Learning from Fundraising

We were two doctors with a dream. I mean, literally in, in Denver, you know, taped a sign on the door of a borrowed clinic and saw our first patients. And we knew the potential that was there, ran that pilot and went out and raised money. And I mean, just that moment of landing that first funding is totally make or break, you know, startups are, you know, default dead, right? And that I think we knew the potential was there. But then hearing that from the venture capital community just really affirmed it in a way that maybe we didn't even totally understand or believe even as much as we wanted it to happen. So that was a pretty incredible moment, and I think let us know that this was really possible. And we've carried that momentum a long way. I think, yeah, I mean, you go through rounds of funding and you just learn so much about your business. And I think, you know, when we started out, and so much has changed in the last 3 years as well, we started out at a purely direct-to-consumer offering and tried to pick a price point that was generally accessible and created an access fund to go with that. But even then, right, like there was not the interest from health insurers that we're seeing now, right? This whole health equity conversation again is just like taken off, but really in the last 6 to 12 months in a big way. And so to think like, oh wow, yeah, we're going to create contracts with every major payer in the country, that sounds great, but that didn't feel like a total reality 3 years ago. And so that was sort of, I think, one of those moments where I was like, hey, one, for this to be viable, we need to do this. It's the right thing to do. And, and now there's actually an appetite for it, right? And so kind of a lot aligned at once. And I think about like expanding our scope of services as well. And so, so yeah, I think this last, like that first and our last raise were sort of the big two of those bigger moments for me anyways.