Full Transcript The hidden trend among physician founders 0:01 Welcome to the Startup Physicians podcast, where we explore how doctors 0:06 lead healthcare innovation. Please like and follow our show to join our 0:10 community of physicians contributing to meaningful change. 0:15 Over the past couple of months, I've talked with dozens of physicians who are 0:19 building something. There is a trend that I keep seeing, and I think you need 0:23 to know about it. These are doctors who have spent six months, sometimes five or 0:28 six figures of their own money developing a product, and they feel 0:32 ready to launch. When I ask them a question, "Who is the buyer?" the answer 0:38 keeps coming back the same. They're not exactly sure. 0:42 They may have a assumption of who's going to buy it, but they have not had
Three things to know before you fall in love with your product 0:47 any stakeholder conversations. It's a pattern. If you are a visionary 0:53 with a prototype already in motion, because product really excites us as 0:58 visionary, this episode is your protection. Last episode, I told you all 1:02 about visionaries and let you see yourself in that setting, and today I'm 1:07 going to give you three things to know before you fall in love with your 1:10 product. Why building first is still the right instinct, why a product without a 1:15 buyer is a hypothesis, and why the product is just one small component of a
Build it 1:21 successful venture. I've sat on both sides of this as a founder who built a 1:24 company on paper before we built anything else, and as an advisor 1:28 watching brilliant doctors get crushed by conversations they had too late. By 1:32 the end, you're going to know the difference between building a product 1:35 and building a business, and exactly which conversations to have before you 1:39 spend another dollar. Number one, do build it. That instinct is right. You've 1:44 all heard stories about startups that started on the back of a napkin with a 1:48 sketch, a a vision trapped in your head can't recruit anyone. So, get it onto 1:53 paper or onto a screen so that other people can finally see what you see. 1:58 Everything gets easier from there. And this is the best moment in history to be 2:02 a visionary who builds. AI and vibe coding put software creation at our 2:06 fingertips. And what used to take a fully funded engineering team 6 months 2:12 can now be done by vibe coding in just a weekend. You should sketch it, build the 2:16 mock-up, make the MVP. If you recognized yourself in the last episode, this is
A product without a buyer is a hypothesis 2:22 your lane. I will never tell you to slow down in it. You should always be 2:26 creating. Number two thing to know, a product 2:29 without a buyer is a hypothesis. So the trend across dozens of conversations, 2:36 many founders, they're deep into creating a product and they are 2:40 convinced they're ready to launch. And there is a little bit of hubris that I 2:43 see and I say that with love because I understand it from the inside. It sounds 2:47 like people who say, "I have a product, I'm already planning my launch, I'm past 2:52 the basics, I think I'm pretty far." And underneath the same picture keeps 2:56 emerging. They haven't identified their buyer, they don't have stakeholder 3:00 conversations, they have not built a financial model. It's all being guided 3:05 by their point of view and their vision. And why it's invisible from the inside, 3:11 they live the problem every day. And their conviction is probably spot-on, 3:17 but conviction from one vantage point is a hypothesis, not a business case. And 3:23 the market does not buy hypotheses. When they finally do have conversations 3:29 and they find out like, "Oh my gosh, there's all these other companies who 3:32 have tried this or here's all these reason it's failed or here's this 3:35 trusted expert in the field who just met with me after I spent 6 months making 3:40 this and they said this is never going to work." Or the person you're imagining
Identify the buyer, not just the user 3:43 as the buyer legitimately does not think this is a problem that they would pay to 3:47 solve. And the problem is so obvious to you, but not to the person who thought 3:50 was going to buy it. So part one, what you need to do. You need to identify the 3:55 buyer, not just the user. Maybe the product that you're envisioning patients 3:59 need it and clinicians love it and you you really need to win over all the 4:04 stakeholders. Maybe it's something that a hospital CFO would buy. You have to 4:09 talk to a hospital CFO. You can't just talk to the user of the product. 4:13 Healthcare is really unique in that there ends up being all these 4:17 stakeholders and sometimes the people who get the service are not the ones 4:20 paying for it. So, part two, you have to have stakeholder conversations that 4:25 sting on purpose. This is actually how we compress time. I would so much rather 4:31 you find out in month one all the reasons why your idea is not going to 4:35 work than find out in month six. What do you use today to solve this? Would you 4:40 pay for this? Out of what budget? Who else has to say yes before you could buy
Have stakeholder conversations that sting 4:44 this? What almost made you buy the last thing like this and then why didn't you? 4:48 You know, again, these are discovery conversations. You start with discovery, 4:51 you move to validation, you do all that before you pitch. As opposed to I made a 4:56 product, I put my head down for six months, I put money into it and now I'm 4:59 going to pitch it and shoot, nobody likes it. You want to do discovery, you 5:03 want to do validation. No with a reason attached is the cheapest education you 5:08 will ever get as a founder. You have to capture that and then you have all these 5:12 conversations, you synthesize them, you identify which ones you're seeing across 5:17 the board and which ones are kind of outliers and maybe you should take them 5:20 with a grain of salt and then you use that to iterate and evolve your model. 5:24 So, my proof point, when we built my first company on paper before we built 5:29 anything else, my co-founder turned my vision into a spreadsheet, which became 5:35 our financial model. We pitched it to payers. They told us everything wrong 5:39 with it and we changed it. We changed it almost every day for eight months. And 5:45 we talked to stakeholders and payers trying to get feedback and then trying
Discovery before validation before pitching 5:50 to get people to buy it for months. And we changed it constantly. And by the 5:54 time we built the real thing, the market had already stress tested it. The 5:59 discovery process is the product development. 6:02 You have to stay flexible. So your vision holds, but the details bend. So 6:07 you keep that notebook, your notebook of thousands of ideas of how things fit 6:10 together and how it could grow and where it could pivot. The discipline is never 6:15 take one idea into this deep expensive development without constant feedback. 6:21 So the third thing to know, a product is one small component of a venture. One of
How feedback shapes a better product 6:27 the things I teach in the incubator is the 10 functional departments of a 6:31 venture. And we're constantly giving prompts and skills and tools and things 6:35 for each department cuz at the beginning you're all of them. But the product, 6:40 which we talk a lot about that design thinking, the divergent and convergent 6:45 on coming up with the problem and then with the solution, all the stuff about 6:49 product development and design thinking sits inside a much larger set of 6:54 questions about who's the buyer, what do stakeholders say, what does the market 6:58 already know that you don't, do the economics work? Who's on this team? Uh 7:02 who operates this thing when it grows past the design phase?
A product is only one part of a successful venture 7:06 You have the vision, you have to run with it, and you're great at being 7:10 creative and developing things. But you need the right people, the right 7:13 resources, a real framework around you. The venture needs to become more than 7:18 just something you built by yourself. If you want to make something really 7:22 impactful and scalable, there are about nine other departments you need to be 7:27 giving attention to or bringing someone in to help you to get the business case 7:32 right and not just focus on product. Here are the three things one more time. 7:36 Definitely keep focusing on product if you're a visionary. Build it because 7:40 getting the vision out of your head is the right first move. A product without 7:45 a buyer is a hypothesis. So, find the person who signs the actual contract and 7:51 have the conversations that are going to sting. We have to develop thick skin to 7:55 learn and grow. And product is only one small component of a venture. The rest 8:00 is the finances, the legal, the business case, creating the evidence, the 8:04 economics plan, the team, and eventually the operators. 8:08 And remember the trend from the start of this episode. Months of work, real money 8:12 spent, no stakeholder conversations, and no business model. That order of 8:17 operations is what crushes these founders, not their talent and not their 8:21 ideas. So, if you want a framework for this 8:24 instead of learning it the expensive way, we did build one. It's called the 8:27 concept pitch builder. I love it because it treats the problem, the solution, and
The three biggest takeaways 8:31 the product as one piece in an eight-phase assessment. The other seven 8:36 phases are the questions that most doctors don't yet know that they need to 8:40 answer. Walking through them will show you exactly where your concept stands. 8:44 Keep creating. I mean that. The world needs what you can see, and it also 8:49 needs you to find out who's buying. Join our email list and check us out at 8:54 startupphysicians.com and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the 8:58 Startup Physicians Podcast. This community was built for doctors who want 9:02 to contribute to the future of healthcare. 9:05 We offer support for physicians who are ready to make the next step towards 9:08 building the career they've dreamed of. Visit startupphysicians.com 9:14 to learn more. And if this episode resonated with you,
The Concept Pitch Builder framework 9:17 share it with another friend who needs to hear it. Let's change the future of 9:21 healthcare together.
Comments