The Future Is Now: Bob Messerschmidt Of COR On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Film Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Everything is important, but not everything is equal.
Not everything deserves equal time and attention. Suppose you have a development plan, and there are a thousand different things to worry about. In that case, you must acknowledge the importance of each part but learn to prioritize and not worry about those thousand things equally. We used to say, “it’s easy to get twisted up in your underwear.” Don’t do that.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob Messerschmidt.
Bob Messerschmidt is a digital health and medicine futurist and serial entrepreneur with a 30 year career in health, wellness, optics and spectroscopy. He began his journey at the University of Pennsylvania, studying biochemistry, where he realized his interests in Analytical Biochemistry and Optics which remain at the core of his methods. He is a serial entrepreneur. He sold his last company to Apple and then joined Apple as a Platform Architect. He architected several technologies while there, most notably elements of the Apple Watch. Bob’s career spans optics, spectroscopy, digital health, invention, product/business development, thought leadership, and senior management. Bob was awarded the Williams-Wright Award in 1996. At COR, Bob is focused on developing a spectrometer that measures blood response to food and fitness interventions.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I began my career as a biochemistry student at the University of Pennsylvania. I came from a middle-class family and was on financial aid to pay for college. Throughout school, I was searching for “work-study” jobs which were a requirement in order to maintain my financial aid support. On-campus jobs were hard to come by at that time, so when I saw an advertisement for a lab technician I immediately went to try and get the position, I discovered two professors who had both just arrived in the lab surrounding with boxes and steamer trunks strewn about — it was total chaos.
One of the professors came over to me and explained there were two job openings available: the first was a standard undergrad lab assistant, mixing solutions; sacrificing rabbits and homogenizing their muscle tissue, etc. The second job was to make operational all of the lab spectroscopy instrumentation that was still packed away in steamer trunks. The professor later told me that he saw my eyes light up when he mentioned the second job and knew instantly which one was for me. Electro-opto-mechanics was clearly my thing, and has remained so throughout my career.
Can you tell us about the cutting-edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on?
My magnum opus is COR, the world’s first in-home spectrometer to help individuals learn how specific nutrition and fitness ideas impact their unique body chemistry. You hear every day from “big wellness” that certain foods like pistachios, coffee, red wine, etc. are good for you, but those diet recommendations are all based on averages. What about your unique body chemistry’s response to those foods? Are some of those foods truly GREAT for you, while others have no impact? Getting answers to those questions is where COR comes in.
So how does it work? COR uses infrared spectrometer technology, which is like a multiple wavelength camera. Rather than looking at single snapshots, infrared spectrometers collect billions of pictures and build models. The process is similar to the way that Tesla builds vehicles that drive themselves through models from camera data.
We start by getting lots of high-quality data from blood through infrared spectrometers in homes. Using infrared spectroscopy, a painless finger prick, and a library of lifestyle programs, COR has created an entire in-home nutrition and fitness information ecosystem, combining hardware, software, and data analytics.
Unlike biomarkers, which developed for disease diagnosis and drug development, COR technology looks at blood not to diagnose, but rather as a way to rapid-test nutrition and fitness responses. In many ways, it turns blood information on its head.
This has never been done before.
The technology uses machine learning in large data sets from multiple users to train a model to identify a pattern which is consistent with, and evoked by, the doing of a particular fitness or nutrition intervention.
How responsive are YOU to pistachios? You can see this in a 21-day test during which all you do is a weekly finger-prick and a daily checklist of practices in the app. We know people are searching for this sort of personalized knowledge, the missing piece for self-efficacy in life improvement.
How do you think that it will help people?
80% of clinical decisions are made using data from your blood. Blood is the gold standard for measuring information on your health and wellness. Even still, we do not understand how to use the information within our blood to optimize our individual lifestyles. Even though each person is uniquely biochemically diverse, we have never been able to measure blood response at home, until now. You can use this information to make lifestyle choices that have the most lifelong impact.
Medical research studies have learned a lot about which lifestyle choices improve health, but even the most highly researched, well understood, and universally accepted lifestyle practices produce a large range of responses across people in clinical trials. The aggregate data shows that something like salmon is good for people on average, but with COR, you can determine precisely how impactful it is for you. Then you can use this information to continue food and fitness practices that can help you lead a better life.
How do you think this might change the world?
A couple of decades ago, if you said that hundreds of millions of people would be routinely wearing a device that measures pulse, blood oxygenation, near research-grade heart health via an ECG, activity levels, movement, and more, they’d probably say you’re crazy.
Well, my former boss at Apple famously said, “here’s to the crazy ones.” This is central to my belief system and to the culture of innovation in Silicon Valley. COR is looking to expand on what is currently possible with wearable devices. Despite incredible advances in technological capability, people today still have access to better analytics about the health of their toasters than about their bodies. COR aims to change that for every person, worldwide.
Eventually, I believe everyone will have a blood spectrometer in their home.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
When I think about developing technology with a phenomenal consumer experience, I can imagine how users could be curious about how their spectroscopy data would be used. Keeping user data, privacy, and security is of paramount importance. We have spent copious amounts of time, energy, and resources to establish state-of-the-art security features in both the COR device and app. For COR users, all data is end-to-end encrypted, fully anonymized, and never shared by us. The user is able to decide to share their blood response with others if they want to, but we never will.
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
A lot of the journey for any founder of a true startup involves long mental walks through dark tunnels and tremendous tribulations along with bouts of uncertainty. The breakthrough that led to COR was no different.
The tipping point for COR came from one day when I locked my door, put up some light blocking curtains, and started reading through thousands of medical journal articles and noticed something strange. There were lots of studies where food and fitness items were determined to be functional in improving outcomes of cardiovascular or metabolic risk or longevity, for example. It was clear food and fitness truly are the best medicine. But in every single study, there was a range of benefits across the population being studied. A BIG range.
I read the PREDICT study that looked at genetically identical twins and their metabolic responses to various inputs. Believe it or not, even genetically identical twins don’t have the same metabolic response to things. I realized that if diet and fitness advice was not made personal in a very objective and data-driven way, you may not be getting the benefits from that daily avocado or training for that marathon that you thought you would be getting. For anything that ultimately is shown to be an effective nutrition or fitness intervention, there is no guarantee it will work well for you specifically. The good news is that health is 80% about your choices, and bad genetics does not have to be a death sentence.
The tipping point that led to the breakthrough of COR was realizing that if you can determine exactly what one specific individual’s response is to a particular diet and fitness routine, you can adapt the diet and routine to precisely what is best for their body.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
Using COR is as simple as wearing a Fitbit or an Apple Watch in an effort to improve your fitness, and therefore we have the expectation of very wide adoption.
We have developed this technology to provide high-quality data right from the home, unlike anything seen before. Having worked in science for many decades, COR is some of the highest quality infrared spectra I have personally ever witnessed, at a fraction of the cost.
COR has three components: a WiFi-connected infrared spectrometer about the size of a kettlebell, a blood sample kit that you use with a painless finger prick once a week, and a cloud-based analysis engine. While Apple Watch can sense your pulse and blood oxygenation level from outside your skin, COR can get about 1,000 times more sensitivity from just one drop of blood. Since 80% of clinical decision-making involves blood diagnostics, now we want 80% of food and fitness decision-making to be based on blood response.
To have COR’s technology widely adopted, we need to reach people who care deeply about optimizing their food and fitness. I believe that once people start to experience the benefits of optimizing their lifestyle, widespread adoption will quickly follow.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
Journalists like John Koetsier at Forbes have picked up on the innovative work we are doing and have helped to spread the message.
We recently signed on with a world-class digital advertising team that is leaning heavily into short videos to share our story and the value that COR brings to every family. We say everyone will eventually have a COR spectrometer in their home and I don’t believe that to be an exaggeration. We are still in the early days of course, with a lot of work to do.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
In 2008, I went out on a limb and sent Steve Jobs an email (I guessed his email address). Instead of just sending it to spam, he actually answered with one sentence: “can I call you somewhere?” And the result? He acquired my company in 2009.
After the acquisition, I assembled and directed a platform architecture team. One day, I heard about a new project taking shape that was focused on a new wrist-worn platform — what would become the Apple Watch. I asked to be “read in” on the project and with Steve Jobs’ blessing, I was given access. My team and I conceived and architected the health sensor technologies for the device. When we had an inkling that we could develop something truly great, we would say “we think this is possible,” then make a prototype. Given the way I came to Apple, through a Steve Jobs-led acquisition, I never had any trouble getting access to interesting projects and for that, I am eternally grateful to Steve Jobs.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
COR’s mission is for each person to optimize their food and fitness and improve their lives, so we are literally all about goodness for the world. Ultimately, we want people to live better lives by making the best lifestyle choices for their bodies.
My successes in technology have given me the ability to live an exceptional and meaningful personal life. I am the dad to a daughter. I try to bring a scientific approach into her universe at every opportunity, with a lot of humor along the way. Along with my wife, an accomplished international law expert in her own right, we try to bring goodness to our portion of the world through dinner parties serving my own homemade wine.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why.
- Progress is rarely linear.
Progress is depicted on a graph as uphill and to the right. In reality, it is uphill and vacillating wildly left and right. Progress is rarely linear but it is always uphill. If something seems easy, you should wonder if you are working on something meaningful enough.
2. Prepare for things to take longer than you expected.
It took years of research and development to get our technology to operate at our high standards. People ask me how I remained so calm. Remaining level-headed and keeping the team inspired by the vision has been and will continue to be essential to our long-term success.
3. Everything is important, but not everything is equal.
Not everything deserves equal time and attention. Suppose you have a development plan, and there are a thousand different things to worry about. In that case, you must acknowledge the importance of each part but learn to prioritize and not worry about those thousand things equally. We used to say, “it’s easy to get twisted up in your underwear.” Don’t do that.
4. Your best employees will find you.
If your vision is compelling enough, the best team will be beating down your door looking to join the squad. If you find you are spending half your time recruiting as a founder of a startup, your idea might not be strong enough.
5. Vision begets vision.
When I started COR, no one was developing this technology. I firmly believed in extending upon the great success we found with the Apple Watch and forged ahead in my conviction that it could be done. I pitched 400 venture capital firms before I got a ‘yes.” The key lesson for me was that “vision begets vision.” The 400 VC firms I pitched to were not the visionary ones, but when I pitched Vinod Khosla, he immediately saw the vision and wrote a $4 million dollar check. The vast majority of VC firms just couldn’t see or share in the sheer audacity of our vision, but Vinod Khosla, of course, saw it in a flash.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The creation of COR is my magnum opus, so I genuinely believe in its ability to bring incredible goodness to our world. Optimizing our lifestyle is of utmost importance, and if I can help anyone feel better, feel empowered, and live longer through optimization, that is the goal.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Ultimately, when you look at any biological question it becomes a chemical problem.” — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
To me, this quote speaks to the primacy of chemical data. At COR, we follow the data, not the other way around. It has been my life mission to bring the best possible data to bear on any given problem. The good news is that technology keeps improving and so there is always new work for me.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Every body is different, so how do you optimize yours? COR is the world’s first in-home spectrometer to help individuals learn how nutrition and exercise changes actually impact their own unique blood and body chemistry so they can optimize better. COR is like a Fitbit for your blood response. We measure for a molecular response as you follow food and fitness experiments for 21 days at a time. People today don’t know there’s a huge range of responses to even the most medically validated food and fitness regimens. COR brings this information to light and provides unprecedented personalized insight.
Our long-term vision is a COR in every household. We want the type of personalized insights COR provides to its users to be available to everyone so anyone can optimize their food, fitness and lifestyle habits to include what truly works the best for them — not just what the health and wellness industry deems “healthy” for all.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Follow me on LinkedIn at and Twitter:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobme/
https://twitter.com/bobme
And follow COR on LinkedIn and Twitter:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/nueon-inc./
https://twitter.com/knowyourcor
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: Bob Messerschmidt Of COR On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
