Big Picture Medicine
By Mustafa Sultan, MD
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
#134 Sean Duffy, Omada Health ($1bn+ Valuation)
According to Business Insider, Omada Health has quietly filed its S-1 to prepare for an IPO. Here's how Sean Duffy (CEO & Co-founder) built it.
0:00 Intro
0:17 Signing first customer
1:51 How to have good ideas in healthcare
4:00 Why metabolic health is a hard area to innovate in
5:18 What the MVP product looked like
11:16 Sean's secret tactics
14:55 Operational innovation as a differentiator
20:19 The Omada playbook — is it repeatable?
25:31 What boss moves have you made Sean?
29:37 The difference between good and great
32:29 Sean's best tip on selling in enterprise healthcare
33:35 Sean's advice to himself
Links
Omada Health: https://www.omadahealth.com
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io
#133 A New Radiology Foundation Model ($160M Raised) — Harrison.ai CEO, Dr Aengus Tran
Dr Aengus Tran is the CEO of Harrison.ai — an Australian radiology AI startup who have raised $160M.
Harrison.ai just released their radiology foundation model, Harrison.rad.1. And it's really good.
0:00 Intro
2:25 I'm glad I didn't found my startup in the US
4:21 Partnering with a clinical operator is key
7:28 Scrappy stories from the early days
11:17 Where human radiologists outperform AI (zero-shot learning)
17:23 Big bets on the future of radiology
21:18 What happens when GPT-8 arrives?
25:29 How can AI reach suprahuman radiology performance?
28:58 What boss moves did you make?
Links
Harrison.ai: https://harrison.ai
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io
#132 Arcadia CEO ($100M ARR) on How To Sell Enterprise Healthcare — Michael Meucci
Michael Meucci (CEO) transformed Arcadia — formerly a mid-sized consultancy into a healthcare platform with $100M of Annual Recurring Revenue. How?
Lots of smart moves, including becoming really good at enterprise healthcare selling. Here's how he did it.
Links
Arcadia: https://arcadia.io/
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#131 Scaling Contraceptive App to 2M Users By Daring Not to Be Free (Dr Elina Berglund, CEO Natural Cycles)
Dr 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/
#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/
#124 Wearable Data is Bullsh*t Debate — Maitham Dib (Vital YC21)
People are wearing Apple Watches to their wedding days. Has this whole 'quantified self' movement gone bananas? Is any of this data actually useful? I spoke to Maitham Dib about this. He's building Vital (YC21); a startup which makes all wearable/lab data available to other startups/companies. 0:00 Wearable data is mostly useless 3:22 The case for wearable data 6:37 Wearable data is mostly useless 8:06 Wearable data is useful 10:16 The big opportunity with wearable/lab data (startups) 14:15 Naivety as a superpower (Paul Graham) 15:45 Why building Vital is so hard 19:31 Pros/cons of an infrastructure play in healthcare 20:51 How to enterprise sales 24:09 Lessons from YCombinator 27:32 The benefits of being an immigrant Links Vital: https://tryvital.io/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#123 How To Write Killer Healthcare Content — Healthcare Huddle (acquired by Workweek)
Dr Jared Dashevsky writes Healthcare Huddle (acquired by Workweek). He's scaled to over 30,000 subscribers. And it was pretty simple.
Here are 12 frameworks that work for healthcare content creation (and mistakes to avoid).
0:00 Intro
1:14 Consistency is king; systematise it
7:40 McKinsey reverse pyramid principle for writing
9:10 You need to have a unique/controversial take
11:41 Content for network building
15:51 Lean startup thinking does not work for content
20:35 Nobody cares about errors
25:52 Injecting personality is a competitive advantage
29:32 Boring content will make you rich
34:13 Don't make a useless audience; acquire data
41:19 Lessons from Jerry Springer
45:18 Hyperoptimisation paradox
48:49 Do things that don't scale
Links
Healthcare Huddle: https://workweek.com/brand/healthcare-huddle/ Dr Jared Dashevsky: https://twitter.com/jareddashevsky Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#122 Why AI Drug Discovery Is So Hard — Dr Imran Haque (Recursion)
Despite $billions of investment into the sector — there are still no AI discovered drugs on the market. Why? Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXRX) is one of the hottest AI drug discovery companies on the market. Especially after NVIDIA's $50M investment into them. Dr Imran Haque (SVP of AI and Digital Sciences) explains why AI drug discovery is so tricky — and when it's arriving. 0:00 Intro 0:42 Decoding biology (the big idea) 2:18 Why is AI drug discovery harder than it looks? 4:48 Simulating the Sims (game) vs AI drug discovery 6:58 Building data for AI drug discovery 14:47 Recursion's successes and failures 24:22 The barriers to AI drug discovery 26:45 How optimistic should we be about AI drug discovery 35:26 Being aggressively generalist for success People Dr Imran Haque: https://www.recursion.com/team-members/imran-haque Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 NVIDIA Pumped $50M Into This Startup You've Never Heard Of (TechBio)
0:00 NVIDIA's $50M investment into Recursion Pharmaceuticals 2:28 NVIDIA is becoming a seed investor 3:45 Bull case for Recursion Pharmaceuticals 9:20 Recursion's two big acquisitions 13:05 How are Recursion going to make money? 14:15 Recursion is overhyped 19:45 Recursion is unprofitable 22:21 Kim Kardashian's full body MRI scan 26:03 Longevity doctor's advice to Kim K 31:49 Speculating on Kim K's longevity regime (what she takes) 35:00 Outro and feedback Podcast Links YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a People Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/ Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#121 Raising $17M Uber for Medical Scans — Charlie Bullock (Scan.com)
Ever waited months for a scan? Scan.com is making getting a scan as easy as booking an Uber. Behind the scenes of the disruptor changing medical imaging forever. 0:00 Race to the bottom? 1:34 AirBnB 11 star framework 9:57 Scan.com looks really easy to build — what's hard about it? 12:19 Lessons from working at Deliveroo 15:14 How do you make a lot of money? 19:41 Buying the domain name Scan.com 24:16 How to build a marketplace business 27:50 The perils of price transparency 30:36 What I would do to build a competitor 32:43 You need grit when building a health startup 35:46 Billion $ health ideas Podcast Links YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEzluDRmBTVby0WsO37V-xg Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPm... People Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ Charlie Bullock: https://scan.com/
🔥 What David Sinclair is Hiding From Elon Musk
0:00 David Sinclair's controversial claim 1:39 Bull v bear case 6:23 David Sinclair's history of exaggerating and profiteering 8:34 Adam Neuman's involvement 11:40 Raising from unsophisticated investors 16:30 Why aren't big pharma interested in longevity? 22:45 Cynics are right, optimists get rich 25:26 Will a longevity drug be the most valuable therapeutic ever made 28:52 Feedback and outro David Sinclair's Tweet: https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1679178670743732249?s=20 David Sinclair's Research Paper: https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text Elon Musk Tweet: https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1679504700285104129?s=20 Dr Charles Brenner's Critique of Sinclair: https://twitter.com/CharlesMBrenner/status/1679213673771057152?s=20 Podcast Links YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a People Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/ Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 Regulators Hate Doctor ChatGPT (Here's Why) — Dr Hugh Harvey (Hardian Health)
0:00 Why not let the builders build? Move fast and break things?
1:56 Why don't you ban people from googling their symptoms?
3:28 Is a disclaimer enough?
5:27 Why are LLMs difficult to regulate?
10:13 Move fast and kill patients — principal agent problem
12:23 People aren't idiots (they are)
14:20 Dr ChatGPT will never work
17:35 Spotting bubbles in healthcare
19:20 How much time does regulation add onto medical device approval?21:40 Can we ever regulate LLMs?
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicineApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Hugh Harvey: https://www.hardianhealth.com/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 Spotify Founder's Longevity Startup: Bear v Bull Case (Neko Health)
Daniel Ek (Spotify Founder) has raised $65M for his new longevity startup: Neko Health. 0:00 What is Neko Health 2:18 They're doing nothing new 5:33 The bull case; why it's going to be huge 7:47 How are they possibly going to make money!? 18:30 Why aren't they doing full body MRI? 20:26 The bear case; why this will fail 25:13 Smells a bit hypey 29:15 The risks of longevity startups and early testing 35:41 The lowdown 37:47 Unexpected way of making $$$ 40:00 Outro and feedback Podcast Links YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a People Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/ Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 Apple's Plan to Dominate Healthcare (And Why It Will Fail)
0:00 Leaked secret Apple health report
5:06 What Apple are up to in healthcare
9:21 Decentralised clinical trials
11:35 Apple healthcare leaked documents controversy
15:38 Apple is going to become a health insurer
23:07 Imran's advice to Tim Cook
26:11 Being a healthcare provider is unprofitable
28:12 Apple will make a longevity/subscription health play
30:27 Outro and feedback
Links mentioned
Apple Struggles in Push to Make Healthcare Its Greatest Legacy (Wall Street Journal): https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-struggles-in-push-to-make-healthcare-greatest-legacy-11623832200
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicineApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#120 Billion $ Healthtech 'Soonicorn' Huma: Lessons from Jony Ive and Big Pharma — Dan Vahdat (CEO)
Huma is about to reach a 1 billion dollar valuation, and is thriving while other digital health companies are dying. But what’s their secret sauce? Dan Vahdat is the Johns Hopkins dropout — who meticulously studied the successful business practices of big pharma, and using these, has created the 'soonicorn' digital health company that’s about to take over the world of remote patient monitoring and decentralised clinical trials. 0:00 Intro 1:11 Focusing on one big thing is bullsh*t 6:33 Lessons from Jony Ive 10:02 Healthtech infrastructure play 16:04 'Ownership is everything' discussion 20:18 If you maximise impact, commercial will come 24:00 Bad design hurts me 28:56 You don't need to try and inspire anyone 30:35 Are you full of sh*t? 32:27 How does your life change when you 'make it'? 36:50 Is studying successful people a waste of time? 39:28 Outro Podcast Links YouTube: / @bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPm... People Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/ Dan Vahdat https://www.huma.com/
🔥 Beauty and the Bucks: Inside GetHarley's $52M Triumph in Skincare
0:00 Intro 1:04 The genius business model of GetHarley 5:26 How important is marketing? 50% of revenue 14:57 Why aren't they doing cooler more innovative stuff? 22:38 What verticals would we expand GetHarley's biz model to 24:37 Vitamin vs painkiller 27:49 Why have investors put so much money into GetHarley? 31:00 Feedback and outro Links mentioned GetHarley, a skincare telehealth and consultation platform, raises $52M (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/06/get... Podcast Links YouTube: / @bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPm... People Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/ Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 News: Pills for Profit — The Dark Side of D2C Health Startups
0:00 Intro
0:20 DEA comes after DTC health startups
3:18 How DTC health startups hacked customer retention
10:30 Will this kill the economics of D2C health startups?
12:57 How would we solve the problem
15:30 New LLM Paper in Nature
28:18 Audience feedback and outro
Links Mentioned
Cerebral Pushed ADHD Prescriptions And Failed To Report Data Breaches, Ex-Executive Alleges In Lawsuit (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2022/04/28/cerebral-pushed-adhd-prescriptions-failed-to-report-data-breaches-ex-executive-alleges-in-lawsuit/DEA's proposed telehealth rules pull back COVID-era remote prescribing flexibilities: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/telehealth/deas-proposed-telehealth-rules-tighten-covid-era-remote-prescribing-regulations
DEA extends telehealth prescribing flexibilities for 6 months: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/telehealth-providers-cheer-dea-moves-temporarily-extend-virtual-prescribing
Health system-scale language models are all-purpose prediction engines (Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06160-y
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
#119 The Unusual Path to Make a Billion $ Men's Health Startup — Numan CEO (Sokratis Papafloratos)
Numan have raised $70M+ and are set to become the biggest men's digital health startup, ever. Here's how. From their eccentric Founder. 0:00 Intro 0:42 Valuation 1:46 Lessons from Calm.com 4:49 Raising aggressively 7:35 Successful entrepreneurs are not hyper intelligent 10:38 When to quit 14:43 The Social R Number 18:14 Being nice gets you nowhere 22:24 Numan's marketing genius 38:09 What Adam Neumann got wrong 45:12 Narrative is like really important 49:13 Being honest about your motivations 52:59 Outro Podcast Links YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a People Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io Sokratis Papafloratos: https://www.numan.com
🔥 News: The Rise and Demise of Babylon Health
0:00 Intro
0:18 Ali Parsa's Immigrant Story
1:57 Picking a Problem That Was Too Big
4:15 The Supply Induced Demand Problem
5:55 The Unit Economics Problem
7:37 The Misaligned Incentives Problem
10:11 The Friction Problem
12:06 The First Mover Disadvantage
13:30 Raising Too Much Money
14:55 The SPAC Problem
17:40 The Pig With Lipstick Problem
22:07 Should Founders be Liberal with the Truth?
26:06 What Will the Next Health Unicorn Be?
Articles Mentioned
Babylon shareholders wiped out in restructuring deal: https://www.ft.com/content/ce42bcb7-d9ee-4667-910a-b6c7a419449b
Podcast Links
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 News: VC Dirty Money and Trillion $ Alzheimer's Opportunity
0:00 Intro
0:38 VC Dirty Money (LP Sources)
8:30 Power Dynamics Founder vs VC
12:56 Trillion $ Alzheimer's Opportunity
14:26 Eli Lily's New Alzheimer's Blockbuster (?) Donanemab
19:01 More Issues with Donanemab Phase III Results
21:48 Will Anyone Pay for Donanemab?
24:13 Donanemab Side Effects
27:15 Startup Opportunities in Alzheimer's
31:34 Outro
Articles Mentioned
Founders need to take a stand against VC's 'dirty money’: https://sifted.eu/articles/founders-vc-dirty-money
Eli Lily Donanemab Phase III Press Release: https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lillys-donanemab-significantly-slowed-cognitive-and-functional
Cost Effectiveness of Donanemab: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35344024/
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat?s=20
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
🔥 News: ChatGPT vs Doctors: Who Will Win?
Papers Mentioned—
ChatGPT better + more empathetic than human doctors (JAMA Int Med Paper): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2804309
Detecting eye disease using AI (Nature Biomedical Engineering): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-022-00867-5
Predicting dementia using LLMs (PLOS Digital Health): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36812634/
AI recognises race from black and white X rays (Lancet Digital Health): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(22)00063-2/fulltext
VC dirty money article: https://sifted.eu/articles/founders-vc-dirty-money
0:00 Intro 0:30 ChatGPT vs Doctors (JAMA Paper) 15:57 AI Better at Diagnosis than Doctors 30:57 Dirty VC Money 32:02 Audience Feedback Joined by: Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep). Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health. Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
🔥 News: It’s Time to Build in Healthcare (a16z) and Why are VCs Miserable?
0:00 Intro
0:32 Why are VCs so unhappy?
2:18 What’s hard about being a VC?
3:56 Hustle culture, FOMO, always-on culture in VC
9:54 Is it ever easy to become rich?
12:22 It’s time to build in healthcare
15:31 Why is healthcare so hard for big tech?
17:31 Reasons why healthcare is easier than you think
21:04 Imposter syndrome for tech people entering healthcare
24:03 Would you build another healthcare startup?
25:12 Outro
Joined by:
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
#118 Martin Shkreli on Drug Pricing, Being Hated/Rich and His GPT-4 Doctor
Martin Shkreli is an American Investor, Pharmaceutical Executive and Hedge Fund Manager who became the most hated man in America in 2015 when he obtained the drug Daraprim and increased its price from $13.50 a pill, to $750 overnight.
0:00 Intro
1:56 The Big Short
8:04 How to price a drug
20:01 Should we price drugs like iPhones
25:36 Pharma's dirty secret with R&D spend
34:12 Why are we not discovering more drugs? Eroom's Law
43:59 Marting's new AI Doctor — Dr Gupta
51:08 What's the FDA going to say?
53:26 Problems with GPT-4; hallucinations and sources
1:00:00 Mental health impact of being the most hated man in America
1:02:30 How rich are you?
1:08:00 Outro
Daraprim is used to treat or prevent parasitic diseases, commonly in patients with HIV or AIDS.
He defended the move by saying “If there was a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle, and we buy that company and we ask to charge Toyota prices, I don't think that that should be a crime.”
Unrelated to the Daraprim scandal, in 2017 he was charged with securities fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison and fined a total of over $70M dollars.
Martin comes from humble beginnings, his parents are Albanian immigrants — but he quickly ascended the world and became a multimillionaire polymath. And despite having no formal training in Medical Sciences — he has a penchant for consuming medical literature from PubMed, and making novel insights.
We talk about how Martin does this, his philosophy around drug pricing — and whether we should think about pricing drugs in the same way we price iPhones, we talk about whether blowing more money into pharma research & development actually leads to more exciting drugs, Martin’s new AI doctor that he just launched and the mental health impact of being the world’s most hated man.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#117 Dr Ben Maruthappu On Raising $400M for Cera Care
Dr Ben Maruthappu is the the Co-founder and CEO of Cera Care; a digitally-enabled social care company which has raised over $400M dollars. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2020.
0:00 Intro
0:47 Ben's story
6:10 How to have good ideas, at the right time
12:14 Good decisions Ben made with Cera to scale
21:07 Is the US greener pastures?
28:10 What healthtech can learn from fintech, ridesharing and food delivery
30:17 Anti-lessons from other industries
33:53 How do you stop driving becoming toxic
36:13 Are founders olympic athletes who don't deserve work-life balance?
38:31 Are you full of sh*t? What are your real motives?
41:19 Are successful founders happy people?
43:30 Mo money mo problems
46:51 The power of vulnerability vs the magnetism of certainty
52:21 Networking advice
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#116 Be Bombastic To Get Ahead — Dr Ala Alenazi (Ascension VC)
Dr Ala Alenazi is a TechBio Investor at Ascension and holds a PhD in Molecular Genetics from Cambridge University — she describes herself as a recovering scientist with extreme FOMO.
0:00 Intro
0:47 Being bombastic
3:32 Do PhDs make good VC investors?
10:38 How much of VC is luck?
12:47 Network building in VC
19:16 Getting deal flow
22:15 How to ask for things
24:43 Experience being a brown woman in VC
28:42 No one gives you anything, you just have to take it
33:50 Main character syndrome
We talk about how being bombastic is the key to getting opportunities, why contrary to popular belief — PhDs don’t suck as investors, how to ask people to do things for you and what it’s like being a brown woman in VC.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
🔥 News: AI Too Powerful? Peter Attia's Longevity Bible and Why Are Americans Dying So Young?
0:00 Intro
0:54 Is AI Too Powerful?
17:59 Outlive, Peter Attia's New Longevity Bible
45:16 Why Are Americans Dying So Young?
Joined by:
Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
#115 Think Like a Doctor to Make Executive Decisions — Dr John Whyte (Chief Medical Officer, WebMD)
Dr John Whyte is the Chief Medical Officer of WebMD, he’s also worked at Director level at the FDA and was also Chief Medical Expert at the Discovery Channel.
0:00 Intro
0:54 Anxiety as a content creator
2:33 Why should executives think like physicians?
7:23 Decision-making with limited information
10:47 Bayesian reasoning
12:57 Risk, acuity and stress
15:28 What should we NOT learn from physicians?
17:06 Future of health communication, health influencers
22:29 Regulation for health influencers?
24:22 Habit: I've never applied for a job
26:53 Networking building
28:24 Introspection as a habit for success
John runs a course called 'Think Like a Doctor to Make Executive Decisions' — and I ask about different frameworks executives can pick up from doctors and use in non-healthcare settings (such as bayesian reasoning and assessing what is a symptom vs a cause).
John’s also a veteran of the health communication space, and we discuss where the future of health content is going, and the art of storytelling.
John's course: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/think-like-a-doctor-to-make-executive-decisions
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
🔥 News: Microsoft's GPT-4 Healthcare Play and Self-Driving Drug Development
0:00 Intro
1:00 AI drug development
7:04 Big picture impact of AI drug development
9:14 Counterintuitive facts about drug development
11:06 Why can't we just make novel drugs with AI? Biology is hard
19:06 Microsoft's GPT-4 healthcare play
26:48 The hardest thing about health startups
31:49 Outro
Joined by:
Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
#114 Alexa for Doctors — Dr Shiv Rao (CEO Abridge)
Dr Shivdev Rao is a Cardiologist and CEO/Co-founder of Abridge, who have raised over $22M.
Think of Abridge like an Alexa or Siri (or other voice assistant) that sits there whilst the physician and patient talk.
Instead of the physician writing notes during the consult, or staying late and charting — Abridge listens to the conversation and writes up the notes for them.
Similarly, instead of the patient frantically taking notes, or being bombarded with information — most of which they will forget — Abridge can send them an appropriately-pitched record of what was said, with key takeaways.
We talk about how Shiv built and grew this company, I ask him about the existential threat of LLMs like ChatGPT, how being in the intensive care unit is similar to building a startup, and how operating from a place of abundance is a key to success.
0:00 Intro
1:35 Shiv's story
8:50 Cross pollination as a tech CEO
12:02 Abridge, idea to execution
17:19 Possibilities with big data
19:53 Threat of LLMs like ChatGPT
23:52 How will Abridge fail?
25:22 How to stay focused
27:10 Leadership lessons
31:14 Habits that have helped Shiv
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
🔥 News: Semaglutide (Wegovy) TikTok Conspiracy, Alcohol Disruptor and Where Are the UK Healthtech Exits?
0:00 Intro
1:27 Semaglutide (Wegovy) lowdown, use in longevity clinics
6:38 Is a 'pill for everything' a bad thing?
10:39 What's going to happen to all the DTC weight loss startups?
13:37 Is Semaglutide a TikTok conspiracy by big pharma?
14:55 The new alcohol-free alcohol, GABA
21:07 Where are all the big UK healthtech exits?
24:16 US investors/entrepreneurs are more ambitious
27:41 Is DTC digital health the way to go?
32:40 Is there much point building in the UK?
Joined by:
Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
🔥 News: David Sinclair's New Startup, Transhumanist Gene Editing to Sleep Less and ChatGPT for Drug Development
0:00 Intro
1:09 David Sinclair's New Startup
11:25 ChatGPT for Drug Development
28:32 Transhumanist Gene Editing to Sleep Less
37:38 Banter/Audience Feedback
Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.
#113 Mental Models for Health Entrepreneurship — Dr Ignacio Medrano (CEO Savana)
Dr Ignacio Medrano is the Founder of Savana (raised $44M dollars with over 100 employees). They use AI to unlock all the value out of clinical records and produce real world evidence.
0:00 Intro
0:34 Ignacio's story
1:30 Learnings from Neurology -> Entrepreneurship
3:27 How to build good health products/services
5:03 Downsides of being a doctor in health entrepreneurship
7:21 Just in case vs just in time learning
9:14 Perils of perfectionism in healthcare
12:34 Do you need to be a d**k to be a good leader?
14:27 Dunbar's number — leading bigger organisations
17:52 Differences in operating in Europe
20:12 Diagnostic medical AI is a waste of time
23:15 SWOT analysis of Savana
26:07 Threats to Savana — LLMs?
29:22 Being eccentric as a competitive advantage
31:09 Becoming a better speaker/storyteller
34:02 Declining Royal Academy of Sciences invite
36:24 Arrogance as a competitive advantage
38:48 Tribes — exclusion criteria importance
40:27 Billion $ Health Idea
41:38 Not watching TV as a competitive advantage
46:40 Outro
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#112 Yelp for Doctors — Dr Stephanie Eltz (CEO Doctify)
Dr Stephanie Eltz is a Trauma Surgeon and CEO and Co-founder of Doctify, which is basically Yelp/Trustpilot for Doctors. They’ve raised >£22M dollar in funding to date.
0:00 Intro
0:41 Story
2:34 Motivations
3:47 Building Doctify
8:25 Why do you have grit? Early childhood
9:21 Are patient reviews good measures of a doctor?
13:53 There is no growth hack
16:34 How to stop reviews becoming a cesspit
19:48 Monetising
21:15 It's all about the destination
22:46 Happiness as a founder
24:31 Are you full of sh*t?
26:48 First become a King, then a Philosopher
28:10 Leadership and MBTI 29:28 Habits
30:20 Insecurity and immigrant hustle
33:16 Hustling
35:00 You don't need to network
36:17 Outro
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#111 Raising $139M, Biotech, Introversion and Happiness — Jason Foster (CEO Ori Biotech)
Jason Foster is the CEO of Ori Biotech; a cell and gene therapy company who have raised $139M in funding. He also sits on the boards of companies like GripAble, Credentially, and Auxita — and is an active angel investor.
0:00 Intro
0:34 Jason's story
5:31 What was your goal?
6:39 When did you make it?
8:31 Taking calculated risks in life
10:48 Creating value vs chasing $$
12:15 When should you say no?
16:39 How to coach people
20:53 How to find a coach?
23:37 How to do cold outreach
27:16 Being a marketer and making it in biotech
31:54 Introversion vs extroversion as a CEO/founder
35:37 How to build professional relationships, Neurolinguistic Programming
37:54 The founders first zeitgeist
42:05 Managing your ego
45:07 Disagreeable givers
45:39 Why do media?
46:29 Jason's grand theory
51:59 Why are health/life sciences/biotech unique markets?
55:28 Billion dollar health idea 1
59:57 Billion dollar health idea 2
1:04:00 Money and happiness
1:07:50 Habits that have helped Jason
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
🔥 News: Bryan Johnson's Blueprint, Spotify Enters Health and VitaDAO Raises $4M
Dr Adam Bataineh is a Longevity Doctor and Founder of Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
0:00 Intro
0:15 Bryan Johnson's Blueprint Program
12:32 Spotify's Daniel Ek Enters Healthcare
22:27 VitaDAO Raises $4.1 (from Pfizer, Balaji Srinivasan...)
#110 Networking, BioSecurity and Generative AI — Morgan Cheatham (VP Bessemer Ventures)
Morgan Cheatham is Vice President at Bessemer Ventures and an MD Student at Brown. He was Forbes30u30 for Venture Capital.
Morgan is a super smart guy who has lots of interesting theses and billion dollar ideas in health and life sciences, including ones in generative AI and biosecurity.
We also spend lot of time talking about relationship-building, networking and using the content game to make it in health.
0:00 Intro
0:31 Relationship building
1:54 What you can offer people
3:33 Having strong beliefs as a competitive advantage
4:02 How to develop unique theses in health
6:56 How to avoid just following trends and have original ideas
10:09 How to network
13:15 How to use content as a USP in health
19:58 Is content-creation for charlatans?
21:54 Predictions in health: Generative AI + BioSecurity
27:19 BioSecurity Idea
29:27 Billion $ Health Ideas
31:43 Generative AI in healthcare
34:11 Book recommendations
37:06 Habits
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
🔥 News: David Sinclair's New Paper, Amazon RxPass, Decline in Disruptive Science and Metformin is the New Birth Control — With Dr Adam Bataineh
Dr Adam Bataineh is a Longevity Doctor and Founder of Span Health (acquired by EightSleep). We discuss:
0:00 David Sinclair's New Ageing Paper — Legit?
15:52 Amazon RxPass — All Hype?
23:37 Metformin is San Francisco's New Birth Control
30:58 Decline in Disruptive Science — Why?
Links
David Sinclair's Paper: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01570-7
Nature Decline in Disruptive Science Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x
#109 Billion $ Health Ideas w/ Dr Chris Lovejoy: Generative AI, DTC Weight Loss + Cross Border Care
New series. We brainstorm billion $ health ideas.
Dr Chris Lovejoy is a Cambridge-trained Medical Doctor, Startup Founder and Data Scientist specialising in medical AI and health informatics. He has an IQ of between 4000–5000. Find out what he's working on at www.chrislovejoy.me.
0:00 Intro
0:10 Generative AI
28:55 DTC Weight Loss Clinics
45:27 Cross Border Care
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#108 Why I've Got More Employees than WhatsApp — Dr Anas Nader (CEO Patchwork Health)
Dr Anas Nader is the CEO and Co-founder of Patchwork Health; an end-to-end workforce solution which helps health systems tackle the staffing crisis. They have raised over $30M.
0:00 Intro
0:29 Why Anas has more employees than WhatsApp
9:24 How to get your product into healthcare providers
12:38 Business opportunities in health-tech
15:22 Habits that have helped Anas
17:11 Similarities between surgical decision-making and startups
18:21 Resource recommendations
22:10 Why you need an executive coach
We talk about why the patchwork team is bigger than WhatsApp’s, how to get your product into healthcare systems and key decision making frameworks Anas has learned.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#107 Fertility-Tech, Cake or Death and Storytelling — Tess Cosad (Co-founder Béa Fertility)
Tess Cosad is the Co-founder and CEO of Béa Fertility; who have raised £2.2M in an effort to democratise access to safe and affordable fertility treatment.
0:00 Intro
1:15 Lessons from PR to healthtech
2:25 Storytelling
5:29 What do others get wrong?
6:54 Does PR add value to the world?
8:01 Béa Fertility origin story
10:16 Advice on relationship-building
11:13 Getting better at pitching
12:15 Future of Béa Fertility
16:28 Benefits of at home clinical care
19:08 Do we need more babies?
20:44 China/Japan
21:57 Moore's Law in Fertility
25:17 Opportunities in fertility tech
27:23 Habits that have helped Tess
30:23 Book recommendations
31:27 Being bold
Specifically, Béa deliver kit to carry out one cycle of intracervical insemination straight to the user’s door. She was previously in the Public Relations world, as Managing Director of Emberson Ventures and we talk about lessons healthtech startups can learn from the PR world.
We also talk about how she’s built Bea, crucial leadership advice she’s received from her mentors and big opportunities in the fertility market.
I hope you enjoy.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#106 Five TechBio Myths That Must Go — Guillermo Vela (Co-Founder NeuScience)
Guillermo Vela is the CEO and Co-Founder of NeuScience, a VC-backed TechBio company using AI to discover novel cancer biomarkers.
0:00 Intro
0:55 Eroom's Law
5:37 Contrarian View of Cancer
15:54 AI Will Not Make Drug Discovery Fast, Better or Cheaper
26:14 Failing is Not a Good Thing
26:38 TechBio Funding
34:07 Habits
He went viral, in the techbio scene, with his 'Five TechBio Myths That Must Go' article in which he explained why it doesn’t take $2.5bn to develop a drug and why technologies like AI wont’ make drug discovery faster, better or cheaper. We discuss that article, we discuss Guillermo’s contrarian view of cancer, why we’re doing more science than ever but not seeing results and how his ADD brain is a superpower.
I hope you enjoy.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#105 The Obstacle is the Way — Dr Ivan Beckley (Co-Founder Suvera Health)
Dr Ivan Beckley is the Co-Founder of Suvera Health, a Google-backed virtual clinic which has raised over £6M in funding.
0:00 Intro
0:42 Ivan's Story
5:14 Making Cash?
7:07 Building Suvera
10:19 Clinician-Product Fit
11:58 Growing
14:11 Experience of Feedback
16:56 Lessons from Google
19:47 Being Black in Tech
23:20 Further Growth
25:36 How Can Someone Move Faster Than You?
28:45 Habits That Have Helped You?
Ivan started Suvera whilst in Medical School at UCL — and has since expanded it from a basic app which could help GPs (Primary Care Physicians) complete medication reviews for their patients, to a full fledged virtual care platform for people with chronic illnesses.
We dig deep into the lessons and habits that have helped Ivan grow Suvera — like how the obstacle is often the way — and how he leans into discomfort as a signal of future success. We speak about how he changed the minds of people who were sceptical of him, how someone building in healthcare today could move faster than him and what it’s like being a black man in healthtech.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#104 Dr Daniel Kraft on the Art of the Possible
Dr Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard-trained physician-scientist and inventor. He serves as faculty chair for Medicine at Singularity University, is founder and chair of Exponential Medicine and has given four TED and two TEDMED talks.
He’s also the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA-approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founder of RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable stem cell-based regenerative therapies.
He’s also served as an officer and flight surgeon with F-15 & F-16 fighter Squadrons. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, with whom he was a finalist for astronaut selection.
We discuss why — despite reaching the fourth industrial revolution — healthcare seems to be stuck in the third or second. Dark horses in healthcare and some of the magic that has helped Daniel get to where he is today.
I hope you enjoy.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#103 Sir Jeremy Farrar on How to Spend £16bn for Good (Director, Wellcome Trust)
How do you spend £16 billion to improve the world’s health?
That is the job of Sir Jeremy Farrar, the Director of the Wellcome Trust. In 1936, British pharmaceutical magnate Sir Henry Wellcome left his fortune to improve the world’s health. Now Sir Jeremy must work out what to do with £16 billion over the next decade — and where to most effectively spend it.
0:00 Intro
0:47 The Third Role of Philanthropy
2:53 Appetite for Risk
5:38 What's Broken in Science Funding
8:16 Generalism vs Specialism
10:12 Why Are You Slow?
14:49 Sexy vs Incremental
17:04 How Much of Your Job Is Not Messing Things Up?
19:35 Metrics for Philanthropy
22:10 Playing the Long Game
23:20 How Do You Know You're Doing a Good Job?
28:05 First Become a King, Then a Philosopher (?)
30:00 Habits That Have Helped In Your Career
31:52 What's It Like Being Famous?
33:28 Book Recommendations
By background he is a medical doctor and researcher, he has been named 12th in Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders, served in the UK’s SAGE group and was knighted in 2019 for his services to Global Health.
I ask him about how he spends that money, how to measure philanthropic impact, problems and opportunities within research funding and just how much of his job is just not messing things up.
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io
#102 Angel Investing, Money and Happiness — Dr Imran Mahmud
Dr Imran Mahmud studied Medicine at Oxford, before studying Public Health at Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship. He then ranked first in the country entering the Ophthalmology training programme — promptly leaving and joining McKinsey. In 2018 he co-founded NYE Health, raising over £4M. He is now a startup advisor, angel investor, digital health consultant and content creator.
We speak about angel investing — which was traditionally a way in which high net worth individuals could invest in small startups — but is now becoming possible for many more people. We speak about the digital nomad post-economic lifestyle — and whether doing whatever you want, wherever you want actually makes you happy. And one of my favourite one of Imran’s principles: To be interesting, do interesting things.
I hope you enjoy.
0:00 Intro
0:49 How to angel invest
06:47 Can anyone angel invest?
10:46 To be interesting, do interesting things
12:43 Does money buy happiness?
16:40 Does freedom make you happy?
19:47 Is homeschooling weird?
23:52 Why are successful people making content?
29:20 Content creation as a competitive advantage
32:07 Better to know how to code or know how to make content?
33:19 Managing your ego
35:43 Habits that have helped you in your career?
You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io