Big Picture Medicine Mustafa Sultan, MD
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- Health & Fitness
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The health entrepreneurship podcast — focusing on big picture stuff.
Interviews with health/biotech entrepreneurs and leaders having impact at scale. Health stuff a techbro/sis would find interesting. Think health meets the Tim Ferriss Show.
Get in touch: pod@musty.io
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#130 Kaia Health, Raising $125M By Turning $50,000 Elite Pain Rehab into an App (CEO, Konstantin Mehl)
Konstantin started Kaia Health after paying $50,000 to cure his back pain at an elite pain rehab centre. It worked. But it seemed stupid. Why did this need to cost $50,000?
Kaia Health has since raised $125M and helped 625,000 users.
0:00 The 90 second story
1:22 How did he grow 20% every week?
2:15 Market timing is everything
7:43 We never put pressure on this making any money
10:51 How does an app cure back pain?
14:43 US vs Germany for digital health entrepreneurs
16:40 Go to market of Kaia Health
19:51 Why raise so much money?
24:57 The hero license
Links
Kaia Health: https://kaiahealth.com/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ -
#129 Jon Ronson on Writing, Hustle and the Psychopath Test
Jon Ronson is one of the most interesting people alive today — period.
He’s the author of the Men Who Stare at Goats, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test — which spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
His two Ted talks have been watched 20 million times, his books have been brought to life by George Clooney on the big screen, he has written screenplays for Netflix blah blah blah.
Don’t believe me, listen to a pitch Jon wrote for ‘the Psychopath Test’. If you are not dying to hear what happens next — then, I don’t what to tell you…
0:00 Jon's pitch for the Psychopath Test
1:41 Jon's story
6:00 Strategies Jon used to bypass career gatekeepers
7:03 Would Jon Ronson be on Substack/podcasting
12:05 Does Jon Ronson pay attention to analytics? Post mortems
16:26 Startup philosophy applied to storytelling
19:08 Writing Advice from Tim Ferriss: Jon's opinion on doing interesting things to write better
24:59 Does Jon Ronson like being famous?
28:49 Analysis of 'The Psychopath Test' pitch to Ira Glass
37:30 Should you make decision based on what would be a good story
38:48 Jon Ronson's habits for creative success -
#128 AgeTech: Shopify vs Amazon Model — Birdie CEO, Max Parmentier
Max Parmentier is the CEO of Birdie, a Series B AgeTech startup who have raised $52M from the likes of Sofina, Omers Ventures and Index Ventures — and captured 10% of the UK market whilst currently scaling into Europe.
0:00 Intro
2:37 Shopify vs Amazon model in AgeTech
7:26 Product pivots: D2C never wins
11:56 Predictive AI AgeTech
13:58 I pitch an idea to Max
19:34 Lessons building Birdie
24:13 Leaving money on the table for purpose
Links
Birdie: https://www.birdie.care/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ -
#127 Gentle Disruption Wins in Healthcare — DrDoctor CEO Tom Whicher
Tom Wicher is CEO of DrDoctor — who have served over 20M patients and just raised £10M in their recent Series A round. But he spent the first 7 years bootstrapping, and diverged from his colleagues: Opting for the slow and steady gentle disruption path. Why?
0:00 Gentle disruption beats move fast and break things
3:36 Picking a problem in healthcare
5:44 Behavioural change theory
7:52 Stop treating patients like kids
10:30 Systems-level efficiency vs personalisation
13:02 Why don't patients show up for their appointments?
16:02 Overbooking: Learning from airlines
18:54 Carrot or stick: Motivating health behaviors
22:35 There's no big conspiracy in healthcare
26:24 PIFU model of patient booking
28:14 Sometime it's better not to empower patients
31:16 Habits/frameworks that have helped Tom succeed
Links
DrDoctor: https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ -
#126 Drug Discovery is Becoming More $$$ — Here's Why, And The Startup Fixing It (Lindus Health)
Drug discovery is becoming more expensive and producing less results than ever before (Eroom's Law)—why?
One of the ballooning costs are clinical trials. Pharma/biotech often outsource their trials to CROs (contract research organisations).
But many CROs are incentivised to make trials as bloated and inefficient as possible. That means more money and less results.
Meri Beckwith is building the anti-CRO: Lindus Health—to solve this problem.
0:00 Intro
1:39 The big problem in drug discovery
4:10 Why do CROs exist?
7:24 The incentive problem in drug discovery/CROs
10:57 Pharma are anti-startups
12:11 How much a clinical trial costs
15:11 How can you compete with big CROs?
17:26 Are you going to build your own drug pipeline?
18:56 Lessons from VC to Founder
23:42 Brand/PR/Positioning as a biotech startup
29:03 Billion dollar ideas in bio/health
31:33 Habits that have helped Meri
Links
Lindus Health: https://www.lindushealth.com/
Meri Beckwith: https://twitter.com/meribeckwith
Mithi Thaya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithi-thaya/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ -
#125 The $350M Startup Creating Perfect Memory (Rewind.ai — CEO Dan Siroker)
Rewind.ai just raised their Series A at a valuation of $350M. Investors include Andreesen Horowitz, Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Rewind sits on your computer and phone, and watches everything you do.
Then you can ask it questions like: What was that really great Mediterranean recipe I looked at last month? Or I’ve got a call with a client next week, can you summarise every interaction I’ve had with them?
But here’s where it becomes even weirder, powerful.
They’ve announced the Rewind Pendant, a small audio recorder that sits on your chest. Rewind will be able to listen in to every conversation you have.
You can ask it: What birthday present should I get for my partner? Did they drop any hints? Or how many arguments did we have last year?
Pretty Black Mirror, right?
Once you get over the ick however, you realise that this is correcting a lagging human function. Just like the cursed amongst us wear glasses; tools like Rewind will repair our broken memories.
I spoke to Dan Siroker, Rewind’s founder—
0:00 Intro
1:54 Lessons from the Obama Campaign
3:28 How to use science to make your startup succeed
8:21 Privacy concerns
17:00 Rewind.ai as a brain-computer interface (BCI)
20:27 Forgetting is important for human wellbeing
22:26 Societal impacts of perfect memory
28:42 Rewind's tech stack
31:56 The existential risk of startups using GPT
35:21 D2C is harder than B2B
37:49 Leadership lessons
40:31 Perils of being a second time founder
46:44 Is any publicity good publicity?
Links
Rewind: https://www.rewind.ai/
Dan Siroker: https://twitter.com/dsiroker
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
Customer Reviews
Top quality content
I’ve been listening to this podcast at the very least monthly for the last 2 years and consistently get a lot of value from it. Cracking Podcast that I would highly recommend.
My favourite Healthtech podcast
Musty is an incredibly thoughtful, insightful and witty interviewer - I listen to the podcast for his questions more so than the interviewee’s answers!
Understandable and useful!
Even as a non-medic, I found the content to be understandable and enjoyable. Complex topics are simplified and the guests are always interesting.