Building at the intersection of Consumer, Health & Technology

We back, build, and advise innovative companies doing what our health system can’t. Advancing a consumer-driven, proactive, personalized, and preventive health future.

Proactive Health. Built Outside the System.

“For most of the past decade, I had the privilege of founding and leading Better Therapeutics, Inc. (founded 2015; IPO 2021). Our premise was simple: treating the symptoms of diet and age-related diseases with drugs while ignoring the behavioral and lifestyle causes was broken.

So we built something better: combining whole-food nutrition with a digital platform for behavior change.

The impact was powerful. We helped people reverse diabetes, improve heart and liver health, and earned the first FDA authorization for a non-drug treatment of type 2 diabetes.

And then we hit the wall: the healthcare system.

Coverage stalled. Innovation slowed. Change from inside the system? Nearly impossible.

Back Bend Labs was created to:

  • Advance proactive, preventive health, without waiting for a dogmatic healthcare system to evolve.

  • Support the founders, CEOs, and partners building what should exist.

  • Fuse science and story, so big ideas become indispensable solutions.

  • Not just take shots on goal, but put more in the net.”

Our Focus

  • Healthy aging is the process of maintaining optimal physical, cognitive, and metabolic function as we grow older while reducing the risk of chronic disease. We are focused on the role of whole-food nutrition in enabling optimal aging.

  • Food as medicine interventions like produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals have shown promising results, but may be constrained by lack of a business model without policy changes, reimbursement, and system integration. A consumer-directed, preventive care model may unlock potential.

  • Four chronic conditions account for the vast majority of preventable deaths in people over 50. New approaches to preventive health focused on healthy habits, periodic testing, and early intervention will emerge from surging consumer interest in maximizing healthspan.

  • A proactive approach to health focused on prevention and exquisitely personal will require a new care model, one less reliant on traditional hospitals, clinics, doctors, and systems. Instead, a digital health assistant purpose-built from the ground up and powered by technology (AI) will provide routine care.

For Builders, Backers & Big Thinkers

If you’re working on something that deserves to exist, we want to hear about it.