Full Transcript Introduction and guest background 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. 0:16 Hi, welcome back to Startup Physicians podcast. This is your host Dr. Allison 0:20 Kerman. I am joined today by my uh colleague and friend Tamas Rudolph. 0:26 Tamas is located in Poland. We first met years ago when I did a keynote for a 0:34 pediatric innovation network that he had created. But what really has struck me 0:38 about his career is both the dedication to a lot of very missiondriven ventures, 0:45 but also a a focus on venture building and actually physician empowerment 0:50 through a lot of the different ventures that he's built. And so Tomas is an 0:54 adviser to me and to the startup physicians incubator and I am so happy 0:59 to have you with me today Tom Tamas. >> Yeah I'm so happy to be here. I guess 1:04 you have been an adviser to me as well. So it's a mutual value that we're 1:08 bringing each other. >> Thanks for for having me. 1:11 >> We we're very very fortunate to have your expertise um on our team. One of 1:17 the things that I struggle with so I I'm very visionary. I have a lot of ideas. 1:23 And then I sometimes struggle with having a real growth strategy or a go to 1:28 market plan. And one of the things that I've always really appreciated about the 1:32 way your brain works is that you never think of things as like onesie 2z 1:37 growth. It's always like okay that's how you get it started and then the real 1:42 plan is this much larger scale. How do you grow things with a network effect? 1:48 How do you grow things with enterprise contracts? Um, and and I always have 1:54 really appreciated how your brain works that way and I think it's going to be a 1:58 great thing for us to talk about with people listening today who may be 2:02 kicking around a concept in their in their head and wonder is this something 2:06 that could actually become something become something really scalable. So 2:11 we'll talk a little bit about that, but before you get to the scalable growth, 2:16 you have to actually start from scratch. And so I think we could talk about that 2:19 as well. So just to kick us off, I'd love if you could share your background 2:24 and kind of your story in healthcare innovation. 2:28 >> Well, I started uh as an entrepreneur when I was 19, which is frighteningly 30 2:34 years ago. Uh and I was initially bringing foreign investors to Poland. 2:39 then was was recently a market economy. Lots was happening and and I I loved 2:44 really the joy of building something new. I saw the the country changing. 2:48 Poland has grown immensely over the the last decades. So I was witnessing that 2:53 and I loved shaping this as well. Building new companies. I built a 2:56 company that was a venture builder building with big corporates like 2:59 Mastercard new companies. It's operating. At some point I also got into 3:04 healthcare through a personal story with my son. I started a foundation to 3:08 transform the experience in children's hospitals which again still operating. 3:12 I'm I'm happy to on the be on the board there and and contribute to to really 3:16 changing with digital tools with new technologies how how parents and 3:20 children experience pediatric care. That's how we connected by when we were 3:24 working on on the hospital of the future. And so we were your work at 3:28 Mercy Virtual. So so that that has been my starting point and then I I decided 3:32 to really focus on healthcare and changing healthcare. I was co-founder 3:36 and and CEO of of a digital health startup called Dr. One which really 3:41 started with the idea of humanizing healthcare and bringing this core 3:45 relationship between the doctor um uh and the patient to a new level beyond 3:49 visits because obviously care often stops when you finish the visit and in 3:53 chronic care it's so important I guess to have this relationship really working 3:57 well. So so I work on that we we raised over six million with the company's 4:02 growing and I really am a starter by definition. this this design phase when 4:06 the venture is starting. So right now I'm I'm uh really advising companies how 4:10 to make this starting phase better and to build stuff that matters and reach 4:15 potential with because obviously when you're designing everything is just an 4:19 idea but the decisions you're making uh are really really defining the DNA of 4:24 your business model and define if if it's going to be something really small
Zero-to-one validation and early customer discovery 4:28 or or something huge that changes the lives of hundreds of thousands of 4:32 patients and has financial potential. think that um you are kind of a 4:38 stereotypical founder of you just see problems and 4:42 instead of grumbling about it, you think like, "Huh, I wonder if we could change 4:46 that. I wonder if we could change that for not just me, but for everyone." And 4:49 so people out there who are listening, if you identify with that, I just want 4:54 you to know this is kind of an episode for you. I I identify with that. I walk 4:58 around the world and I think like, why do we do it that way? Maybe we could do 5:02 it another way. And and then I start my once the gears start turning I I end up 5:07 exploring a lot of different concepts that are like maybe we should do this, 5:11 maybe we should do this. That makes really great founder potentials because 5:15 if you're someone who's able to look at problems and try and think outside the 5:20 box of what solutions could be and then you'd actually be willing to start 5:23 mapping it out and figuring out like hey could this actually work and be 5:28 sustainable. You mentioned that, you know, a lot of your initiation into the 5:31 healthc care field had to do with personal experiences and I know you had 5:34 an experience with your child at uh in a healthcare setting um which made you say 5:42 no it shouldn't be this way like we should change this for pediatrics and 5:46 then did this incredible initiative across your entire country for pediatric 5:50 innovation. And so, um, I find that to be very inspiring and I hope that other 5:55 people as we talk through more of the nuts and bolts today will realize that I 5:59 don't know sometimes I always thought there was something wrong with me 6:02 because I'm always like just I say spewing vision all over the place and so 6:07 it gets hard for people that work with me to be like, "Okay, what are we 6:10 actually doing? You're you're visioning all these things." And so, as a founder, 6:14 one of the first things you have to do is uh how do you stress test this idea? 6:19 So you've got an idea before you go putting capital into it. What is that 6:24 zero to one validation look like? And what have you seen in your experience? 6:29 What have you seen other physicians building? And and where have you seen 6:32 founders that do well in that 0ero to one concept? 6:35 >> Well, I think I I see this as two steps. So the first step is the validation you 6:40 can do yourself just intellectually right now also a lot supported by AI and 6:45 research tools. And it's a validation where you ask yourself really the DNA 6:50 questions of this business that you're designing. And and I think using this 6:53 biology metaphor any business that you're starting can have the DNA of the 6:57 founder what you believe what you really how you design it like the Apple style 7:02 has this specific thing and every founder has has their specific way they 7:05 they would structure the business and the other half of the DNA of the of the 7:09 business is defined by the market you pick. So if you pick let's say design 7:14 the same idea of a let's say chronic care startup for the Indian direct to 7:18 consumer startup market it will be a totally different business than if you 7:22 design it for a payer market in US. So, so all of those decisions that you're 7:27 making initially really define what kind of business you're making. And that 7:31 that's why I love that the incubator is a is a process that can actually stress 7:35 test your idea and open your eyes to the to the potential that can also you 7:40 multiple go to market ways and because if you're doing it for the first time, 7:44 you maybe haven't even asked yourself many of those questions. So this is the 7:49 initial kind of discussion. How could that business look like if we went this 7:54 path? This path and it's good to have this intellectual exercise even to play 7:59 around with how it impacts financials, how it it really is market big enough 8:04 really to be a billion dollar startup and be venture funded. Is it just a 8:09 small business that you'd like to build? And it's okay if you want to build a 8:12 small business, but if you would really like to build something bigger and 8:16 impact more lives, which many doctors have as the their motivation, you need 8:20 to make this decision. So I think this is the uh the homework that you need to 8:25 be doing before you go out of the building uh and before the real 8:29 validation on the market starts. I agree completely and that's the teaching that 8:34 we bring in our incubator program is how do you build as much as possible on 8:39 paper before putting capital in. And so a lot of times people are like, 8:42 "Wouldn't it be great if this problem could be solved and maybe it would look 8:46 like this fancy shiny techbased solution? Maybe I should go build that." 8:51 And and the question is, okay, have you actually looked and seen like who's 8:55 going to buy it? And can you test something very small with the person who 8:59 you think is going to buy it? because I've seen a lot of like six or seven 9:03 figure builds that then like they totally miss the mark and they don't h 9:07 they can't sell it and and they're they obviously don't take off. Um so what 9:13 sorts of things have you done besides just I I have built entire models and 9:17 curriculums and and ways that we derisk a concept on paper. What other kind of 9:23 hacks have you used in that early stage to get feedback early on? 9:28 Well, I think the key challenge for many people is just to go out get out of the 9:33 building and start talking to people and not just hire a market researcher or 9:37 whatever, but really do it firsthand. You cannot outsource your eyes as Steve 9:42 Blank um a professor that teaches entrepreneurship used to say um uh and 9:47 and you really need to start talking to let's say 10 at a time from a certain 9:52 segment. You might change your segment after those conver initial conversations 9:56 and see okay I'm thinking it might not be the best market let's pivot to a to a 10:00 new group that would be the buyer group and then you again take 10 at a time and 10:04 talk to 10 similar people find them on LinkedIn find them on uh with with 10:10 certain criteria and then if you scale this business you just multiply it by 10:15 100 or thousand whatever but you already have some criteria how do you define 10:19 this unit of 10 let's say people don't base decisions on on initial one or two 10:24 conversations which might impact your maybe you talk to a friend doctor or a 10:29 friend hospital director that tells you it's a good or bad idea. I don't think 10:33 it's it's good enough because you might be really throwing away a great concept 10:38 or the other way around be biased by somebody that just is your friend and 10:41 would like to be polite so tells you it's a great idea. So I think if you if 10:45 you do this validation and start talking 10 people at a time from your cohort, 10:50 you might obviously validate if the problem exists. Is it costly? If you're 10:54 talking to companies, obviously it should either mean lost revenue or or it 10:58 should mean potentially increased cost that you're validating. If you're 11:03 talking to consumers, it's a different story, but still you can see is there an 11:07 unmet need and focus your 80% of your initial conversations on really 11:12 understanding what are the the the jobs to be done for for people, what are the 11:16 problems, pain points and I think if you have that then you can move to really 11:21 building the solution, prototyping it, showing the prototype and really testing 11:25 it on the market and and I think there are many hacks and obviously during the 11:30 incubation process you might you might That's uh the support from members in 11:34 finding the best suite of of tasks uh to do easily in your situation. One that I 11:40 really love from from my past I I learned from Trevor Owens who wrote 11:44 wrote a book about lean enterprise and validation techniques and he he shared 11:49 his story when he was building a startup that was about rental of electric 11:54 vehicles. Uh and and he he just posted an ad for half the price and they got 12:00 people calling him day and night to buy this this vehicle and and he just told 12:06 him, "I'm sorry. I'm I just want to be transparent. I don't have this vehicle 12:10 anymore, but I wanted to talk to people that are interested in electric. Would 12:15 you rent it? And can I ask you a couple of questions? And so he had actually his 12:18 whole customer base call him all the time. He didn't have to look for them. 12:22 They were calling him. So I guess there are many hacks like that that you can 12:26 learn from experienced founders or or from people that are experienced in in 12:31 just validation of concepts that will help you to talk to enough people 12:35 quickly enough and and validate if the idea is right or wrong and and I guess 12:40 the the goal of validation isn't to prove that you're right. is to prove 12:44 where your concept might be wrong or what might require a rethinking and get 12:50 there as soon as possible because then you're not wasting time building 12:53 something that nobody wants. >> Yeah, that's the worst possible outcome 12:56 is that you invested not just your time but probably capital into building 13:01 something that can't be sold. And so everything in this uh process is a 13:07 step-wise approach. I think back to when we were incubating my first company, how 13:12 I mean some of the first conversations I'm like I don't even know what we 13:15 talked about. Like I I feel like we had just like an idea that we talked about 13:19 and then we get to a one pager where it's like okay I think we've kind of 13:22 crystallized what we think we're doing and those earlier conversations are a 13:26 lot lower stakes because you're not actually selling because you don't 13:28 actually have something to sell. That's really what we call the discovery 13:33 process and it is something that you should be doing. You should be having a 13:37 lot of conversations and you should be moving from those lower stakes 13:40 conversations of like friends, family, colleagues to okay, if I'm really gonna 13:45 make this guess that health insurance plans would pay for this, like who could 13:50 I actually talk to to ask would you actually pay for this? And then I think 13:54 that along with as your messaging is evolving and becoming a little bit more 13:59 mature um and you're creating materials to go along with that and the 14:04 appropriate ways to communicate because the the clearer you can be the better 14:10 the feedback will be. But you also be have to be kind of having a a good way 14:16 to track and manage all your assumptions. And so we do that in the 14:19 format of two main assets that I help people build as they go through the 14:24 discovery process. The first is a forward-looking financial model, which 14:28 is like, you know, the model. It's the operating plan. It's exactly all the 14:33 things you would do if you got, you know, it's it's it's something you 14:38 make on paper. And then you identify what are the core assumptions that 14:42 you're making and which of those assumptions are highly sensitive, 14:45 meaning it could make or break the business case. so that you're really 14:48 directing a lot of your discovery towards those. And every piece of 14:52 feedback that you get, you are then going back and updating your assumptions 14:56 and updating your model and identifying like here's this other like rabbit hole 15:00 I might need to go down to validate this. So we create the financial model. 15:04 We create your product roadmap which is like what is the thing you are making? 15:08 what is and then what are the versions of it so that like the earliest version 15:12 the earliest prototype is like a v0ero and it's maybe just like a clickable 15:17 prototype or the tech that would support the service model or something like that 15:21 but that we're actually tying that together with like what is the thing 15:26 that you're making over time and how will it mature over time and how does 15:29 that map to your financial and operational model and so if you have 15:33 those two tools and you know how to use them then every single one of these 15:37 discovery recalls comes back comes back and drastically improves both of those 15:43 assets. And those are the things that I feel like a founder today, an individual 15:49 founder with the help of a lot of AI tools and the guidance of people who 15:53 have done this before can do so much as a solo founder. Like it's it's 15:58 astounding how much you can do to get a lot of leverage so that at the time that 16:03 you finally go to close contracts or raise funding, you have a lot of proof 16:08 even though you haven't operated yet. >> Exactly. Exactly. Not much to add. I 16:14 mean I definitely I love starting from the reverse P&L method that Rita Gunter 16:19 McGrath from Colombia uh I think promoted and and you start from a 16:23 number. It might be your the profit. It might be, let's say, uh, revenue in year 16:28 three, let's say. What would it take to make it a hund00 million business? And 16:32 then you go, you list all those assumptions back to the initial like one 16:37 transaction price, the unit price of a one transaction. And then you have in a 16:42 whole Excel sheet all of those riskiest assumptions that you mentioned. And you 16:46 can start by validating assumption number one or number two or the price or
Choosing the right buyer and business model 16:50 the frequency of purchase or whatever. And and I guess this intellectual 16:55 exercise backed by interviews is something that you really need to invest 16:59 in early on in the first weeks and or months of of building the venture 17:03 because obviously right now it's possible to build any technology very 17:07 fast, but you need to know what problem you're you're solving first. 17:12 >> And the other big question is who's paying for it. So that's something that 17:16 I um think you have a probably have a lot of thoughts on, but as I've talked 17:20 to a number of founders throughout their different exploration stages, sometimes 17:25 they have this very aspirational vision of something that really would make 17:28 healthcare better, but then they have no idea who would pay for that. And I think 17:33 that that is the core question that has to be answered before you start 17:36 investing in something. What are some of your thoughts on like how you narrow in 17:41 on a business model and identifying who would pay for it both initially and at 17:45 scale? >> I guess first you need to know that you 17:49 at the end you you don't have to make a choice or like it's not one choice 17:54 forever. You might start with direct to consumer and for initial validation 17:59 let's first months let's say and then move and transition and really build 18:03 this business as an enterprise business. You might, if it's possible to start 18:07 with enterprise deals, you might stay only with with big companies as clients 18:11 uh rather than individuals. You might go and stay with direct to consumer as as a 18:16 as a consumer brand. So, and and sometimes those companies have multiple 18:19 business models and they have a consumer layer. They have small and business 18:24 small business layer and they have enterprise layers. And you might decide 18:28 which is the best to start from. And that's that's a tricky question. You've 18:32 never made those decisions. It's good to get some advice for your specific case, 18:37 but I I think it's good to ask yourself which uh which of the models do I really 18:42 understand the best? Which of the of the target groups uh that could be paying? 18:48 Because it might be that patients themselves might be paying for the to 18:51 solve this problem. It might be that employers might be paying. It might be 18:54 pharma. It might be whoever. And you might ask yourself which of those groups 18:59 actually has the biggest benefit from your solution which is is where is the 19:05 pain point really biggest? Where will if you solve that problem where will the 19:09 evidence that you've solved it will be actually the strongest and the most 19:13 powerful? Because then maybe you should start from the center of the bullseye 19:18 and really solve the problem for the for the extreme user for the group that 19:22 really feels the pain the most. And then if you solve it from them it will be 19:27 easier to have this ripple effect and and scale it to other groups. So, so I 19:31 think one is your skill, your understanding, can I really sell into 19:35 enterprise and if not then really understanding learning from someone or 19:39 bringing on board a salesperson or a co-founder or whatever who really knows 19:43 how to do it or an adviser or deciding at the same time where is actually the 19:48 market taking you. Where is the where are the payers actually wanting this 19:53 solution the most and and not trying to boil the ocean and and bring the 19:58 solution to everybody initially it's it's good to to to start from this 20:03 so-called beach head market that's it's easy to to win there and then if you win 20:07 there just like Facebook didn't become a platform with billion dollar users 20:12 initially they started just with with Harvard and even actually within Harvard 20:17 with with the fraternities sorities uh there. 20:22 >> Yeah, I mean I think that identifying multiple potential buyers is a really 20:27 important exercise and then identifying where you going to start and where 20:30 you're going to go. I see a lot of people who are interested in building a 20:33 technology solution and think about it as a potential software as a service 20:38 model, but I think as development becomes so much more accessible that's 20:44 going to be harder to sell. What are your thoughts on that? 20:47 Well, I believe uh the general trend right now is that we are disrupting 20:54 labor and work not just providing tools for the work. I guess the initial wave 20:59 in the last years was that we were giving tools to people and one tool was 21:04 replacing a a previous tool. Now a lot of work can be done powered by AI but 21:10 it's it's way more powerful than just to be selling tools to solve the problem 21:15 and then take a cut of the of the of the whole problem of the how you much you 21:19 have been spending to to get it done and I think that's where where a lot of new 21:24 companies will be getting I guess why combinator recently announced the call 21:28 for startups and one of them were AI powered agencies so rather than selling 21:32 a tool for to get something and that the cost of that tool would be 5% 1% of the 21:39 revenues of of of of the business um that we're selling to. You get the whole 21:45 thing done and uh uh and you really disrupt it from from behind. You really 21:52 benefit from from all the uh cost savings yourself. Plus, if you're 21:56 delivering this business yourself, you know the pro problems really well 22:02 because you're operating this yourself rather than just providing tools for 22:06 others to get the job done. And I think with agents right now with AI, it's 22:11 really powerful what you can do in terms of automating your own business. And 22:15 that's why agencies becoming and in general outsourcing work to new AI power 22:20 AI first companies becomes hot again. >> Yeah. And I think you just verbalized it 22:26 so well and it I want to really put a pin on it that physicians are really 22:31 well positioned to build service models because there is a piece that it is 22:38 required to have a doctor to do it. It is required like someone could build the 22:42 tools, someone could build the agent, but if they don't have the doctor, if 22:45 they don't have the clinical people behind it, they're not going to be able 22:48 to do it. And so the difference between a clinician saying, "I'm going to build 22:53 a software that you can use with your team versus," I will take this entire 22:57 problem off of your plate and I'll hand it back to you. Done. Because we have 23:02 the ability to do that. You could then continue to make your own business, your 23:07 own tech enabled service model more and more and more efficient with your own 23:11 agents and and your own um kind of internal efficiencies. But that's just 23:16 an example of how I see something that a doctor could provide immediate value. 23:21 Get it off the ground, even if it's a little more manual at first, get it off 23:24 the ground very rapidly and also have a path to scaling it. 23:28 >> Definitely. And I think it's easy to create a new tool, but it's very hard to 23:34 get that tool integrated into workflows. And I think what I've learned is that 23:39 when we're thinking of the value we're creating for the market, we're thinking 23:43 of all the benefits. uh if we will add this to your workflow it will it will be 23:48 uh changing this it will be making this and this simpler but we are not really 23:52 thinking of of the effort of the implementation of the integration of of 23:58 uh teaching people how to use it and so on and uh I believe uh 24:04 in general is more important especially in 24:08 healthcare innovation than addition and we need to think how we are actually 24:13 subtracting work from people not adding extra uh extra tasks extra extra um
AI, service models, and reducing implementation friction 24:20 elements that's why ambient scribes and everything that are actually adopted 24:25 they are adopted because we're eliminating certain tasks moans 24:29 professor moani from kell school of management who who created the tool for 24:33 understanding your value proposition really stresses this well I think that 24:37 as a as an innovator we cannot just think of the of the positive side of of 24:42 a solution we're bringing and the benefit benefits and the differentiators 24:45 and the proof points the evidence that it works. We need to think of the of the 24:49 negative side and cost is not is really not the biggest thing usually or the 24:54 price you're paying the cost of implementing switching the teaching 24:58 others and all the effort related to it. even the effort to buy this solution 25:02 which sometimes is months of procedures and the effort to prove that it's 25:06 actually safe, secure and so on and the risks related to implementing a new 25:11 solution and entering a new player into our systems. All of those negatives 25:15 elements is what blocks innovation. And that's why it's very hard to hope that 25:19 if you create a tiny thing, but needs to go through all of those hurdles of 25:24 getting implemented that it will really get adopted well and quickly 25:29 >> and it makes the sales cycle longer, especially if now you're talking about 25:32 enterprise contracts and you're talking about offering new tools like, "Oh, it's 25:36 going to make this thing so much easier for you." and they're like, "We put a 25:41 moratorum on new tools. Like, we're done with new tools. We're building our own 25:45 tools. Like, we we don't want to integrate any we don't want to piece 25:50 together any more things." Um, I think it's going to get really hard to sell 25:54 softwarebased solutions unless there's there's some other, you know, aspect to 25:58 it that makes it, like you said, subtracting work, not adding. I think 26:02 that a lot of times founders underestimate those implementation costs 26:06 and how much it takes to you know there's there's internal processes, 26:10 there's legal teams, there's vendor review teams, there's how do you 26:13 actually get it integrated from like a technical perspective, but more so the 26:17 change management if you're going to have to train people on it, if you're 26:21 going to have to keep this updated as part of training, all of that becomes 26:26 really really a hard cell, especially when other people are starting to 26:32 realize that they could make some AI tools themselves. And so if you actually 26:37 take work off their table, it becomes something that the sales cycle can get a 26:42 lot shorter because if you say, I will take care of this service line for you. 26:46 I we will we would contract with you to come and do the work and you know, we're 26:51 insured and all these things. They would be a lot more willing to try 26:56 it because it's like an easy button for them. The other piece that I think we 27:00 wanted to talk about was about the difference between a ventureback startup 27:06 and more of a lifestyle business and how you differentiate those. 27:11 So I call those uh small businesses ants and and the the really scalable ventures 27:17 elephants and and even when you're starting and we're investing the first 27:21 month or two in the work, you don't really see like in the early phases of 27:25 pregnancy, you don't see what's going to get out of this embryo. But I guess the 27:29 decisions you're making to build a venturebacked startups are totally 27:33 different than if you're really really building a so-called bootstrapped or a 27:37 small business lifestyle business that might be your just private clinic or 27:42 whatever. If you want to really build for scale, there is there is certain 27:46 logic of the fundraising process which takes a lot of time and effort and which 27:50 is a commitment to really build a company that can return the whole fund 27:55 for two investors because that's how how this industry operates. So, so you're 28:00 you're really looked at as can this company be a billiond dollar company 28:04 which means that it cannot be a two niche solution. It needs to be 28:08 infrastructure for the whole industry or or at least an niche and and it needs to 28:12 generate a certain minimum of let's say 100 200 300 million dollars uh in in the 28:19 foreseeable future and it needs to be built to for scale and you need to be 28:23 yourself ready to really grow fast grow and and build large larger structures 28:30 even though right now there are first billion dollar companies reported who 28:34 are just solo founded and have one employee only. Um, and I believe it will 28:40 will be more and more possible to build smaller companies that are unicorns, but 28:44 it's it's a different story. So, it's good to at least read a book about 28:50 building venture funded startups or join an incubator where you can really talk 28:54 to people, talk to investors, have this preparation to understand, to speak the 28:59 language, to know how to talk to investors, to know how to respond to 29:03 questions. It's it's a skill in itself. It's like learning Spanish. I mean, you 29:06 need to learn the language and you need to practice it. Obviously, fundraising, 29:10 it doesn't happen by talking to three investors or four. Usually, you need to 29:14 take talk to a hundred of them. So, you you better do it right. And and there 29:19 definitely tips and tricks that you can learn from other either other founders 29:22 or or advisers and and investors in the incubator that can help you get there. 29:30 find that if I'm trying to do something on my own, I tend to take kind of a 29:34 meandering pathway and sometimes start down ways that I'm like, "Oh, shoot. I 29:39 spent way too much time on that and that was actually not the priority, but now I 29:42 know that looking back." Um, and when I was in more of a venture studio 29:46 environment, I think that what really helped is just having like a really 29:50 clear structure. This is what you are supposed to be working on. Here are the 29:53 tools. Here are the people. Here are the processes. Here is the thesis statement. 29:57 we're all aligned on like what this month is all about. And you can really 30:02 compress time by following a a really clear pathway and not waste your time 30:09 going and doing, you know, I just I see people all the time, they're like, "Oh, 30:13 should I like copyright my name and should I should I go get my domain name 30:18 and and go like start getting a logo?" And I'm like, "No, you need to get your 30:23 you need to get your business model down. Like, you don't even know if 30:25 you're building this. Don't get distracted. Right. There's no 30:28 >> And when you're a solo founder and you're actually the chief strategy 30:33 officer and the chief marketing officer and the chief growth officer and the 30:36 chief product officer, like you're you're doing all these things. It's very 30:40 easy to get distracted and it's very easy to get discouraged. I think that it 30:45 can be really hard to build on your own because like you said, you will get 30:49 negative feedback sometimes and you need to understand how do I incorporate that 30:52 to make this grow and and move forward and how do I surround myself actually 30:56 with peers that are that are going to help support me when I mean the the 31:01 number of questions or problems that come up as a founder that you not only 31:06 have no idea what the answer is, but you had absolutely no way to predict that 31:11 this problem or question would come up. it's like it was not even on your radar. 31:14 I mean, it's like a weekly thing, right? So, you want to have your bench or your
Venture-backed scaling and physician founder support 31:19 your sounding board up front. Otherwise, you will get distracted, you will get 31:24 discouraged, and you will get off track. And so, I think a lot of us who have 31:28 built startups before had really strong mentors, had really strong 31:32 infrastructure around us to keep us going um and want to provide that for 31:38 other founders, too. >> Yeah. I I uh totally agree and I believe 31:43 people like you who have built that and turned an idea that you had by working 31:48 in the health system and and that you designed but then you turned it into a 31:53 company with hundreds of thousands of patients uh uh uh is is actually the way 31:59 to go and you need to talk have those people in your network have such expert 32:03 mentors and and a peer group that is just starting with you so that you can 32:08 actually be like a university friends with each other. It's it's a journey. Uh 32:12 and I believe it's a very rewarding, but also a very hard journey. So, why not 32:17 have have friends that are helping you on the way? And just like in the gym, 32:21 it's sometimes good to have a personal trainer that really has a structure and 32:25 a process that guides you. You can come up with all of this yourself, but we 32:29 know that many people just want to be and they just buy the gym ticket, but 32:34 then never go. And and I think it's a wasted potential. And I've myself seen 32:39 so many great uh ideas uh among physicians I mean in physicians ads and 32:45 they were sharing them but they never actually had the guts to really do it 32:48 and do it well and do it on a big scale. So I I believe um your initiative that's 32:54 why I believe it's so valuable is that can give you courage and it can give you 32:58 courage not just to start and launch it and launch it really well among best 33:03 companies at health in in Las Vegas still this year but I think it can also 33:08 help you to build something that reaches its full potential. 33:11 >> I have a lot of faith in physicians. I think that if there's anything that 33:14 we're really really exceptionally good at it's at learning. we have been 33:19 learning our whole lives and um most doctors I talk to they don't know a 33:23 single person in venture or startups. It's not that they don't feel like they 33:27 could do it or they don't have the skills. They they could have the skills, 33:32 they just don't have the path and they don't have the connections and they 33:35 don't have that network. And I know people open the doors for me. I I 33:39 learned what executive sponsorship really is. When people go ahead of you 33:43 and say, "You got to listen to this person. They've got a great idea." and 33:47 and use their relationships to to again clear the way for someone who has a ton 33:53 of potential and just needs that that that roadmap and that launchpad. And so 33:58 I think that there's certain things that clinicians are actually phenomenally 34:02 good at. I I mentioned before like you have the asset that's needed to actually 34:07 start a healthcare business like tomorrow. You could literally start in 34:10 the next month uh you know the smaller version of what you want to do and 34:14 you've you've got a license and you've got experience and you could start a 34:18 medical group there. There's so much that's available to you as a physician 34:22 that a lot of founders could not do they can't do. And then if what you need is 34:27 the pathway, the connections, the language, the understanding, I think 34:31 that those are learnable, those are reachable. And so I think there's 34:35 something so unique about physician founders and I spend so much time with 34:40 people in venture and they're very very excited about what I am trying to build 34:45 because they're like oh my gosh I can't wait to have access to your founders. 34:48 Like people realize that it's like two silos. You have physicians practicing in 34:54 the traditional healthare system and then you have this whole venture startup 34:58 space where there's just not a lot of connection between the two. And so the 35:03 idea of pulling these great minds and these great creatives out of the 35:07 traditional healthcare experience and equipping them with what they need to 35:11 actually thrive in the venture space, that's what gets me really excited. 35:15 >> Yeah, it gets me excited as well. And I believe patients are waiting for it. I 35:19 guess healthcare is broken not just in US, in Europe, everywhere in in 35:23 different ways, but there's still so much to be done and so much that we can 35:27 do for the next generation of healthcare that can be massively better and and 35:32 leverage the potential of technology, data, new tools, but we will not never 35:37 do it without physicians that understand medicine, that understand the workflows. 35:41 So, I guess there are so many bright IT guys, but they don't know what you know. 35:47 So I think what we're really uh looking for in the incubator is is access to to 35:52 the pain points you're seeing and and to the to the problems you're seeing and to 35:56 the ideas you have about how to solve those. 36:00 >> Absolutely. And I love that you brought it back to really the mission. This is 36:03 why why we became physicians in the first place was to help people to help 36:07 patients. We've all become frustrated with the system. We see where it's 36:11 broken. I I have always been most driven by mission and impact. how can we 36:16 actually help kids? How can we help their families? Um, and then to see 36:20 something that's able to scale, I think it it's so rewarding to have that one to 36:25 many impact. I personally want to help as many aspiring physician founders 36:30 flourish as possible. I think that just getting you guys on the path, getting 36:35 you in this environment is all you need to be able to really make incredible 36:40 change in the health care system. And so I'd love to invite anyone who's 36:45 interested to join us on our next webinar for physician founders. It's 36:50 going to be on May 18th from 7 to 8:30 central time and we have that link in 36:56 the show notes. It's also on our website at startupphysicians.com. 37:01 But we want to really walk through a lot of this in more detail of the tools and 37:06 the training that physicians need to go from I have an idea but I've never had 37:11 any contact with the venture world to you actually could be well on your way 37:17 to becoming a venturebacked startup founder. So I really appreciate all of 37:21 your insight here Tomas and I I uh want everyone to know that people 37:26 participating in the incubator he's a great adviser for me. He's been great at 37:31 helping. He's done so much with venture building globally and just a great 37:36 representation that the work that we're doing there there's actually demand for 37:40 it all around the world. I mean sometimes you can even think bigger than 37:43 just like oh I'd like to start a US healthcare company like how else could 37:47 we grow these ideas. So Tamas has been a great support for me but also just 37:52 really good thought partner on go to market strategy. How do we make things 37:56 that can scale? How do we position people to get the the funding that they 38:00 need? And it's literally like a recipe. And this is why you see so many founders 38:04 who once they do it, they go on to start, you know, they call what like a 38:09 serial entrepreneur or something like you find the pattern and you recognize 38:13 there is a recipe to starting a venture pack startup and you can rinse and 38:18 repeat and you could do it with a lot of different concepts. 38:21 >> Exactly. Just do it. >> Just do it. Yeah. Just do it with 38:25 support. Um, thank you so much, Tomas. I do you have any closing thoughts for 38:29 physicians? >> No, I guess it can be overwhelming. So, 38:32 it might you might ask yourself, uh, do I have the time with my clinical 38:36 practice? I don't want to give out give it up. And I I believe your example 38:40 shows that you can really do it. You can make the idea bigger than yourself. So, 38:44 you might hire a CEO, you might whatever have people taking care of the business 38:49 side or operations side or financials, whatever. But nobody will really take 38:54 the job from you of starting this and and I guess you can start it, you can 38:58 build a movement, you can build a organization around the idea, but but we 39:03 need your vision to to really get started. 39:05 >> Well, thank you for joining us and uh those of you who are listening, we would 39:09 love to have you join the webinar on May 18th. So see you all then. Thanks for 39:14 listening to the Startup Physicians podcast. This community was built for 39:18 doctors who want to contribute to the future of healthcare. We offer support 39:22 for physicians who are ready to make the next step towards building the career 39:26 they've dreamed of. Visit startupfysicians.com 39:30 to learn more. And if this episode resonated with you, share it with 39:35 another friend who needs to hear it. Let's change the future of healthcare 39:38 together.
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