Founder Stories: Jay Desai - Co-Founder and CEO of PatientPing, coordinating healthcare

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup Sense Podcast. This is your host, Jonah Lupton. Thank you so much for joining us today. Of course, we have another great episode for you. First though, just make sure you are subscribed on iTunes and Google Play, and that way you never miss an episode. Today's guest is Jay Desai. He is the co-founder of a company called PatientPing. They're based right here in Boston, about 50 employees. Company has raised a little bit more than $41 million from about 7 different investors. Some very prominent VCs in there, including Andreessen Horowitz and First Round and Google Ventures and SV Angel and some other names that many of us are familiar with. Patient Ping— actually, I'm not going to describe what they do because it's a little tricky to explain, but Jay will do that in a second. So let's welcome him to the show. What's up, Jay? How are you?

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

You're very welcome, man. I didn't want to screw up the introduction in terms of describing what you guys do, so Why don't you, in your own words, kind of tell us what PatientPing is up to?

Yeah, thanks. So, so what we do is, is, is very straightforward. We, we notify healthcare providers in real time when their patients get admitted or discharged anywhere. So just as an example, if you're a primary care provider and one of your patients gets admitted to the emergency room, we would notify that provider so that they can make sure that the care is is high quality while they're at the hospital and then coordinated after they leave. And so, it's a really simple, kind of lightweight service to connect providers because, as we all know, patients get care from a lot of providers. And, you know, actually, the average Medicare patient sees 7 providers a year, and those with a chronic condition sometimes see up to 25 or more., and when those providers aren't working together and knowing about each other and, you know, sharing information with each other, uh, care can be very expensive and, and, uh, and dangerous. And so we, we connect those providers, uh, so that they can seamlessly coordinate patient care, uh, through a lightweight, very simple, very straightforward technology.

So maybe this is a silly question, but, you know, I'm dealing with a DVT blood clot of my own, so I've been very involved with the healthcare system for the last year., and trying to coordinate all my doctors and specialists. It's, it's difficult. No one ever seems to be on the same page. Uh, do doctors even have the time? Like, does my primary care physician, would he really care when I actually went to go see the specialist or when I had to check into the hospital to get an ultrasound?

Do they even have the time to care? Yeah. Um, so the, the, the truth is most of the, the providers went into the, the field of medicine to be able to help patients. And so, They know that there are definitely patients who, you know, if you're a primary care provider and one of your really sick patients that you know has an allergy or doesn't have anybody at home to support their care or, you know, is sort of depressed and recently lost a loved one, if that patient shows up at the hospital, the emergency room, there are a lot of primary care providers that would love to be able to just quickly ping the ER and say, "Hey, you know, let me just give you some context on this patient." You're right, though, that a lot of times they don't have time, and frankly, the healthcare system in this country hasn't really rewarded or incentivized providers to take that extra time to coordinate. That's changed very meaningfully over the past several years where the incentives are such that providers get paid more, actually, if they reduce the cost and improve the quality, and that's created a huge amount of demand for for coordination. But I think there's sort of a raw human emotional desire to deliver really high-quality care when you know you can help. And the good thing is that the reimbursement system now has caught up to meet that need. And I'll add one last point, which is, you know, we know providers are really busy, and we know that, you know, that if you deliver technology that's anything but blindingly kind of brain-dead simple, it's not going to— they're not going to use it because they're busy enough. And so we focus on building stuff that's just so easy to use and so kind of simple to join and, you know, kind of obviously valuable, and you don't have to really do too much to make it usable. And that's a huge part of our sort of guiding light.

Yeah, it does feel like providers are slow to adopt new technologies. You know, once they get stuck doing something one way, they like to stick with it, even though it may be broken. Yeah. Now, you started the company in 2013, right?

That's right. Yep.

And you have a co-founder, David Berkowitz. How did you guys kind of fall into this? Who came up with the idea? And, you know, how did you guys start to pursue this idea?

Yeah. So, so prior to, prior to PatientPing, I was working at Medicare at the CMS Innovation Center. CMS stands for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. So I was part of a group that was helping change those reimbursements that we were— or sort of those incentives to the providers that we were talking about earlier, where we're shifting the system from one where we reimburse for volume, so every time you go to the hospital, the hospital gets paid, or every time you go to the clinic, the primary care doctor gets paid, to one where we reimburse for quality. Value. So that's one where, you know, instead of rewarding people getting more care, you're rewarding people getting high-quality care. And so I worked a lot on changing those incentives at Medicare. And this— as the demand for coordination started increasing, it became obvious that this was just a basic need of being able to know where your patients are. In real time. So if you're a primary care doctor and you've got a panel of 1,000 patients and they're showing up all over the place, particularly if they're elderly, they didn't have any visibility into that. So this was something that we tried to fix at the government. I tried it a bunch of different ways and just saw that there was a lot of issues with the current state of the art around solutions. And so I left back in 2013, moved to Boston, And I actually met David through a class that I was sort of guest lecturing at MIT called Healthcare Ventures, which is taught by a really great guy in Boston named Zhen Xu. And David was in the class. And so he came and talked to me about one of his projects after the class a few days later, and I just sort of started telling him about the project that I was working on. And we just completely hit it off. And so I remember one day at Upper Crust Pizzeria in Beacon Hill, he and I were kind of drawing on the back of the pizza box and really, really just enjoyed getting to know David first as a person because he's just a phenomenal human being. And it was clear that he has this wealth of experience first as a neurosurgeon which is what— how he started his career in medicine, but then, you know, became a software developer and was at Mass General for about 15 years writing code. And so I learned so much from him, and, you know, and we kind of quickly paired up as a co-founder team and were able to make a huge amount of progress in a short period of time.

And when did you guys raise your first round of capital?

So, so that, that first round of capital we raised back in, I believe we closed that round in March of 2014.

And that was that. You guys launched the product yet, or was that pre-launch?

Yeah, no, we had already, we had already gone live with the product. We were servicing our first customer in Boston, and we were, you know, we were generating a little bit of revenue at that point, and And so at that point, you know, it, it, it, so, so it wasn't, you know, I'm grateful that we, it wasn't too difficult to raise that round because we had already made quite a bit of, quite a bit of traction.

So what were some of, who are some of your first clients and what does a client typically pay for your service?

Yep. Yeah. So our, our first clients were these, these health systems. And we started in Massachusetts, so we had our first clients in Massachusetts, and they were health systems that, and if you think about a health system, say, just pick any health system, they typically have the hospital part of it, and then they have the outpatient clinic, so the doctors. So there's the hospital and the doctors. And our clients are the doctor, the doctor part of it is typically who we start with, where they'll have a list of patients and they'll want to get notifications when those patients receive care, you know, at various places. And so they pay us based on the size of their patient panel, because the value that we're delivering to them is the ability to get this visibility into where their patients are receiving care so that they can coordinate it and then generate sort of savings on those patients by improving the quality of care, preventing readmissions, and, you know, making sure that they're getting home as quickly as possible, quickly and safely as possible. So that's, that's how we, how we, how we charge and, you know, and make money.

Okay. So, but in order for your service to work, you have to have both sides of the providers, right? Or all providers on this, on the platform. So, you know, in my case, you know, this, my primary care physician would need to be using it as well as my, you know, the place I go to for my ultrasounds and then the vascular specialist. So they all can communicate, right? Or they all know what's going on. Yeah. And what are some of the, you know, the feedback or case studies you guys have seen so far from clients or have heard back from doctors? You know, are they able to now provide a higher quality of care?

Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely. So, you know, it was actually really pretty, pretty amazing in the early days because, you know, we had our first customer that said, boy, it'd be really great if you could tell us when our patients patients show up at one of our competitor hospitals, as well as the rehab providers that patients go to after they get, say, a knee replacement or a— and these facilities are called skilled nursing facilities. It's where you go after a hospitalization. And the reason that they wanted that was so that they could reduce the amount of time that they're in the rehab provider and get them home faster and supported with home care, with a home care nurse. And if they were in a hospital, a lot of the opportunities were to make sure that the follow-up care is happening so that they don't get readmitted to the hospital, which, you know, the readmission rates in this country oftentimes are up, you know, 20%, I believe, is the national average for Medicare patients where they leave the hospital and then within 30 days they come back because something went wrong. So when we, you know, and they have great programs in place to try to prevent that from happening. And it's simple things. It's, you know, When they leave the hospital, they'll make sure that the medications that they just got prescribed aren't going to adversely react with something that they may already be on. So it's called medication reconciliation. If they need to get in for a follow-up appointment with the primary care provider just to kind of tweak the medication, make sure that they're doing a lab test to make sure everything's on track, they'll make sure that the appointment's scheduled and that they're going to come in and they have transport to get to the doctor. So these are simple things that happen, but they can't trigger that workflow without getting the event notification that the patient's being discharged from the hospital. So, when we started doing this, people were like, "This is amazing. I all of a sudden know where all my patients are in real time, and it's just so much easier." Because before that, it was a system of faxes and emails and phone calls and kind of trying to basically chase the patients to support them. And the patients, on the other hand, love this because now all of a sudden they feel supported, you know, all the logistics of creating an appointment. It's like, you know, somebody's there to take care of you. So, yeah, so it was, you know, we got such great adoption, such really, you know, vocal, excited customers in the early days that our ability to scale from there was really pretty, you know, pretty, I mean, I wouldn't say totally easy because it's never easy to build a company in the early days. But, but we had just incredible support from our early customers that made it easier for us to get into a lot more states and build density in our existing states.

This is Jonah Lupton, founder of Joule and host of the Startup Sense podcast. At Joule, we help entrepreneurs and startup founders build, launch, and grow their companies by providing superior technology, marketing, and consulting services. We help clients of all sizes, budgets, and industries. We put our clients in the best position to raise capital, grow grow revenues, hire employees, and maximize their profits. For more information or to set up a free consultation with our team, please visit our website at joool.net. That's J-O-O-L dot net. Have you guys had any requests from family members or people that have, you know, power of attorney, I guess, or healthcare proxies over their elderly parents possibly that want to be alerted when their, you know, parents are checked into a place?

Yeah, absolutely. It's something that we want to build, but I'll just give you myself as an example. I live in Boston and my parents live outside of Chicago. And if my mom had recently a procedure done and if she needs 3 days of rehab per week, I'd love to be able to just get a note that says, hey, she showed up to make sure that she's on track with her discharge plan. Same thing applies for parents who may have kids in college to get an— it's a great source of peace of mind when you know that you're going to get alerted if they show up in the emergency room. And to your point, folks who are caregivers, close caregivers, or power of attorney who want to know if something's going on and they may not be immediately sort of proximate to their loved one, there's a lot of value there. We haven't built that service yet, but it's certainly something that we know there's a lot of value for and, you know, we would love to be able to serve. It's a natural extension of what we do.

What have been some of the biggest challenges so far with regards to building this company? I mean, I'm sure first was the tech, you know, building the technology. And then the second part of that is, you know, finding, finding the providers and getting them signed up, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny, different stages, it's different things. I feel like I'm in a very privileged position here where, you know, we've got, you know, a really great product in a, you know, in a great market where we know there's a lot of opportunity. You know, we think we're, you know, we've become at this point sort of the leader in, you know, encounter notification, you know, services. And we, You know, and, you know, we got a great board, we got a great team, we got great investors, we just got a lot of wind in our sails. So it, you know, for me, it's sort of like, let's just not get in our own way. And making sure that we're focusing, prioritizing, you know, not trying to do to boil the ocean, because it's so easy to just kind of get in your own way. So making sure that we're continuing to be really self-aware, not overcomplicating anything, and just continuing to execute is is a big part of our, a big part of, I'd say, our challenge, if you want to call it that, which is why I do say that we're in a pretty lucky position, because I know what it feels like to not have all that. And so a lot of this is just about us consistently and methodically executing to keep making progress and impacting our mission.

So talk to us about the team. I know you're about 50 employees. Mostly in the Boston area, you know, what's been your recruiting strategy? Are you— and how is that team split up? Like, what percentage are technical versus, you know, support versus sales and marketing?

Yep. So we, so we, we have kind of a really strong— maybe I'll break it into sort of our go-to-market efforts and then our product development efforts. So we have kind of our go-to-market team, which is our growth team, which these are folks who are launching new markets, sort of the tip of the spear, Navy SEALs kind of getting into a new market, building out that relationship with the first anchor. And then once we're in market, it's continuing to build out our presence there. So that's a combination of both growth, sales, you know, sales, business development, and marketing. So that's kind of the— and then once we launch a market, we're very keen on engaging those customers, you know, delighting those customers, making sure that our net promoter scores are high, and servicing them in a way that they're able to use and really benefit and learn from, you know, kind of the best use of the technology and, you know, and get the full value out of that. So we have a full team dedicated to onboarding, servicing, and driving engagement of our communities. So that's sort of, I'd say, the go-to-market and service team. On the other end is product development. So we have kind of our product team that's thinking about what we should be building, what our customers are asking for, and making sure that we're continuing to evolve and improve our product And obviously, the other major part of that is our engineering team, which is a large and important team here that's continuing to scale our solutions, stabilize what it is that we do, but still ship features that are really game-changing and transforming how providers are coordinating care with one another while still maintaining the simplicity. I'll sort of keep emphasizing that point. We don't want to overcomplicate what it is that we do and want to make sure that we're delivering really targeted, important solutions.

How many markets are you guys in right now?

So we're in, we're in 8 states, got several more kind of on the heels that are going to be coming out here pretty soon. So, but 8 states today, and it's across the country. So in, you know, a lot in New England, so, you know, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont. We're in New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois. And we have several kind of several more that are, that are coming down the pipe.

How do the big insurance companies fit into this? You know, the Blue Crosses and the— I mean, God, I'm trying to think. When I used to be in the investment business, I used to trade a lot of those stocks. I can't remember who the big ones are right now, but I assume they like this, right? Because if your providers are providing higher quality care, that should drive down the pricing.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, ultimately, the beneficiaries of our service are first the patients and second the providers. I'm sorry, second the payers. Because more coordinated care is less expensive care. So, you mentioned price, but cost of healthcare is price times quantity. I think what we do is we really impact quantity. So the patient that was otherwise in the emergency, in the hospital is now in the primary care clinic. $7,000 versus, a couple hundred bucks. The patient who was in a nursing home for 25 days is now home in 15 days, and at $500 a day, if you're saving 10 days, that's $5,000. So, those are savings that accrue to the health plans in the region. And so, what we find is that as we start getting traction, the health plans really do encourage our adoption across the region. And it may not— not necessarily ours, but just the notion of having infrastructure that connects providers in sort of a seamless way is really sort of in the interest of the health plan to exist within a region. And so we find that they're great advocates for ours. If we're not in a market yet, the health plan can be a channel for us, a sponsor to bring us into that market.. And if we are in the market, they encourage our adoption. But health plans also have their own case management services. This is the other thing that, you know, for high-risk patients or those who are high utilizers or kind of have complex needs, health plans have case management services, and we deliver our services to them as well so that their case managers can get real-time notifications when the patient's in the emergency room and call and engage the patient in the health plan case management service. So, you know, there's a lot of value that we deliver and, you know, and partner with— a lot of value that we deliver to the health plans, and then as a result, we're able to partner with them pretty closely.

So, when doing some research for the call, I found a stat that said over 250,000 people die every year due to medical errors. And I'm sure that's— that probably includes a lot of different things. That might even include surgery mistakes. I don't know. But I would think some of them can probably be attributed to bad communication or untimely communication between providers, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, you know, there are some times where, as you said, there, you know, surgeon, you know, we hear, we hear kind of horror stories of the surgeon amputated the wrong leg. And, you know, and that that either was, you know, they didn't sleep enough last night, or, you know, they read it wrong, and, you know, or they didn't, you know, somebody didn't communicate well. And those are, I don't say we necessarily do much to impact that. But medical errors, you know, just examples of medical errors, you know, we have a patient that we serve who's a child, and he has a feeding tube that he uses to eat. To eat. And, you know, the patient— if that mother got the feeding tube from the emergency room, it was free. But if they ordered it on their own, it was several hundred dollars. It was a piece of plastic. So, we were able to see that, you know, this patient was showing up at the emergency room, you know, regularly, multiple times per week, just to get that feeding tube because they couldn't afford to pay for it. This is not directly answering your question on medical errors, but, you know, once that patient got in case management, the care coordinator was able to see that the patient was showing up at the emergency room. They were able to ask the question, "Why is this patient going to the emergency room?" And it's costing the system, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for that to occur. And with the coordination now that was being created, they were able to sort of buy the feeding tubes for this family. So they didn't have to keep getting refills at the emergency room. I mean, these are simple things that create medical errors. You know, patient shows up at the hospital, you know, they don't have, you know, they bring a baggie of medications and they forgot to, you know, forgot to put one of them in there. You know, this is the green pill, this is the blue pill, and, you know, they also happen to have seen a cardiologist a while ago who put them on something, they just forgot to bring it to the hospital. And, you know, and that patient, while they're in the hospital, the provider doesn't give them that medication, and all of a sudden now things start slipping because that information didn't get communicated. You know, these sorts of things that, you know, they're allergic to another medication and they get, you know, they have dementia and they forgot to mention it. They don't have any caregiver supports at home, so the patient wasn't able to go into, you know, to the pharmacy to pick up their prescription. The coverage that they were under didn't cut, you know, the copay was too expensive. They couldn't afford it. Like, these are, these are simple things that cause major, major harm on, on patients. And when you get people talking to one another and coordinating and just sharing this information, somebody usually knows. And, you know, it's— the problem is that that somebody is not always there when something bad's happening to make sure that that information is transferred.

So what is your favorite thing about being an entrepreneur?

It's a good question. I'll tell you, in the, in the early days, um, so I, I love solving really hard problems. Um, you know, the harder the problem, the hairier the problem, the more, more I enjoy, um, solving it. And, um, you know, in the early days, it was largely about, um, the, the strategy. And our fundamental problem was You know, if you're one health system and you want to know when your patients go to Health System 2, you know, that's okay. Let me actually say this again. Health System 1 wants to know when the patients go to Health System 2. Health System 2 wants to know when the patients go to Health System 1. Yet they don't share. And both of them agree that this is something that should happen. They don't share because they compete. And that I get, and that makes a lot of sense. Yet they both agree that they should share with each other. And so there's a stalemate in these markets where, you know, because of competition, patient care is suffering. And so for me, you know, that to me was sort of the initial spark was like, how can you break this down in a way that's market-driven, organic, gets people to want to share with each other even though they compete, you know, to create all this value for patients. And as soon as I realized it was a big problem and that patient care was suffering as a result of it, to me it felt like if you solve that problem, you've unlocked a lot of value for the community. And so I love that process. I'll tell you, as the organization has scaled, this was a— it was an unexpected source of fulfillment and gratification because there's the company strategy and there's figuring out the right product for the right market and product-market fit. And keep calibrating and improving it. But then there's the organization, you know, there's the company organization, which is really about people and getting a group of people to feel motivated and excited and, you know, happy to be at work. And, you know, we spend a lot of time at work, and, you know, if you can create fulfillment from the people who come to work every day, and when they come to our, you know, when they come to our office every day, boy, that's a really fulfilling experience, you know. And so I take a lot of responsibility for the engagement and the fulfillment that our employees derive from working here. And it's hard. I'd say that's harder than the company strategy piece of it to get that right. But when you do get it right, it's a very satisfying experience because you see how you can make people just— it's a very motivating experience when you like your job. Permeates the rest of your life. So anyways, I don't know if that's—

What is your number one business goal for this year?

So we have growth and engagement goals. So we want to grow our community and build out our network and continue to expand and basically do more of what we do today. And we want to continue to engage the users that are that are on our platform. So we have very specific growth and engagement goals that we kind of continue to march for. I know that's two, not one, so I'm cheating a little bit, but both are really important in what we do. And at any given quarter, one's more important than the other, but overall, I think this year we're gonna keep making a lot of progress on growth and engagement.

And what is the end goal for the company, right? You guys have raised a ton of money, Do you think that someday you'll be an ideal acquisition target, or is this a potential IPO in the future?

You know, I'm sure you ask that question to everybody, and there's a way to not answer the question.

It's hard to get a real answer because everyone says, you know, we're just building an independent company and we'll see what happens, which is probably the right answer.

You know, and I'll try to give you the most honest version of that answer, which is, you know, when I started the company, I thought, well, 'You know, this is potentially a neat little business, and you know, there's these physician groups that want to know when their patients go to rehab providers, and if we do that in 5 states, and you know, we don't raise a lot of capital, and you know, we can probably have a pretty big exit.' And then as I got into it, I was like, 'Wait a second, there's a lot more people who we can benefit from this service. And so, you know, we did our Series A. We raised more money. And I thought, well, maybe we can build a medium-sized business. And then as we started seeing what we were actually building kind of within the community, where this is a very differentiated asset, if you will, where it sort of becomes the only place where everybody is kind of talking to each other and connected on a common platform. I sort of was like, wait a second, this, this could be completely transformative for the industry. So at this point, you know, I just don't see— I want to, you know, I think we have the opportunity to build something just totally transformative for the healthcare industry that connects providers to seamlessly coordinate patient care. It doesn't matter where the patient goes anywhere in the country. If you're, you know, if you've got your primary care provider in in Texas and you're skiing in Vermont and you fall down and you break your hip. Well, we should connect those providers. They should talk. That infrastructure doesn't exist today. And then once you do that, well, think about all the value that you can add. Well, we can take some lessons from what they did in Texas locally and bring those to Vermont and help them improve the standard of care there. Like, there's so much you can do. And so, like I said, you know, The challenges become different at different stages, but the opportunity just keeps growing. And for me, my life journey is one of exploration and learning and experience. I love every single part of this job and every single part of building a business and of entrepreneurship. And because it's such a— to be selfish, it's a self-indulgent— it is the most extreme experience to learn about yourself and gain self-awareness, but also like, you know, just learn about the world. And, and, and because I'm so passionate about healthcare and, you know, doing things that make the world a better place, which, you know, it has to be every entrepreneur's guiding light because it's too hard if, if you don't care a lot about that. I just, I can't see us At least I don't see any, any line of sight right now into us slowing down or stopping, just because there's so much opportunity for us to, you know, continue making an impact in the world and improving patient care.

How long do you think it'll take you guys to get into all 50 states?

Um, 4 months. Really? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah, we, you know, We're gonna go as fast as we can. And I think we've got a really rich pipeline, got a huge backlog. We've got an incredible team that's working hard towards making it happen. And we're not gonna stop until we're there.

So— I assume as you grow the team, you'll be growing the team more on the marketing sales side, right? And probably people that come out of patient care or have a lot of connections into what, into providers and whatnot in those states you're trying to get into?

Yeah, and you know, the, the process of opening a new market is probably one of the more complex parts of our, of our, of our sales process. And so that, that, that's an important, important role for us. And we, you know, we're always looking for people you know, it's a strategic, it's a highly strategic salesperson, you know, that has a large business development component to it. So that's a really important hire for us, but then, you know, so once we launch into a market, we just sort of run our playbook, you know, where we, you know, scale it with growth folks, we scale it with operations folks, you know, we sort of build the integrations team to be able to get all the connections built. And it, you know, it just sort of, you know, we just run the playbook. So, yeah, but then we are going to continue to really, you know, boost and invest and, you know, meaningfully improve the service that we deliver to the market today. So it is both on the growth side, and then our new markets team will kind of bring us into new markets, and then we'll kick off our sort of service and, you know, growth and service machinery, but then also continuing to invest in our product and engineering teams to build out, you know, to build out what it is that we are delivering in the market.

Fantastic. Last question for you. You know, you guys have raised money from some great investors. I rattled off their names in the introduction, but do you have any— what is the single best piece of advice or value-add you've gotten from any of your investors to date? That's interesting. And hopefully this doesn't get you into trouble with the other ones. Yeah, I'm trying to think.

Who led your A round? So our A round was led by, by Google Ventures. Yeah. And our seed round was led by F Prime Capital Partners, which is— and Google and First Round participated in that one as well. And SV Angel. So it's interesting. Got it. So it's such an interesting question because it's so, it's so time time-dependent.

I mean, I'm looking— I mean, because Andreessen's obviously in many different industries, same with Google Ventures. I don't know much about F Prime.

Leerank is exclusively in healthcare, right? Yeah. Yeah. So let me— maybe— and this may not be a very, very sort of pithy or fulfilling answer, but I'll tell you actually the truth. And it's, you know, every time we— so we are an enterprise SaaS business with consumer-like network effects in healthcare. And there are great investors in each of those categories. But there are— I have yet to find folks who truly span all three. And frankly, that would just be very hard to do, to be world-class in kind of all three of those categories. It's a big pool. So every time we do a round, I've had to build a syndicate of, you know, kind of complementary skill sets. So the reason we did the seed round and the Series A with the group that we have is one is a really great healthcare investor, that's F Prime. One is a really great consumer product or consumer tech investor, and that's First Round. And Google Ventures, actually Krishna is a very unique person in the world in that he does touch on all elements of both consumer, enterprise, healthcare. He's a physician by training. And so he, you know, he does touch all three. When we did our Series B with Andreessen and Leerink, it was a similar dynamic. Leerink is a, you know, Todd Cousins is a very strong healthcare entrepreneur. He knows health IT and kind of how to get health IT products in the market better than anyone I've ever met, and he— but he was at Sequoia, so he did have aspects of understanding consumer, you know, consumer products. Andreessen Horowitz obviously is extraordinary when it comes to network effects. Both Vijay and Jeff Jordan are really great at thinking about network effects and kind of hypergrowth. So for me, in board meetings and from our investor syndicate, what I love is actually the divergence of opinions and kind of the— because it's so easy to kind of regress to a diluted, you know, point of view that's like, this is, you know, okay, well, this is what what sounds right, and that's sort of, it's sort of a non-confrontational piece of advice, which is sometimes what it feels like we get. But with our board, with our group, they have strong points of view, and as the CEO, you know, a lot of my job is just to filter through the advice that I get and make it context-specific for our company and then, you know, make a decision on that. And so I love that we have tension between points of view that are opposing, and it's a very productive tension because people, you know, some people see left and others see right, but they have a strong reason as to why they feel that way, and I can then take that and make it relevant to our business to, you know, to make the right decision. So again, that may not be exactly what you're looking for, but a more appropriate, response to that is I will say that, you know, it's easy to get tunnel vision as an entrepreneur because you got to put up the goals, you got to target, you know, you have your targets, and we always have sort of the big, the bigger picture in mind. But what I love about the dynamic with our investors is that they do consistently encourage me to think even bigger than I thought I was thinking, and I very much appreciate that about them. So, you know, they will, they will take me to places that that, you know, that I'm always grateful for them to do. It's not always the right answer because you got to balance that against short-term execution. But I do very much appreciate that.

Awesome. Well, man, it was really great chatting with you. I appreciate your time today. I mean, anything exciting happens or, you know, I mean, there's obviously exciting stuff happening every day probably for you, but if you ever want to come back and Give us some updates, feel free. Uh, the audience can find you guys at patientping.com and on social media. Uh, what if they want to connect with you personally?

What's the best way to do that?

Yep, jay@patientping.com. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jay. Really appreciate it, and, uh, we'll talk to you soon.

Terrific.

Thanks so much.

Got it, man.