Bloomberg Explores the Longevity Ecosystem

Despite all of its promise, the longevity sector continues to fly under the radar of mainstream media. That’s why, whenever a well-known publication does happen to cover longevity, your team at spannr gets pretty amped up.

That was the case when Bloomberg’s Digital Original dubbed “The $7.6 Trillion Quest for Longer Life,” was published earlier this month. You can watch it here.

As we’ve seen many times over in other emerging industries – such as cannabis, psychedelics, or crypto – there’s both a positive and negative effect when it comes to this type of media coverage.

On one hand, largely due to the size of their audiences, the “talking heads on TV” have the power to instantly bolster industry awareness amongst thousands of listeners and readers. This welcomes legitimacy to the industry, can spark new conversations, and could eventually even turn the heads of government regulators.

The downside to these events, however, is that the message can sometimes be a bit misleading or misconstrued. For example, it can be too broad or narrow, politicized, or overtly full of hype – a slippery slope for investors and promoters alike.

Now, to be frank, we think Bloomberg did an excellent job at keeping things middle-grounded. It’s a great introduction to the space and we do suggest checking it out. But there are some things we’d like to highlight first…

Longevity’s Branding Problems:

• Only For The Rich? No, despite the Jeff Bezos’ and Peter Thiel’s of the world funding the industry with billions of dollars, we won’t go as far out to say that they’re only doing it for selfish reasonings. Furthermore, too much focus on the billionaires undermines the leg work of all the researchers, labs, and the several private or “stealth” companies that have led us to this point.
• One Pill To Save Us All? Not quite. While that sounds appetizing for big pharma, the longevity industry doesn’t exactly fit in with the current healthcare model as it spans far beyond just patented drug development. Bloomberg actually did an awesome job debunking this common misperception. Innovation in the space will happen on the fringes of biotech and new preventative medical practices. It will happen within a “multi-pronged” and collaborative effort to curb age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Cancer, M.S., Heart Disease, and so forth. Needless to say, life-spanning scientific breakthroughs won’t come as a pill anytime soon.
• Hard To Understand? After watching Bloomberg’s video, you might be left with more questions than you have answers to. If so, we wanted to let you know that you’re not alone. One of the biggest problems the industry faces is that the material can get confusing rather quickly, especially if you’re new to the field.

What companies are leading the space and what are they focusing on? How do you start learning more? And what are the realistic steps you can take today to embrace the Longevity mindset?

These are the same unanswered questions that led us to build spannr.

While it’s just the beginning, we are dedicated to helping fill these gaps.