Aging is inevitable, but Modern Age wants to help you do it in a way that is healthier.
Melissa Earner, former vice president at Amazon and COO at Glossier, is behind the company, which is announcing $27 million in Series A funding led by Oak HC/FT.
Longevity has a personal component for her: As she watched her parents age, she saw the differences between her mother and her mother’s friends and got to thinking about how, in the second half of life, some people will thrive while others can decline rapidly.
“For example, what genetics and her environment is in her control,” said Earner, who went to business school with the intention of getting into long-term care, but ended up finding it difficult to find a long-term care company that wanted an MBA. Instead, it was Amazon that gave her the foundation for customer focus and using technology to solve problems.
As such, Modern Age wants to help people live longer, healthier lives, providing digital tools to help users understand their aging options, including telemedicine and in-person treatments. While researching the topic, Earner came across research that when you feel younger, you live longer.
“That got me thinking about health and wellness to manage how you feel,” she added. “There are a lot of spot solutions out there, like going to the dermatologist for age spots, but not a lot of companies connecting the dots between all of the factors: nutrition, sleep, fitness, hair, skins, bones and metabolism. Humans are not great at these data points, but computers are, and using that, we have built something powerful.”
Users start by taking an assessment across variables to determine how old they feel and areas of health and wellness that are most important. The company plans to launch initially in the areas of skin, hair, bones and hormones.
For example, signs of aging in skin and hair are noticeable beginning in your 30s, which is also the time when people begin losing bone mass, something Earner said is not talked about much. In addition, hormones affect how much energy you have, and Earner says there is a lot of misinformation and a general lack of information, like women don’t realize that lower testosterone can lead to fatigue.
Also participating in the round are GV and founding partner Juxtapose, which gave the company a seed round in 2020, to bring the company’s total funding to $33 million.
“Much like some of our other successes in the health and wellness space, like Care/of or Tend Dental, we see Modern Age as another opportunity to utilize technology in a way that creates a hyper-personalized experience for customers and can lead to better resources and patient care,” Jed Cairo, co-founder and managing partner at Juxtapose, said via email.
A large portion of the new funding will be used to build out Modern Age’s flagship clinic in New York’s Flatiron district that is expected to open in early 2022. In addition, the company will invest in talent, technology development and customer engagement.
The company is now at 17 employees, and Earner expects to grow to 50, not including the staff in the clinic, by the end of 2022. The clinic will have its own clinicians and medical team. She also will be hiring a chief medical officer to work with her as well.
Annie Lamont, co-founder and managing partner at Oak HC/FT, said the science of longevity is still in the early stages and it is going to be a major area of investment. Indeed, companies like Longevica, Gero AI and Rosita Longevity recently were in the news about their approaches and attracting funding.
Lamont says Earner “is incredibly experienced and grounded in sciences” and wants to build a company that is bringing clarity to consumers to become a trusted entity and credible voice to the topic of longevity.
“There are piecemeal attempts right now, and how people feel matters, as does the science,” she added. “Modern Age may not provide all of the services, but it will be a place to find out the truth of both the virtual and physical space and will have evolving services.”