventions are not that expensive.
[23:28]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:29]
Neal Parikh
There are some supplements that can help you that are not that expensive. Going to a sauna, 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.
[23:49]
Unnamed Guest
Right.
[23:50]
Neal Parikh
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. And 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.
[24:25]
So you're saying there might not be altruism, but there's like some, 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, and so they want optimization with their bodies as well. I mean this, the Tim Ferriss kind of started this fire with 4 hour body and 4 hour workweek before that. What do you think about that idea?
[24:54]
I think that's right.
[24:55]
Unnamed Guest
Yeah.
[24:56]
Neal Parikh
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.
[25:15]
I mean, I know a lot of entrepreneurs, you probably do too, who bring optimization to their personal lives. They use Monday.com production 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?
[25:33]
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. Like 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 would say that's probably driven the biggest change because 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 be a big impact for me.
[26:16]
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? Like when you first made real money, did you just think, like, I've got money, like, I'm never going to run out of money, we're cool. And then not pay attention?
[26:35]
No, I did the opposite. Personally. I went and did two things, one of which I'd recommend and the other I would not recommend. So I aggressively angel invested. I've made like 200 investments into other companies, which is cool. And part of it's like you get to learn a lot and you get to support other entrepreneurs and it's awesome. But the liquidity on angel investing is really, really long. And I think you kind of. You don't really think about that, that when you write a check to invest into a company, first of all, most likely that money's never come back.
[27:06]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[27:07]
Neal Parikh
You don't really think about that. And then secondly, if it ever does, the first companies that I backed like 10 years ago are starting to exit.
[27:15]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[27:15]
Neal Parikh
And so, like, that's a long time to wait to get access to your money again. So that's the one where, like, if you're really into it, that's great. But I think the fact that, like, everybody wants to, you know, do angel investing, I'd probably think about it. The one I do recommend is just investing into yourself. Like, I spend a lot of money on coaches and, like, therapists and learning of all different sorts. Like, I'll hire people to teach me. I don't know anything I can think of. And I think for me, that has had the biggest impact. And that's usually what I recommend to most people. Because it's like, if your life is like an exponential curve, small changes at every point can dramatically impact you, like, you know, slightly further and further out. And so, like, if there's anything you're going to invest in, it's probably much better to invest in yourself and go long on yourself versus going long on just the S&P 500, you know.
[28:07]
Yeah, you've been listening to money rehab. Investing in yourself pays most dividends later on. Duh. Neil, you then went back into the entrepreneur game after that. You then predicted that a bunch of startups and VCs are going to go out of business. Why did you say that? And what do you see for the year moving forward?
[28:26]
Okay, so we're in a liquidity crunch. And the problem is that we had a historic amount of venture capital that entered the ecosystem over the last five years. Like, everybody's cousin has a venture fund. You know what I mean? Like a 10 to $50 million fund where they're investing in something or other. So what's amazing about that is that every, you know, a lot of people were able to start companies because you could raise 500k to 2 and a half million dollars from people. But the problem is that, like, if you hadn't figured out your business model and we've gotten to today, the thresholds for Series A's and Series B's are way higher than they used to be. And so what ends up happening is that there's just like, not a lot of Money left for those companies that are doing okay but not amazing. Unless you're an AI. If you're an AI, all bets are off, Right? But for a lot of these companies, the second thing is that we were sold a bill of goods by investors that ended up often not being true, right? Like, oh, I'm always going to be there for you. I've got your back, I've got more money, et cetera. But I think the reality is, like, most of them investors aren't your friends, right? Like, it's your job to manage your business. It's your job to think about liquidity. And it was like a little bit of a series of unfortunate events, like when the SBB collapse happened.
[29:38]
Unnamed Guest
Right?
[29:38]
Neal Parikh
Now, all the people that took venture debt from them are struggling because there's no more money to come. You know, how do you. One, how do you repay that venture debt? And two, who's inheriting and collecting that money? Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of a painful year. That said, I've shut down companies before and it was really hard. And the reality is, I think this is just like, part of the ecosystem, right? Like, a lot of companies just should shut down. And I think we should think about them like projects, not like forever entities where, like, if it's not a thing to be ashamed of that you shut something down, right? It's more of a sign of, like, if you see the writing on the wall, you have to decide, am I going to pound the pavement for the next 10 years to make this happen because I'm willing to do anything, or do I want to go work on something else? And I don't think there's anything wrong with either way.
[30:23]
I don't either.
[30:24]
Nicole Lapin
I shut down a company.
[30:25]
Neal Parikh
It was a financial smartwatch.
[30:26]
Unnamed Guest
I thought it was brilliant idea and it was so stupid and I.
[30:31]
Neal Parikh
And it was painful, but you have.
[30:32]
Nicole Lapin
To shut it down.
[30:32]
Neal Parikh
And that is the financial circle of life. We end our episodes, Neil, by asking.
[30:38]
Nicole Lapin
All of our guests for one money.
[30:39]
Neal Parikh
Tip listeners can take straight to the bank. What's just one thing that you would leave listeners with about saving, investing, budgeting.
[30:46]
Nicole Lapin
Running a business, shift a business down, anything?
[30:49]
Neal Parikh
The biggest tip I have is set aside money to invest in yourself, you know, and think about, okay, 10% every month I'm going to spend on myself, Whether that means going to the gym, hiring a trainer, going to therapy, saving up for school or something. The compounding gains for that in your life are going to be enormous. And most people never think about it, right they just think, I can't afford it. But, like, if you save for vacations, you should save to invest in yourself.
[31:13]
Nicole Lapin
Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some Money Rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions moneyrehaboneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one on one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagramoneynews and TikTokoneyNewsnetwork.
[31:39]
Neal Parikh
For exclusive video content.
[31:41]
Nicole Lapin
And lastly, thank you.
[31:43]
Neal Parikh
No, seriously, thank you.
[31:44]
Nicole Lapin
Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.