Special Guests:
Pulses, Tachyons, Soundbites from show
Using AI to Start an AI Business
One of the other cool things talking about AI and the nascency of it is my goodness, I can't even imagine like a health plan or a hospital system or a doctor's office. Now the vendors to them, especially the big vendors are already using you know, NLP has been out there for a long time. And but, but what I've done with this business has been kind of fun is use AI to start this business. So I used AI to write my contract, my terms and conditions contract with my customer. And then I used another custom GPT, which I call a robot lawyer to analyze the first robot lawyer. So I can use a real lawyer. I used GPTs that were written by real lawyers to create a document that's a legal document and then interrogate that document to make it better.
Strategic Insights on Pricing Models for Startups
I'm interested in how you think about pricing, because that's something that I think is an interesting conversation, but it is one of the things around scale that, you know, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of ways to think about a pricing model as part of a GTM and as part of product design as well. How do you get there, Wayne? Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think a very big challenge for startups, early startups, particularly, and I think part of it is, how do you quantify the value? Like you may say the value is x, but the end user has to agree, right? So the way that we do it, I think this is something that particularly health tech startups should look at is try to figure out what metrics matter to your client. What is the pain point that you're trying to solve and what are the metrics around that?
Importance of Focus and Alignment in leveraging AI
And you still need to be aligned with your initial or whatever it is that your value proposition is. Because AI can really help with that. But as with any tool, if it's not used in the right way, you could get in trouble and you could end up like AI could say, oh, well, you could do this with veterinary practices and other things. And you know, while it's true, you probably could, but it's probably not the, you shouldn't be, you know, you don't want to diversify your focus until you've actually, you know, finished, you know, marketing and doing everything you need to do in your first market. So I think that's it. I agree. I mean, they get worthless focus on scale. You got to get that first idea, Michael, to fit. Yeah. You know, pick, you've got a thesis, you go out there, you spend a little money and time, you do some market fit work.
Vitamins Talk and Heartfelt Thank Yous
The best way to know what everyone's taking is go to Costco and you see the vitamins. They have them there. I mean, they have stuff for statins, the red yeast extract. But anyway, this has been awesome. This has been so great to have you, Wayne and Miriam, on to really dive into what makes a great company, scaling, what to do. We've learned so much. I really sincerely appreciate both of you coming on today. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having me too. It's my pleasure. I really appreciate it. It's great to spend time with you both. Yep, same here. Awesome. Until next time, friends, it's been an awesome time.
Strategic Insights on Pricing Models for Startups
I'm interested in how you think about pricing, because that's something that I think is an interesting conversation, but it is one of the things around scale that, you know, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of ways to think about a pricing model as part of a GTM and as part of product design as well. How do you get there, Wayne? Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think a very big challenge for startups, early startups, particularly, and I think part of it is, how do you quantify the value? Like you may say the value is x, but the end user has to agree, right? So the way that we do it, I think this is something that particularly health tech startups should look at is try to figure out what metrics matter to your client. What is the pain point that you're trying to solve and what are the metrics around that?
From Career Transition to Identifying a Multi-Billion Dollar Issue
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. You know, I'm at sort of what I call the fourth stage of my career. And one of the things I wanted to be doing at this point in my life is working in the investment side of the ecosystem. And I do that. I'm an active angel investor. I'm an LP in a venture fund. And I also do advising for private equity. But I found that I still wanted to enjoy the process of creating and doing something from scratch and doing something new. And I had a bug that sort of bit me several years ago around pharmaceutical copay coupons for patients, which is a multi-billion dollar, more than $10 billion a year of available savings to consumers that aren't used in an era of financial toxicity, in an era of healthcare is unaffordable, in an era of poor outcomes and difficulty with medication adherence. Why aren't we using these savings?
Choosing Investors Wisely: Aligning Values and Expectations
I just want to follow up with what Miriam said about investors as well. So the culture extends to your investors and choose your investors wisely. I think that's very, very important because, you know, while you're a startup, you're desperate for money. You're like, okay, anybody that's going to sign on the dotted line, we'll just take, but beware because if the investor doesn't have one, the mission, the culture, and or the metrics, right? A lot of venture funds may not have the same model for success as your business. And if it doesn't match up, then you're going to be in for trouble later on because they're expecting, like you said, a hockey stick and you're saying, no, it's got to go this way because that's how these things work. That's really critical to get right from the beginning because otherwise the board meetings will be very, very painful.
Challenges from Both Sides: Client and Vendor Perspectives
I sat on both sides of the table, both as a client as well as a vendor. And from a client perspective, we often get sold things that don't exist, right? So then that becomes a problem because if you're expecting things because of timelines, because of regulatory issues, and they don't happen, or they end up taking an inordinate amount of time of the staff to train the engineers of the vendor company to actually do those things, it becomes really problematic.
Challenges of Healthcare Technology Adoption
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think a lot of physicians got burned with the EHR implementation, right? They came along saying, oh, it's going to be funded by the government. Great. So it doesn't cost me anything. But what they realized was it cost them a lot in time. It reduced their productivity. And so at the other end of the tunnel, they lost money, right? And they are struggling with bad EHRs that are not doing the things that they say they're going to do. And so they're shy about new technologies. So you can come there and say, hey, I've got the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it's gonna pay you a million dollars a year. And they're gonna look at you and say, well, you know, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. So they're not really excited about this. I think that's one of the things that healthcare technology companies in particular need to be aware of is how does it fit into the current ecosystem and workflow? If it requires any change, I mean, I'm talking about like, oh, just click here. That's not going to work. It's got to be exactly what they're doing today. And it's got to be exactly what they expect to do. And it should not cost them one second of time. Now, obviously, it's hard. But those are the things that, at minimum, if you do that, then you have a shot at having somebody listen to you and talk about it.
Personal Reflection on Branding and Mission
You know, Michael, I'll kind of shine the light back on you. Really, the reason I wanted to do this podcast when you reached out was because of your branding. And you're talking about, you know, peace, love and kindness and really thinking about it. Also, I think it's funny. So I respond really well to humor. I think the name of your podcast is funny. You know, you're in my sector. because you're in health, but you have a vibe and a brand that comes across as you're a caring person. And you're putting this out there, because you have a big heart, you know, and and so that really attracted me.
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125 Scaling for Success: Building Sustainable HealthTech with Wayne Pan, MD, PhD, MBA & Miriam Paramore