A seasoned Vancouver entrepreneur and investor has set his sights on the concept of longevity with the launch of a new venture capital fund.
Alongside “long-time friends and partners” Rudi Airisto and Lars Staal Wegner, Recon Instruments founder Dan Eisenhardt has co-launched Bristlecone Pacific.
“With the average age of populations worldwide continuing to climb, maintaining optimal health and performance throughout life will drive enormous benefits at the individual, societal, and economic levels,” reads a statement from the new BC VC firm.
The investors and entrepreneurs building Bristlecone boast a track record of building businesses, raising capital, executing transactions, and engineering exits. Now they want to tackle an emerging field of tech and research that looks to enhance our species’ lifespan.
“We started Bristlecone Pacific to be the venture capital partner of choice for innovative companies developing solutions to extend healthy human lifespan,” the founders say.
The company was named after a famous bristlecone pine tree, nicknamed “Methuselah,” which is alleged to be nearly 5,000 years old—likely the oldest tree in the world.
“It is not an unreasonable expectation for anyone who is alive and healthy today to reach 100 in good health—active and engaged at levels we’d expect of healthy 50-year olds today,” offers Dr. David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor who wrote “Lifespan.”
New interventions, backed by scientific evidence, will enable humans to “control the biological aging process and be youthful at any age,” believes Bristlecone. “The longevity mega-trend is primed for an inflection point, with a multi-decade runway of rapid growth ahead.”
Prior to cofounding Bristlecone, Eisenhardt launched FORM, a sport technology startup that in 2019 released a pair of swim goggles that allow athletes to view performance metrics underwater while competing.
The move came after the entrepreneur sold his prior venture, Recon, to Intel in 2015. This enabled him to co-launch Rhino Ventures, which continues funding Canadian companies today.
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