3 ms·
There are definitely companies and investors thinking/working in this space. They think if you can demonstrate an ability solve X in “staging” it has a chance t
by gen220 4y ago
There are definitely companies and investors thinking/working in this space. They think if you can demonstrate an ability solve X in “staging” it has a chance to transfer to “prod”. It works better for some things (generally, simpler/smaller and deterministic things) than others.
Practically speaking, the human health space is heavily regulated, and the costs associated with compliance are high. Intuitively, to me, there are not many health-specific innovations that one can discover in pet care that will lead to reduced costs in human care. Because most costs are not technologically-induced, rather they’re regulatory or bureaucratic.
You can iterate towards a better mouse trap in pet-land, but the time and financial costs of getting that mouse trap FDA-approved do not magically go away, and unfortunately human care is not a very free market, so being a 10x better mousetrap is not enough to break through.
The human healthcare market is also stupidly bigger than the pet care space, like 100x depending on what you include in each category. So if you’re after the big bucks, which most investors / investees are, it’s still generally worth it to target humans first.
That being said, some are seeing pets as an angle because human stuff is proving so hard and slow-going, they’re willing to experiment with any potential shortcuts.
Worked in human health and pet health.
- ben_w 4y agoOne thing I've been wondering about recently is SENS for pets. Lab rats can already be given extreme longevity, but I suspect there are plenty of dog owners who would pay a lot for double or treble life expectancy for their pets, especially as the lab rat with that treatment (reportedly) spent their years close to the peak of fitness.
- gen220 4y agoThere’s at least one company I knows of whose long term target is human life extension, and they’re bootstrapping with pets [1]. Personally I’m bearish on the whole notion of life extension writ large so I don’t know much about them, but it does exist! [1]: https://www.lifespan.io/news/new-harvard-startup-wants-to-reverse-aging-in-dogs-and-then-humans/ https://www.lifespan.io/news/new-harvard-startup-wants-to-re...
- MrFantastic 4y agoHuman healthcare has 3rd parties subsidizing the bills. This makes consumers price immune. Plus most surgeons can't tell you accurately how much the total bill with be because insurers pay different rates for same procedure. Vets are mostly out of pocket payments.