Launching a Digital Health Company
Launching a Digital Health Company class at HBS
Harvard Business School
Tuesday, July18th, 2023
12–1:30 p.m. EST
Bonjour!
In a rapidly evolving digital health landscape, where cutting-edge technologies meet the crucial mission of transforming healthcare, sharing my comprehensive piece on a captivating journey through the recent learnings from the esteemed Launching a Digital Health Company class at Harvard Business School.
🛠 Finding Cofounders/Partners and Splitting Roles and Responsibilities for Your Startup.
“Finding someone who has a shared passion for the problem you’re solving is a must”.
It’s important to assign specific roles and divide responsibilities to hold each other accountable.
During her M.D.-Ph.D. program at the University of California, Alice Zhang (Co-Founder at Verge Genomics which uses artificial intelligence and human data to develop better drugs faster) coded algorithms that analyzed networks of genes to predict new drugs for nerve regeneration. The algorithms looked at gene networks that distinguished nerves that could recover after injury from nerves that couldn’t, “with the idea that if we knew the networks, we could reprogram the nerves,” says Zhang.
She left the M.D.-Ph.D. program midway and started working with another M.D.-Ph.D. student, Jason Chen, and the two turned to write the story together. She took over a generalist role while her co-founder with consulting, and equity experience managed the product role. She believes in equally splitting roles and responsibilities between the founders based on their interests and fetching it with a long-horizon problem of a minimum 4-year cycle. And her way to evaluate that you are working with the right co-founder is by working on a project together to have a larger picture while working on a startup.
A general heuristic to follow is to ask 3 questions:
- Do I trust this person?
- Do he/she is competent to work on this idea?
- Do I enjoy working with them?
Jonathan Bush, Chief Executive Officer at Zus Health believes that complementarity is the most important factor to look for in a co-founder. Your weakness shall be their strength. It’s better to partner with somebody who knows you well, steps in for you when necessary, and does not fear you.
🤝 Takeaway: It’s important to look for factors like complementarity, trust, competency, comprehensibility, and someone to enjoy working with while looking for a co-founder. Roles and responsibilities shall be equally split based on interests.
🦄 Bootstrapping or Fundraising for early-stage startups during such economic conditions?
Sandeep, Co-Founder of Octave advises that the best advice is to not raise and the best time to work on a startup is a recession because it makes you disciplined.
One shall only raise with if they believe in their ability to hit the milestone growth over a specified time.
Julian, Co-Founder & CEO at Summus, believes that to raise it is to have a mindset of making money for your investors. And more importantly, to be conservative when it comes to spending. Having a frugal mindset is a critical part of a founder.
🤝 The first answer to raise is NO. However, after raising ensure that you reach your promised milestone and be conservative with your spending.
❓ How Gender Matters While Raising Money?
Although only 2% of founders get funding, male and female entrepreneurs usually come across different questions from VCs.
The Harvard Business Review Article excellently covered this topic.
It’s observed that Men get asked questions about their promotion, while women get asked about prevention/retention. One is aggressive on growth and the other is conservative.
Women are usually asked questions about their family planning, while men don’t.
🤝 Takeaway: It’s necessary to be prepared to answer all sorts of questions while fund-raising.
🔥 What’s the commercial strategy to find your first customer?
Julian strongly believes that health care is all about your relationships. Rather than having a stressed sales employee, one should look for making deeper relations in the industry and then push your best sales executive to let him/her push their sales ninja techniques to make a sales pipeline.
Many people believe that going to tech conferences does not help. However, this is not true. You meet some of the best people at conferences and if you get a chance to speak on stage, you are heard and people start taking an interest in your mission.
No better time to start blogging even though you are in the building stage, write as much as you can.
🤝 Other Key Takeaways
- Look for Perfection.
Get feedback, iterate, and repeat till you have perfection
2. Set out on a global mission with the people you love, to never run out of energy.
3. It takes time to witness growth in healthcare and be patient. The demand curve doesn’t work in Healthcare.
4. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Be vulnerable, be open, be greedy. There will be a constant struggle between building with fear Vs. Building out of confidence. No matter what, keep building.
🤝 Further Reading suggested by Speakers:
- https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Campbell-Power-Myth-Moyers/dp/B07BC2VHHJ
- https://medium.com/@elleluna/the-crossroads-of-should-and-must-90c75eb7c5b0
- https://www.foundingsales.com/
- https://rockhealth.com/insights/streamlining-enterprise-sales-in-digital-health/
- https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get
🤝 Conclusion
The insights from the Launching a Digital Health Company class emphasize the importance of finding compatible co-founders, equally splitting roles and building relationships for successful startups. Being disciplined in fundraising, answering diverse questions during funding, and implementing effective commercial strategies are vital. Perseverance, vulnerability, and constant growth fuel the journey toward transforming healthcare with innovative solutions.
