Founder Stories: Ariel Katz, Co-Founder and CEO at H1 Insights

Hey everyone, thanks so much for joining me on the Slice of Healthcare podcast.

I'm your host, Jared Taylor. Today's episode, we have Ariel Katz, the co-founder and CEO at H1. Ariel, how are you today?

I'm good. It's been a good morning. I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to chat with you. I think we should dive right into it since we like to keep these short and sweet for our audience. It'd be great if you could tell us a little bit about your background before we go into H1.

Yeah, sure. So I'll make the short story short. I started in academia studying neuroscience, specifically focused on schizophrenia and behavioral observations you can make around schizophrenia, specifically anhedonia, which is people that have early onsets of schizophrenia. Hedonism, you do things you enjoy. Anhedonia, you do things you don't enjoy. It's an interesting behavioral output that you could observe people with schizophrenia. And then I was studying consciousness and how consciousness manifests itself and how you could observe that with like neural detections. Started with that and then ended up starting my first startup. It's called Research Connection, which profiled every academic across the US, and it was used by students to find out who to do their PhD programs with. Grew that business, sold that business, and then started up H1 about 4 years ago.

And it seems like it's been a great ride so far, right? Everything you had the— we will talk about this in a second, but obviously a couple of months ago you announced this, a great Series C with some great investors. We'll talk about that shortly. Can, can we go through— I always tell everyone that comes on the podcast, I ask for 3 things: the why, how, and what of the company. You can do it in any order that you want, but I always want to make sure that's clear to our audience, uh, whenever someone comes on.

Sure. So we actually have those things internally and we showcase that to every team member, that new team member that joins, every town hall. The mission of H1 is to create a healthier future. Um, the vision that we do that is by connecting parties in the healthcare ecosystem. And we do that by providing a source of truth of doctor information for the world. And so we believe if people had that information, it would help form better connections. What is a tangible example of that? If you had information about the right doctor to go see, that's a better connection. You won't get referred to 10 different doctors and not see the right one. If a pharma company knew the right doctor to run their clinical trial, that saves a ton of time and that'll create a healthier future, more therapies get approved. And so That's really the why behind it. It's, it's something that will never be solved, creating a healthier future. Like, health is always going to be something that humans deal with. And so we know we're going to try to asymptote towards that reality as quickly as we can.

And going from there, can we talk a little bit about this, this— you raised $100 million Series C, right around November of 2021. So it has been a couple months now. What was really the focus of that round? Where did you— I know you already have been acting on it, but where kind of are those use of proceeds going into? What buckets?

Do you know what actually happens when you fundraise? You never need to say use of proceeds anymore. I feel like my investors would kill me if I say that. Isn't that funny?

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah, you don't do it. That's the old days. When I had to raise money in my first company, it's always about use of proceeds. Today it's they talk about growth of the business and then use of proceeds happens after they give you the money. Um, so it's an interesting thing that happens. I feel like that happens when you're smaller. They don't ask it as much. I'm assuming as you get larger, they'll get more into that as you get public company and use of proceeds and all those things. But it doesn't come up in conversation as much during the fundraise. You can think about it, but it doesn't come up as much. Um, so companies like H1, they generally operate with a burn, so a deficit for the purpose of growing even faster. And so some of the proceeds is to cover the burn. And that burn is made up of investments, deep investments into data science, engineering, go-to-market activities. Get this thing in front of as many people as possible. What I learned, I learned like 3 things at Y Combinator. One of them was your job as a CEO before product market fit is to get product market fit. Your job as a CEO after product market fit is to get your thing in front of as many human beings that need it as quickly as possible without breaking the company. And so that's my job now. And so you invest in go-to-market, like go-to-market activities. And then we invest a lot in data science and engineering. Like I imagine a future, can't do it today, but I imagine a future, a not too distant future where you can search. I don't know where you, where do you live?

Tampa. Tampa.

I like to go Bucs. And so you can search. Who's the best doctor for my eczema in Tampa? I just, uh, who's the best doctor for my hip replacement in Tampa? Which doctor is the best doctor to run my clinical trial in bladder cancer in Tampa? You can't do that today. And so to do that, you need to invest a lot in natural language processing. You need to invest a lot into data science, invest a lot into search, a lot into engineering. But I think that's the future. That's the future we all want. That's a great user experience. If you got this weird rash and best doctors near me to deal with rashes, that's a great experience. And so that's the world that we imagine in the future and we're trying to build towards.

Yeah. And traditional resources to search that information, I swear, like if they even pick up, like someone mentioned it in like things they could possibly help with, even if they don't do it at all, right? Like I'm getting recommended people if I search for that, that could not help me at all. And sometimes you don't find out until like you're having that conversation with them that they're not a fit.

And it happens across the board from like a pharma company trying to run a clinical trial. Did they find the right doctor? No, they generally don't. And they don't recruit patients to a patient trying to find a specialist. And that's really, really hard. A specialist in-network that accepts your insurance, that has dealt with similar things that you're dealing with and can understand it and properly diagnose it and treat it is very difficult. To everything across the board. And so there's a lot of building and innovation we have to do. And so we're investing, investing to try and build that future.

And obviously you guys, congrats on all this success so far. I know you guys are really just, just getting rolling too. Like, that's probably the mindset, right? Like, no matter where we're at, we're continuously progressing. What, what continues to motivate you and what continues to motivate your team to make an impact?

Yeah, so I think about this a lot. So when I think about like, and it changed over time, so different elements of motivation. You could look at the company and motivation around like financial success, and the Series C is a great stamp of approval for financial success. Revenue is a great stamp of approval for revenue success, but I view that as an output, not an input to motivation. So that's like a, you If you do all the right things, you will raise Series D and you will be worth $10 billion. But I don't view that as a North Star at all. Valuation, money raised, revenue, not a North Star. Number of clients, not really a North Star either. Our North Stars are around like impact metrics. So like one example is we believe in 2 years, H1 can facilitate 100 million patient-doctor interactions. 100 million patients in the United States of America use H1 to find the right doctor to go see. 100 million, a quarter of the US. In 2 years, we want 50% of the clinical trials that take place in the United States to be using H1 to make sure they have diverse patients and diverse physicians enrolled in their studies. And we made an impact then. We believe if we get the patient thing right, we're going to help 100 million lives and their families, hundreds of millions of people find the right doctor, healthier lives. If we make sure that there's more diverse medicine, it'll lead to more trust in the system by minorities. It'll lead to more successful clinical trials, which means more therapies to market, which means sick people get their therapies that might not exist right now. And so we're like deeply motivated by impact metrics on healthcare. And trust me, if we built something that affects 100 million people, we're gonna make a lot of money and will be worth a kajillion dollars. But like, we think a lot about those impacts. How do you build products to do that? And then how do you create business models against that? And so that's what motivates me every day and I push the team to think about and we try and share those stories internally.

Yeah, I like, I like that North Star a lot and everything, like everything else, right? Like, like you just said, money, uh, additional, like all of that follows if you continue following that North Star and you hit that North Star, right? So that's, that's, I love that approach. What's so beyond what motivates you and the team, what's, what's next for H1?

So a few different things. When, like, what we're trying to do here is we believe if you have a, take Dr. John Smith in Tampa, and you have everything about Dr. John Smith, all the information of where he works, his specialty, what he's good at, what he's good at treating, if he's good at running a clinical trial, all the research he's interested in doing, and you keep that information kept up to date every single day, and you have Dr. John Smith contributing to that information, it's going to change the world and change healthcare. You'll have a place that you could trust to go to, to learn about John Smith, and it could solve all these problems that exist when you're trying to find a doctor to go see, work with a doctor across the board, and will save lots of times and inefficiencies in the healthcare ecosystem. Now, how do you do that? How do you do that around the world? That's actually a pretty tough thing. John Smith in Tampa, that's not so hard. What about Nair Muhammad in Uzbekistan? That's a harder one. Or about Rajiv in India. You want all these doctors around the world to start to contribute to their H1 profile. And so what's next? Expanding OfferPrint even more globally, getting doctors to participate more in the network and touching as many patients' lives as we can. And so it's really around those North Stars still, but we're trying to expand more and get more doctor engagement and expand globally.

I love it. And I look forward to hopefully having you come back on again to kind of update us on where things are at. We obviously would love to also talk about maybe next time you raise capital, we can kind of go into more just around the excitement around the team, the excitement from you. Because obviously, like, a lot of the outside world will see that as a win, but your win continues to be that North Star. And that's just part of what helps you get closer to the North Star, right?

That's exactly right. Like, people are like, wow, you raised $100 million. It's not a startup anymore. I'm thinking we didn't even start. We're not a startup anymore. I'm literally like, I'm just tied my shoelace and the gun just shot to start the marathon. I took the first step. Like, we barely, like, if our target's 100 million lives, how many did we do? It's not enough. Even 100 million is not enough. 100 million is not that bad. There's 7 billion people in the world. 100 million is a drop in the ocean in the US, but like, I feel like it's incredibly early days here still. We barely skimmed the surface of our mission.

I'm not like the biggest basketball fan, but I do see some things with basketball. And there was a clip from Kobe Bryant when his team was up about to win the championship and they're like, wow, you must be so excited. He's like, job's not finished yet. It's not finished. Like, it's not done. Like, there's still so much to do. And yeah, we're in the right position, but we're not there yet. So like, that's like the mentality I hear, like when you're explaining things to me, like all of that's great, but you have, you still are working towards that North Star and this is just going to help propel you towards it.

That's exactly right. We have the foundation, but like we haven't even started, just started, just out of the gate. That's how I feel. Yeah.

Well, super excited that we were able to have you on the podcast. Can't wait to have you on again already. And wish you and the team all the best of luck and, and can't wait to continue the conversation.

That's great. It's great to be here. Thanks again.