Funding a Longevity Clinic: Owner Accepts a $200K Convertible Note Offer

We're about to meet a doctor who worked in the Navy for ten years. Afterwards, he could have done anything, but instead he launched vessel longevity here in Austin, TX.

They are all anti aging regenerative medicine, so anything that helps you look and feel younger, that's what we do.

What was total revenue last year?

Total revenue last year was about 7 and $20,000

They're hitting some obstacles though that are preventing their growth.

You know, I'm a solo practitioner and I'm not even here full time because I still have to go to Arizona every month.

So the times that I'm not here, you know, revenue kind of declines a little bit. He's got ideas on how to double and triple revenue, but he needs some cash to make it happen.

I think stem cell can quickly become our number one revenue generator.

If everything goes according to plan, what can you go revenue to next year you think? Your most ambitious goal?

If we... If the stem cells really takes off, I mean, 2,000,000.

I believe that.

If I like his ideas, I'll offer to invest on the spot. I've never done a deal with a needle in my body. Let's see what we'll see what happens here.

Hey, how are you?

Hey Nathan, how are you?

I'm Nathan.

Really nice to meet you, Doctor. Emeka.

Emeka, Doctor. Emeka, nice to meet you. Absolutely. So this is your place, Yes, is. Vessel Longevity. Tell us what you're selling here.

Oh, we are all anti aging regenerative medicine. So anything that helps you look and feel younger, that's what we do. Whether it's IV, vitamin nutrition, bio identical hormones, stem cells, peptides, shockwave therapy, bio charger, anything that helps you look and function better, that's what we do.

How did you get into this space? Are you like a trained, obviously trained doctor? Give me a bit of your background.

Yeah, so I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I've been practicing orthopedic surgery for twenty years. I spent ten years in the and I was getting out of the Navy right before the pandemic. I just realized that our healthcare system is not optimized for people who are trying to live their best lives. It's trying to keep people from being sick and trying to get them back to just barely functional. So what we're trying to do is help all of

those who are, you know, 30 to older trying to live and feel their very best. So 2018, I leave the Navy, I come back to Austin. One of my good friends in the Navy, Michelle Koff, she's another one of the doctors. She's from New Mexico. And she comes up with this idea, Hey, I'm going to open up an IV bar in New Mexico. And she calls me, I'm like, What the heck is an IV bar? She

said they were in Vegas and they were feeling awful, as sometimes people in Vegas do. And they went to an IV bar and it was a mobile IV bar. She said they gave us the IV and within thirty minutes we felt amazing. She said it would be really cool if you could start something like this in Austin since I'm starting in New Mexico. A year later, we had opened up our location here in Austin.

You're sort of next to like a sports complex. So talk us through sort of the strategy around this location in Yes.

Mean, next door, we've got professional athletes that trained during the off season, middle school athletes and everything in between. Those folks have the opportunity to come over here and do IVs and do wellness therapies to kind of keep them optimized. Keep demographic is all right here. These are active people who want to stay healthy, that's what we're trying to treat.

Are you treating the athletes or the parents that have sixty minutes to kill while their kids are playing hockey next door?

Yes. Both. Both.

I think a lot of people, when they think about IVs, they go, It's for the drunk college party person that wants to get an IV in the morning. But you're really talking about preventative health.

Ongoing wellness. So basically seventy five percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated and people think there's really no negative effects of that. But actually chronic dehydration can lead to increase in diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure. Sure, we'll take care of the people who are feeling sick or hungover and those kind of things, but the one off isn't as beneficial as getting it on a consistent basis. It's basically for your general health and wellness.

When did you break ground here? When did you sign the lease? What year?

2020.

2020. Okay. How You remember what

was happening in 2020? Pretty brutal. Yeah. It was rough. So this building had just been built. We were the second tenant in this building. So this actual space we're in right now hadn't even been built out. So we were doing IVs by an ice rink for three months while this space was getting built out. We all had masks on. People weren't sure how close you could get to people, how sick they were going to get. So

it was a great time to start a wellness business, but at the same time, a lot of people weren't going out and exploring. At the same time in 2020, people were starting to question kind of medical treatment and medical advice and trying to be like, you know what? I need to take better care of myself because this system is not going to be taking care of me the way I thought it would. I'm still a surgeon.

Operate every month in Arizona. I fix broken hips, broken femurs, you know. So I'm still treating people who are literally broken. When people are asking me advice, I can be on the wellness side and I can also be on the traditional medicine side. So I'm giving them a full perspective. I don't take any salary from this place. So I go to Arizona every month. That's where I make my money when I'm doing my surgeries. So I'm here and then I go over there to make money to put back into this business.

I see. So how much personally did you put in just to get it open? Are we talking like 50 ks or like 500 ks?

Oh, closer to 500.

Really? Yeah. I wouldn't have no I mean, what's the most expensive?

Well, the build out. So the build out itself costs 300,000. So yeah, this is pretty much all self funded. I got a I got a loan from a bank, but that disappeared pretty quickly. So a lot of this has just been me on my own just hustling to try to put money back into it.

What were you hoping to do in first year revenue versus what did you actually do? Well, you know,

first year revenue, was hoping to be at least 500 ks, but we were closer to $33.30. And now we're kind of getting close to that 750,000, like $75,800,000. Getting close to that. You know, I'm a solo practitioner and I'm not even here full time because I still have to go to Arizona every month.

So the times that I'm not here, you know, revenue kind of declines a

little bit because people are looking for care from the doctor. So I've got three fantastic nurses that work for me. So we've been open here six years. We opened up a location in Lakeway a year ago this month. And when I'm in town, I'm here three days a week and then I'm in Lakeway two days a week.

Okay. Okay. So Doctor. Mecca, help me understand like year one, what did your product suite look like? I'm seeing these things behind us on the TV. What was your best selling product?

Yeah. So the IVs and the intramuscular shots are definitely our best selling products. These are our most popular IVs.

These were on average for like 180 up to you can spend as much as $800 for an NR infusion?

Correct.

And if you look at total revenue last year and I asked you to break it down to your top three product lines, IV, it sounds like it would be number one.

Our weight loss program would be number one. Okay. Yeah. So we do the GLP, semaglutide, tirzepatide. So the weight loss program has been huge for the last three years. Number two would be hormones. We do hormone pellets, which for men is $7.50 per insertion, that's twice a year. Women is 500 per insertion, and that's every three to four months. But then you basically, I insert them underneath the skin. So they go underneath the skin and then the hormones inside that pellet slowly go into your bloodstream over the course of several months.

Okay. So revenue breakdown last year, number one was weight loss. Number two was hormones. Hormones. Yep. Number three? Would be IVs. What was total revenue last year?

Total revenue last year was about 7 and $20,000

So what makes you so nervous about breaking a 250,000 this year? I mean, feels like you're close.

We are close. We are close. But the difficulty is my time. So what would be great is if I have another clinician who's here so that we have somebody on-site all the time.

Those of you on YouTube, Doctor. Ameca is really talking about a broken healthcare system in The US. How many of you guys agree? Leave a comment below.

So the IV memberships involve whether you want one IV or two IVs per month and those can roll over. So you just come in, you get any IV you want and it's already included in the price and it's already at a steep discount.

What does the IV membership cost?

Well, so if you do one IV a month, it's 175 and two IVs a month is $3.50.

Okay. Is that your most popular membership today in terms of revenue?

It is, yeah. But now we have our Vitality membership, which is for all of our people on hormone treatment. And so that includes their hormone treatment. It includes any hormone related labs. Everything else is discounted. You know, it's 15% off our weight loss program. If you're a member, it's 20% off all your peptides, if you're a member, and it's discounts on everything else we offer. So this is our multipurpose treatment room. So we have multiple devices

that we have at Bessel. And so this is our skin laser. So we use this for skin resurfacing. I can also use this for laser hair treatments. For our weight loss patients, we also do our body scans in here. We also have body sculpting devices. So for fat loss or for muscle definition, shockwave treatments for musculoskeletal and erectile dysfunction treatments.

I see influencers on Instagram and TikTok always wearing these masks with this red light. Is that what this is?

Yes. Yeah, this is our red light mask.

When I see this stuff on influencers or influencers, I go, Oh, they just want attention. But does it actually work as a science sound?

This is, yeah, this is FDA approved device for red light. Using a red light mask every day was going to help with collagen and elastin formation decreases wrinkles.

So is it better for like if I want to get relaxed to go to sleep or when I wake up in the morning, I should use it? Yes. Both? Yeah. Okay. You just have all kinds of ways to make money.

Well, I have all kinds of ways to help people.

Yeah, help people not make money. Exactly.

This is what we call the bio lounge, which features our bio charger. This is probably my favorite device in the entire clinic because it does everything. So it uses four natural healing energies. So it's electricity, electromagnetic field, frequency, and light. And these are all the natural energies that you get outside that helps to rejuvenate your body. And this machine has 1,500 different programs for health and wellness. You tell me what's going on with you. The bio

charger probably has a recipe to help with that.

Maybe people watching on YouTube, they see this, they go, this is like fufu. It like looks cool on camera. Influencers wanna take selfies next to it because it, you know, gets a lot of comments. How do you sort of... Your ability to take this to the mass market, if you really believe in the technology, is directly correlated to your ability to talk about the science and convince people that think it's just a influencer, you know, comment machine.

Absolutely.

How do get around that?

I love the skeptics. You know, I bring the skeptics in here. Case in point, like my own mom was here, you know, last year. She has bad knee pain. And I said, Mom, sit down here. I'm going to put this on pain support protocol. And she was just like, What the heck is this thing? Twelve minutes later, when the program is over and I have her get up and I was like, How are your knees feeling? She's like, My knees don't hurt anymore.

YouTube is going, Placebo effect. It's just placebo effects. Your mom wanted to feel better. Now she feels better. It's placebo.

No, no, not at all. Because it's happened many, many times. This is a $35 to $50 treatment for people. So it doesn't generate a ton of revenue, but it's a massive benefit for our clients.

All right. So doctor, I walk in, I just finished my workout next door. I'm telling you, want to keep building my muscle. I'm a middle aged male, 36 years old. I want to do an IV. What do you recommend?

Absolutely. So if you're just coming from working out and I can look at you and tell you're a pretty fit guy, most times I would recommend you get the Gainzilla.

Okay. Just

for athletic performance and recovery. And by by and far, that's what most of our athletes prefer.

And I see here the GameZilla, the difference is it's $149 for the members. It's $2.00 $9 for everybody else. So what, there's like a $60 discount basically if you're a member.

Correct. So everything is custom made. Sometimes people are like, you know, can I get it without this particular ingredient because I'm allergic and we can absolutely do that? So, none of these are premixed. It's yellow because it's got B complex vitamins. And so, you'll actually notice when you get this IV that once the IV starts running, it kind of tastes like you have Flintstones vitamins in your mouth. And that's from the B complex. And this is a half liter bag. Oftentimes we'll do full liter bags as well.

Okay. So on the $170 product, which is what we're looking at, what are your all in costs about to deliver that?

For this is about $40

$40 And so your markup there is about what, 200%, 300%?

For the product itself. But then I'm also paying a nurse to start it. And so the labor costs for me are kind of eat into that margin.

Is that your biggest cost monthly is what you pay your nurses?

Labor is. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. You got some beautiful veins.

Why do you say my veins are beautiful?

Well, I mean, they're, we like to call them plump and juicy. So easy to find. One, three.

Let me attach our line. Our IV is dripping. Now And I'm gonna give you

I can already taste it the roof of my mouth.

I told you.

It's like it's almost like it's coming from the roof of my mouth. I've never done a deal with a needle in my body. Let's see what we'll see what happens here. Guys, I've I've got some time to kill here, obviously. You mentioned you're traveling all the time. You've got some help that makes this place run. Should we you want to tell us more about your team?

Absolutely. So it starts with my COO, Carrie Cass. She was instrumental in the success of a of a stem cell and health and anti aging company here in Austin. I thought that kind of expertise would really help Vessel.

When did you get into

the I've been in healthcare my whole career, on the leadership and executive side. I helped open a clinic that was pain and regenerative medicine. I was director and leader for fifteen years, and then they got acquired and came under new ownership. And that's when I exited in May 2025. Private equity is making a major play in health care, good or bad. They're buying up PT clinics. They're buying up veterinarian clinics. They're buying up regenerative

clinics. And it's happening, med spas. It's happening all over the place.

How many people are full time on the team today?

So in addition to two of us, we have two full time nurses and one part time nurse.

And how many clients will you see in an average month physically coming in?

100 to 150 a month.

Are you overstaffed right now or understaffed? Like, you perfectly busy?

Sometimes we have plenty of staff and you don't have a whole lot of people here. So then you have to send people home. So my kind of take on it is I want to be understaffed until our pace necessitates we hire more staff.

New man, baby. Let's go. What did you bring her on to do? Is it to drive new customer growth?

Yes, yeah, in partnerships and the referral sources, especially as we build out our stem cell services. That's kind of what her expertise is.

Yes. I see.

Building awareness and building community and building those partnerships with different companies. And then the other side is just reconnecting with all of these physicians and chiropractors and PTs that I've built relationships with over the last fifteen years here in Austin and introducing them to Vessel.

So if you guys fast forward five years and all the current plans you've discussed happen, you execute according to plan, how much revenue can this place be doing?

So people are going to Panama or Costa Rica or Mexico to get this treatment done for $20.30, 50,000. So what we can, we provide like a cheaper price point, but it still has a very good margin for us. So you can stay here in town. We can do both of your knees for 10,000.

If everything goes according to plan, what can you go revenue to next year, you think? Your most ambitious goal?

If the stem cells really takes off, I mean, 2,000,000?

I believe that.

But I think stem cell can quickly, quickly become our number one revenue generating. I

believe that too, especially now that I'm able to go out and tell the story.

Are there any capital needs of getting from where we are today, a 250,000, sorry, 0.75 of million a year in revenue to 2,000,000? Or is it really just your time hustling doing partnerships?

If I had another clinician here on-site, so either a nurse practitioner or a PA that I could train up in wellness and in the injections and the hormone treatment, that would be huge. Then I can have a clinician in Cedar Park and a clinician in Lakeway. Ultimately, my goal is for this place to generate enough revenue where I can pay myself. I'll just stop going to Arizona. I'll just be full time here because this is what my passion passion is.

So how much cash would you need to hire a second clinician and get them trained up in your method?

In Austin, a PA is about between 140 and 155.

But is this like a break even business right now or burning money? Why can't you just come up with the money yourself?

I'm still burning because I still have a lot of outstanding debts that from that I'm still paying. In the next year, all of our debts should be paid off, but I'm still very much like close to close to break even.

Okay. How much debt is currently on the balance sheet today?

I think we're probably still looking at about close to 200 ks.

Okay. And is this manageable debt or is it like painful, really expensive debt with really bad terms?

Both. Both. I would love to see those get off of the balance sheet so then all of our cash flow stays with us. But for all the revenue we make, a lot of that goes out to pay the debt.

Do you have a sense of what that is? Is it like $20 a month on debt payments per month or 10 ks or more?

A little bit less than 20 ks a month for free debt. Yeah.

So if the debt was paid off, you'd have 20 ks of new free cash flow, which you could save up to then reinvest in the spending on a new collection. Correct.

So that these high, high interest like lenders who are always just like, hey, we're happy to give you money. But it's, you know, like 30%.

So if I made an offer that was, I don't know, dollars 200,000, but for something much cheaper than a 30% interest rate, that is something that would free up more of your cash flow every month. So you would have profits to reinvest in the business. Yeah. If the capital need is 150 ks for a new clinician, how would you want me to, do you want me to make you a debt offer? Are you open to selling equity instead? So you have no monthly payments. There's no, you don't have to repay it effectively.

I don't need to own all this myself.

Yeah. So, I want to make an offer. I'm going to get creative though, because I don't know what the equity is worth. I'll offer $150,000 as a convertible note. And the way that a convertible note works is there's an interest rate attached to it. I'll give you an interest rate and that's half of the 30% of what you're currently paying, which should free up cash flow. So it'd be a 15% interest rate. Each month, you'd make

monthly payments just on the interest, not the principal. At the end of twenty four months, and this is why it's called a convertible note, we'll sit down and decide, do you have the cash to pay back the 150 k of principal or we can convert it into equity at that point in time. So it pushes off the valuation conversation to twenty four months from today, but I'm still making money on the monthly interest payments.

What does equity look like if it turns into that?

There's a couple ways we could structure this. We could agree on a valuation cap today. So we could say in two years, you know, I'm putting in 150 ks, it could convert, but it can convert at a 5,000,000 valuation, which I hopefully you guys would say that's much higher than what it would be worth today. Right? Because that would be like four x, five x revenue. Right. Which is pretty high, I think. Right? If the cap

is 1,000,000. Right. If the cap is 5,000,000, then it's sort of much lower. So that's how the equity conversation would work. It'd be uncapped and we talk about valuation in two years or we can cap it at something relatively high that you guys like today.

Mhmm. 5,000,000,000 in two years. We... That sounds reasonable.

I do too. Yeah. I believe that.

Yeah. So the offer would be $150,000 on a convertible note at a 15% interest rate. You're making monthly interest payments, which saves you money because it's cheaper than your current debt. Mhmm. And if in two years we decide we wanna convert it into equity, we'll take a 150 k divided into 5,000,000 to determine what percent of the business I would own if I decide to convert. The other option is if we don't want to convert and

you have the cash in your balance sheet, you can just pay me that principal. In the meantime though, we get the clinician in, we go execute the vision and try and double triple the revenue.

So having that clinician build up their own That's clientel very true. List is going to take is going take some time.

Doctors into an established clinic. And it takes a while.

So could we make the same kind of offer for ON250? It's going take them at least six months to get up

to training time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I've heard enough. I mean, I've heard a lot of context. Here's my final offer. I'll go up to $200,000 on a convertible note with a 15% interest rate and a 5,000,000 cap. Do we have a deal?

I've got a deal.

Got a deal?

Yes. We've a deal.

Alright. Let's get to work.

Yeah. It's more awesome.

IVs for everybody.

Woo hoo.

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