#74: Winding Down From a $400M Fundraise (with Adrian Aoun)
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What is IT actually like to unwind the company?

You guys know the E, C, K. right? He goes, look, whenever somebody says they're getting divorced, everybody walks up to them and says, i'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. I and he goes, none of you have IT all wrong the day they're going to device. That's actually the good day.

IT was the year leading up to IT. That was the awful year. okay? Like I had to make one hundred and fifty phone calls literally .

does not an exaggeration. A lot of entrepreneurs can like lift off the plane, but not all entrepreneurs land the plane and landing the plane could be an exit. Just finish the job. Don't abandon the .

think you should be commended for being on this podcast talking about this. It's not Normalized, but IT is so important when a second time founder like you walk through our door and offline .

ventures are super excited.

No thanks. Just did you ever stop being a reporter?

He do.

He said there with about IT.

Right, the test more.

Well, hello, friends, and welcome to another week of more or less. What you viewers are not seeing is my incredible tartness because.

well.

I have a complaint. Wasn't your fault. Now my complaint is with the great city of new york where I am. But first, let's welcome our substitute some, but you know so much more than that.

right? And how do .

you pronounce your last name? Good friend.

that I should know not quite as good looking, but my last name is like your housing at the moon. I would interest .

Adrian a one to get .

the one activity.

I love that description. For those who who don't know Adrian. Adrian has, with one of silicon valley serial entrepreneurs, has also spent a long stint of time inside alphabet, which he played a big role in creating and most recently last week, ground down his company forward.

So we are thrilled to have Adrian on the pod to give us the inside story of forward and everything that goes into moving onto the next chapter. So thank you for joining a sir. We will also make you do what we do on this pod, which is talk about everything else happening in the world, and of course, our complaints with the world.

I am happy to i'm happy to point to get on things I don't actually know like the rest of you on this time. And i'm also happy to turn IT into a therapy section about how my company will after a year. So let's go asia .

and you're of the fastest founders to public theri that I this is great.

We're good at that. Well, Adrian, is that long term, O G, more less listener. And so I feel like it's only a propose that he like comes on.

especially in sams place. I am one of the six listeners. The if the this if the viewership goes down this week, I apologize also. Listen.

no, you have to, you have to get this that six. That's really important.

so important.

But I wait. Can I just finish my thoughts? This speaking of therapy, I don't even know way to do this.

That doesn't sound and not just so here goes. But how do you guys move around new york city? I think this is a huge problem.

They don't have out there now.

They don't wao. Let's rewind. When Young Jessica began her career in new york city, SHE was a nino of the subway.

Should you get anywhere? uptown? downtown? Full thing. Now, jesica executive is a little more incumbent. First, all I just where .

high heels has to yeah.

i'm hearing like an office in my bag.

What about the parents?

Oh yeah, i'm wearing the great leather pants. Thank you to those are comfortable.

And I also like .

I have an office in new york is actually our largest office. But i'm not important enough anyone will come to me. So for the last, like I don't know, last ten hours, i've been late to like a series of nine meetings trying to get on the city isn't not .

just new york.

There has to be a Better way.

Is that why everybody shifted to zoom? Yeah, it's called zoom. Well.

if I may, if I may, because i've done a lot of work in new york over there.

If I eat some echo ox snacks while you tell me how to do OK.

I love that you're staying at the echo ox satire, which I hear has A A sex store, but something called IT A A.

well, a wellness draw. No, somebody has called .

IT an x an .

exercise versac. Also, this is in a.

okay, I want to be clear. I want to be clear. Let me to set the record straight. Jessica, call IT a sextra and I said.

no, it's a foam roller, a foam roller for your ba. Gina OK.

no, no, highly inappropriate. I didn't look in the draw.

I didn't look in the draw. I didn't find the activated charm. Me, well, maybe IT is in the .

thing that you should .

do is go to the fourth floor where there's like the biggest question, all of and all of new york and you will feel so terrible about yourself because you're walking out and you be like every single person here is a getting model like every person is turn out of ten and lives like three hundred pound waites like their like their paper while i'm sitting struggling to breathe on the making trade ml, so enjoy.

enjoy the equal x you guys can find me in front of the fire. The granet hotel.

Oh, that's the last place I stayed much Better. Okay.

but same my recommendations for just yeah, number one, invest in a pair of snakes. They are like sneakers that look like I heal. Thank you. Sorry.

I have a pair. They are lovely. They're not my thing.

Secondly, if breather still existed, that was always my go to so that you could you could book your meetings of the same areas .

around town and the an office.

No, but the office is not. You need to be near where your other meetings are.

Get a black lane. You know what black lane is? It's like uber. But for the day, a is a car and they just take .

you everywhere. And this is what I want.

was my third tip, just like you have a driver that goes .

you everywhere.

So I passed this out because i've probably spent on uber five hundred box hundred and but so it's .

IT be cheaper than that little be cheaper.

I think I I have spent between three and five hundred dollars on uber. Been perpetual late. So I actually did as someone to look this up. And for six fifty, you can get a car for five hours. But i've never heard of this black lane thing.

It's amazing. And IT works in in most major cities around the planet. That's the thing that .

makes you really special. Wasn't uber supposed to be this?

Not really. 对。 Maybe originally, maybe at the web back in .

whatever year that was.

Guys.

i've ready, learnt .

something. indians. Audience, nothing expect.

I want to talk about foreign. Can I talk about one bit of news before we talk about foreign? K, and actually, I am going to drive this age, age. You worked for the great Larry page for a number of years, correct?

And that I referred to every day the great Larry page. And then I gentile's. okay.

And maybe we can, you know, we want to give people some silicon valley history. You sold your company to google. IT was an A I. Company, I believe. Mame, perhaps the first time I heard a founder talk about A I do you want .

tells what your A I company did.

is it's true. We were doing deeper learning on atal language back when, you know, neural networks and all this sort of stuff was terribly unpopular. In fact, I mean, to throw our dear friend max life.

didn't we call IT NLP back.

did we call IT? I will be. But I remember pitching max left in invest and max goes. I'm totally in. I'm offered this company as long gas.

You tell me you're not using neural networks because these things don't work and sitting there are thinking, all were you thinking, is no network. And I got all, of course, that we would never do that to worry about IT. Max, you know, very kindness invested, but that's all riders.

And so a so I saw that to google. This was early days before google have like a real A I division. And so that was kind of coming together and mean, and some other people kind of helped build that, build that up. And now it's obviously but him. We bought deep mind. And so I spent a little time in kind of the AI side of the house, and then I kind of switch over, and I and spent some time working for Larry on, you know, something that crazy, your alphabet stuff into that for a few years, and then left from there and did the ford thing.

okay. So before we get to ford, which will be our focus, I promise people, when under patch, I called Donald trump to ask him, urting you graduate him on winning the election? And saw, found out, I don't think he saw, heard the elan mosque was on the phone as reported by the information recently.

Well, what do you think his reaction was? And more broadly, like what do you think is going on? Its like google right now with regards to this.

This doesn't seem like a surprise to me.

Yeah, i'm not gonna sit here and trying like speculate on what soon as reaction what i'll do that out of out of respect for him, I refrain. But here's what I would say if I call you Jessica and someone else is on the line all of the sudden like, really, are you kidding me like that's just a little weird uh, and certainly when you consider that, like this person is a competitor.

but sam is always like.

I actually have no idea where he is. I don't even know. Try stay here folks. I know I did.

You've be amazed at how often I tell sam something and then I presume, Jessica, I knows that and he's like, I have no clear you're talking about and like really that's you just keep secrets or that you guys just don't have the actual relationship. I'm not sure it's probably .

that you're not in the center of our relationship.

If that's probably good.

unlikely. Let's let to be clear. Look, I think it's weird because at the end of the day, sooner is competing with um you on on a bunch of things.

And so this creates a very odd conflict of interest that said, dudes, president in the united states kind of gets to do what he wants to do, right? And you don't get to dictate that. So, you know, welcomes .

to .

the new world. Like, I don't thanks in dark or or anybody should be surprised that whether it's elon or after us like who knows who's .

going .

to be on the phone with you and Donald .

trump man who knows? Yeah and just .

to think like we've title a little bit about this on the pod, but this question, I mean, I know OpenAI is quaking to over mean and someone was telling me today, I mean, the bad good part about running around new york is you actually learn things but they were saying the trump elon friendship is really genuine like it's a real friendship seems .

that way and I was like.

great. Tell me more like how or why and this person said, just trump doesn't have many friends.

Why do you think he doesn't?

I thought .

that was interesting. Okay, here's them. More or less ready. I did take this is a not to be clear.

and this is very important. I didn't take IT as a knock is like, I think, you know, when you generally rise, like business leaders struggle to make fit, right? Like I took IT is not like there was a personality for all that people may have their own opinions, but just sort of, you know the ongoing isolation of of the view from the top but anyway but you were onna pull. They're both pretty .

quirky and are cystic. But I think again, ready here's the more or less do you think Donald trump and elon mass will be more friends in four years or at less? Friends, and four years, do you think there's coming on ravelling and they like hate each other or they are gonna like super brows. And four years.

i'm going to go at less. Why i'm going to go at less cause I think at some point trumps gona have a lot of trade off to make great and some of those trade, ffs, will affect even directly. And you'd have to presume that like the market cap of you know elan's companies is so great that they will outweigh other trump interest. Uh, and I just highly doubt that will always be the case. And so i'm going to go with less because I think at some point he's gonna have to roughly, you know, screw elon and that will create some real tension, right?

Yes, I agree. I will say I feel less confident in that prediction. And I did a week ago or three days like I I agree in in that sort of logical.

But you know evens also stretch like the who knows no, who knows. That's my approach to covering well, the next four years. The counter .

argument IT would be, if you presume somebody like J D vis gonna come president in the next election, which I think has a very serious possibility that that would be highly incentivize for trump to earth art, for elon to overlook any sort of, hey, you screw me a little, but i'm in again more by being close to trump. Slash J D through an extra for eight years.

Yeah, maybe you on runs for president. Okay, dive more or less.

I don't think you can, right? I think I think there .

are a the .

constitution.

which is isn't onna happen?

I think he's done a harder things in his career, so I have not child, but IT past him .

told i'm going to take the more on this. I guess all the things you ve all have said are quite true. I think he's uh, pragmatic long term player, elon. And likely I think just what he said earlier, probably true as well that you know it's hard to find friends when you're in a leadership position really is know there's literally what like Y P O and is all kinds of things out there that are designed to help leaders find friends.

Um so if that's kind of one of the emergent narratives here, I also think that there are bigger, bigger strategic things going on right now that these folks share in common, right? You ve got pretty serious foreign policy things going on related to, uh, ukraine in particular. This involves the you know development of uh, weapons and defense technology and space acx is like directly in the metal of this, and so is tesla.

Frankly, if you're not looking at optimists as both, you know they are pitching IT is a consumer thing, but it's very clearly military technology. And so I think that there's a lot going on, on that side of the baLance street that isn't being talked about publicly and is likely, uh, something yeah I guess, throwing their space for starlink, I mean IT, the list goes on and on of the foreign policy baLance that's in sort of hanging the baLance right now. And so I think that that's probably where the friendship is born.

And you know, elon's really strategic thinker, do I want him thinking about strategy of america? absolutely. And so, you know, I kind of hope that they are they keep IT together. So i'm i'm long wrong.

Okay, what time will tell speaking of being lonely at the top? So Adrian, we invited you here. What IT is like .

to have to shut .

down the company. You spend a lot of passion, lot of talent, lot of money building how many years a order?

About eight years.

Eight years raised thirty four hundred million, four hundred million dollars. Vision was really to reimagine health care. Give us the yeah, give us the story.

what? Maybe let's start. Well, I we could start anywhere. But I am really curious both, you know, when you kind of knew, you know, this really is IT working the way we hoped and then how you thought about what steps to take from there.

Yeah, I have a million thoughts and we don't have seventeen hours. I'm i'm going to keep .

a brief i'll save that for the .

book yeah let's hope I never after write IT. So look, the first we just give kind of some of the broader like macro o context to the company, uh, the environment that we Operate. So where start up like many that did the whole twenty twenty one kind of t you know super large around, we raise two hundred twenty five million super high Prices.

And you have to remember, the world has corrected from there. So already were coming in with like you know a aweigh on our shoulders and like know here on the deal start of thing, which is it's hard for any company in that situation. You've got all these twenty.

twenty one companies, like take us to twenty twenty one for a second. Like like yeah. So when you were when you saw those big checks, big valuations, like a in a smart man, you know that that would expect what was IT about this moment that may do want to swiming from the fence.

Well, I wanted to swing from the fans from the beginning. So just taking a step back. Like, you know, I i've done i've done enough things in my career where it's not like i'm like sitting around going home, you know, getting a double.

Is that interesting? You know, at some point this is your life more than this is your career. And I just want to see if I can know, improve humanity for the Better.

That's really important for me. And I know that health care is easily wanted. The largest problems on this planet literally affects every single one of us. Unless you know somebody who's not onna die, maybe brian Johnson IT doesn't, and everybody else, we need a health care solution and so I said, okay, let's go for IT now we always took a stance that like the the approaches that everybody has in the world of health care, incredibly incremental right now.

Um you can't look you know maybe maybe i'm biased, maybe i'm wrong, but if you go to look at every single healthcare company out there, you don't go wait a minute, if they're successful, everything changes. And what I wanted was the company where it's like that generational company where you say, you know what, we've kind of just put a pin in in that in that kind of health care problem and we no longer really have to think about IT anymore. I think a lot about like what did google do for humanity? Well, I was hard to get information.

I had libraries grown up. But you know what the kid and really did never library right? Nowadays we don't really worry about like access to information because google is just everywhere, right in. And that problem, which was actually enormous problem for for centuries and centuries now, is just kind of behind us, right? And I wanted the same thing for for health care.

So when twenty twenty one came around and you know you could like sneeze and get A A few hundred million dollars is okay, well, there's something really awesome here and there's something incredibly scary here. And the main chAllenge of that is you're like, okay, soft banger, whom ever is going to give you a big ground, but who's gna come behind that? Who come behind that? Now we were smart enough to say, let's be really conservative and not spend that money like quite the rate that others were IT IT.

Just turns out that the world corrected way more than me, or Frankly, the vast majority of people even thought, because IT wasn't just like the tech valuations ation corrected and the tech grounds corrected, that was the entire economy came back down, right? I mean, any company you can see in the public markets quite well, right? Any company that was worth ten billion back then is worth one billion or two .

billion right now, right? Well, some, some. But yes.

yes, sir. Yes, true. yes. Yeah, yeah.

And that's completely correct.

It's like if I look at IT as A A headed tail distribution, the very, very, very small head went up in a cruise value and then the rest of those lost that value. So all that kind of value move from those companies, right? And so that makes IT the growth stage.

Fining markets are very, very tough in general for a company like cars. And now add to that the layer of like what's happening in in primary care care. So look, when I started the company, um I know I was like google and my k starting a company building doctors offices and Frankly, like you know the majority of people look to me or like you kidding me, we don't do that.

We do tech things. And I said now I want to make the contrarian bet here like I actually think health care is going to become attack problem now fast forward to you know, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three. And what happened was a bunch of the big players got into primary care.

I amazon bought one medical I think goes about four billion wall Greens, bod village, M, D, I think five point seven billion, uh cbs, bt, oak street for about eleven billion. Walmart built clinics. I mean, literally everybody signal about every note.

I mean, everybody got this. So presume something on the, whatever, about twenty to twenty five billion worth of acquisitions and investment. So right on the bat.

you're like, okay, that apple made IT a key strategy and still, I mean, apple apple, apple s health killer remains a major part of one of the magnificent seven, right?

That's quite an apple wanted to get into clinics, right? Apple was at some point was like we're going to start building our so so that space got very, very, very hot. And Frankly, for us, that was kind of a good.

good couple follow up questions. Feel free. Jump in people. This is what we do. Not just get sorry forward again, you guys.

We were building doctors officers that were very, very technical. You know, I went and I got, so you were using technology, but you were not virtual care. You are made, that's right. You are making the bed .

on the in person. Yeah, yeah. So we were ahead of people in that. We realized that all these virtual care companies that took off and call IT you twenty wondering COVID all those teletext of the world, I said they aren't going to be able to to succeed in the long run because fundamentally healthcare is physical, right? Like you can't deliver a baby over a sume call.

right? And so started, right. Just to remind everyone.

yes, I was at one of your first customers.

by the way, and I we were all we two step.

What year did you actually start? What was the starting year?

whatever. Eight for twenty seventeen or or somewhere around there are terribly dates.

So you were away to the demise.

And two agrium point, you were so ahead with that thinking too, because IT was like, I remember walking in this thing, like sand me. The doctors office had like A T, V in the in the room, which was showing like my body, my art, like the art. IT was just like so forward or so innovative and but to your point, like fast for now, I mean, doctors are using A I to describe their notes.

You know there's a whole branch of health care companies that are like robotic health care companies. They are blood testing health care companies. They are like all kinds of personalized, like prenez u bos and whatever of the world. And so IT definitely became much larger and very fragmented. I would say.

yeah, that's right. And if if you want to give one complaint to ford is that, you know, we were likely ahead of our time a little right? We didn't time freely.

That might be my pattern, right? I did A I, and if I had waited to sell that A I eighteen months, I be a billion. But you know, fundamentally, we thought we'd built the clinics and then you know everybody all started coming into clinics, but we had already built up.

And Frankly, what we learned is you can make clinics like a reasonable business. They are not really a venture backed able business. Um is what we found these are not like this is not you're not onna go find attack company building clinics every uh everywhere and scaling that to the whole planets.

And so what we had done is we had started to kind of uh migrate to our second gene n product, which is basically we call a cariboo. It's like an A I doctor in a box sort of thing. So think of IT is it's now hardware, software.

There is not a doctor kind of uh, sitting there. There are doctors behind the scenes doing things, but it's incredibly efficient for them. And we presume that can kind of scale to the planet.

Now while we were rolling that out, remember I told you twenty twenty five billion dollars of the acquisitions well over the last kind of got twelve months. So pretty much every single one of those has failed, right? And so wall Greens um just completely roll down village M D C V S.

Well, you know they just fire their CEO. You can go look at their stock, walmart, shut their shut their clinic and uh and you can plan to see the writing on the wall with one medical right now. And you don't have to trust me to look at you know the information reporting on on their financial and I mean, it's pretty terrible, right? And so they're losing money hand over fist, though.

Everybody's kind of getting out of IT because the economics aren't good. Now what does that do for us? Well, that puts us in a really tough spot because already the growth stage funding markets are pretty rough.

But now you're going up to go stage investor or like I am in primary care and they're none to know. Primary care doesn't work. We just saw to twenty five billion dollars for the failures.

And to make IT even worse, we're sitting there in lake yeah, but we've got a novel, unproven action product. Trust us. And you know that's a really tough cell in a very conservative market.

So the reality is we were able to you know of the last year or so um we we saw that market shift and we said all got this is really rough. We tried to do the whole life conserve capital. We did some kind of distressed fundraising sort of things to try bias time to the other side in the market.

But eventually what we found, I mean, as early as last week, we had round on the table. And the reality is that we kind of set, look, is this round gonna get us to the other side of this sort of Marks and and the reality is, no, it's not. And so we had to know, make the the, you know, terrible, yet responsible decision to say we should, unlike now, I think the lesson that I want for anybody listening and that I want you to take is like, not that what we were doing with carpooses a bad idea.

Actually, i'm not saying we solved that all. I think there's some changes we need to make their especially business model. But but I do think something in that space is going to work that's different than they structurally where we kind of set up right and set.

And you know, if you guys know neil, neil bluemont doll, the, uh, is out there, new york. You were be, of course, I had a call with neil. I think yeah and he said something really he asked a question, a really .

interesting .

and very time. He said, Adrian, and how many more years before before this works? Like we two years.

Are we ten years? Like someone gonna figure this out. And how many more years? And I think you're starting to see the elements of IT comes together.

Brit mentioned, prenez val, okay, po neuva do IT like getting the consumers in for this sort of, or the nego health stride out out in york, get you in for these sorts of scans. You know, I, I, I love these companies. I'm actually involved in some of them, but but I don't I don't think that is quite nailed the like.

How do I keep users engaged over time? I think that's actually something ford did pretty well. How do I keep users engaged over time? I think we are a little less, uh, good at the like. I mean, to give you this one time body scan that gets you in the door starting, I think there are some element in which if you start kind emerging these concepts in some formal, i'm not saying I we know exactly what that's gona look like. But I think over the coming three, five, seven years, that might be a real thing.

Have a question. So are you saying that you think one of the biggest issues was that you are based in primary care and that may be a specialty care type of health concept would have worked because that is more niche. It's probably like there's more a reason to come back like ob care or you know whatever IT might be is something that you have to return to time and time again. And therefore, maybe that's a Better L T V.

Probably those might a might be fine businesses, probably not enormous um especially not venture backed able. But I will tell you that if your goal is the kind of, let's say, reinvent the health care system from the ground up, IT would be very hard to start there. So just ask yourself this kind of simple question, right?

If I told you for your birthday ebra, I can give you one of two guests, I can give you google, or I could give you a year, which would you rather have you like, my god, rather have google than yp. why? Because google can become yelp can become google.

What's the insight? Well, the insight is you go to google is kind of the front page of your experience to the internet. And so any kind of downstream thing you want to do, you type restaurants, they can capture those queries.

You type travel, they can capture those queries. And so that the idea is that the front door of a system is really important, and primary hair is the front door. And so you capture like all the traffic.

When we launched a drama ology product boom right there, we have like a hundred percent market capture inside of our audience, right? We launch cardiology product right there, one hundred percent market capture. Whether if you start with these kind of point, point things, it's really hard to expand from there.

Well, to expand as being like the leader and all things revolutionizing healthcare. But wonder you argue you can still make a meaningful business. I think we've seen yeah just like fertility, for instance, with kind body and other various brand. So it's definitely .

yeah I think that's right. Not not quite .

a billion dollars is IT a trillion dollar a visit .

is like is a different question. And even know .

you look at the kind bodies .

and you look at category, very few of these are good businesses like very these are not tech company businesses, right um and so so what I worry about is some of them could be reasonable businesses, especially if they hadn't raised the whole bunch of venture. But given the venture uh rounds, given their kind of valuations, I don't know that the majority of them are kind of a to say a rise to the occasion.

So they didn't raise yeah they had a sustainable business model, didn't need to raise a ton of venture capital and theoretically .

could be really great business.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, some of these the business.

but clearly an investor in some of so that just play. I I actually really believe in specially held care. I the points mentioning like I think it's harder to like boil the ocean and we've seen what happened with one medical audit else. And so as much as I like your google analogy, I think I think even being yp is actually still okay and that could be a good outcome.

Yeah, yes, totally a great. That just was an argo. Argo was how do we how do we create the kind of generational company for healthcare? But I I agree, there are other things.

And I will cut. I'm an investment, a unch of the companies we've mentioned. By the way, i've not some of the companies have mention i'm an investor and and promoted others, so i'm trying to .

be as unbias as possible. I know it's .

hard in the interest of making sure this episode is totally reliable and accessible. A lot of people there has been another round of bus with like super expensive concierge medicine like that has been a trend that has always certainly been true in silicon valley. And now I feel like i'm hearing new names i've never heard of .

yeah seems to be popping up all over the place I mean.

is going on with that? And how does the job with the chAllenges forward .

is IT just what you're saying that these businesses are the margins are so razer, then that unless you go and do luxury version of IT, you're not going to be able to produce the margin.

Is that is that I think that is simple as that. I think you can kind of cate the market and you can say you can say I want to go super expensive of fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars a year per person. Don't venture back IT um and say i'm going to build a nice like slow growth, reasonable business.

But let me be clear, you're not affecting like you know the the common man, right? This is not for for everybody or you can say, hey, I wanted push towards massive scale, which is kind of the forward attempt of, uh, i'm going to be very low Price. I'm going to trying to be affordable enough that everybody in society can get IT and arkle go, uh, was that because we're using technology is opposed to an enormous amount of labor that we're able to kind of just reduce that Price more and more over time till IT becomes the commodity that everyone has?

I think both of those strategies are reasonable strategies. IT just depends on what you're going like. Why do you start the company? right? yeah.

So take us IT. Well, actually take but a few following question. When the wave of acquisitions was happening, why were you guys acquired? Were you not ready to go that row?

no. I mean, candidly and and you know twenty twenty but a kind of as I mentioned from the beginning, our goal was to change the world. I think our goal still is to change the world, right? Like where I know everybody says this, but I I promise if you walked in the halls of ford, you'll find the most missionary anted people you have you've ever seen in your life.

Like didn't we didn't get into ford because we're like I we're looking for a quick bug. We get into ford saying how do you create like literally the the most important uh company in health care that affects the the largest amount of lives. And so I mean, during the stack era, we really didn't retain those conversations. During the acquisition era, we didn't retain this. Like that wasn't really what we were trying to do.

God did that was not in apple. Try to .

acquire you.

thanks to journalists .

being a reporter.

SHE doesn't do that to me.

Yeah.

we try to keep her out of this mode on this.

Well, i'm just very you know but am I .

she's said there with her about IT she's got her pen and her .

pad in front of pen that .

I love IT she's york.

So tired guys have been nothing like for you.

What I think and the reason .

i'm asking these questions is like it's a really this is a great opportunity for founders to really hear about like the moments in the journey. I really believe that, right? Because and and also so much and I this is from my venge point as a reporter, you know something doesn't work and actually, you know very few people and like reporters are very quick to sort a snap to why or what did you know and and these things are way more complicated along the way. And I also think, I mean, there are so many stories of great tech companies that, like, didn't take the offer, and this happened, you know, you never really know.

right? So a .

given story.

Yeah, these moments are just really, really interesting.

I know like this, bringing up so much drama, I wanted to take .

that direction. Jason, asking a question that i've always wondered, which is your Adrian, you talked about a little bit already, but in the beginning you are very focused on these beautiful know, these beautiful doctor's offices. I thought you had a really genius product thing you and I had talked about a lot at the time around um these screens that you put on the wall.

Remember being in there with you at one point, you're describing to me the reason that I needed to be a screen and I needed to be on the wall so that the patient and the doctor both would interface through through this world computer, and then therefore the the data in the software would become part of the would be in the conversation, right? Obviously, now this has become a big thing. A eye like this is a pretty obvious thing.

I think you were showing me that in seventeen or eighteen or something like that, at some point you transition from, you know, doing the the doctor's office vision to this more care pod centric vision. And so I am curious about that transition, like what what drove you to, to really change your product strategy? And then I guess the side question is, and i'm sure you did consider this, but I want to hear about IT, which is why not go full software and you know take that, that software that you develop could have gone into any doctor's office no matter what IT looked like, I think, and I could be overgeneralizing.

But I remember being struck by that notion that, you know, to use kind of a simple, simple analogy, that, like open table became the computer for every restaurant in the world, right? And then after that, they were able to layer on all these services. And and we've seen this happened with various other things um and and so why didn't you go the the full soft around and stay in the the harper plus after a so let's start .

with the first part like why go to carports? Like what's the insight and the the whole goal afford was fundamentally how do you scale health care of billion people? Like what would have to be true for you to get to a point where like health care is just a commodity all around us.

And you can also think of IT like a tms are all around us. We don't even think about them anymore. why? Because they're just super damn cheap. They can be produced in mass and they can be distributed everywhere, right?

Uh, cell tower, same thing like there's a bunch of infrastructure that now existing society, one of the chAllenges of health care and one of the reasons that is incredible expensive, not the only reason, but one of the reason was because it's the labor based industry, right? Every time you want engage IT, you're engaging this person who went to school for ten years super well, meaning awesome human. But at some point they're just high salaries.

And so what we said is, well, a doctor fundamentally doesn't need to be dealing with like your goals, your rush, your flu, your Normal text c, you should save the doctors for the most important complex things. And if you kind of detach them from the doctor's office where you you start with the care pipe you do, you're ninety percent of career there and anything that super complex you to escalate to the doctor. And that's a far more scalable, uh, far more scalable model.

And I definitely, I be honest, I I uh, drink as much of my own collate on that today as I did you know, year ago, five years ago. I am convinced that actually incredibly, incredibly good. Um now you asked um you ask the second question, which i'm going to call the mark benefice tions so bens to one of our big investors and I and i've known for many, many years and many of us like just take this dam software, he's a software guy.

right? He's is a same guy. Take this damp.

softer still going to all the dave morin question day I he said just goes out now there's two problems there. The the first problem um which you you may choose to care about or not is, well, you're probably not gonna actually change the world. If you do that, you're gonna put the stick on a pig.

And like the existing health care system has just fundamentally the wrong incentives. And just by putting a screen on a wall, you're not going to go ahead and like massively be able to kind of change the system. That said, that might be a reasonable business.

My talents with the business is that you know ah if you're a health care system or you're doctors office, why would you pay for this thing? Because the benefit across to the consumer, but you can't build more for IT. And so you actually don't really have an incentive to deploy IT.

So so I give you example very early on the C E O of kiser, very, very early on before the CEO of kiser came in genitor. And he goes as the most amazing the author's officer i've ever seen and then spent twenty minutes giving me electron why we need to sell to k or um uh or will never succeed without and then I he he really loved the body scanner that brit was mentioning earlier. And I said, will, look, you're I don't know, you're a quarter million medical professionals.

You're at pretty, pretty large scale. Why don't you have a body scanner and he said something really interesting. He goes, will look like health care based on billing codes if I don't have a nurse do something, actually, we build less.

And in a system like kaiser, where there's fully vertically integrated, they still couldn't get around that. To me, that was shocking. And when you realize this technology adoption and health care only really goes in service of billing. So why describing becoming the billing?

Something you said is really important that I think most people don't understand that aren't in the nuts involves in those of us that are investing in health care companies. We think and worry about codes, billing codes all the time. But it's not just billing. It's actually specific billing .

codes that qualify a procedure and a way it's done by the humans. Your exactly correct. And so there is no billing code for body scanner.

But why why describing working right now? Well, the reason scribing working is because like in essence of doctor, they have an appointment. And then there are the electronic medical record is really just quick books for doctors.

They need to generate an invoice. You know, think about IT like that, but that's kind of what they're doing. And this helps them generate the invoice faster, which means they can get to the next event building event like next to code.

Yeah.

you got IT. And so what I worry about in health care that the incentives do are not actually set up for consumers and don't kind of push you in the in the right direction.

Well, just to push you though, like i'm pulling the same the same .

question just to push you.

Adrian, making doctors Better doctors, making nurses Better nurses, which is what you just said with scribing, right? Like you're basically by doing A I scribing you you're kind of like removing this thing that wasn't available now they can do go do more valuable things, right? Oh, couldn't your software by being in the middle of every conversation between doctors and nurses on the planet theod ally, do this and improve building?

Yeah so so the question is, could you create a company where you're selling off of one incentive? But but once you're in, you're just kind of doing good for the world. Maybe most companies kind of revert to their incentives over time and invest in the things that make them money.

So i've been nervous about the company where you're trying to scale IT off the wrong business model. But the second thing i'd say is if if that's the case is might be somebody else. I'm not a healthcare expert.

I don't know a how healthcare systems run intimately. And so it's not to say that, that strategy couldn't be effective. IT is to say that I know how to do that.

So I just think to here you say i'm not a alth are expert when I think of you is being a health are expert.

Well, so here's a funny thing. So if you go if you go on like linked in in twitter, i've gotten got ten thousand people bashing me over the last week being like a you tech brows. If only you had talked to doctors, we could told you how to do. I an like nobody realized we have a hundred doctors at forward. We have doctors of the product team on the clinics and team on the Operation team on the management time.

Day one, I remember in the first day. First.

we know clinical care. We we have learned a lot about how to deliver care.

but not health care system. You got IT.

The industry of health care. We have never chosen to become experts on IT and kind of intentionally, right? You have well, in that respect, ford didn't work. So many things might have been a good idea outside of what we did.

No, I mean, I think that's what your choice to do this this fast. I mean, i'm here pushing you on these things because it's worth thinking about. Like do you think you should have have done that?

A and and I will not, again, somebody else to go try that as they think it's a good idea. I I will not go do that. It's it's like Larry page sitting down with surging like we invent google.

Step one, lets learn to do a system. Is the library. What are you talking about? no. Like like you know you're not you're not going to disrupt IT by trying to to create the existing system again, you can make the improvements and you can have impact. I don't want to say you can, but I don't think you're going to create .

that generational kind of new, not a revolution. You it's evolutionary, not revolutionary, and you know props you for staying in the revolutionary mode, right? It's interesting listening to this because, as you know, a lot of my interactions of this are through the lens of mental health and trying to do you know, make a real impact on the mental health side, which is even more screwed up h IT comes of all of this and even less technology um and no diagnostics IT turns out yeah so props you for staying in that mode. But I think that the the health care system is very difficult to shift these incentives you know, IT seems like most people have to find a weird simple business model wedge and write IT somewhere. I think you that doesn't always go where they wanted to go.

Healthy care is very, very hard. We did not optimize. We did not say let's go start the company that has the highest probability of making a quick book or we would have nothing to started car washes and later mats, right? We said let's let's optimize for the thing that could be the largest kind of generational company and have an enormous amount of impact. And when you play high stakes poker, well, you got to be willing to, you know, win some hands and lose some hands, right? And and that's what we did.

So two questions, I mean, and did what is IT actually like to unwind the company? I mean, like a little bit more in terms of like I mean, what you do like how did you approach communicating that to your team?

Gotto be still ongoing too, right?

yeah. So let's talk through kind of two aspects. The first aspect is this to talk logistics, right? Um as soon as we knew we weren't going to take around um I felt uh a moral and ethical obligation to do IT.

You know a lot of people said, why was IT so quick? Why was IT so abrupt? It's like, well, because I when you're asking investors, when you're asking customers, when you're asking employees to follow you and believe in you, the second you don't believe that you have a chance of success, you're being unethical and having all these people follow you.

So uh, I don't know four hours later, what is some number like that? We went and we shared with the employees, right? I'll tell it's incredibly unpleasant. In case you're wondering.

did that you did IT for out? So you reached the final decision. You did IT four hours later.

Now let me give you, let me give you. Uh, you guys know the E, C, K, right? The the comedian he's got this great city where he goes and I credit alia, one of my co founders for this but he goes, look um whenever somebody says they are getting divorced, everybody walks up to them and says, i'm so sorry, i'm so sorry so and he goes, none you have IT all wrong the day they're getting divorce.

That's actually the good day. IT was the year leading up to IT. That was the awful year. okay.

So let me tell you, you know, that day was going to make one hundred and fifty phone calls, literally that's not an exaggeration, one, five, zero phone calls to our investors to inform them and uh and by the way, one of the most shocking responses was I can't believe you actually called. Nobody else calls. It's like, really, who are these founders that don't call?

I got that too. I was really shocking. And you know, IT was also interesting, was the people that I was the most scared of to talk to or the most kind?

yeah. So okay, so this was actually really interesting. So I I, you know, on tuesday morning I was like, i've decided i'm doing nothing for six months to a year. I need a break. I like licking my wounds.

I like this this really a consumer, right then what happened was I made all these calls and some of our biggest investor, I D one, one very largest investor ah, that you guys know that might have been on this pod who who calls me. I returned my call and i'm like sitting IT at a meal and i'm like, I don't want to get up. He's just gonna scream at me.

He's not the nicest person and and I get on the phone and I like, okay, let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you why I had ended like this and because, yeah, we're done with that. So what are you doing next? And can I cut you a term? And that my thinking was like, there is something .

delusion that I was to ask you after we get off the pod.

Yes, after the pod, you people, the pot is when you ask the questions. This is .

what we do tomo the deals .

and secret.

So, so, so I mean, there is something increate. Just think about this, like we just burned, you know, not quite a half a billion dollars on an idea and every, not actually say everybody, but a lot of people's reaction is, what are you doing next? Lets do IT again. And like, what what sort of special as culture did we create in silicon valley where this is reality? I mean.

this is absurd to give you credit. Like I think the quote that that David I use a lot is like a lot of entrepreneurs can like lift off the plane, but not all entrepreneurs land the plane and landing the plane could be an exit IT, could be returning partial money back, or could just be like following through.

just.

just, just fishing the right way, just finished the job, don't abandon the ship like. And literally the credibility of when an entrepreneur can just do that with you, fight the good fight, have a big idea, like have a great culture in the company and like really go for IT, then land the plane when IT doesn't work. That is all the credibility you need to get the investors that want investing .

in the next time. Well, well, you're super kind. I mean, I think we're very, very lucky and thankful to be in the midst where that's true.

I think this is important to push on, though, because I don't think that most founders realized that this is the case. I think that we talk about this, you know, there's lots of narrative that that failure is Normal and that ninety percent of things fail in silicon valley. But all of us on this pod know that the actual lived experience of the founders is frequently very different from these people.

Get the pressed for years, they think that their investors hate them. Uh, they get uninvited from everything, and they take this very personally and they think they shouldn't try again. And I think this is actually the worst thing that you can take from this.

And when I was going through this, Adrian, you know, I I was actually I was at the code conference in hawaii and was right after the same day you're talking about and I went to the breakfast in the morning and I saw one of my biggest shareholders standing there at the buffet and I walked up and I was terrified, right? And he turned around me, he smiled and his, hey, dave, and give a huge hug and I was like, oh, man, I I thought you'd be angry. I literally said, I thought you'd like really angry at me and he said, why would he be angry at you? You landed the plane and he goes, how many boards do you think I on? I don't know.

I'm on twelve means like guess how many founders land the plan? And this guy has been around many more generations than you guys, than all of us. And I like, I don't know, and he goes, I put IT ten percent.

And he's like, most of them never call again, and you just never hear from them again. And what that, to me, says is that people are taking IT really personal. They think they failed. They fail in immense amount of shame. I mean, I really think you should be commended for being on this podcast, talking about this .

like this right now. I mean, it's incredible.

super kind. I think it's a really powerful thing that people just it's not Normalized but is so important. Like when a second time founder like you walk through our door at offline ventures, we are super excited to talk to people because that means that you are not a freshman anymore like you've actually learned a lot of the important lessons.

And as we all know, if you're a freshman, you know at school or on a sports team or doing anything, a lot of the things that you learn by the time you're senior, you know you you really wish you wouldn't know them right here as an investor like I think second, third time founders are often and talk about in terms of the people that you know should be getting big checks and taking big swings are not feeling all of this shame. But I know from experience talking to people that happens all the time. So props to you.

Well, well, you're super, super, super kind.

Can I be? Sam is not here, which I think means everyone's .

been too nice. So i'm going to I am not in ash.

Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I think there's something very unique, important about the silicon valley culture where you can fail and you can do IT again in all of that.

What a big chunk of the world would see in all of this as they see arrogance, right? They would say, great, that he wants to build this business and change the world. But you know that that venture money came from people, the employees who worked, spent their career.

And you know, who is he to say, just because he had this big audi ous idea, he could, you know, sort of choose this path? And you know, some people might say this is actually what's problematic with silicon valley is that we have these um these talented leaders who are so arrogant that they you know that that this thing is isn't comment like what do you say to that person? Well.

they're not going like my response. I think we need more arrogance and scot body, not. And by that, what I mean is not this outward of noxious, be an assess kind of argon.

But look, IT takes a special kind of a aversion to sit down, look at something like health care, be like why everybody else has fail that this. And you know what? I think I can change IT.

So let's go try. And I want more people who wanted try to change the world, not fewer. The the whole idea is like, look, if a one hundred people go try a couple of them, we're gona work and we're all going to live in a Better world.

And you know, you got to accept that like ninety, ninety five percent of them don't. But we all say this and all the people that are, you know, whatever shooting on me on twitter or linked dinner, whatever IT happens to be, they're also using the internet on their iphones, while in a plane going seven mile and out. right? Technology has come from people who have dared for greatness.

And I think we need more of that, not less. Now you mentioned employees, and that's the one to me that is by far the most important to people who actually far more important than who put their their dollars and is who showed up every single. And I i'll tell you, I have very short all hands.

I was not I was not, you know, incredibly excited to be up there in front of all the employees. Uh, I knew it's obviously the right thing to do. But but when I when I got off that stage, I I hung around for a lot of questions in such.

And I expect an enormous amount employees to be pretty simple, Frankly, like I think could be a little justified. And uh the the the most common first of zero people have come to me or I ve heard of them being passed. Maybe they are, but I haven't heard IT.

But actually the far more common reaction was people came up to me and they said, yeah ah I know you said you're not doing something for six months or year, but that doesn't work for me. I need a job. I need a real salary.

So will you go ahead and you know start your next company like today and hire me next week? And honestly, tuesday morning and after this all happened, I said i'm taking a break. And by wednesday morning, because the investors said they want to come in and the employees said they want to come in, I said i'm starting a company like without and not only in my starting company, i'm doing IT today like .

I don't have time.

I already tired hearing this. Okay, but why is this real?

Yeah what are you shorting?

What can talk not to talk about? We're not going to talk about that.

But but but just take in the chat is IT an .

LLM for doctors? You know, it's something but here's .

to do that .

was not denial that denial such a reporter take your reporter have .

off and just be atran friend .

for a minute IT doesn't .

come on is about the company.

So you here's here's where we've created. We've created and I maybe not us, maybe the generations before I have created a silicon valley where literally somebody will go up to you proactively and say, I want to work on the thing that that you think is the highest impact for humanity and people with big checkbooks will come and say, I will fun that. I think you're almost irresponsible.

I know this sounds crazy, but you're almost irresponsible. You're not starting a company. You have an opportunity to change humanity. Wait when you're nested.

especially if you have the education and the education is having done IT before yeah because you cannot buy that education, you cannot like go to school for IT. And I think that if you are stuck, I mean, call me, i'll help you get out of being stuck. I am very good at IT. You do have a responsibility to use your education to do IT.

And the other thing I say yes and thing just I think that um the concept you are talking about a minute of landing the plane, I think that there are founders that just bail and they don't finish the job, right? And that's a very different thing where the skeptics and the people do deserve, or they do fraudful lent things that even worse right there is that that goes on. But people that are, you went to the very last day tried everything.

They tried every business model. They they went to work every day trying to figure out the right product, the right market. And you know the capital markets just didn't support the idea anymore. Like that's okay, right? Like you have to kind of, you know call IT at some point .

and go try again, right? So so let say and I don't think I justifying losing that much money at SATA, but but let me just give you one one way to to put IT in context, which is so I was that google and um I you know working on a bunch of kind of higher risky bets when I start of loses four hundred million dollars. We go oh my god, how stupid is that person how like they must be an entire fuck up whatever IT is but you know if you're google, like IT is the responsible thing to be losing four hundred million dollars on basically quarterly basis because you have to be taking an enormous amount of bets. And I worked on many things in google that just and others are aware and have covered in in their turn.

And and you know what? Some of them have worked and some of them worked spectacular and really happy, and some of them have been quite spectacular like pieces of crap, right? But at the end of the day, like I i'm going to repeat business and and I I want i'm not a poker player, but I use the poker analogy, which is don't sit at the table and play one hand. You in the idiot, you sit at the table, play one hand, sit at the table and be prepared to play a lot of hands because you know some of we're going to work in. Some of them are yeah.

I think so a definite I mean, I think I think people should really listen about also there's we have talked on this pot about like the zombi, especially with these like seismic changes that have been happening in the market that you point me to. You know there's when something really isn't onna work and the leader can identify that and then there's just sort of like you don't know, can you talk about the different I .

think you usually know what what .

what happens is and we had a really big decision to make. And in this respect is not clear that we made the right one. But like, look, the when the economy started kind of pulling back, what everybody in these grocery companies did is all cut, burn, run your business until you're like slightly profitable, have no growth, no future story.

And I will tell you about naming names. The amount of peers in our space that did that, that have no tech story, have no future is pretty real. Some of them have continued because they're like, well, we don't need a bunch of money, but they're not interesting businesses.

We took an incredibly control and back to that um did not work out to be clear. But what we said is we're going to double down on our future in a market that's telling us not to invest in the future, right? The markets are not supporting grow stage markets right now for Price at least.

We're not supporting doing high, high, high risk. You high alpha, big spend sort of plays like, hey, go invent this new thing called the care bug. We said, you know what we can predict.

Market is going to take us a few years to kind of work on this project and get IT to a good place. Were hoping the markets will support us during that in the respect that was clearly like not the right answer or from an economic h from an economically perspective. But like if you had told me to just sit in that company, I would quit that company. Like there's no way I wanted to sit the company where I already don't believe in the future, but I have somehow managed to get IT to continue for in purpuric.

Like why the hell would you work on that? So and I I think someone was have to wrap and you've given us a lot of your time. So and apparently don't have any because you're starting a new business at some point.

I have more of IT these days like only time said via term sheet.

but it's .

going to send IT. I think you're going .

to get some term sheet .

IT around .

the over party. But we feel that I I did have .

many come up. One of our big investors come up to me yesterday. I'm in vegas that this goldman conference um and also someone you guys all know and he was on my board a week ago to be clear and he goes I hear i'm already too late on the next one and I do not want people to .

think that is happening right now. So you are we already book your time and .

are you .

guys really oh, my gonna. okay. But give us like i'm sure you've reflected deeply about what you would do differently. And if you look back, but is is there anything at this point that you can say, okay, i'm going to take this from forward, and i'm going to make sure I do IT differently at my ellam for healthcare start up. That isn't fact that we'll call in the okay.

So well, the first thing, the first thing that I think about is, Frankly, like I think I had good idea, said that maybe two or three times now, right, but they need more time. And so I think if you took those Carry pods, if somebody wanted to go buy those assets, maybe me or somebody else and spend that into a new company, that's not what I am not working on right now, to be clear. But if you did, I actually think that would be a good idea.

Just fund IT and give you a few years to go figure IT out. It's not fully solved, but I think there's something along that path. It's going to be a good idea.

Now what's the take away that I have? Well, the first take away that I have is, um hey, you know make sure you're timing a market really well like that would be nice um and make sure that you're more resilient to the up and downs of the market. I mean, we had to deal a lot of this.

This most recent thing was just one of them. We had to deal with the beginning of cove. We had to deal with multiple recessions. We were around a while. And and so being incredibly resilient to market changes is something where where I I think a lot about that to give a shot .

just quickly. Like when you think about how you do that, is that like more cash on the bank is IT was.

So, uh, everybody here presumably knows mojo shaw, who's a good friend of mine, who hasn't start up called hippocratic. That's really exciting. Before this he did to start up that that didn't work out.

And so I asked him like, well, how are you approaching hippocratic and I free. I'm not going to use the right terms, but he's like, we basically have this go cold plan. Anything goes wrong. We can scale down our bird and ensure that like with the contracts were signing were never overcommitted. We can always scale down to a point where we've got and I forget in a number thirty six months of cash in the bank .

actually thought that was a really that's Better than like are you default alive or not, right? It's one thing to be like defauts alive. It's another thing entirely to have a go cold plan. I like that. I want a shirt that says.

go cold yeah, I thought is really clever because the insight is you can so whenever a company kind of scales up there burn and they're like, oh, shit, I want to cut burn mostly what they do is they caught employees. If you're enough vertically integrated business like us, like employees, are our cost, don't get me wrong, but they're not eighty percent of your costs, rather thirty or forty percent at.

And so now we have everything from leases to A W S. Contracts to you name IT, and we can go cold on a lot of those. And I think it's really clever in a started to think about things that way.

great. Well, Angela, this is been fasting. I mean, thank you for joining us more. In any final words or anything, we have leave the fine listeners with just again I send .

them .

to the weekend.

create the transparency and courage to to jump on and just i'm like some day one was such a fan, a forward. And I think what you'll never know is how many lives were touched both as patients spent, also as like founders to be that are .

going to hopefully follow.

And my biological thirty three, just to wrap up, in days face one more time, my guys.

I thought we've got past that. I didn't know what the problem could survive that we're worried. So we're not one time .

I think forward is is to think for this.

Well, you're super, super kind. IT has been really nice. I've got ten a bunch of messages from people i've never met, whether it's on linked in or emails or tweet or whatever going, hey, I got one and even just an hour go going, hey, you are the inspiration for me starting x and if that's all the impact we hadn't, we're just handing, handing the toron to somebody else to take Carried on. I would be perfectly .

happier with that OK.

sir, what will invite you back for the big announcement of the repeal because there no one else can can move this story forward. But um I think with that we will thank everyone for listening to the special episode for tuning in oh big thing to all of we had a moral i'm so tired because I had a more or less breakfast this morning in new york and so many listeners came, which was awesome. But you know what happened? This is very telling.

Our Young listeners came. Sami were probably the oldest ones there because they, I don't know, getting kids off to really need that. We had, like a great cohorts of thirty year olds. So to all thirty year old who came out to breakfast in the east village.

that was really fun.

We'll do IT again. And to you, everyone else, i'll see here next week for another episode more or less. Bye.

guys.

If you enjoying this show, please leave us a virtual high five by reading IT and reviewing IT on apple podcast, spotify, youtube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for at more or less at dave morin at lesson at j lesson. And as for me, i'm at break. See you guys next time.