Why I'm Building Radical Good

Two weeks ago I was driving to a surf break in Spain when a friend asked me who Radical Good was actually for.

I didn't have to think about it.

"People like us," I said. "People who are getting older, who used to be active, and who want to stay that way for as long as possible."

He nodded. We parked. We went surfing(ish).

The waves were, in the grand tradition of Mediterranean surf, pretty average. Think grey, confused, and vaguely apologetic, like the ocean had tried its best and was embarrassed about it. We surfed anyway. Because that's the point. Not the perfect conditions. The fact that we were still out there doing it.

That moment, one New Zealander and one Spaniard paddling around in mediocre Mediterranean slop, is a more accurate brief for Radical Good than anything I've written in a pitch deck.

Here's the uncomfortable demographic reality nobody in wellness wants to say directly: we are all getting older. Simultaneously, we are living longer. This sounds like straightforwardly good news. And it mostly is. Except it also means more years where the quality of how you live matters enormously. More years where your energy, your mobility, your ability to do the things you love either compounds positively, or quietly erodes while you're busy assuming it won't happen to you.

Spoiler: it happens to everyone.

There's a condition called metabolic syndrome, a cluster of factors including abdominal weight gain, elevated blood pressure, blood sugar dysregulation, and abnormal cholesterol levels, that sits quietly underneath a lot of the health decline people attribute to simply getting older. It's worth knowing about because it's both largely preventable and almost entirely underreported in how it's discussed publicly.

Globally, it now affects an estimated 1.54 billion adults. That number has roughly doubled since 2000. It increases with age, with urbanisation, and, somewhat ironically, with income. In other words, the more successful and busy your life, the more likely it is to be quietly working against you in the background.

Most people carrying these risk factors don't know it. And most of what drives it, poor sleep, chronic stress, ultra-processed food, not enough movement, is exactly what a consuming work life produces.

This is not a niche problem. It is the defining health story of our generation.

The wellness industry looked at this enormous, active, aging population and largely responded with two things.

First: clinical and cold. Products designed for people already unwell, wrapped in language that makes you feel like a patient filling out forms rather than a person trying to live well. Useful. Important. About as enjoyable as a waiting room, or a tax return.

Second: biohacker culture. A bewildering, evangelical, borderline competitive stack of supplements, cold plunges at 4am, continuous glucose monitors, infrared saunas, peptide injections, and the general atmosphere that unless you're optimising seventeen variables before breakfast you're practically giving up. This appeals to approximately three percent of the population. It quietly terrifies everyone else. It also requires the free time of someone who has clearly never had kids, a job, or a bad Monday.

There was no simple, considered entry point for the rest of us. The people who want to keep surfing badly in Spain. Keep playing golf. Keep painting, creating, travelling, working, being present for the people they love, without it becoming a second career in amateur biochemistry.

That's the gap. That's Radical Good.

Now, simple doesn't mean unserious. This is important.

Like surfing, a good surfer makes it look easy. Relaxed, unhurried, borderline bored. But they've read the ocean, positioned correctly, timed the wave and are constantly adjusting to the moment. The effort is real and considerable, it's just invisible by the time it looks good. Years of proper fundamentals hidden inside something that appears effortless.

That's exactly how we think about formulation. Every ingredient is among the most thoroughly studied in its category. The science is rigorous. The experience is simple. We're doing the serious work quietly so you don't have to become a different kind of person to feel confident about what you're taking.

And we're not trying to replace the people doing deep clinical work. The preventative health practitioners, the longevity clinics running proper diagnostics, that work is important and we have genuine respect for it. Radical Good sits alongside that. The everyday foundation. The consistent baseline that makes everything else work better. The clinical layer and the lifestyle layer aren't competing. They're complementary.

Most people aren't going to overhaul their entire approach to health overnight. But most people will make one simple, considered decision if it's easy enough and trustworthy enough to say yes to.

That's the entry point we're building.

I'm writing this from Spain. We surfed again this morning, badly, but enthusiastically, which I've decided counts. Maria's family is here. We're eating well, moving every day, spending time with people we love.

This is what Radical Good is built around. Not the product. The life the product is designed to protect.

Even when the waves are terrible.