Breathe better.
Sleep healthier.
Live longer.
The technology and integration architecture behind Sleep Cycle Center, The Longevity Institute, and a national network of sleep-apnea-led longevity practices.
What you've described is not a clinic chain. It's a longevity platform with sleep apnea as the front door.
Your View from 30,000 Feet document defines four key pieces of the puzzle: sleep apnea treatments, wearable devices, AI, and a referral plus treatment ecosystem. The first is yours. The next three are where every competitor will get stuck. That's where this document begins.
3× top, 10× bottom in 2026. Operationalized, documented, instrumented, so it can be cloned.
Continuous monitoring, contextual interpretation, daily action. Not a wellness gimmick. A reimbursable clinical signal stream.
MSO above the network. Owns brand, technology, data, and patient relationships. Investor-grade structure from day one.
A bespoke six-layer architecture, built for this. Not adapted from someone else's MSO.
Every existing sleep-medicine SaaS treats the patient as a row in a database. Ours treats the patient as a longitudinal physiological signal, and the franchisee as the operator of a high-yield clinical product, not the manager of an EMR.
Multi-tenant from day one. New franchisee equals new tenant ID. Branding, pricing, payor mix, comms templates configurable per location.
HIPAA, SOC 2 path, FDA 21 CFR 820 awareness for any SaMD claim. Data segregation per state for CPOM and anti-kickback boundaries.
Every external dependency, payor, device, model, EMR, sits behind a TTC interface so vendor lock-in stays under our control, not theirs.
What the platform does, and what it does not.
- •The platform does not diagnose sleep apnea from wearable data.
- •Wearables support patient engagement, trend monitoring, adherence coaching, and clinician review.
- •Diagnostic claims remain tied to approved testing pathways, clinician interpretation, and applicable regulatory standards.
- •AI outputs are decision-support and patient-education tools unless and until separately validated and cleared.
Eight integration plays most sleep-medicine platforms are not built to operationalize.
Sleep-medicine software today connects to one CPAP cloud and one billing clearinghouse. We're going to connect to the entire physiological surface of the patient, then translate that into the kind of clinical signal that justifies the longevity-platform thesis you're raising on.
Apple AirPods as the
next clinical signal layer.
Apple is steadily turning AirPods into a health interface. AirPods Pro 2 already support regulated hearing-health features, including Apple's FDA-authorized OTC Hearing Aid Feature, Hearing Test, Hearing Protection, and Live Listen. AirPods Pro 3 extends the platform further with in-ear heart-rate sensing for workouts. Together, these moves point to a clear direction: ear-worn devices are becoming a mainstream channel for health data.
Apple's public patent filings go further. The company has filed applications describing earbud-based biosignal sensing using in-ear and around-ear electrodes, including EEG-style neural signal measurement. These filings do not mean Apple has shipped EEG AirPods, and they do not guarantee Apple will expose neural data to developers. But they strongly support the strategic thesis that the ear is becoming a high-value sensing location for hearing, cardiac, motion, and potentially neural signals.
TLI's opportunity is to build the sleep-medicine interpretation layer ahead of the hardware curve. We can begin today with public Apple frameworks: HealthKit, audiogram data, heart-rate data where available, motion data, and audio / hearing-health workflows. As Apple and other ear-worn platforms expose richer biosignals, TLI is positioned to become the clinical destination for interpreting that data in the context of sleep health.
This is not a bet that AirPods are a clinical EEG device today. It is a bet that the world's most widely adopted ear-worn platform is moving toward clinical-grade sensing, and that sleep medicine needs a trusted interpretation layer when those signals become available.
Oura Ring · Whoop · Garmin
HRV, recovery, body temperature, sleep architecture cross-validation. Three rings is better than one. Agreement-vs-disagreement signals improve confidence intervals on AHI estimation.
Dexcom G7 · Libre 3 · Levels
CGM as a sleep-quality biomarker. Apnea events drive overnight glucose excursions. Correlating the two is a powerful patient-education moment and a publishable signal.
Withings ScanWatch · Omron · KardiaMobile
Continuous BP and ECG. Untreated apnea drives nocturnal hypertension. Objective BP normalization post-treatment is the clinical proof point that justifies premium pricing.
Eight Sleep Pod 4
Bed-level temperature, HRV, sleep-stage data. The only ecosystem that can act on a recommendation overnight by adjusting bed temperature in response to apnea-related arousal.
ResMed AirView · Philips Care Orchestrator · React Health
Compliance and AHI streaming directly into the franchisee dashboard. 90-day adherence drives reimbursement. Auto-flagged non-compliant patients get a coach call within 24h.
Availity · Change Healthcare · Eligible
Real-time benefits verification, prior auth tracking, claims posting. The "we'll handle insurance" promise to dentist franchisees becomes a real, measurable workflow. Not a sales-deck line.
The Marwan Sabbagh / Alzheimer's correlation lane
Dr. Marwan Sabbagh is one of the most cited Alzheimer's researchers in the world, the national voice on the topic, and a personal childhood friend of Ernie's. He is reachable.
Sleep apnea is now established in the literature as a major contributor to amyloid clearance dysfunction and Alzheimer's progression. A formal advisory relationship with Sabbagh, appointed to the TLI Scientific Advisory Board, gives the platform a clinical research narrative no competitor can match: "the sleep-medicine network that publishes Alzheimer's-prevention data."
Ernie will not initiate outreach until you green-light.
Three working prototypes built in one weekend. Imagine what's next.
We built clickable prototypes of the three primary surfaces of the TLI platform. They are live in your browser, click in and navigate.
Morning AI Report
The 30-second readout the patient sees on waking. Telemetry plus interpretation plus tomorrow's recommendation. The product surface that drives compliance.
Practice Operating System
The day-one workspace for a dentist who's never run a sleep-apnea practice. Pipeline, billing, marketing, training. Turnkey.
Network Command Center
Multi-location rollups, cohort analytics, compliance audit, Series A investor reporting. The surface FORBventures leadership runs the network from.
The franchise architecture isn't theoretical. We've already built one.
Franchise systems are not built in strategy documents. They are built in the tension between brand standards, local operator reality, unit economics, training, compliance, and cash flow. TTC brings the rare combination of brand-building, software-building, and real franchise operating experience.
Ernest Koury · selected operator track
Largest franchisee in the territory. Multi-unit P&L. Hiring, training, vendor management, real estate, marketing. Operated as principal for years.
2013 to 2019. Built a country's franchise system from zero. 16 stores in Sydney. Site selection, build-out, training systems, supply chain, multi-state regulatory navigation, multi-currency, expat ops.
Largest sign manufacturer in the Southwest US. Vertical integration into the brand-standardization layer that every franchise system relies on.
Operated in parallel with the franchise stores. TTC turned Callaway from #4 to #1 in two years and held it for 13. Currently servicing the LPGA Tour, Mark Wahlberg's Municipal, and Lab Golf.
Population density, payor mix per ZIP, dentist-density saturation, drive-time isochrones, competitor mapping.
Unit-economics worksheet, $20K/mo bottom-line target reverse-engineered to patient throughput, payor mix, treatment plan.
Brand non-negotiables vs. operational latitude. The line that separates franchise integrity from franchisee revolt. We've drawn it before.
Smeltzer fits, narrowed.
Per your instruction, we've assumed Smeltzer's team is every bit as accomplished as the proposal conveys. The question then becomes one of fit, not capability. Here is the lane where Smeltzer is genuinely best, and the reason the rest belongs with TTC.
Boots-on-ground shadow-patient walkthrough at both Austin clinics. Anonymous, embedded, reported. This is genuinely the most effective way to find the gaps no internal staff sees anymore. Smeltzer is local-Austin in a way TTC isn't. Treat as a fixed-fee discrete deliverable. Two to three days of fieldwork, roughly a 30-page gap report.
If Smeltzer's "active investor relationship in position toward $100M" is real and named, it is his single most valuable contribution. Hold him on retainer for the introduction plus ongoing investor-relations advisory. Validate the relationship privately before relying on it.
- Phase I (Brand) › TTC. Travis Graham plus Dave Huerta brought TaylorMade and Callaway to #1. Smeltzer's case studies are inventory and fragrance.
- Phase II (Business plan, franchise framework, growth roadmap) › Ernie plus TTC. Operator track at country-master-franchisee scale. Smeltzer has no franchise case studies on record.
- Phase IV (Training, sales scripts, pricing, marketing) › TTC plus Ernie. Marketing and comms is TTC core competency. Training systems built for an entire continent of Little Caesars stores.
The cleanest structure is not either / or. Smeltzer is best used as a focused Austin-based audit and investor-access resource. TTC should lead the brand, platform, franchise operating system, and commercialization architecture. That gives each party a defined lane, avoids duplicated fees, and keeps the engagement tied to measurable outcomes.
Anchor partner. Equity-led. Sharp pencil pre-Series-A.
Per your structure on the call: zero up front, options at signing, deferred fees through Series A, current basis post-close, options ladder tied to delivery. We're aligned. Below is how the work maps to that structure.
- NDA executed (Taco Truck Creative, LLC)
- Term sheet finalized via Hal
- This deck presented Mon May 11
- Brand identity (SCC plus TLI plus dentist sub-brand)
- Austin SCC marketing engine live (3× / 10× plan)
- Patient app v1 plus AI report (HSAT-only signal)
- Franchisee dashboard alpha
- Wearable telemetry ingest (Watch + Oura + Whoop + CGM)
- Insurance / RCM integration
- Franchisee recruitment platform live
- First 5 dentist franchisees onboarded as pilots
- MSO command center plus investor reporting
- Series A deck production (TTC) plus warm investor activation (Smeltzer)
- Apple AirPods biosensor SDK integration scaffold
- National launch readiness · Q1 2027
Compensation structure (per call)
Terms to be documented
Each bucket below carries a number or formula in the term sheet. No bucket stays vague.
Four decisions. None take long.
So that we can move from this conversation into shipped work, the items below need a yes / no / hold from you and Chad before the end of the week. Every later step depends on these.