Jasmine Sun

So there certainly are a lot of health risks that people are taking when they choose to experiment.

I think tech culture and San Francisco culture is in an interesting place where people are really embracing the cyberpunk and the biopunk.

I think there's this notion among a lot of folks that, sure, maybe the rest of the world is caught up in these slow and bureaucratic institutions like the FDA.

But us here in San Francisco, because we are pioneers and we're hackers, we can do our own research and we can be on the frontier of medicine and health.

And so I think there is this kind of anti-establishment attitude where folks believe that they and their own communities can experiment much faster and much better than the FDA can.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I definitely think that this sort of optimization culture is another big part of it.

It was really interesting how many of the tech founders I spoke to who are doing peptides, they would analogize it to the experiments that they run on their software products.

So like one woman said,

It's another thing I can tweak just like my SEO.

She's like, just try whatever, see if the number goes up, see if I feel better.

A lot of folks also said when I asked them, are you worried about the risk?

They would say, yes, it is risky, but I'm a risk tolerant person.

I'm the kind of person who would start a company.

I'm the kind of person who is willing to try anything to hunt for the big upside, even if there is some downside risk.

And then I do think that there is a way in which it's possible that tech culture is becoming a little bit more appearance and charisma conscious as well.

One thing I was interested to know is that one of the women I interviewed who is on gray market, read a true tide, the GLP three, she said that she is starting a company.

She was watching all of these launch videos from other founders.

And she noticed that

other founders weren't overweight anymore.