On leavings and beginnings…
Today is my last day at babylon health as the head of the Artificial Intelligence team. My time here at babylon has been an amazing journey in which I have had the opportunity to learn an enormous amount, work with an incredible group of people on a mission that’s going to have a measurable impact on the world, and build a team that has done and will do awesome things. Let me tell you, building artificial intelligence to help deliver babylon’s mission of giving affordable and accessible healthcare to everyone on earth is something that’s easy to get out of bed for.
And yet, as they say, all good things.
One of the things I learned about myself while working at babylon is that I have a strong desire to build a business of my own that will solve people’s problems, which is itself a creative urge. I’ve come to view it as another expression of what I did while I was in academia; if you view owning a piece of research and contributing new scientific knowledge as a creative act (as I do), then it’s a straightforward continuation of a theme. It took me a while to realise that it was something I wanted to do in industry as well, though. While at babylon, I had the chance to spend a significant amount of time working with our CEO, Ali, whom one of my friends described as ‘one of the best healthtech entrepreneurs in Europe, maybe anywhere’. As I watched what he was making at babylon, I realised that I had a hunger to do that too.
Meanwhile, late last year I stumbled into two guys, Michael Wong and Visesh Gosrani, in a chance meeting. They stood up in an event that I was attending and announced that they were early-stage and looking for a CTO. It was actually a bit of a strange place to proclaim this, but it caught my attention, and driven by curiosity I wandered over and introduced myself. What were they working on, I asked.
Insurance?
Not an obvious choice, given my history. But within minutes, I was captivated by the passion they showed for helping people in an industry which is not famous (justly or unjustly) for that ideal. Insurance is so often a terrible experience for people, they explained to me, and we think that we can use technology to do better. Insurance is a product that, at its best, evokes the principles I spent years studying in behavioural biology: bringing people together in a social group to spread the risk of a loss and minimize its impact on any one member through mutual aid. There is a subtle and venerable nobility to this field that is not evident in many of its current implementations, but it’s a nobility that Visesh and Michael are inspired by and want to reclaim with modern technology.
We spent time getting to know each other, and did all of the things you should do when considering starting a company together — these people are going to effectively become a part of your family, after all — but I already knew that I wanted to be a part of this. In what felt like a nicely symbolic gesture, we shook hands on it January 1st, 2017, and I pledged to join (what would become) Shoal as CTO and co-founder.
Fast forward to today, and I find myself with a foot in both worlds. I’ll never really close the door on babylon (and I’ll be rooting for their success in every step they take), but I’m ready and eager to get started on my next step. I’m going to be using the skills I’ve gathered over the years in development, data science and AI, and technical leadership to help Shoal deliver on its mission of making home insurance something that you’ll actually enjoy. And it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
(Have questions? Reach out!)
