Meet Albert Tai, CEO of Hypercare
Albert talks summer camps, coding at 11, old Android devices, and the healthcare grind
About
Welcome to the second installment of Tsingyuan Ventures’ Meet Our Portfolio portrait series. Every week, we publish an in-depth founder interview, ranging from early-stage entrepreneurs to successful businesses. Our conversations cover their personal journeys, the lessons that shaped them, their visions for the future, and their failures. We also learn more about their companies and about the challenges they try to solve. These insights and lessons are applicable to any entrepreneur — current or future.
Read past interviews here.
Hypercare
Hypercare is a mobile-first digital healthcare collaboration app that enables communication and greater continuity of patient care. It connects the right providers at the right time for patient-centered care in diverse settings such as hospitals, long term care facilities, community care organizations and family practices. Sign up to try it out today, or visit hypercare.com to learn more.
Albert Tai is the founder and CEO of Hypercare, a healthcare technology company that connects the right healthcare providers at the right time to collaborate for patient care in hospital and community settings. He started programming at 11 years old and created several software companies. During his masters degree, he shadowed doctors in the hospital on-call and was shocked that they still used pagers and fax machines to communicate about patients. He then devoted himself to creating a better solution for patient care. He comes from a product and engineering background.
Why we invested in Hypercare: Efficient communication in healthcare is such an obvious area where tech can make a huge positive impact. Yet larger companies have been unsuccessful. Albert’s entrepreneurial instinct and drive impressed us. As a strong product manager, he’s able to capitalize on the product-driven category Hypercare is in. Every customer who has worked with Hypercare loves their product and their team.
Meet Albert Tai
Interview edited for clarity and length.
“You can’t be Silicon-Valley-esque in healthcare.”
Albert introduces himself
I’m Albert Tai, co-founder and CEO of Hypercare. Growing up, my parents moved around a ton. We joke that we were like gypsies. I had to make friends really quickly. It made me more personable.
I was lucky that my parents enrolled me into cram school for computer science really early. I learned how to program Java and Visual Basic when I was 11. A lot of my friends had no idea what programming was. That led me on a journey of making software and getting it to people.
But after cram school, my parents were really against me spending all this time outside of school programming and doing web development. Unlike a lot of tech founders, my parents were totally against me doing tech. They wanted me to go into science. Over time, I persevered and convinced them to let me do computer science. But it took a long time. That taught me grit and persistence.
Honestly, as entrepreneurs, so many days feel bleak. You have to push through. At that time I was not happy, but it taught me grit, and grit is really important as an entrepreneur.
Honestly, as entrepreneurs, so many days feel bleak. You have to push through. At that time I was not happy, but it really taught me grit.
On working at summer camps
Three out of four years of university, I was working at summer camps. It allowed me to understand that I really like to do socially impactful things. The summers were not paid well, but I enjoyed them. For the kids, a lot of them felt that week at camp was the best thing that happened to them during the summer.
For the kids, a lot of them felt that week at camp was the best thing that happened to them during the summer.
That ties into why I’m doing Hypercare. I want to do something with purpose and meaning: not just building tech, but applying technology to a problem and benefiting the world in a positive way.
On building culture
One of the things that I loved about working at summer camps is that the team feels like a family. We’re there to make the kids happy. Yet there’s also pressure because of all the things that could go wrong: I had to chase kids down if they ran away. I try to build in this feeling I got from summer camps into the company.
One of the things that I loved about working at summer camps is that the team feels like a family.
I also based our culture off of my internship experiences. I didn’t enjoy a company that was too large where there was lots of politics. We try to minimize that. When we interview, we have questions tied directly to our cultural values. It largely revolves around hiring smart people, being kind to each other, caring about each other, and being smart and respectful about how you work.
It largely revolves around hiring smart people, being kind to each other, caring about each other, and being smart and respectful about how you work.
On finding Hypercare’s first customers
When we first started, we talked to a lot of residents. Residents are still training and they’re not a fully official position. They do a lot of grunt work in healthcare. We realized that residents have the most communication problems, because they’re working in really hectic team settings.
We got them to start using our product and they taught us their workflow. Unfortunately, in healthcare, residents aren’t considered in “the system.” It’s really hierarchal, like a totem pole. So we could only continue testing with residents.
We got lucky one day. One of the hospitals approached us to implement Hypercare for their department. At that time, they probably had no idea that we had no customers. They were the first one who signed on board.
We got lucky one day. One of the hospitals approached us to implement Hypercare for their department. They probably had no idea that we had no customers.
Before that hospital, there were a lot of road trips where the doctor on my team and I would go “knocking” to each hospital to talk to executives. Healthcare is such a risk-averse environment that no one wanted to be the first. But we got the hospital who took the first leap of faith. Since then, we’ve been closing deals left and right.
Healthcare is such a risk-averse environment that no one wanted to be the first. But we got the hospital who took the first leap of faith.
On failure and learning from failure
One of the big failures happened early on, before we raised a round of funding. We were trying to get investors interested, and they wanted us to show that people are interested in solving this problem and adopting our product. A messaging app sounds really easy to build. But it’s actually really complicated. Because of healthcare regulations, we had to build our own real-time framework.
A messaging app sounds really easy to build. But it’s actually really complicated.
It also needed to be multi-platform. A lot of startups start off building for iPhone, and then build on Android or other devices. But we had to build for everyone on a team: iPhone, Android, and web for nurses on computers.
Because of that, our product was a little buggy. We pitched and got a hospital interested. Their executive team tried it out and it worked, because most of them were on iPhones. It went to the surgery department as a proof of concept. There were a few glitches with Android, but it was still functional.
But then there was a surgical assistant who was so old he had lost his license to practice. He was probably 85. He was using a phone from 8 years ago, so the app was crashing on him.
We got a very nicely-worded letter that basically said: I’m not a beta-tester and my time isn’t worth it to test the app. It’s true — healthcare providers are very burnt out and the last thing they want to do is spend time beta-testing a startup app. In healthcare, every second is critical. They’re not okay with a crashing app.
We got a very nicely-worded letter that basically said: I’m not a beta-tester and my time isn’t worth it to test the app. […] In healthcare, every second is critical.
In Silicon Valley, there’s a mentality that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission. But it was a wake-up call that you can’t be Silicon-Valley-esque in healthcare.
In Silicon Valley, there’s a mentality that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission. But it was a wake-up call that you can’t be Silicon-Valley-esque in healthcare.
Thankfully, we’re still friends with that doctor. It’s been two years, things have changed, and that really taught us. We made two main changes:
- We hired a quality assurance engineer super early on. Not many software companies do that as a start-up, but our first engineer was actually a quality assurance engineer who did manual testing and made sure our app was working.
- We bought a lot of old devices: old Androids and old iPhones. This allows us to relate to the fragmentation of mobile devices.
Even now, we always grill ourselves to make sure our quality is very high and users don’t feel like they’re beta-testers.
Biggest challenge of his role as CEO
Early on, there’s a flow of challenges: you make sure there’s a problem, you build a product that you think solves the problem, and then you iterate. You prove that you can sell and land your first customer. you try to close larger deals. These challenges all disappear or change. We’re at that point where there are still some unknowns, but we’re focused on making everything more efficient and operationalized. A year and a half ago, I was doing everything: customer success, selling, and even programming. Now, a lot of these tasks I handed over. So my challenge is to make sure these teams are built well, lead well, and work well together.
So my challenge is to make sure these teams are built well, lead well, and work well together.
Best advice received about healthcare
One of my advisors, Dr. Joshua Liu, built a successful healthcare software company that’s in 20 or 30 large U.S. institutions. He told me early on that healthcare is a grind. That’s one of the best reminders. Sometimes it’s good to be optimistic. If I wasn’t optimistic I wouldn’t be doing healthcare anymore, if I knew how hard it is. But the struggles you face today aren’t particular to you. The company might not be growing as fast, not because you’re not a good founder, but because the industry itself doesn’t change fast.
Sometimes it’s good to be optimistic. If I wasn’t optimistic I wouldn’t be doing healthcare anymore. […] When things are tough, I just remind myself: healthcare is a grind.
It motivates me because I want to prove it wrong. But also, when things are tough, I just remind myself: healthcare is a grind.
Advice for founders in healthcare
It’s critical to have clinicians on your team. We have a physician who joined our team about 18 months in, right before we raised a round of funding. It was super impactful. It’s really hard for software developers to understand the problems in healthcare. It’s so nuanced and not very well-documented. People are busy, so they don’t document all the problems they face). It’s really important to have clinicians, and if you’re patient-facing, having patients and clinicians in your company in some meaningful way.
On big shifts in healthcare
Some people think that healthcare is so slow and risk-averse that it won’t change — faxes and pagers will be there forever. But I think we are at a pivotal moment. Clinicians are completely fed up with the tools. A lot of them are even empowered to start their own companies. Healthcare today will be totally different from healthcare in five or 10 years. I hope it will be an industry that won’t be lagging behind.
COVID is a good starter that sparked a lot of innovation. Clinicians now are under even more stress. Patients who previously were okay with the system, now can’t see the doctor during COVID. They really want and ask for a better solution to communicate with doctors. We’ve been growing a tremendous amount as people realize that pagers don’t work in a fast environment.
Patients who previously were okay with the system, now can’t see the doctor during COVID.
Hypercare’s response to COVID-19
I’ll give an example related to homeless patients. For most people, if they are infected with COVID, they can go home and self-isolate, it doesn’t infect more people. But with homeless patients, they have no home to self-isolate in. So the homeless population is one of the most affected during COVID.
The homeless population is one of the most affected during COVID. […] We set up Hypercare for the social agency, so that any emergency department in the Greater Toronto area can reach a doctor in that agency.
An emergency physician who sees a homeless patient with COVID-like symptoms needs to coordinate with another agency that takes care of the homeless population. There’s all this logistical planning for physicians. So we set up Hypercare for the social agency, so that any emergency department in the Greater Toronto area can reach a doctor in that social agency really quickly. They can quickly figure out the next steps. Should we get a hotel for them? Should we discharge them? It’s really impressive to see that happen in over 3,500 phone calls conducted over Hypercare.
As some background, pagers are rotationally owned in healthcare. For example, if we’re both taking care of a patient, and I pass the pager to you, you’re responsible now. Whoever holds the pager is the one who fronts calls. With COVID, the providers are in all these fragmented shelters. It’s not easy to pass someone a pager.
We set up a phone number that ties directly into the on-call schedule on Hypercare. We directly send a secure text message over Hypercare. So there’s no “ownership of a pager.” Everyone can be more efficient. People loved it and there were even testimonials where they said: if it wasn’t for Hypercare, I feel like some of these patients would have died.
That was one of the big wins. Another big win is our first electronic medical record integration. In one of the hospitals we deployed, we had some business logic running on the EMR, so if someone was COVID positive and the oxygenation level went above 50% (showing that they were deteriorating), we message the responsible physician and the entire infectious disease team.
As a tech company, we have Slack, Asana, etc. We have quick notifications and a lot of nice, convenient messaging. But in healthcare, the things you think are important and vital are not even there.
Exciting trends in medical technology
I love that people are trying to solve the problem of being able to access your own records (personal records, X-rays, CT scans, etc.) On top of that access, you can build personalized medicine. You can donate your data to research, or figure out personalized treatments, or alert the family doctor if there’s anything abnormal. For doctors right now, there are portals for them to see all the data, but no one’s doing that. There’s way too much data. If data is more consolidated, you could feed it into something. Apple, Microsoft, Google — a lot of the giants are playing in this space. I think a lot of them see healthcare as the final frontier for technology. That’s really exciting.
I think a lot of them see healthcare as the final frontier for technology.
Three media recommendations
- Podcast: Masters of Scale by Reed Hoffman. He has incredible founders talk about how they built their company. I like media that shows the realistic side of building a startup. Masters of Scale talks about all the fires founders had to deal with, the things that didn’t work out, and the people they had to fire. It reminds you that you’re not the only one going through it when it’s bleak.
- Book: The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He went through a lot of adversity but he built a billion-dollar company and sold it. It’s incredible. While reading it, a lot of times you think: wow, this seems like it’s going to fail. During the day-to-day of building a company, it feels the same way. It motivates you to push through bleak times because someone else has done it, and there was success on the other side. No matter how bleak it seems, there are opportunities to beat that.
While reading it, a lot of times you think: wow, this seems like it’s going to fail. During the day-to-day of building a company, it feels the same way.
- Book and Documentary: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It’s incredibly sad. For me, it also reminds me of the recent flight crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in Iran airspace. I knew a medical student who was in the plane. He was so young, super smart, hustling super hard, and really interested in healthcare innovation. It reminds you that life is so short. A lot of people think about life as, I’m going to build a legacy when I’m 80. The way I see it is: we can die anytime, so we should be building a legacy now. Not because you don’t want to be forgotten, but because you want to make an impact on people and that’s the best way you can give back to humanity. That’s how I approach it.
On making space
It’s important to give yourself some personal time. It’s hard to not feel guilty about it as a founder. I’ve learned over and over again that burning out is terrible for the company, because you don’t feel motivated and people around you can also feel the same way.
There are a lot of physicians on Twitter, and I like to have conversations with them. It’s cool because it’s a way for them to learn about Hypercare, and a way for me to understand more about how they think. Within physicians, there are different specialties (family doctors, urologists, radiologists) and people interact differently. All of them have different quirks.
One question to ask more often
Teach me something that you’re passionate about. It’s a really cool question, so you can learn something out of every conversation.
Teach me something that you’re passionate about.
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