Health Tech: Jerry Kroll On How Jevitty Life Science’s Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With Luke Kervin

it has to be good for the people. You need something that will make people care and support your business. Jevitty is not just about living longer — it is about living healthier. And that’s something everyone can get behind.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jerry Kroll.

Jerry Kroll is the CEO of Jevitty Life Science, Founder and Director of ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Corp and owner of Bodycomp Imaging. He wants to push the limits of the human lifespan with the combination of knowledge and technology. “We have the technology to become the best we can be, for as long as we want.”

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in Vancouver, BC. My parents immigrated from Germany to Canada in the 1960s and started a farm greenhouse growing flowers, so I became very connected with nature and technology growing up. I believe that’s where my inspiration came from — trying to improve the environment and ourselves using technology.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

For over 20 years, I have been working on a one-person electric car. I invented it, built a company, and took it public. About a month ago, I was driving from Santa Cruz back to San Jose on a hectic four-lane highway through the mountains and for the first time ever, I spotted one of my own cars coming toward me in traffic.

It was such an emotional moment for me. It’s reassuring that more than 20 years later, after all that effort, I got to see one of my pure electric small footprint cars, exactly how I imagined it, right in front of me.

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?

For me, it’s never one person. Like the human body, it’s not just the heart, lungs, or feet. It is a team effort.

There are hundreds of people that come into your life from time to time that work along with you, and they all have a part in making you a successful person.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

As a young boy, I read the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. At one point, he says, “Success in dealing with people depends on a sympathetic grasp of the other person’s viewpoint.” And it was such an epiphany for me — it taught me how to see things from the other person’s perspective. It’s not about being polite or trying to manipulate people. It’s about being aware of others. I believe it is the most important book I have ever read.

My mom thought there was something wrong with me the day after I started reading the book. She served me breakfast, and I thanked her for it. Until then, that wasn’t very common for the young version of me.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I think the first one would be: friendly. As my parents always said: “Make sure you’re good to other people because you’ll bump into them again in the future.” And I don’t mean just saying hi to everyone at a party or smiling at all times.

When I was younger, I thought that meant next week or month. But in truth, it could be more like 20 or 40 years down the road. There are people I met back when all of my businesses were still just a plan but supported me decades later. If you are friendly, honest, and hard-working, people will remember you and support you no matter how much time has gone by.

The second one I would say: empathy. It is a bit related to the friendly one because you need to think beyond yourself and your needs. Ultimately, of course, you want your business to be successful. But why would other people want you to be successful? Why would they want to help you in your endeavours?

You want people to care, so first, you need to know what they care about. When I started my environmentally friendly clothing company, my electric car company, and now Jevitty, I focused on one important mission: making the world a better place. Either stop cotton pollution, eliminate fossil fuel burning, or improve humans’ lifespan. These are all important missions that everybody can get behind. And if everybody is rallying towards the company’s mission, your business efforts have a tailwind instead of having choppy seas.

Lastly — resilience. This one is quite simple: if you are not resilient, you will quit when obstacles come your way. The electric car I saw in the traffic on my way back to San Jose? It took more than two decades of hard work to get there.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

Simply put, I want to solve the problem of aging. It’s not about looking younger but about being older. The longest a human has ever lived is 122 years and 164 days. We think we can make it longer.

How do you think your technology can address this?

There are five levels of longevity. The first level is to eliminate negative habits like smoking, bad eating and overdrinking. The second level involves adding positive habits like exercising, sleeping more and having a healthy diet. The third level is where technology comes into play, where we recognize aging as a disease and start developing actual treatments and vaccines for it. The fourth level is to take the technology to the next level and work on reversing aging — sort of like a factory reset of yourself to 22 years of age. The fifth and final one is to build an algorithm that helps maintain your life in factory settings for as long as possible.

That is the ultimate goal: reaching the fifth stage. Right now, we are at levels one and two. We call them awareness stages — people need to fix themselves, but you can’t fix what you can’t measure. And that’s where Jevitty comes in. Our Jevitty app gives you a projected number of how long you’re going to live based on your actuarial algorithm, considering your current lifestyle, age, activity level, and body composition. That last one is important: your weight doesn’t matter much — your lean mass and body fat percentage do. So once you get a body composition scan at one of our Bodycomp locations, you’ll be able to know exactly where you currently stand.

And from that, you can work on improving your current lifestyle by eating better, sleeping better, and getting enough exercise. And that doesn’t mean running a marathon a day; it just means being active more often, in a very subtle way, makes a huge difference.

At the same time that we are bringing awareness to longevity, we are also working with scientists, doctors, and technology leaders and investing in them as they work on different therapies, such as stem cell gene therapy and mRNA technologies, to actually slow down and stop aging.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

When I was about six or seven years old, I was faced with the fact that people get old and die just like that. And I don’t know why it affected me the way it did, but I remember thinking, “Why is no one doing anything about it?” But people don’t like to think about aging or death; they avoid the subject. But even as a child, I knew I didn’t want to avoid the issue. I wanted to prevent it from happening at all.

And over the years, I met brilliant people who had command of medicine, science and computers. And they would tell me that they were able to find out how aging occurs, then figure out how to stop it, and reverse it.

How do you think this might change the world?

I think the pandemic made people realize how health is more important than anything else. We can’t just live our lives acting like we’re going to live forever.

The population is declining. We’re losing so many valuable people to age and death. That’s as big of a tragedy as having a priceless, irreplaceable library burned down every single day. That’s a shame.

But we are at a time where we cannot only do something about it, technology-wise, but we have the will of the people and the will of investors to get behind it. And once aging is solved and death is cured, this will be the most significant human accomplishment in history.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I think it’s pretty universal thinking that life is good, death is bad. But even the things that seem obvious generate some resistance — some people insist we need to burn more gasoline, mainly because they have invested in it.

The only drawback I can see would be from people who may have misinformation on the technology involved in making this happen, or maybe some think it’s unnatural. But it’s progress.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

For me, there are three main things you really need to focus on. I call them the 3 Ps: People, Planet, Profit.

First, it has to be good for the people. You need something that will make people care and support your business. Jevitty is not just about living longer — it is about living healthier. And that’s something everyone can get behind.

It also has to be good for the planet. After all, we are talking about sustainability. Living longer wouldn’t be a concern if the population wasn’t declining. But it is, and we are losing brilliant minds in the process. So, to keep the planet alive, we need to be alive as well.

Finally, it has to be good for profit. You can have the best intentions and the best solutions, but you do not have a company without profit. Without the possibility of profit, you’re not likely to get the funding you need even to get your project off the ground.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Have a mission. A few days ago, I talked to an inspiring entrepreneur, and she asked me, “What should I do so that I don’t waste my time and money?” I told her “nothing”.

I think the biggest tragedy in life is when people think only about the profits instead of focusing on a mission like helping people or the planet.

For young people, I would say: Imagine you have all the money in the world, and you wake up on a Monday morning. What are you going to do with your time and money? Whether it’s building race cars, researching medical solutions, or whatever is your deepest desire waiting to come out. That’s your life mission.

Give yourself permission to do something important to you, even if it doesn’t appear obvious how much money you can make doing it. And I promise you that if it comes from within you, it will be like a holiday every day, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

When I was a young man, my heroes were Jim Pattison and Howard Hughes. Pattinson was from my hometown in Vancouver and was just starting his business when I was growing up. Hughes was the world’s wealthiest man at the time, and both were doing amazing things for the people and the planet. And that’s who I aspired to be when I was a little boy.

Today, I would say I am also greatly inspired by Elon Musk. Yes, he is making billions of dollars, but he is also making a real contribution to the planet — and the people. He inspires thousands of young boys and girls to follow the same path: use your abilities and money to do good.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find me on LinkedIn. You can follow and download our Jevitty app on our website. And to know your exact body composition and make good changes in your life, you can book a Bodycomp scan at one of our four locations via our website.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.