Full Transcript Introduction to Dr. David Lortscher 0:01 Welcome to the Startup [music] Physicians podcast, where we explore how 0:05 doctors lead healthcare innovation. Please like and follow our show to join 0:10 our community [music] of physicians contributing to meaningful change. 0:17 Hi everyone, welcome back to the Startup [music] Physicians podcast. This is your 0:20 host, Dr. Allison Kurfman, and I'm joined today by a colleague, Dr. David 0:25 Lordcher, who has a very inspiring message for physicians. He has a journey 0:30 that I think is a little parallel to mine, but is also just a great example 0:37 and has some really really impressive evidence of why doctors are good 0:43 contributors to startups and why they succeed as founders and co-founders. So, 0:49 David, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, great to be here, Allison. 0:53 Can you share a little bit about your clinical background and then your 0:56 journey into the startup space? Yes, so I'm a dermatologist by training.
From Dermatology to a Billion-Dollar Startup 1:01 I did my residency at UCSD and I started practicing 2012 at a great practice out 1:07 in the middle of New Mexico and ended up within six months getting an idea to 1:12 found a startup. And happy to go into a little bit about the early days cuz I 1:16 know your your listeners are going to be interested in that. The way it worked 1:18 for me was that I was very busy like all new dermatologists, right? So many 1:22 specialties are in great need. And you know, as as soon as I walked into this 1:26 practice where which two other physicians started, a six-month waiting 1:29 list. Not because I was a great dermatologist, but just because the need 1:32 was so great. And back in 2012, this was like, you know, five years after the 1:36 iPhone came out. And so this was the core time when everybody was building a 1:41 telehealth app. Right? It's like 50% of the population now had iPhones in 2012. 1:46 And so it was clear that this was going to transform how medicine was delivered, 1:50 how care was delivered to patients. But what I kept seeing is that for my 1:53 patients when I was looking for these telehealth solutions, none of them 1:56 really seemed to actually solve the problem in my mind. And really at the 1:59 time there were already probably at least 10 telehealth apps specifically 2:04 for dermatology. Um but for various reasons none of them seemed to work for 2:07 my patients. And so what I did is I ended up deciding to throw my hat in the 2:10 ring, um start my own telehealth company. Over the 10 years I spent as 2:15 co-founder and CEO of the company, we grew to hundreds of employees, treated 5 2:20 million patients, achieved a valuation of a billion dollars, and also each of 2:25 these fun milestones, but learned an absolute ton along the way. And uh since 2:29 I retired from that uh from that business, 2:32 I I've started looking into, you know, what is it that enables physicians to 2:37 succeed at startups. Because I've had so many colleagues that that that joined 2:42 startups as physician and were able to contribute to their company's success. 2:46 And and I really tried to look into that from a scientific perspective. 2:49 >> That's such an incredible journey and congratulations on the work that you did 2:53 there. And especially the impact. I think that's what really drives a lot of 2:57 physicians more than anything is like your stat of seeing 5 million patients. 3:02 I mean, being able to bring care to people in a way that they hadn't 3:07 had access to before is really really meaningful. So, how did you get started? 3:11 I mean, I think a lot of people are actually a great founder 3:17 type. Like they they have what it takes, but they just don't know 3:21 anything about the space. So, how did you get started? Did you have mentors in 3:25 startups? Had you had advisors in the past? Did you just read about it? How 3:30 did you decide like, "Oh, I'm going to start a startup?"
How Physicians Spot Problems Others Miss 3:33 It started with which is I think how a lot of physicians end up if they found a 3:37 startup how it starts is that they they notice a clinical need in a way that's 3:41 hard to do if you're an outsider, right? I see so many healthcare companies 3:44 started by like, "Oh, I'm an investor. I was a consultant." But but the people 3:48 who I think are best positioned to spot these real needs are doctors. And and 3:51 that's what happened to me, right? I was just in practice. I had a spot to go to 3:55 a fellowship in dermatopathology at UCLA the next year. So, I had no plans of 3:59 founding a startup at the time. But, the need that I saw was that there were so 4:04 many patients who just could not access dermatology care, right? And but now it 4:07 should be so efficient and easy for these people to. So, why wasn't why 4:09 isn't this being solved? And when I looked at the 10 other or so 4:13 teledermatology apps or or websites out there, 4:17 what I saw is that like the typical one would charge a patient about $60 for 4:22 what we call an asynchronous consult, right? And as as all dermatologists 4:25 know, these asynchronous consults are just like photos and text, right? And 4:28 that's the best way to do telehealth in dermatology cuz like, you know, video 4:32 just doesn't work for looking at people's skin. But, what I saw is that 4:35 for a dermatologist, if you're seeing a telehealth consult for something 4:38 relatively simple, you should be able to do this in in my mind in about 30 4:41 seconds. And what I was seeing with the with the 4:44 other apps out there is they would charge the patient $60, 30 that would go 4:46 to the dermatologist, but if you're paying the dermatologist 4:49 $30 for every visit, uh to some people that sounds really low. It's like, I'm 4:53 used to getting $200 to see a patient in my office. But, in my mind that was too 4:56 high. Like, what if we could actually get dermatologists to see these consults 4:59 for $5? And then all of a sudden, we could we could open up access to so many 5:02 more people. And that's ultimately what we did. And so so that was sort of the 5:06 key belief I had at the beginning that we could actually make these things much 5:09 more effective. And it took a lot of operational clinical knowledge because 5:14 as a dermatologist, what I knew I needed to do was think of every possible use 5:19 case. Like, let's say a patient comes in for acne. And I think it's being caused 5:22 by some obscure milk-based protein powder they're using. I don't want to 5:26 have to type that out to them or somehow in this back in 2012 you're typing 5:29 things, right? So, what what you would do was memorize 300 different keyboard 5:33 shortcuts like a dot followed by three letters. And then no matter what you 5:36 what their diagnosis is and what lifestyle changes you need to make, you 5:39 could type it to them in like 4 seconds. And so, our patients ended up saying, 5:43 "Wow, I've never had care this insightful and this customized." Um but 5:48 what we saw from the clinician perspective is each console only took us 5:51 30 seconds. And so what this created was a huge volume of like untapped demand 5:55 from patients who thought they couldn't see a dermatologist either because it 5:58 was too expensive or it was too far away for them or the wait time is too long. 6:02 And so we we aim to solve all three of those problems. And to go to the other 6:05 part of your question, you know, once I had that idea, how did I get the 6:08 mentorship? I was very lucky because um my best friend growing up, um you know, 6:14 we went to the same schools from from elementary on to like our our 6:18 public high school, ended up going to Harvard Business School, and worked at 6:21 Goldman Sachs. So he was really plugged into the investment community, the 6:24 startup world. And he was able to give me the mentorship from a business 6:27 perspective. Like um and we could talk about the advice he gave me. But but it 6:30 was absolutely key to have him as as just a constant resource as I was 6:34 building the company. Yeah, I mean it it's so important to surround yourself 6:39 with the right people because if you spend 6:42 all of your time with people who are getting along at their clinical job and 6:46 doing what most people do when they see problems, which is complain about them, 6:50 you're never going to break out of that environment and just see more. See more 6:55 that you're able to do. See opportunity. See a chance to change something. And 6:59 that's why I love spending time with founders and spending time with people 7:02 in venture is that they're just very in general, I think optimistic about the 7:06 future and see just opportunities everywhere. Now, not everything is the 7:12 same level of opportunity, but I think that that it's a an ability to see the 7:17 potential for change. And a lot of it is formulaic, too. Like what makes a good 7:23 concept? What makes a good founder? It's why you see people who have a successful 7:27 startup and then they go and they like do some more. Like that's why people 7:30 become serial entrepreneurs is they use the same concepts and learnings they had 7:34 for one concept, now they apply it to another concept. Everything needs some 7:38 of the same stuff. And so I think that your point about having great mentors or 7:45 advisors or people who knew the space and were able to be a sounding board for 7:50 you is probably a huge part of why you were able to get through those early 7:55 stages and and find success. Absolutely. And so, what I've been
What Successful Physician Founders Have in Common 7:59 spending my last 2 years on is writing this book for for physicians who are 8:03 curious about startups, whether it's like starting their own or or joining 8:06 one and trying to provide that that mentorship that that I that I had, but 8:11 many, many other physicians in my space wouldn't have had just because their 8:14 best friend wasn't an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. And so, you know, 8:18 basically looked into as I was interviewing all these other health tech 8:22 founders for my book, you know, for example, like the physician founder of 8:25 the AI scribe company Abridge or the physician founder of UpToDate, the 8:28 physician founder of Doximity. What I saw with this these people is exactly 8:32 what you say, like there's there's there's actually formulas that repeat 8:36 from startup to startup to startup. And and what what a lot of these people did 8:40 is is dip their foot into the startup community before before they were, you 8:44 know, ready to launch their own. So, you know, for example, for with with with 8:48 Shiv from Abridge, what he did is like build his own apps when he was a 8:51 resident. He like just simple apps to help him and his co-residents like 8:54 collect journal articles that might be relevant to their patients, right? But 8:57 like from building an app, you realize you realize what goes into making a 9:01 product usable and then you realize like, okay, once you have a product that 9:04 you think think is so cool, it actually is really hard to get other people to 9:06 use it. You can't just be like, if you build it, they will come. And same thing 9:10 with like Dr. Gross from Doximity. He was building his own apps. And then when 9:12 you look at Dr. Shrive, one of the founders of uh um Crossover Health, you 9:17 know, what he did to get into the startup community was he was he was 9:20 blogging, he was speaking, and just like saying like, this is where I think like 9:23 healthcare needs to go and like interviewing people like you're doing, 9:26 like learning learning about like, you know, what are the opportunities to 9:29 improve healthcare. You know, I saw a lot of people who I 9:32 interviewed for the book working with the health tech incubator. 9:35 So, like, you know, the founder of Shockwave, uh he, you know, he was 9:39 working with Biodesign at Stanford and basically just being like, "Hey, like, 9:42 you know, all these companies are coming through with their different like 9:44 medical device ideas, how can I, as a physician, help you figure out how to 9:48 validate them? Like, what sort of what sort of steps we need to take so that a 9:51 clinician will will actually know whether this is helpful to patients." 9:54 So, there's so many different ways to dip your foot into the startup community 9:57 and that's that I think that's that's the biggest the biggest thread I saw 10:02 running through all these companies. And I am so impressed by your book and in 10:05 the information that you shared with me even at the beginning of this call, but 10:10 what did you find in the data that said validated your hypothesis about 10:15 physician founders? Well, yeah, this was the craziest thing. So, when you look
The Data Behind Why Doctors Win 10:19 back at the 100 most valuable healthcare companies founded in the past four 10:23 decades, right, just like think to yourself about what some of them are. 10:25 The number one most valuable is Intuitive Surgical. That was founded by 10:29 a physician. The number two most valuable company in healthcare founded 10:32 over the past four decades is Gilead, also founded by a physician. Number four 10:36 is Regeneron, also founded by a physician. And going all the way down 10:39 these top 100 most valuable companies, 51% of them had at least one physician 10:43 founder. So, it was really remarkable to me to see, especially since when you 10:48 look at healthcare startups overall, only 17% have a physician founder. So, 10:52 basically, what you see is this huge outperformance. And what I took that to 10:56 mean is not that necessarily physicians make better founders than 11:00 non-physicians. But, when you're founding a company, domain expertise is 11:04 important. And I think in any other industry, like, you're if you're 11:07 founding a software company, you're going to have a software engineer on the 11:09 team, right? If you're founding like a legal company, you're probably going to 11:12 have a lawyer on the founding team. But, like, for some reason in healthcare, 11:14 that doesn't happen. And I think it's because a lot of physicians shy away 11:18 from entrepreneurship for various reasons. But, but when a startup does 11:21 have a physician as a co-founder, adding that clinical insight, it really can be 11:25 a huge lever for for the startup. And the the other the other reason that, you 11:30 know, the data led me to write this book is that when you think about those 83% 11:34 of healthcare startups that don't have a physician on the founding team, they 11:37 still need that clinical guidance and not just because it's better for 11:40 patients, but because it's better for the business, right? It's going to It's 11:43 going to ultimately create a better business. And so, they need a physician 11:46 executive who's in a position to help direct the company, point them in the 11:49 right direction, right? So, so what I'm trying to help is is get all of these 11:53 other physicians who have an inclination to help patients at a larger scale, 11:57 maybe beyond the one-to-one scale where we help them in clinic, um help these 12:00 people get um get a position where they can actually make a difference in 12:03 startups. That's incredible. And I feel like 12:07 you're saying all the things I'm always trying to tell physicians cuz you and I 12:11 have such a similar story and and background and um you know, being 12:15 involved from the very very beginning of a concept and having it come out of a 12:20 real clinical need that you're seeing. Um I often challenge physicians to start 12:24 thinking, what is a problem in healthcare that you think you could 12:28 solve? And And you're right that there are a lot of um companies, many 12:32 companies, majority of companies in the healthcare sector that don't include 12:36 physicians in the founding team or or until a little bit of a later stage if 12:41 they bring them in at all. And I think the stats that you're sharing about 12:45 these top 100 companies are are really compelling. I see how having been 12:52 in it from the very beginning of a concept, how you can see how that 12:56 strategy and the clinical insight and that domain expertise really needs to 13:01 get woven into the fabric of what the company is going to become. And you're 13:06 right that you wouldn't start a legal company without a lawyer, but I think in 13:10 healthcare, people have a lot of personal experiences with healthcare and 13:14 it triggers this drive, this founder's drive in them. Maybe their child had 13:18 diabetes and they had a experience and now they're like, "Wow, there's so much 13:23 opportunity in this market to improve it. I'm going to go do that." And I 13:27 think you're right that a lot of physicians see the problem, 13:30 think they could make it better, and instead feel just kind of discouraged 13:34 and frustrated with the system instead of They don't feel empowered to change 13:39 it. They don't think they Most people don't know anyone in venture. They don't
Learning Business Without Losing Clinical Insight 13:42 know anyone who's founded a startup. Yeah, and they don't have any any 13:45 background in business. And it's funny because that it definitely, I think, 13:50 gives us a psychological barrier to wanting to start a company. But what I 13:54 saw is that that looking at all these companies where they were 13:57 physician-founded, first of all, like in most cases, the physician ended up being 14:00 the CEO, even if he or she didn't have business experience. And in my view, 14:04 that is usually the right choice. You want the CEO to be the person who has 14:07 the domain expertise. But the other thing is that all these people had 14:11 tremendous humility and curiosity. They said, "I'm going to learn about 14:15 business. I'm going to put everything I can into learning about business. I'm 14:17 going to I'm going to like read biographies of the Steve Jobs or like 14:19 great inventors of the past. Like I'm going to learn about finance, you know?" 14:22 And it's not easy to do that. But but, you know, as much as it's important to 14:26 recognize that the clinical expertise is invaluable, you also have to recognize 14:31 that the all the other stuff that we don't know about about marketing and 14:34 hiring like are just as important. So so the physicians that succeed are really 14:38 the ones that, A, you have to have like the right idea, join the right type of 14:41 startup. And and, you know, this is This is why my book is called Why Doctors 14:44 Win. It's like you have to do all these things, right? You have to find the 14:47 right people to work with. Um you have to you have to find the right startup 14:51 with the right idea. And as clinicians, we are well positioned to figure out 14:56 whether a startup is going to win. But we need to do the research, and we need 14:59 to know how to do the research. So I try to break that down in the book. And then 15:02 and then but when you do join, then that's when the humility really starts 15:05 cuz you I see a lot of the doctors join startups from a position of like, "Oh, 15:08 let me teach you guys how things work." And the the way that the people who 15:12 really succeed approach it is let me learn from you. Like, you know, approach 15:16 like you approach us with humility. Like you're not telling people anything. 15:19 You're learning and you're guiding. Um but like everything you you try to guide 15:23 the company to do should should be more framed as like as a question as a 15:26 suggestion, and you should ideally spend more time learning from your colleagues 15:30 than you spend teaching your colleagues. Absolutely. Those are two principles 15:33 that I speak on a lot is that the things that trip people up are either not 15:39 having enough confidence and not understanding the value of their domain 15:42 expertise and never getting started or having sort of this arrogance or 15:48 rigidity about the way things have to happen and being so focused on on being 15:54 the last word that that you don't actually get the the growth in the the 15:59 other perspectives because in a startup the clinical expertise is is of course 16:04 super super valuable, but if you don't get the thing to make money, it's not 16:07 going to work. It is not going to work. And so all the other pieces that make a 16:10 business run are are critical and you have to go into 16:14 it realizing that like the first time you put a central line in you didn't 16:18 know what you were doing. You did a see one, do one, teach one, etc. You 16:23 have to be willing to feel like an intern again. I feel like an intern so 16:27 many days of my life because I do new things all the time, and I don't expect 16:33 myself to be an expert, and I I've told the joke multiple times that I showed up 16:37 at my fancy private equity firm with startups for dummies, and I was 16:41 literally like trying to trying to get it into my brain like how do I actually 16:45 operate in this space, and I was totally okay with the fact that there were a lot 16:50 of things I didn't know. And by being really open to learning and curious, 16:53 they poured a ton of resources into me, and and I grew. But I think that one 16:59 thing that physicians are really good at, if they can bring that humility 17:03 piece, we are so good at learning. We are real We spent our whole lives 17:08 learning. Like we are a a a black belt in learning and finding resources. I I 17:16 think the other thing that's really interesting about starting a business 17:19 that relates to the clinical side of things, I'm an ER doctor, I know that I 17:23 don't know everything. I know that there's I can kind of categorize things 17:27 as they come in as emergent or not emergent and what organ system, but I 17:31 call consults. I call consults all the time when I have figured out like this 17:35 is out of my range and I need to call surgery or I need to call neurology. And 17:41 that doesn't that's a skill set of triage and assessing what do I know? 17:46 What do I not know? Who can help me? And that's what you do in a startup. You 17:49 say, well, what do I know? I I know this clinically. What do I not know? I've no 17:52 idea what the payer model is going to look like. Who can help me? I'm going to 17:56 I'm going to get someone to connect me to do a pitch with the payers and we're 17:59 going to get feedback. And so I think that the doctors that do really well in 18:03 this space are like you said, the ones that are willing to be open about their 18:08 lack of knowledge, willing to learn. I do think it's easier to learn business 18:13 than it was to learn medicine clinical medicine. So, um I'm curious your 18:17 thoughts on that. I mean, it's it's funny. It is it is really a dichotomy 18:20 where you need the confidence but also the humility. But I think the way you 18:24 described it as like you need to be willing to go back to being like that 18:27 fourth year med student or that intern. Like that's the perfect example cuz it's 18:30 like, you know, we all >> We all make you wear a short white coat. 18:33 Exactly. Exactly. So, no, I think that's that's exactly it. You just really need 18:37 to go back to that learning phase and it isn't it isn't rocket science. You can 18:41 all learn it, but you need to have that that hunger. 18:43 >> So, that brings me to another question which is So, here you are, you 18:47 understand that your clinical expertise is great, you have a great idea, maybe 18:50 you have a a great founder profile, but you see the gaps of what you don't have. 18:55 What would you suggest for like finding what's the ideal co-founder? I I gained 19:01 so much from my co-founders. I love them. I will always love them. We all 19:05 had very different minds, different skill sets, and we came together and 19:09 created something beautiful. But, um that it doesn't always work out that 19:13 well. So, curious to you about what's the ideal co-founder for a physician 19:18 startup founder? So, in the the 10 physician successful founders I
Finding the Right Co-Founder 19:22 interviewed, the pattern I saw again and again was a clinical oriented founder 19:27 and a tech oriented founder. And so, that that goes for the every single type 19:32 of company all the way up to like the AI company. So, for example, you look at 19:35 Viz AI, you look at a bridge, you know, both they came from they had a CEO 19:39 coming from medicine, they had a CTO coming from machine learning. And to me 19:43 that is the key power. The thing that I didn't see very often was was I need a 19:48 business co-founder. Like I need a consultant or Harvard Business School 19:51 graduate. Like I did not see many of those. The one exception where I think a 19:55 business co-founder could be really useful is if let's say you're in pharma, 19:59 right? Or biotech and you're like you've invented this molecule, you need to 20:02 figure out how to take that to market. There's just so much really specialized 20:06 knowledge of how to get that through the FDA, how to get that through payers, and 20:09 like how to commercialize that. That um you know, one of the one of the founders 20:12 I I interviewed, Dr. Kathy High, um she ran into a founder who who would run 20:16 that business side so she could focus on like getting getting the molecule 20:19 finally cleared to the FDA and he was like running all like the patent stuff 20:23 and the business development deals and the financing. But, for the most part, 20:26 what I find is you want a tech founder and you want a clinical founder. You 20:30 know, some people would argue that these days where it's easier to vibe code, you 20:33 may not need a tech founder, but I think to get something that is actually 20:37 amazing quality, it's like sure, vibe coding is great. We're going to, you 20:40 know, probably machines are going to write 100% of our code, but you want 20:43 someone who's an absolute tech genius managing that process. So, I would still 20:47 say the tech co-founder's key. I am again in alignment with you. I love 20:52 the doors that it has opened up to be able to vibe code and I just don't think 20:57 that people fully appreciate what it takes to get something to production 21:00 ready. I mean, you can get an MVP. I think it's a great way for a 21:04 non-technical person to be able to kind of express some of their ideas in the 21:08 form of like what could this look like? What would this look like? Maybe it'll 21:11 help you recruit the right technical co-founder. But my one of my co-founders 21:16 who really managed a lot of the technical side of things was more 21:19 product face but based and she was just this amazing combination of 21:25 development understanding and strategic business planning and like bringing it 21:30 back to the core team of I'm building the clinical model. Now we're discussing 21:34 it. She's taking all of that clinical strategy and getting it into our product 21:39 roadmap which that's what the dev team works off of. Whether you're using 21:44 a bunch of agents to code for you for development or if you're using humans 21:48 that are overseeing agents or back in the day back in 2022 when we were using 21:52 a whole team of humans, the point is you can code and code and code and code 21:56 forever. You could code anything. You could you could vibe code anything. You 21:59 could just keep building all sorts of additional features. If you don't have 22:03 that strategic oversight of making sure that it is actually 22:08 ticking and tying with the goals of the business at that stage. Like a really 22:13 great technical co-founder or product co-founder will know exactly the vision 22:19 for the product and how the technology is going to support the business. You 22:23 will say, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this too?" And they will 22:27 say, "That is a feature in version 3.2 which will be coming out in November and 22:34 there's after our next fund raise. There's a reason strategically that it's 22:37 been put there and not sooner. We recognize that there is a strategic 22:41 order to things and that we got to get things up and out the door as fast as 22:46 possible and start getting user feedback and iterate on that. And it's that 22:50 that's an entire philosophy. It's an entire way of thinking that we were not 22:56 taught in med school and I have taken on a lot of that and learned a lot 23:01 of that because of my technical co-founders and other people that I've 23:04 worked with, but I think I agree with you that in those early stages that 23:08 technology strategy, not just the coding, not just the what is this button 23:14 going to do, but how does it support the business? Those are the two visionaries 23:19 that I think you put together and you can really create something phenomenal 23:23 clinically that, you know, you're trying to do something innovative, something 23:26 new, something that is not the way we do it now. Well, guess what? You're going 23:29 to have to have tools to deliver. Completely agree. So you you said that 23:32 you didn't feel like the like a business co-founder was something you saw 23:37 commonly. What about operators? I mean, I guess you can always When I first 23:41 started working at a firm, I'm like, "What's an operator?" I don't know what 23:43 they're talking about. Like did you feel like you oversaw operations or you 23:46 brought in people for for your personal experience? 23:49 Yeah, I I think that's important. I think these days I would say you can 23:53 wait longer because, you know, using AI we can leverage ourselves further and I 23:57 think that for the longer we spend doing everything 24:00 ourselves, the better the company is going to be created like with a culture 24:03 of like, you know, this this like healthcare first, patient first culture. 24:07 But, you know, I think it's it's absolutely invaluable to bring in, you 24:10 know, a really talented business generalist. Probably not as a 24:14 co-founder, but maybe as like a chief of staff, right? Maybe this is like someone 24:17 who was a you know, investment banker at Morgan 24:19 Stanley or whatever, then they then they were chief of staff to another great 24:22 startup that you respect. You you pay them more than you think you should pay 24:25 them, you hire them, and they're going to like be worth their weight in gold, 24:27 right? Cuz they're going to help you put together the fundraising decks, they're 24:29 going to help put together like, okay, like how do we handle the logistics of 24:33 hiring this huge clinical team, managing them all? Like, you know, like they're 24:36 going to help do the legwork of like making sure that the HR stuff is in 24:39 order and all that stuff. So I think like a a business generalist who's 24:42 really, really sharp like and who you very much respect is huge, but but maybe 24:46 not as a co-founder right away. Yeah.
How to Test an Early Startup Idea 24:50 Um so I guess the last question I have for you is 24:54 for all the people and I'm sure you get this question a cuz I get this question 24:58 a lot that are like it's just the beginning of an idea. They 25:02 don't have any idea like how to jump in. They 25:06 feel like they have a concept. They see that 25:11 problem, that problem that they know uniquely how to solve. What sort of 25:16 advice would you give to people who aren't quite ready to jump in yet, but 25:20 they want to know more? Yeah, so two things. So, 25:24 part two of the book Why Doctors Went That I Wrote is literally me going 25:28 through that exact process. So, like I have the inkling of an idea and I ran 25:33 ran through two different case studies. One startup idea I had that I didn't end 25:36 up running with and one that I had that I did end up running with and being CEO 25:39 for 10 years. And I go through exactly how do I figure out whether this is 25:43 worth you know, would this is worth pursuing 25:46 and then how do I do it? Do I do this part-time? Do I do it full-time? So, you 25:49 know, I'd say that's that's a resource that I I'm biased, but I would 25:52 recommend. And the second thing is I think testing it out, right? Like, you 25:56 know, it's so easy to vibe code something these days and just like 25:59 really like, you know, really just like, you know, see how it 26:03 works and get it into people's hands, you know, I think that's so easy to do 26:06 these days and it's important. So, I just want to take a second and share a
Building a Startup Plan That Creates Leverage 26:09 little bit about where I've been trying to support physician founders. I went 26:13 through a very structured process at a firm. I was in a venture studio and so 26:17 they brought in a lot of resources around us. We had a lot of tools, we had 26:20 a lot of people and the process was basically they were like, "We will only 26:25 fund this company when you can prove that it'll be worth a billion dollars." 26:28 And it was like, "What What? A billion? Really? Like, what?" And we had to build 26:33 it on paper. So, you do so much as a founder to create the model and and it's 26:40 an economic model, it's a product roadmap, it's the messaging and the 26:43 clear you you start with the one-pager, grow it to a pitch, grow it to a, you 26:47 know, a data room, but you are building those three core assets. You're building 26:53 your forward-looking financial model that is all of your assumptions, all of 26:58 the things that you're assuming about the cost, the revenue streams, the 27:01 go-to-market strategy. You're figuring out your unit economics, you're figuring 27:05 out a sensitivity analysis to say which of these variables am I making 27:09 assumptions about that if I was wrong, it would like kill the business. So, 27:13 you're really creating what will then be your operational plan. It is going to be 27:18 the thing that you're showing to investors and they're like, "Okay, not 27:21 only do I follow the logic and I can see how this could become a billion-dollar 27:25 company, but now I can see there's like a very clear execution plan as soon as 27:29 we give money to these founders, we know what they're going to do. They have a 27:32 plan." And same with the product roadmap, like really clearly versioning 27:36 out both your services and the tech product that goes along with it that 27:41 that really aligns with that same business plan. So, you have a plan and a 27:45 go-to-market strategy and then, like you said, you have to get so much feedback. 27:50 So, I am running an incubator program this summer. We have applications open 27:54 now and we will be walking physicians through this entire process of how to 27:59 build these assets to create leverage. So, that it's never been a better time 28:03 to be a solo founder. If you can have the tools to get some of this stuff 28:07 together on your own, then you will be going into all of your conversations 28:11 with a very, very great picture of what this business could look like. And you 28:16 don't have to invest six figures of your own money into building tech just to see 28:22 if it would work out. Out. This is something that you can actually invest 28:26 your time and your thoughts into to really de-risk a concept. And you have 28:31 to start by talking to patients. Start by talking to other doctors. Start by, 28:36 like you said, vibe coding a prototype and saying, "What would you think about 28:40 this for your practice?" Because you take every piece of feedback and 28:44 then you come back to your model and you change your model, you change your 28:47 product road map, you change your pitch. And you do that over and over until you 28:50 get to the harder conversations or the more challenging ones where you are 28:54 talking to a payer or you are trying to sell it to Can you pre-sell it? Would 28:59 someone agree to buy it before you've even built it? Because if so, that's a 29:03 really great market indicator. It makes it way easier to fundraise. And so all 29:07 of these things are things that I think you have demonstrated incredibly both in 29:13 your own journey and in your interviews of all these other doctors who have made 29:18 incredible startups and in this book which I think everyone should go to 29:22 Amazon and buy. Why Doctors Win is really a a great contribution to this 29:27 space, but I just I think that we need more physicians in this space. I think 29:32 that just because you haven't been exposed to the venture space does not 29:36 mean that you don't have what it takes to be a founder. I think David and I are 29:40 both great examples of this. If you're someone that sees the potential in a 29:44 problem and you're willing to go find the solution and you're willing to be 29:49 humble and and ask people for help and ask people to tell you where you're 29:53 wrong in the hopes of creating something meaningful and impactful that can scale 29:58 to serve hundreds of thousands or millions of patients, there is a space 30:02 for you. So that's my spiel. I love that. Couldn't agree more. 30:07 Well, thank you so much again. Again, everyone should check out Why Doctors
Where to Find David and Why Doctors Win 30:11 Win, David Lordster, and we will put the link and um and his LinkedIn in the show 30:18 notes. Thank you again, David, so much [music] for joining me today. Thanks so 30:22 much, Allison. Thanks for listening to The Startup Physicians Podcast. This 30:26 community was built for doctors [music] who want to contribute to the future of 30:30 healthcare. We offer support for physicians who are 30:33 ready to make the next step towards building the career they've dreamed of. 30:37 Visit [music] startupphysicians.com to learn more. 30:41 And if this episode [music] resonated with you, share it with another friend 30:45 who needs to hear it. Let's change the [music] future of health care together.
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