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When he was 15 years old, Max Clarke would wake up to find blood pouring from his nose. The nosebleeds were relentless, sometimes happening multiple times a week. Doctors couldn’t diagnose it. By the time Clarke got to university, he was exhausted and still without answers.
So he did something about it.
He changed his diet. Started meditating. Practiced yoga. Took supplements. Focused on sleep. “I’ve never had a nosebleed since,” Max Clarke says. “Doctors were saying I needed surgery, but I knew there had to be another way.”
That experience gave him a mission — to take the guesswork out of wellness by helping people find what actually works for them, without having to sort through endless advice, or no advice at all.
From importer to innovator
Clarke launched his company, Healf, with his brother in 2021. It started with curating the best wellness products from around the world—the kinds of things he had used to heal himself—and making them available in the UK, where options were limited.
But that was just the beginning. “We were hearing the same thing again and again from customers,” Clarke says. “They’d say, These are all amazing products, but how do I know what’s right for me?'”
So, Clarke and his team built a platform called Healf Zone, which uses at-home blood testing kits and wearable integrations to help users understand what’s happening inside their bodies. Then, using AI and machine learning, the system looks at the data and recommends personalized wellness products, nutrition plans, and lifestyle tweaks.
Build a company by solving one problem at a time
Rather than setting out to launch a wellness empire, Clarke tackled challenges as they emerged. First, they addressed the lack of product quality. Then, the limited access to global products in the UK. After that, they helped customers learn which products were right for them. Each solution led to the next phase of the business.
The takeaway: Don’t try to launch the perfect company out of the gate. Build by listening and iterating. “You don’t need to know how it’s all going to come together. You just need to solve the next problem.”
Related: What This Founder Thinks Most Supplement Brands Get Wrong—and How He Fixed It With David Beckham
Be obsessed with your customer
Since launch, the business has grown to more than $100 million in annual revenue in under four years. Clarke credits this to customer obsession as a core principle. That includes same-day deliveries, hand-carrying orders to celebrities and athletes, and responding to urgent requests in real time.
One example is a billionaire aboard a yacht at the Cannes Film Festival, who urgently requested a specific product the company sold. Clarke’s team personally flew it from the UK to the French Riviera, making the delivery just in time for the party.
“We’ll do whatever it takes,” Clarke says. “One of our standards that we live by is never settle.”
Create a culture that works hard
Clarke built the company around five core principles: work harder than anyone else, never settle, obsession beats talent, stronger together, and the Healf lifestyle—a philosophy rooted in prevention over treatment and living well through movement, nutrition, mindfulness, and sleep.
Employees work seven days a week. Performance reviews are done every three months. Clarke personally does one-on-ones with team members on Sundays.
His advice for other entrepreneurs is to build your culture early and protect it. Be transparent about what you expect. Reward results, not titles.
Hire for heart, not just smarts
Clarke learned some of those lessons the hard way. Early on, he put too much weight on advice from industry veterans and occasionally hired for pedigree instead of passion. Now, he trusts his instincts and not just the depth of their resume.
And Healf has tweaked the interview process. “We were hiring people who were incredibly smart, incredibly driven, incredibly behind the mission, but they just didn’t have that depth that’s needed when things get really hard. So now we’re trying to hire people who we say have big hearts.”
Act like it’s still day one
Despite explosive growth, its ambitions are bigger than ever. The company is getting ready to expand internationally, and longer term, Clarke wants to build physical experiential wellness studios in major global cities that blend diagnostics with community.
For him, the mission hasn’t changed. It’s still about helping people feel better, faster — and giving them the tools to do it without having to guess.
“Even now, everyone in the company is very much behind this idea that it’s still day one,” Clarke says. “We’re not even scratching the surface of how much value we can add.”
Clarke doesn’t see Healf as a supplement brand, nor a biohacking platform. He sees it as a category-defining system to turn data and signals from your body into intelligent actions.
“Healf isn’t just here to play the game. We’re here to change it.”
When he was 15 years old, Max Clarke would wake up to find blood pouring from his nose. The nosebleeds were relentless, sometimes happening multiple times a week. Doctors couldn’t diagnose it. By the time Clarke got to university, he was exhausted and still without answers.
So he did something about it.
He changed his diet. Started meditating. Practiced yoga. Took supplements. Focused on sleep. “I’ve never had a nosebleed since,” Max Clarke says. “Doctors were saying I needed surgery, but I knew there had to be another way.”
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