The Company Putting A Score On Your Life - EP 28 Dugal Bain-Kim

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
You are more massive than I had expected from the photos. Have you been doing extra lifting, or have you been in this state for some time?

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (0:11)
I actually used to be significantly bigger. This is being like, trying to maintain a hang on mode at 40 years old.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:17)
I must have been just seeing shots from the shoulders up or something. Yeah. I was like, damn, tubes rolling in. Well, here, I'll set us up for success.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (0:28)
Good.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:28)
Well, I'll try. Dugal Bain-Kim, thank you for joining us. We've never met before, so this is a treat for me at least. You, we're gonna get in to your background and everything, but so people know, you're the co-founder and CEO of Lifeforce. I think it's safe to describe it as a longevity, human health company, and we'll get into what it does. You, your background is a bit of business and management consulting and things like that before you got here, but do I have the basics right so far?

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (1:18)
Yeah, that sounds great.
Thanks for having me on. I love the show, glad to be here.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:22)
Awesome. Just before we kick off, I'll just mention as always that the show is sponsored by E1 Ventures, the finest venture capital company in the land. Thank you, E1. All right, well you are near and dear to my heart already because you're Australian and my mom is Australian.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (1:41)
Oh, that's cool. Where is she from?

**Ashlee Vance** (1:42)
She's from Sydney, which I think is where you're from.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (1:47)
I'm from Brisbane.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:47)
You're from Brisbane.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (1:48)
So about an hour north of Sydney, but we all know each other out there anyhow.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:51)
Yeah. So I'm half Aussie. I used to go there twice a year, every year. When I was growing up, spent tons of time there. Most of my family was much larger on the Aussie side. So yeah, so it's near and dear to my heart.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (2:07)
Yeah. I'm getting along already.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:08)
And you, you sounded like the typical Aussie type. I mean, tons of sport growing up outdoors, all that.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (2:16)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I loved growing up in Australia. I was there until my early 20s.
And yeah, I think it's been, it's been something that I've always kind of looked back on around that outdoors experience and pretty health conscious sort of country. And have a lot of friends there and love to get back there and bring my daughters back there as they get older.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:36)
It's, I don't know if like people who haven't been there fully appreciate, it's just like the afternoon, weekends, just everybody is outside. Or at least that's what it used to be like when I, I go less often the last decade than I used to. But I don't know like too many other cultures that are so sport forward and outdoor forward.

**Dugal Bain-Kim** (2:58)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it is definitely something you grow up with is just, just sort of core to what it means to live a good life is to be outdoors and be active and get involved in things. And you know, if you're down on Bondi Beach at 5 a.m. in the morning, any day of the week, it's going to be packed with people doing all sorts of things. Yeah. So it's a pretty lucky place in that way.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:18)
Yeah, I love it. My parents ended up living by Manly Beach. And yes, exactly what you said would transpire every day. Well, I want to, I mean, I do want to do a little bit more on your background, but I also want to explain Lifeforce to people quickly, just to let them know where we're heading on some of this conversation.
I'll take a crack again, and then you can tell me if I've gone astray. But, you know, mention it's in the longevity realm. We clearly have a number of companies that have popped up over the last decade to try and help people live healthier lives, and we have all these new tests coming, things, blood tests, things to measure your clocks, your aging speed, all kinds of tests. At this kind of consumer level, it seemed like you guys are taking advantage of that, and then adding a lot of stuff around it to help people make sense of the data that they might be getting. I saw, let's start here if it makes sense, which is, this struck me as different to some of the things that I read about in the past, which is you actually send a phlebotomist to people's house to go collect this initial sample. And so tell me what Lifeforce does, and does it kind of begin with this blood sample?