Big Picture Medicine Mustafa Sultan, MD

Elina Berglund is the CEO/Co-founder of Natural Cycles, which she has grown to 2M users. When every other app seemed to be free — she made a brave decision: She charged her users a monthly fee. And it worked...



0:57 - The Birth of Natural Cycles
2:57 - The Decision to Charge from the Start
3:47 - Building Trust Through Pricing
4:23 - From Personal Struggles to Public Solution
5:52 - Creating the Fail-Safe Algorithm
6:32 - Collaboration with CERN Colleagues
7:13 - The Human Body: Complex Beyond Measure
8:37 - The Promise and Challenge of Wearables
10:16 - Understanding User Behavior
11:04 - Gaining Regulatory Approval
12:26 - Secrets to Growth and Marketing
13:43 - The Challenge of Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare
16:02 - Data-Driven Decision Making
17:13 - Instincts Versus Data
19:01 - Staying Honest with Data
21:20 - Calibrating Communication for Investors
22:30 - Benefits of Being Profitable
24:08 - Data as a Superpower
24:59 - Overcoming Negative PR
27:13 - Future of Contraception
29:30 - Impact of Roe v. Wade Overturning



Links

Natural Cycles: https://www.naturalcycles.com/

Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

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/

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

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/

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/

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/