How To Navigate Pre-Seed Challenges: Insights from a HealthTech Investor (feat. Owen Willis)

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with the We've had incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildingpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to yet another

episode of the Building Public Podcast. I am super, super, super excited for today's episode. I'm joined by a very close friend, someone I've been meaning to bring on this pod from like the gag from a long time ago, and I think it's overdue. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Owen Willis.

Hey, KP, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. First long time, first time.

I know, right? And so for folks who may not know Owen, I mean, I'll have to say a couple of things about him that excited me about this podcast episode, but also generally, like, you know, about the things that he's working on. Owen and I, for those of you who follow me closely, know that we both worked on On Deck, and Owen was in the health— On Deck Health, built it from scratch, grew it to, I think, what it was Is it 500? How many founders did you have in your community?

We ended up at just over 300.

300. But you evaluated thousands, right? For both the community but also the ODX accelerator. You know, so he's got his hands deep in the pre-seed founder, you know, idea to MVP stage for MVP, I mean, for health tech. And I'm just, you know, he's been a relentless operator. I love— I said this many, many times to him directly, and I'm saying this on air now, that he's one of the people who has such great EQ and a wonderful leader. And I cannot highlight this enough. He's a wonderful leader. I enjoyed working with him. Towards the end, we got to work together in the same team, and I saw his leadership and such a founder-friendly, team-centric personality. So it's an honor that I got to work with you there. I'm not joking and I'm gassing you up, but genuinely, you know, someone who I felt like really cared about people and founders or, you know, whoever you were serving. Right. So the spirit of service tagline we talk about all the time, I think you're a walking example of that, Owen. So with that said, send me the Venmo payment.

I got to say, man, this is— I just need to come on the show every week for those first, like, 2 minutes, right? Because I am now, like, ready to go. I am hyped. I feel great.

Ready to walk through a wall.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love it.

It's very important for us to— I feel like we just do so many things. I know you're into conferences and you've done the Substack, which people should check it out. I'll link it in the show notes. We create a lot of content. We do a lot of community events and you host a lot of events and firesides and whatnot. I feel like sometimes we forget to be at the receiving end of some of these things and like, huh, okay, this is like a cool reflection on what I've been, you know, what kind of impact I've been leaving. I want to start off with this super unconventional thing that you did that blew my mind when you shared with me. And I'm so jealous that you did it. But of course you did it, which is you— I mean, I want to know the rationale, but like you basically spent towards the end of the year a good chunk of your time and wrote, what, 100+ handwritten notes and emails to people who impacted you in 2022? Number one, are you crazy? Number two, why did you do it?

Yeah, man. I think one of the things, and this is definitely a lesson that I learned from my time at Osmosis, so a huge shout out to Shiv Kuglani for teaching me this lesson. I think one of the things that we miss in the world is we don't really often see what happens after you have a conversation with somebody. What is the impact that their words had on you? What are the things that they inspired you to do? In many ways, just the act of closing the loop is just a really powerful reminder for folks that the things that they do, the the time that they spend with people has impact and has meaning. And so what I would say, you know, for founders out there who are working with investors and advisors, who get introductions, kind of all of these things, definitely spend some time every month and really work on a practice of gratitude. Because, you know, at the end of the day, it's something that is going to be paid forward to you at some point in your career as you become more successful. But also it's a really great way just to say thank you and make sure that those people, you know, will continue stepping up to the plate for you in the future. So at the end of the year, You know, I went through this process and it was part of actually a broader exercise of looking at every phone call I had, every meeting I had from the time that I left on deck all the way through the end of the year, and just understanding the impact that each one of those meetings had on me. And I came away with it with a couple of things. Number one was an understanding of where my time was being well spent and the things that I could be doing differently coming into the new year. Right. How do I make sure that I'm showing up to the most important things, not just physically, but also mentally?

Right.

And then secondarily, kind of as I was going through, I had All of these really amazing moments of like, oh man, that call actually really changed the way I thought about X, Y, or Z thing. I really need to reach out and tell that person that that is something that had an impact. So, very manual thing.

Yeah. Do things at your own scale.

Yeah. Fortunately, kind of end of the year, you always have a little bit of extra time. But yeah, I sat down and wrote every single person an email. Next year it'll be handwritten, KP. You've got me to step it up. But for me, it was a really impactful exercise. exercise, both in terms of being able to say thank you, but also just how many people have my back. And so that for somebody, you know, oftentimes as founders, you're building alone. It's this very lonely experience. Getting that moment of understanding all the people out there that were rooting for me and helping me along the way, I think that is the value of it, at least, at least from my perspective.

The beauty with doing that exercise and of course sending it across to I don't know how many people you send it to is one, it's something we always, you and I know we align on this, is we keep advising founders to constantly share monthly updates even with investors who may not have invested in your previous round, but just keep them in the loop if they've opted into it. Right. And so there's this narrative continuation that happens when you choose to spend, I don't know, like 30 minutes to write an email and send it to some people. So this episode genuinely came to life because I got that email from you and I was making a list that day. I was making a list of people that I would love to have On my podcast for 2023. And I think this was end of 2022, December 26th or 27th or something. And I was like, oh my God, of course I got to get Arvind on the show. I'm like, I'm like, how did I miss him? And of course, you know, so you stayed top of mind and you're such a warm feeling to be at the receiving end. And you do, you like, you specifically called out the 3 or 4 meetings we had or calls we had. And like, I'm like, wow, this guy actually cares. He was really empathetic, really thoughtful. You know, I am so jealous of the fact that you were able to pull that off across such a big network that you have. So let's walk through your career trajectory as a whole. You know, for those of us in the audience who may not know much about what you've done before On Deck, can you give us a condensed summary of some key inflection points, you know, through your career?

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually, I started my career in education. I was a pre-K through 7th grade special education teacher in Washington, D.C. through Teach for America. And that was, you know, when I think about inflection points, getting the opportunity to do that, getting the invitation from TFA to join their cohort that I was part of, that was a big inflection point. I graduated from college in 2009 and I was a finance major, economy finance, and I thought I was going to be an investment banker. And in 2009, there were like negative investment banking jobs, right? Like one of my friends got a job. Right. And very, very fortunately, I had this opportunity come along and it totally changed the trajectory of my career. I think, you know, TFA is really good at creating education advocates and that's what I became. I got my master's in education. I'm George Mason, ended up going into edtech and then consulting. We're going to talk a little bit about those things more in detail later. But as a consultant, I was mostly working with the Gates and the Dell Foundation doing data system design and implementation in the education space. And I didn't realize that that was necessarily going to prepare me for working in health tech. But as it turned out, education data is— the only thing more screwed up than education data is healthcare data. Even that is a little bit of a competition, right? I think that's a little debatable which is worse. Healthcare data is worse, yeah. And so like I learned a ton about like both data interoperability, but also, you know, we were spending months and months and months embedded with these clients. And you learn a lot about relationship building, about business development, and you learn a lot about kind of what happens through setting of expectations and then like the actual follow-through, right? And what happens when that is done well and what happens when that is done poorly. So that was it. That was really, really helpful for me. On the side, I was doing some sourcing and diligence for an edtech investor and I ended up recommending finding a company called Osmosis, recommending investing And then getting to meet the founder, Shiv, kind of as part of that process.

Was it still in DC, Washington, DC, or was it in New York?

Yeah. Yeah. So I was in DC. I was looking to get into tech. You know, there were a few different paths to doing it. And, you know, one of them was venture. One of them was going to business school. And one of them was actually joining a startup. And, you know, fortunately for me, the startup is the one that hit. I joined the team. I was an early employee, built us out to more than 150 folks. We were fully remote. This is pre-COVID. And learned a lot about the process of team building, how team size and kind of location impacts the ability to build and evolve the culture of an organization. And at the end of the day—

What was Osmosis called? Like, I'm curious, what was the platform or product doing?

Totally. So Osmosis was a medical education startup. The core product when I joined was these supplemental resources for medical students who were preparing for their board exams. So at the founding, the 2 founders of Osmosis Moses, Shiv, and Ryan realized that medical education was actually being done pretty poorly. Only about 25% of medical students were attending lecture. Most of them were learning on YouTube and other platforms or learning from peers. And so they built a platform that facilitated the sharing and learning of medical education content. They also realized that one of the things that would be a differentiator, it was to create incredibly high-quality content. And they eventually brought on the former head of the medical team at Khan Academy, Dr. Rishi Desai, who became the chief medical officer. Wow. And they started producing this very, very high-quality medical education content on YouTube. That became their top of funnel. When I joined, as we started kind of raising more capital and kind of like looking at, you know, what the next phase of growth was for us, we realized that the big opportunity was in the B2B space. So, you know, kind of taking these videos, this kind of content that we'd created, you know, flashcards, questions, kind of learning workspaces, all that. And repackaging it and selling it directly to medical schools as an alternative medical education curriculum. And so my job ended up kind of shifting more into that space as Chief Operating Officer. I was focused on validating that market, leading early sales, and then eventually starting to build out the sales team. When I was there, we ended up capturing about 22% of the US med school market in about 18 months, which is— Wow.

Yeah.

Wild. Yeah, it's an incredibly conservative market. And if you look at a Venn diagram of 2 spaces that are really difficult to sell into, education and healthcare, are kind of right in the middle there. And yeah, I think for us, there are a lot of lessons around sales and sales tactics and business development and relationship building. So that is something I think was an incredibly valuable lesson for me. Very painful, but also something that I've been able to help a lot of founders with. I left Osmosis in August of 2020 and ended up joining On Deck, as you mentioned, and launched What's really funny about that program is that it was actually, I think, pretty notorious within On Deck for how slow of a start it had as we were bringing it to market. And we ended up getting 170 folks in the first cohort. We sourced most of them off of LinkedIn and Twitter. And then cohort 2 ended up being 80% referrals from cohort 1. And that community plus the investing work obviously that I did as part of the ODX accelerator, Really gave me an insight into both what I wanted to do next in my career and the ways in which I could be most valuable to founders. Wow. And fortunately for me and what I wanted to do, those things actually lined up pretty well. Today I'm doing health tech investing. I am looking at the pre-seed stage and I'm really focused and interested in this idea of community-driven investing and making sure that we're giving founders this network of support to help them build. Because as I said earlier, Being a founder, it's exceptionally lonely. That's really difficult. You have these very weird feedback loops, and having folks around you who can kind of help get you to that next stage is really the difference maker for a lot of folks, especially in a complex space like healthcare.

What, in your perspective, as you've spent the last 3, 4 years, like, you know, analyzing and studying a lot of the pre-seed stage startups, what are some common themes that you have seen across the space in general in terms of founders and their bottlenecks, right? What are some of the challenges typically pre-seed, especially pre-seed founders have in health tech?

Yeah, and I would say that, you know, health tech is a challenging space, right? I think it's uniquely challenging in some ways. But there are a lot of sectors that have similar challenges, right? They— in healthcare, you have kind of 3 main spaces where I think founders early on get stuck, right? So number one, institutional knowledge and access to the people that have that knowledge. Is really tied up in a few key relationships. There are a lot of kingmakers in health tech, kind of people who are going to make that introduction that gets your foot in the door, that gets your first sale. And it's really hard to know who those people are and where to find them. It's not something that you can necessarily Google. So I would say that's number one, is just getting access to the institutional knowledge you need to understand what you should be building and how you should be approaching the market. I would say number 2, there's regulatory complexity in healthcare. So you have to understand where what you're wanting to build fits into kind of like the myriad of rules and regulations around companies in healthcare. And this goes back a little bit to the access piece, but I think it's more specific. There are things that you can do early on as a founder of a health tech company that can literally torpedo your company from day one. Wow. And I think it's really hard to know what those things are and kind of know how to find them as you're just drinking through the fire hose of information that every founder goes through for every startup around figuring out how to bring a company to market. And then I'd say the third thing is there's a lot of complexity around purchasing decisions in healthcare. Yeah. And this is a little bit more unique to healthcare, but you see it a little bit in edtech as well. Your end user in healthcare is almost always not the person who's buying your product.

Right.

And what that means is that you have to deal with somebody who's using your product, somebody who is paying for your product, and then maybe somebody who is getting billed at the end of the day for that product. And so, you know, there's sometimes 2 people involved, there's sometimes 3 people involved. I've seen companies that there's 4 entities that are kind of involved in the healthcare decision-making. And that's really challenging for founders to understand, especially folks coming from more traditional tech and B2B SaaS, where you're really just dealing with one And what all of those things mean in healthcare is that the best product doesn't win. It doesn't matter. Like, you can build the most beautiful app, you can build something that solves very real problems for people in the space. But if number one, you're not able to integrate yourself into somebody's workflow and make yourself indispensable, or you're not able to actually sell it in to the people who are going to need to pay for it, you can't convince them that this is a problem that is worth spending money on. It's never going to be successful. And I think, again, that's, you know, you see a lot of, you know, incredibly talented people who are building for all of the right reasons, build something stunning, and then just hit a wall because they are not able to execute on the go-to-market because they don't have access to the information they need to go from 0 to 1. And so I think that's unique to healthcare. And I was having a conversation last week at a conference with another investor. And one of the things that they commented on, I thought was really insightful is, you know, for them, actually, a really elegant product is an immediate yellow flag, because to them, it then becomes a question of, do they have a healthcare person on the team? And have they taken a version of this to market already, that they have validated that there is an opportunity here to build? Right? I think, you know, lots of people, we experience healthcare, We see it from the perspective of a patient. But that is only kind of the surface of the healthcare industry. And there's all of these other layers of complexity underneath that you need people to guide you through in order to build successfully.

It's funny, it's funny you say that, because it's almost counterintuitive, right? If you have a completely frictionless, elegant, you know, like perfect UX, you would think that would like be an amazing green flag in any other sector. But I can see, I can see how that, that could mean that the founding team have been building in You know, and we have been polishing, you know, a prototype without ever taking it to an MD or, you know, another, you know, buyer somewhere, right? So, no, that makes sense. But it's just funny and definitely the opposite of how many other sectors operate. You mentioned distribution, Owen, right? And, you know, that is very close to my heart. I think some of the principles around distribution and go-to-market, you know, broadly apply to other sectors as well, like building in public, You know, constantly iterating and not just being attached to the scope that you have in your mind and like listening to what people really want and co-creating with the community and all that. In your experience, if you have to give like, you know, I don't know, a bullet point list of advice around distribution especially, and from the lens of community-driven, what would that be? You know, and how would you advise founders to go about it?

Yeah, I think a lot of it in healthcare actually depends on the product that you're going to build. Right. So, and this is true kind of what I'm thinking about kind of in evaluating startups. This is something that I covered recently in a piece on getting to conviction in health tech that'll talk about it much more eloquently than I will right now. But, you know, I would say, you know, fundamentally, you know, especially for the founders at the early stages of building, you need to have some sort of unique competitive advantage or right to win around getting access to early customers. I think it is absolutely critical in healthcare. And it's especially important because of how much money has flowed into health tech over the past couple of years, right? Mm-hmm. Kind of post-COVID, there's been a lot of focus, a lot of investment the space. And it means that things that might have worked previously, especially around kind of direct-to-consumer marketing using Facebook, Google Ads, and all that, they're really expensive now. It's actually very expensive, much more expensive to acquire customers than it was a couple of years ago. And so for founders, it's about really understanding what is number one, what is the company that they're going to be best able to build and be really honest with themselves about that and making sure that they have a founding team that does have a competitive advantage around their core market. So I'll give 2 examples. Let's say you're building a company that is a direct-to-consumer healthcare company, you are looking at care delivery, right? So you're treating kind of a certain type of patient. If I'm looking at that company today, and I am gauging a founder's right to win in that space, I'm going to be looking at their ability to access that very niche community, whatever it is that they're going after. And so, you know, it could be a direct-to-consumer startup that is looking at the obesity space and looking at care coordination in the obesity space. I need to know that they have either relationships with clinics that'll be able to refer them patients, Right. or that they are connected and plugged into that community to be able to start building momentum and building evidence around the product that they're building and start getting patients in the door. So that is, that is incredibly important. If you're building, let's say, a company that is in, you know, the software space or, you know, hospital operations space, And you're selling into hospital administrators or surgery centers or, you know, whatever it might be, I need to know that number one, you can speak the language, right? That you know how the space works. You know how those folks operate, most likely because you've either worked in that space or have someone on your team, an advisor or founding teammate who has worked in that space. And I need to know that you have an ability to find the person who is going to be making the decision for you and be able to convert them. Right. So when I was at Osmosis, we were selling into medical schools and we were selling to either associate deans for education or associate deans for student affairs or student services. And one of the things we learned very quickly is that the sell to either one of them is going to look totally different. The things that they care about are totally different. The things that they are measured on in their career and as part of their own path to success and in their careers is very different. And so you have to have a different sales approach that is nuanced enough to understand that there might be different types of decision makers within an organization and be able to communicate to them the value that your product has in not just helping their patients, but also making their lives easier.

As you were explaining this, I just had this fun question that, like, if it was not health tech, which other sector would you be? If you had to be solo, like siloed into one sector, what would that be if not for health tech in terms of investing? The reason I ask is I'm curious to know which other area you think is most impactful for the world, you know?

Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, my kind of like mandate that I've set for myself from an investing perspective is helping people live healthier and more productive lives. I'm thinking a lot about tech has been additive to all of our lives. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now if not for Twitter and social media and everything. But I think in some ways as well, it's taken a lot away from us too. Mm-hmm. I think generally we see lots of instances of mental health being worse. We see lots of instances of physical health being worse. Obesity is on the rise. So I want to, in my career, focus on sectors that are doing kind of just that. They are enabling people to live healthier and more productive lives. I think that includes climate. And actually, I think climate coincidentally has a lot of the same challenges that healthcare and health tech does in terms of lots of government regulation, a lot of opacity around decision-making and purchasing in the space. Right. And then oftentimes really interesting incentives where your end user You know, kind of consumers are not the people actually at the end of the day footing the bill for the product because of grants and government spending and all of that. So I think climate is a really interesting space. And then I think edtech and future of work, right? If you want to blend those two, right?

I was going to say edtech. Edtech had to be in there.

It has to, right? Education is always going to be a big part of my life. It's a space that I'm deeply, deeply passionate about. What I would say though is one of my big lessons from when I was teaching is that a lot of the things that we attribute to being failings of the education system are actually systemic issues of poverty. Yeah. Students not getting enough food at home and having to rely on schools to provide them with meals. Students not getting adequate medical care, whether that's mental health, dental care, visiting a PCP. And I can tell you that If a student comes into class with a toothache, they're not going to learn anything.

Yeah.

Right? And when you think about all the times when we've gone to school and we've been feeling sick and we've generally, I think, had access, especially peers that have grown up in the US have access to healthcare and we don't even really think about it. And so one of the things for me is thinking about the ways in which all of these different things are interconnected. And the other big lesson from when I was teaching KP, and this is one I think that you'll really appreciate, is that, you know, you can work harder than everyone else, right? You can push yourself and kind of, you know, get to that next level. You can kind of go to college, you can move to the place you want to move to. But at the end of the day, the thing that matters is your community and your network, right?

Yeah.

That's how, you know, and so for me, I've had students actually from when I was teaching, this kind of shows how old I am, have gone on and gone to college, right? And the thing is, is that, you know, they are getting to college, but they're the only one in their family who has gone to college. They don't have a network, they don't have peers, they don't have role models.

Right.

And it's an incredibly challenging and lonely experience for them. And they are at a huge disadvantage when it's time to go get that first job or that first internship, that person who's going to take a chance on them. And I think, you know, when we think about kind of edtech, future of work, all of that, I think community is a huge, huge part of that, because that's the thing that enables people to level up and, And, you know, take that next step in their careers.

Yeah. Oh my God. I think, you know, hit a nerve there because I was one of those people, you know, who didn't have a community, who didn't have a network. When I first moved to the US, I was 21 and I was at Vanderbilt University, but I didn't feel like when I graduated, I had like 2 friends and I'm a very social person. Right. It's just, I didn't have the cultural context of how to build relationships, you know, in the US as an Indian immigrant. I was like kind of lost. And so when I graduated and all of the support systems that I had in my classroom disappeared because everybody went off to do their things in their, you know, different cities and different jobs. I suddenly felt so isolated and lost about what is my next step here. You know, nobody to call. There's no people to rely on. No events.

How are you going to get advice about that? Yeah. And I think part of it too is like, and this is the thing that I think so many of us take for granted, like we just kind of learn We learn the right social cues. We learn the right way to talk to people, the right way to ask for help, the right way to approach new problems and situations. And I think this is probably true for you and it's definitely true for my students, is you have nobody to teach them that. So you end up either not asking for help when you should or you end up coming on way too strong and scaring somebody off. Yeah. And I think it's really hard to learn that without somebody actually Like showing—

Unless you're immersed, unless you're immersed in it, right? And I see this now, like a lot of— I mean, this is so important for founders who are listening to, please, I hope you get the gist of what we're trying to say is that surround yourself with the kind of people that you aspire to be. Somehow get in those rooms, get in those Zooms, get in those events somehow, and just find out and figure out an excuse to hang out with them more and more, because you're going to learn a ton through osmosis, much more than watching a YouTube video or reading a Substack post, right? Because when I worked at On Deck and both of us felt this where we saw troves, like, I don't know, like thousands of founder applications come in, thousands of video pitches come in, and hundreds of fellows and founders and investors. It was such a thriving, vibrant ecosystem that I picked up so many cues on so many aspects of being in tech just because I existed in that ecosystem. So I'm grateful for that.

Totally.

And I'm blown away that that is a thing that was inaccessible to me many years ago. Now, talent-wise, I was the same. I don't think my IQ has grown since, you know, joining On Deck or since I got into tech. It's the same person, same talents, you know, same ambition. All of these were same, except I think the access, to your point, like now I have, you know, both of us have insane networks and access. The other thing is, of course, of course, support system. Who do you call when you need advice? And do you have the right person in your contact book, right? It can't just be one person for all of your questions. You want a growth person, you want a community person, you want a, you know, hiring decision person. So you need to have a diverse mix of experiences in your network, you know. So, so key.

Yeah. Well, and, and what I would add on to that too is, you know, part of the value of, of having— building your network, expanding it as, as broad as you can, building real meaningful relationships with people, is that You then aren't going back to the same people over and over again for help.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I think some founders miss is, and this is something I missed as I was kind of early on in this journey, is that every time somebody helps you, they are making an active decision not to do something else or not to help someone else. Every introduction they make for you, is one less thing that they can ask that connection for.

Right. Social capital, right? They're like, they're expending their social capital.

They're expending their social capital. And I think that is something that we don't really value properly. That's so true. When I'm having conversations with folks, either— and this is something I saw a little bit on Deck and I see this on Twitter or I see it on LinkedIn— is someone will reach out and say, hey, I see you're connected to this this well-known investor. Can you make an introduction? Right? And this is somebody I've never met before. Like, yeah, this is somebody reaching out who I've never met before. And my answer is always gonna be no. Right? Because like, the more impressive, the more well-known that person is, the fewer times they're gonna open my email. Right? I get like 5 emails. Right? I get like 5 asks, like maybe.

Right.

And so like, and so, you know, for me, a big part of it is like, you know, if I'm making intros, I'm gonna make interests with people that I have spent time building a relationship with first. I'm always going to prioritize that. And now that things are kind of opening up again and all that, I would say that the relationships that started on the internet that have grown or finding ways to meet up with internet friends in person is so important and so valuable. Yeah.

Yeah,

that is how you turn an internet friend into a real-life friend,

right?

And when I joined on deck, I had actually just moved to New York, and it was in the middle of COVID It was you know I moved to New York in late 2020, started at on deck in early 2021, and like my only friends for that first year were internet friends, right? Everything was closed. There was nobody that you could meet. It was you know and and at first it was fine. And then it wasn't, right? Suddenly I was like, man, this is actually a really lonely existence. And, you know, even just like starting to kind of put in that extra effort to meet up with people in person, to start building those relationships, um, I mean, that, that is like, you know, totally transformed my life here. And it has been the biggest unlock for me besides going to therapy in my career.

Right.

And, and so like, I almost kind of Because when I look back on my time living here in the past 2 years, kind of first at On Deck and now as an investor, it's almost like looking at it in black and white. And then all of a sudden, it's like stepping into Oz and everything going into Technicolor.

Right.

Because I have this community, I have these people, I can invite friends over for dinner, I can go out for drinks. And if I'm having a really, really hard day, I know that there's at least one person that I can call that will go get a cup of coffee with me. And that is what makes all of this sustainable. And that's what makes all of this worth it. Because if you're doing it alone, if you're doing it by yourself, it is an incredibly lonely journey. And you're not going to have people to help you when things go badly. And I think even worse, you're not going to have people to celebrate with when things go well.

Yeah, right. The small wins, right? So fun fact, Owen and I, every time we jump on a call, the first thing we ask each other is, hey, what's a small win in the last— what's been a small win in the last week or so? And I feel like that's a better opening than saying, how are you, in a way? Because how are you just can come up like you can say some dry answer to it. But for small win, you really have to pause and reflect on something that was a celebration, you know, or some positive thing. So I got one last question, Owen, which is we talked about investing in healthcare. We talked about sort of your track record. I'm curious about specifically some tangible examples of companies, startups that you invested in. What made them tick for you? And how should like, let's say, if there are any founders here who may want you as an angel investor, What are some things you look for, you know, when you, when you invest?

Yeah, so, you know, through my time at On Deck, I got to develop a, I think, pretty exciting thesis around the healthcare space and the types of founders that do especially well in kind of the current market conditions. And that was both from companies that I invested in and companies that I supported through the On Deck community. So, you know, I'm a big fan of the team at Curio. They're working in the psychedelic-assisted therapy space. Hillary and Felix and Matteo are a fantastic team. And then I'm a big fan of companies like Icona. Tim Fitzpatrick is the founder of Icona, and this is somebody who has been really putting in the work. He's been building the company for 5 years and has been able to now raise successful funding rounds to now take this company to the next level. And Icona is great because they're working in the patient education space around bringing dialysis into the home, which is something that is dramatically going to improve the lives of patients who are having to get that treatment. And I think, you know, with those sorts of companies, with companies like Evie and Welltheory and Pear Team, you know, the thing that all of these founders are having in common around kind of how they're thinking about the space is that they are building something out of lived experience, right? Mm-hmm. They've seen something in the healthcare system either through themselves, through a family member, through a patient, through a loved one, and they realize that, hey, there's something fundamentally broken And I have the earned knowledge to go after that problem.

Hmm.

Either through myself and/or the founding team of folks that I'm able to assemble. These people are all fantastic storytellers. They are able, as you said, to wiggle their way into rooms that they don't have any right to be in. They have advisors and investors who are exceptional. They have access to to B2B contracts and customers that are just for the stage of company is truly shocking. And that fully comes down to their ability to tell an incredibly compelling story and get folks on their side, turn people who are potential customers into advocates. And then the third piece, and I think this is one that people overlook, and this is something that I think a lot of founders have to think about, is, you know, at the early stages of building and especially building in health tech, there are these kind of long troughs where You're not going to be able to raise capital, but you are having to prove something out, right? You're having to collect clinical data, you're having to get X number of contracts. And so I think, you know, for founders and for CEOs, the ability to keep their company capitalized and have the network to build the network of investors who are going to be able to support them as they're kind of building from 0 to 1, that is so necessary to building a company in this space. So So just like, again, high level, building out of lived experience with kind of an earned knowledge and earned advantage, the ability to get into the right rooms and bring the right folks on board and again, kind of cultivate the right advocates, and then the ability to keep your company capitalized as you are building out your clinical proof or your go-to-market proof. I think those are the 3 most important things that precede. And I think everything else is just a matter of the type of company that you're wanting

Right. Awesome. I mean, I think we're almost at the end of the top of the hour. So I want to be conscious of your time. This is fun, man. I think we, we could do a monthly series. I feel like I just scraped the surface of how much I want to know about healthcare from your lens, knowing that I know you're deep into this. Appreciate you being here. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your candid reflections on your career, what you see, you know, for founders. So thank you so much, and hope to see you soon. Thank you.

Thanks, KP. This was a blast. Always great to chat with you. And this is fun. I mean, this is like turning our normal monthly phone call into a podcast. This is great.

I think that's what I said, right? Like, we could just do our monthly thing.

Yeah. To be clear, I don't normally talk this much. It's a little more even in our conversations.

That is true. Usually I'm the one who's like 90% of the airwaves. But I got very curious. I think the one thing that was exciting for me, you know, about this sort of session was I got to ask you, and I get to ask in public and ask on air the kind of things that normally I would, you know, not care for or ask for because we talk about life things and like other things, right? So this was really enlightening for me too, like how you view the field, how you view the industry and so on. So thanks again. And— Thanks, Kamal. Wish you all the best.