On this week's episode, Dom and Becca are joined by Eli Ben-Joseph, the co-founder and CEO of Regard, a startup that uses AI to streamline the clinical side of medicine that's hoping to reduce physician burnout. Eli talked about his journey from deciding to forgo attending medical school because of the very issue he then decided to build a company to fix years later. He also talked about why it was important for them to build an AI model that requires a human touch and what it is like to sell to hospitals.
On this week's episode, Dom and Becca are joined by Eli Ben-Joseph, the co-founder and CEO of Regard, a startup that uses AI to streamline the clinical side of medicine that's hoping to reduce physician burnout. Eli talked about his journey from deciding to forgo attending medical school because of the very issue he then decided to build a company to fix years later. He also talked about why it was important for them to build an AI model that requires a human touch and what it is like to sell to hospitals.
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Becca Szkutak 0:02
Hello, everyone, welcome to found TechCrunch his podcast where we bring you the stories behind the startups. today. I'm joined as always by the lovely the fabulous, though, what was she doing last weekend? Always looks cool.
Dom Davis 0:14
Dominic Midori Davis.
Becca Szkutak 0:16
Hey, Dom, how's it going?
Dom Davis 0:17
I'm good, how are you?
Becca Szkutak 0:18
I'm good, fighting the pollen fighting the elements. But here to live another day and tell another startup founder story and excited for this one. I am excited for this one as well. Today, we've got a very fun guest. We're talking to Eli Ben Joseph, who is the co founder of regard which is a software company developing an AI copilot for physicians to help diagnose medical conditions in a quest to help reduce burnout. And here's our conversation with Eli.
Hey, Eli, how's it gone?
Eli Ben-Joseph 0:52
Hey, I'm doing great. How are you?
Becca Szkutak 0:54
I'm doing great. And I apologize, because I saw you were from the Boston area. So I am also from the Boston area. So I have to ask, Where are you from?
Eli Ben-Joseph 1:02
I grew up in Acton, Massachusetts. How about you?
Becca Szkutak 1:06
I grew up in Georgetown near Newburyport. But I have family living in Acton right now. So I've been over there a fair amount. Oh, wow. Nice. No, you always you got to ask it's too small of a state to not in my opinion.
Eli Ben-Joseph 1:19
It is a small state.
Becca Szkutak 1:21
But looking more toward what we're actually here to talk about, because I could bore you to death with the Bruins and some other fun Boston crap as well. We're here to talk about regard. So Eli, maybe tell us about regard and what the company does.
Eli Ben-Joseph 1:34
Sure. Yeah, well, nice to meet you both. So regard is a company that we started about six years ago, to help doctors and nurses use the data that they have access to in their medical record more efficiently. You may have seen news articles about how burnout in the clinical workforce is at an all time high. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the medical record systems that they have access to weren't actually designed for the doctors and nurses. And now, with so much data that's available. They're struggling to get through everything with so many patients they need to see every day, they're struggling to get through all the work they need to do and are burning out as a result. So we started this company to directly address that issue.
Becca Szkutak 2:19
And that's such an interesting piece of text. I know, as you mentioned, burnout. I mean, we've been hearing about that, especially since the pandemic physician burnout has become a much bigger part of the health care conversation, which is good, because I'm sure this was an issue, obviously, way before that you guys started the company to fix it before the pandemic, of course, but I'm curious thinking about physician burnout, why was this the area to focus on to improve that? And maybe like, Was this your first idea to focus on sort of being able to like use medical records more efficiently? Or did you kind of end up landing in this area? I'm just curious how you got this specific?
Eli Ben-Joseph 2:53
Yeah, let me give a little bit of a backstory, because that kind of explains how we got here. So me and my two co founders all had a similar path. We all were engineering students in undergrad, we all were pre med students, all three of us took the MCAT entrance exam. And one of us even got into medical school. And all three of us on our own, hit the brakes, and you turned. And when we connected a couple of years after school, we bonded over that and said, That's interesting. Why were we pushed away from what traditionally has been a great career path? And for all three of us the answer was the same. The answer was that when we were doing shadowing of doctors and nurses in the hospital, we found that a lot of them just weren't very happy. And that scared us off. And that was about 10 years ago now. So it's only gotten worse. And you know, to commit to a career, that's so much of your life, to potentially not be happy, was scary. And we thought about what's going on there. My grandfather was a physician, and he loved his job. And I think a lot of people from that generation loved being a doctor. So something has happened in the last couple of decades, where the job has become much more focused on administrative work on dealing with insurance, on coding and billing, and not as much on what I think is the true joy of health care, which is taking care of patients. So that was kind of the starting point. We then just had a simple daydream of what does the doctor of the future look like? I guess I'd love to ask you both because I'm always curious to hear what people think. If you imagine going into a doctor or what healthcare could look like in 20 or 30 years. What what comes to mind?
Dom Davis 4:34
Oh, I have no idea.
Becca Szkutak 4:36
No, it's something I have found interesting about this space, but you guys are not doing which I think is a good thing is some of those new startups that are like, Oh, it's the dentist but it's beautiful. So you want to go more and it's like, no, the dental work is what I didn't like about the dentist, not what the office looks like.
Dom Davis 4:52
You missed the point.
Becca Szkutak 4:54
I am curious about what that would look like. I mean, I'm assuming stuff would just be Oh, you Want to see faster? But that isn't always the best answer, I guess, like faster wait times maybe. Right?
Eli Ben-Joseph 5:05
Hopefully, hopefully. it should be.
Dom Davis 5:07
Yeah. But because assuming like from a US focus, what is it about the job of being a physician? And if in healthcare right now that has made it such a burnout experience, and has completely changed the way even doctors feel about themselves within the past few decades?
Eli Ben-Joseph 5:21
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple macro trends that are going on that are leading to this, there's a couple studies that have come out in the last few years. The first one shows that now for every hour that a doctor spends with a patient, they need to spend two hours on their computer. So that's one result of what's going on. And the other one is now for every doctor in the hospital, there's, I believe, eight or 10 administrators to work with them. Geez. Yeah. So there's been this huge administrative overhead that's kind of grown. And one of the trends that's caused this is that there's so much data now, in the medical record, you know, a couple of decades ago, it just wasn't as prevalent. Most of the charts were on paper. And I think it's a good thing, that there's more data available, because that allows the doctors and nurses to actually get a better sense of what's going on. The problem is, is that the electronic medical records, were not actually designed for physician and nurse workflows. They were designed for helping hospitals stay compliant and helping them bill. So a mix of that, plus the fact that private health insurance is hard to deal with. And Ain't that the truth? Yep. A lot of physicians need to spend a ton of time making sure they have the right documentation to avoid a denial denials have become something that has been an ongoing battle for the hospitals and the physicians to deal with. And that is another reason that the administrative burden has increased so much.
Becca Szkutak 6:43
And sort of thinking about when you guys came together and had this common realization and started formulating the idea for the company, what did it look like to actually build? How did the three of you figure out how to divide and conquer how to approach this problem to build it out from the idea?
Eli Ben-Joseph 6:58
Yeah, so our vision is that the majority of basic medicine should be automated, that technology should be used to really empower the doctors and nurses who are using it. So an analogy I like to use if you've watched the Iron Man movies, it's kind of like having Jarvis helping the doctor, not replacing, I think that it were far from replacing with technology, but rather augmenting them. And we felt strongly that technology was in a place that it could do that. So that has always been our guiding vision is to create a product that the doctors who use it would really love. And that really amplifies their abilities. We started we got really fortunate and got admitted to the Cedars Sinai TechStars accelerator program in the very early days. And they actually gave us access to the whole hospital and to some data to start building some of the algorithms that we wanted to create and the origin story of the product. It's a fun story, I was shadowing a physician in the hospital and following him on the rounds. And observing how he did his workflow. And it went something like he would open the door and pop his head into the patient room and say hi, go back to his computer and spend 10 minutes typing. And then he'd do the same thing for the next patient and the next patient. And as I was observing him writing his notes, I started seeing that he was kind of writing a lot of the same things over and over again. So as someone trained in computer science, you're taught that if you have to do something a couple times, you should automate it. So I naively asked him the question, can I write code that does what you're doing? And he said, Of course you can. And I said, What do you mean, of course, you're a doctor, you went to four years of medical school, you train for another four years, it seems really complicated. And he said, Listen, 90% of medicine is data driven, and algorithmic. And that was the lightbulb moment that came to my head. And I said, This is it. This is the product we could build. We can help them do this at 90%. So they can focus on the really complicated and the really human aspects of medicine.
Becca Szkutak 8:57
And so thinking a little bit about the journey from there, it looks like it took you guys a couple of years to kind of develop this and sort of start getting people on it. What was that like? And what roadblocks or hurdles Did you run into, as you were starting to put
Eli Ben-Joseph 9:09
this together, so many roadblocks and hurdles, especially in healthcare, it's such a complicated and nuanced industry. The first roadblock was just trying to convince a hospital to even give us a shot. Again, we were lucky to be in the Cedar Sinai program, but we didn't really have a product that we had the idea. So we spent about a year building and at the same time, sending a lot of cold emails to healthcare administrators saying hey, I think we have something that could really help your doctors. And we got again, very lucky that one physician responded, a medical director, and he said I really passionate about this, and I want to help you make this happen. And through a lot of sheer force of will and not giving up it took us about a year to convince that hospital, the administrators that this is worth the risk and you know To us, it was like we had to do it. But looking back, it's amazing that we were able to convince a hospital to give us a shot at actually trying a new product on real patients. So that whole process of convincing the administrators integrating with the medical record is a huge, huge pain the first time you do it getting access to live patients that took us almost two years to do. So that was a long, tedious process.
Dom Davis 10:22
I can only imagine how just like I don't know, crazy, that whole process is especially like dealing with everybody and all the hoops you had to jump. What does that internally look like? So you reach out to a doctor, you cold call the doctor. And then what happens? Like who do you have to go through in order to get access to all of the things that you need, because I imagine it's just so like, I don't even know,
Eli Ben-Joseph 10:44
there's so many so many hoops, that's the right way to put it. First, it was a couple of meetings just with this doctor to convince him that what we're doing isn't too crazy, and that we're the right team. So that took a few sessions. And then once he was a believer, he had to then pull a lot of his own political capital, the amount of politics that goes on in hospitals is kind of crazy. I didn't expect it, it makes sense. Now looking back, but the amount of people you need to convince the different threads, you have to go down. So here we go through the first layer of administration, all the way up to like the C level where we had their CIO in the meetings, convincing them that we're not going to break their system, then we had various security meetings, we had to go through documentation to allow them to share medical data with us safely. So I don't even remember, it was probably a dozens of meetings. But what's really frustrating is that healthcare also moves at a very slow pace. So the gap between each meeting was almost a month. So while it was 12 meetings, it was 12 months of waiting for each one to happen. So it was a lot of patience required on our side, too.
Speaker 3 11:46
Oh, my goodness. How many hospitals are you working with now?
Speaker 2 11:50
Now we're live in almost 30. So we launched the product about three years ago. And we've fortunately seen really rapid growth. It's one of those things where once you get the first one, the second one's much easier than the third one, it gets even easier. So things have been growing nicely for us since then.
Speaker 3 12:04
Yeah, I was gonna ask, have you had to do this 30 times then? Or?
Speaker 2 12:08
It gets so much better after the first couple. Yeah, we've also learned so much, you know, the Epic and Cerner are the two leading medical records. And the first time we worked with them, we had no idea how to integrate. So we had to learn a lot. The first integration we did with the medical record took almost a year now we can do them in a month. So we've gotten very fast. We also learned how to work the process. What's crazy is that a lot of hospitals don't know how to work with companies like us is something that we learned. So we've realized that to help, we need to actually kind of hold the hand and say, Okay, let's go talk to your security team. Now let's go talk to the administrator. Now let's go talk to the doctors. And that has helped a ton as well.
Becca Szkutak 12:48
Yeah, cuz that's what I was gonna ask. Because I know like, you chat with like a b2b company that's selling software. So I feel like I always accidentally like shit on the b2b software space on this podcast, which I do not mean to do. But like, if you're going to say sell the sales force, they have so much money put aside for that kind of stuff. I'm not saying the pitch is easy, but it's definitely a little different than something with so much nuance, like a product like yours is. I mean, I don't think of hospitals as being like the big cash cows that have a ton of money to just spend on innovation, even though they want it. And so I'm curious kind of like, Is there something you came across while pitching these hospitals that really seemed to like strike a chord, like maybe changed how you guys pitched from there on out? Was there something that came up that made it seem like it was a way to get hospitals on board?
Eli Ben-Joseph 13:33
Yeah, two things. So the first thing is actually times have changed a little bit, even since we launched, like the burnout situation has really come to a breaking point. And finances hospitals actually struggled a lot the last two years. And the great thing about our product is that we address both burnout, and we help ease some of the financial burden because we make doctors more efficient. So we see financial benefits as well. So from a sales perspective, we say, hey, we know you're having these two really big problems, and we actually can help address them directly. So that has helped a lot. And the other thing is a lot of sales in health care is about social proof. So now that we have multiple partners, someone has told me once that the worst pitch by one of their own is going to be better than the best pitch that you give. And that's very true in healthcare, where if I can pull in one of our client reference sites, and they can talk to a new potential client that will move the ball forward much faster than anything I could possibly say.
Becca Szkutak 14:30
No, definitely. And thinking about feedback you've gotten, do you still feel like some hospital systems and other kind of healthcare providers are resistant to adding in automation. I know automation includes things like AI, which I know obviously a big buzzword right now, but it's seen as being a lot of people really into it around a lot of people looking to adopt it. You also have a huge group of people who are nervous about it and who are sort of concerned about what could be done if left unchecked or sort of not have the proper guardrails in place, so I'm curious one if you guys still get some kind I don't I say pushback might not be the right word. But like you still get a lot of questions or still find people not so sure about going down this path. And I'm curious how you think about that whole broader conversation about concerns around AI, too?
Eli Ben-Joseph 15:12
Yeah, it's a good question. For the first part, when we first started the company, there was more of that, where people were a little bit more cautious about bringing in AI or automation of some sort. But recently, in the last probably a year or so almost not, I think the public has really adopted to the fact that AI is going to be around and everyone should learn how to use it the right way. And if you don't learn it, how to use it the right way you may be left behind. So it's been interesting to see how that's changed over the last few years, where today, there's almost no pushback. In fact, it's almost a tailwind where now even healthcare systems are saying we recognize we need to figure out how to use this. And we're really interested to talk to you in terms of the repercussions of using AI, it's a really interesting topic that I spend a lot of time on when we build our models. So one thing that you've probably heard of a chat GPT is the hallucinations. thing, right. So that's because the way that large language models work is that it doesn't always produce the same output given an input. And there's a lot of concerns about that in the clinical space where any mistake could cause someone harm. So we specifically when we created our algorithms made sure that they would always produce the same output if you give them the same inputs. And the second thing that we ensured is that everything that we created went through a very rigorous validation process with a team of doctors that we work with, to make sure that they all look at it and agree that this is going to be helpful, and not something that could harm a patient
Speaker 3 16:41
On the topic of AI because I was looking at your product, and I was trying to this might not even have anything to do with it. But I was trying to see what the conversation of addressing and finding bias looks like because bias and healthcare is such a big fear and topic, especially regarding AI and how it kind of reinforces what doctors already do. And so since your product addresses what doctors are already doing, I was just interested to see your thoughts kind of on that and how your product touches addresses or in the future if it will ever intersect with that.
Eli Ben-Joseph 17:13
Yes, another good question. We were pretty mindful of this from the early days and wanted to make sure not to build algorithms with bias. So the way we have addressed that to date is two ways. One is our team of physicians itself is a diverse team. So when we create any algorithms and the outputs of those algorithms, we make sure that it's not just one person who is giving the stamp of approval, that there's always at least two or three people who review it and make sure that there isn't any kind of bias that's been built into it. So that's one thing that we do to try to mitigate that. The second thing is we do not currently allow our algorithms to self learn, we gate. So we get all the feedback we see when they reject or accept a condition that we present to them. But we don't let it automatically improve itself just yet. Because we are aware of this problem and want to make sure that it doesn't go off on some random direction without us knowing. So we'll gather the feedback. But then we still have a human in the loop to make sure that when we're going to improve an algorithm, it's the right thing to do.
Becca Szkutak 18:12
That's super interesting, because I know that's obviously like one of the biggest fears people have about not just AI and healthcare, but like AI in general. Like I was chatting recently with someone about an AI relationship coach. And he was saying he was like, Well, what if three people in a row are using this and the AI chatbot ends up telling them to like, oh, just go bug those women try to get them to sleep with you. And he's like, and then one of that becomes a response to literally every question, if there's no guardrails in place like that could get. So relationships, obviously not as heavy as healthcare by any means. But like things can get real weird, real fast. And so it is really interesting to hear about that human touch. But I'm curious how you think about scale in that way, then, if you are planning, obviously, to keep growing the company, but still keep that human touch, which I think is really relevant and important in this space. How do you think about scaling that part of the business?
Eli Ben-Joseph 19:04
Yeah, the advantage that we have is that you don't need to move super fast and healthcare. Oh, true. So that there's some positives to it as well. So once we have an algorithm that we think is good and is working, we don't need to change it every month to like, keep up with the paces. I think that medicine is a conservative industry for the right reasons, because it's always a risk to change something and we kind of can ride with that same flow where if we will always want to be updated and staying up to date as much as possible, but it kind of happens at more of a a yearly pace versus daily or monthly. So it's not too much of a concern as of now or our team can still keep up with it.
Speaker 3 19:45
We're gonna take a quick break, but don't even think about tuning out because when we get back Eli talks about why pitching hospitals is way easier than pitching VCs, how he and his co founders worked out who would be CEO and how they've grown from the early days of building out of Eli's garage apartment. So you've done a lot of pitching to hospitals, I'm now interested in what was it like pitching the VCs? And also, were you pitching hospitals and VCs at the same time? And was that kind of like stressful?
Speaker 2 20:13
I have done both at the same time. I have done both. Yes. It's interesting with pitching to hospitals, especially nowadays, most we have our story kind of more baked in and some proof behind us, that's usually the the easier pitch to do, because they inherently understand the value that our product can bring them. But it's really fun to pitch hospitals, because the product sells itself, I have realized that I don't need to have slides, I don't need to talk about numbers, I just open up the product and let them see it. And for most meetings, they say, Wow, this is really cool. We want to bring this in somehow. For investors, it's a little bit different. The early days were really hard. We didn't have any proof. We were just, you know, a few people working together trying to make this dream come true. And I remember the first time I went out to fundraise, I think I was told no 65 times before I had my first Yes. And it was a very tough process to deal with that. I've also gotten much better at pitching and fundraising I think since I started doing this five, six years ago, but it was hard. In the beginning, it was a lot of noes. And then finally getting that first Yes, also made me realize that it's so different than school where you have to be right all the time to get an A. But in life, you just sometimes have to wait for that first, yes. And then things start falling into place afterwards. So that was the early days when we had no proof, it was really, really hard to convince investors that there was something here. Now it's gotten easier and easier. As more proof comes behind us. More hospitals join our product to show them like this is real, this is really happening. This is a real problem. And I think investors are also now really paying a lot more attention to healthcare and burnout and the problems that we're solving are much more prevalent in people's minds. So it's become a little bit easier in that sense as well.
Becca Szkutak 21:56
Do you think the recent surge of AI or AI focus from VCs might help you guys fundraise a little easier in the next room to like definite? Are they already emailing and calling you asking you when you're raising next? Yes. Ah, imagine every other sector is jealous at the moment I think of AI, especially in this funding environment.
Eli Ben-Joseph 22:17
Definitely. Yeah, I have it's been a noticeable shift.
Becca Szkutak 22:21
No, and that's not interesting thinking about fundraising journey to I'm curious, did you ever get questions about the fact that you guys were building in healthcare? And that was all a career you guys like, almost entered? But didn't? Did that ever become a factor? Because I feel like I mean, we've talked about it multiple times I was called healthcare is such a different animal than some of the other industries out there so much nuance, so much regulation, did that ever become a hurdle for you guys that you've never actually ended up working in the space prior?
Eli Ben-Joseph 22:48
In the early days? Absolutely. Absolutely. So many people are asking us, why are you doing this? None of you are doctors. Why are you doing this? You don't have any experience in this space. What's interesting is, and I think this is the case for most industries, that once you kind of learn to walk the walk and talk the talk, you learn the lingo, you learn some of the names of the people in the space, it matters less and less, probably, it was an issue for us the first year or two. But as we kind of became more experts in the space and learned how to speak the language of healthcare, it has become a non issue. So now when I meet, even with doctors, I helped write some of the code for our early algorithms. And when I go down and meet some of the doctors, I can understand most of what they're saying to me, or maybe half of what they're saying to me. And just being able to relate a language level with the words that they use, both in the executive and physician layer allows you to make that Connection with people. So it doesn't really matter anymore.
Dom Davis 23:47
It seems really like the process and journey of starting a business is always so up and down. And especially in an industry like health care. I'm really interested to know how did you meet your co founders and know that they were the ones you wanted to go on this journey with?
Eli Ben-Joseph 24:01
Yeah, so one of my co founders, my CTO, Thomas, I met him almost 20 years ago. Now. We were college friends back at MIT. And him and I have always had an interest in technology and in health care. You know, we didn't start this company until many years after. But whenever I had ideas in the space, I'd always chat with him about it. So there was this kind of natural draw between me and him on the health technology side. So when I started working on this, the timing just worked out really nicely, where he had just left a job. And I said, Hey, I'm kind of starting to dig into this project. I don't know where it's going to go, but it's exciting and you may be interested and he started working with me and never stopped. So that's how, that's how he joined and then my other co founder, Nate, who's our CIO. He is a friend that I met also now quite a few years ago, when I was living in Boston, and we met through mutual friends. I used to work in consulting my first job And I quit and took a year off. And Nate was also a consultant at a different firm. But he had similarly quit and was taking a year off. And we were both funemployed together, and we kind of just became fast friends, and similarly had that same interest in engineering meets health. And when the timing worked out, for us to work together, when I'm looking back that it kind of is amazing that there's this window of time, where I was interested in building something. And both of them happen to be in places in their careers where they are also open to working on something new. And it kind of worked itself out. Looking back, it all made sense. It made sense at the moment. But looking back, I see how there's a lot of good fortune that the timing worked out
Becca Szkutak 25:43
that is really interesting. And think of like meeting someone and hanging out in them while you're both taking a gap year and then being like, what should we do next. And it's like, literally launch a startup, which is like the hardest job to get back into, as opposed to just coming back to the field you're in. So what was it like the three of you guys actually building this company? Especially, as you mentioned, if two of you came from the consulting space, obviously, that looks pretty different from what you guys ended up doing? What was it like making that switch? And sort of what did you learn along the way?
Eli Ben-Joseph 26:10
Yeah, in the beginning, I mean, it was fun, honestly, the whole time when you when you work with people you like to work with, and you're working on an interesting project, I think that it should hopefully be fun. There are many, many days where we are asking ourselves, what are we doing, who's going to buy this, this is such a long road to even just getting a hospital to pay attention to us. But we were just initially excited about the vision that we had and happy to work together. It was hard, though, you know, I didn't have much savings left at the time as living in a garage in San Francisco. And they would come over to my garage room. And we kind of just work together and five, six months in, we were excited about the space. But we just kept hitting this wall where it was so hard to get a hospital to pay attention to us like they're such conservative institutions. There's no way they're going to pay attention to three guys in a garage in San Francisco. For other industries that may be appealing a pro almost Yeah, exactly. And healthcare is not it's the opposite. So we got again, very fortunate that we were admitted to this Cedars Sinai accelerator, I really think that if we hadn't been, I don't know if we would have made it. So that program really allowed us to launch into the next level.
Becca Szkutak 27:20
And knowing that you originally wanted to be a doctor, that was probably obviously the career path, you were thinking of going to school what you wanted to do with your life. Did you ever think you would end up in entrepreneurship? Or did it ever even cross your mind you might found a company someday and sort of falling onto that, especially found a company in an area that you ended up deciding you did not want to work the rest of your life, and you decided not to go to medical school and then decided you know what, I might as well just work in this field anyway.
Eli Ben-Joseph 27:48
Yeah, I didn't think about it at all in college or high school or anything like that. It was actually when I did consulting, I was living in San Francisco. And it's really hard not to have the startup bug bite when you're living in San Francisco for a few years. The other thing that inspired me was a lot of my friends went off and started companies while I was doing consulting, and I was seeing them have these really exciting paths, whether they succeeded or failed, it was still exciting. And I knew a lot of them. And I said, Well, I know those guys. And you know, I think I could do what they do, because I know them and it helped made it more approachable. So that's when it first bit and I didn't jump right into it, you know, right after consulting, it took some time off, and they've gone to grad school for a bit. But it always was living in the back of my mind, there was some voice deep down saying you gotta try this. I remember being a various crossroads in my life before starting this company, where you could really clearly see one or two paths in front of you. And it was hard to choose. What I personally like to do when I'm stuck at a decision point is what I call it, the deathbed exercise where you imagine yourself at the end of your life. And you are looking back at today. And you ask yourself, which path would I wish I have taken? And I was deciding between going into industry or going into startups. And when I put myself into that mind state of which path would I wish I've taken, I realized that it was very clear that I wanted to at least give it a shot of building my own thing.
Dom Davis 29:10
Yeah. And in terms of passion and skill set going back a little bit to you and your co founders, how did you break up? Who was going to be what? And how did you match your skills to the titles?
Eli Ben-Joseph 29:21
Yeah, so for Thomas, it was obvious, he was by far the best engineer between the three of us. So it made sense that he was going to be the CTO with Nate and I there was a lot of overlap. And for the first few months, we actually just kind of didn't talk about it. And we just wanted to see if this is even going somewhere before we had the discussion, because I think we both knew that we had an interest and there's a lot of overlap. So at the end of the day, I remember going on like an hour long walk with Nate and we finally had the discussion. And I think both of us were interested in having the CEO position. And my pitch was that what we're building is going to be a very technical product and I had a more rigorous technical background than he did. And also a bit of the business side having been a consultant as well. And I said, I think for this business is going to be best for us to have someone in leadership that can understand both sides of it, we came to an agreement. And it's been a happy path since that,
Becca Szkutak 30:16
and thinking about the space you guys are building. And honestly, we've been talking about it throughout the call, but how has it been being an entrepreneur in the healthcare space, because healthcare has changed so much, even before the pandemic, obviously, the pandemic made a huge difference in sort of how people think or interact or feel about the healthcare system in general. So what has it been like building in a space that has changed so rapidly since you guys got started?
Eli Ben-Joseph 30:39
It's been fun, it's been good, I think the changes that are happening are building the momentum behind what we're doing. So in the beginning, some people again understood the value of what we're doing, the pandemic caused a huge shift in people's focus on health care, and what's going on in health care, which I think is a positive for us as well, because there's a lot of things that are broken in healthcare today, and a lot of really important problems that are broken, and so many places for companies or people to come in and potentially solve. There's just so much going on in this space. It's such a massive industry that needs a lot of help. Now, you know, a couple years post pandemic, we're seeing that momentum and the AI momentum kind of converging, where there's this interest in health, there's an interest in AI, and that really is helping us as a business. And the conversations have gotten more and more interesting. As a result,
Dom Davis 31:28
we I was literally about to ask that. Like, it just dawned on me that three years ago was the pandemic and I was like, wait a minute, you are pitching and building this, like in the heat of the pandemic, calling up all the hospitals, while they are dealing with just so much stuff that must have been a wild, wild journey and experience
Becca Szkutak 31:45
no matter it took a month between each meeting? Yeah,
Eli Ben-Joseph 31:48
yeah. What was interesting is that the doctors really, really wanted this because they were the ones that had to deal with these crazy patient censuses, they had so much on their plate, what was really cool to see is that we actually launched in a couple of hospitals before the pandemic hit. And the doctors who are using our product in those hospitals, were telling us how much it has been a lifesaver for them, because they're able to process the data that need to go through much more efficiently. And well, it was harder to convince new hospitals during the pandemic to look at us because they were so busy just taking care of patients, it actually helped build a huge support network for people who were actively using our product.
Becca Szkutak 32:29
And I think a good final question to wrap up on is you guys have gotten this far. And as you mentioned, healthcare and AI, like people are just more interested in both of those spaces and sort of how they meet now than, say, three years ago. And so how are you thinking about the future of the company?
Eli Ben-Joseph 32:44
Yeah, I would say that the path that we're on hasn't really changed much. I think people are just paying attention to more now, which is great. We believe that every doctor should have access to our technology, what we're seeing with their users that are using it is that it's really is reducing burnout, we have studies showing that it reduces burnout, we have studies showing that it helps with patient care that almost every single doctor on our product has a story where they used our technology, and they saw something they wouldn't have seen. And they were able to change the course of care because of it. And on the financial piece. Because doctors are working more efficiently. It's having benefits for the health system too. So for us, the path is still there of we want to get this into the hands of as many doctors and nurses as possible, because they really do think that what we're building is having a positive impact on the way healthcare practice is done. So for us, it's still march forward and try to get out there as much as we can.
Becca Szkutak 33:39
We love a company that has the receipts to show that it works. So that is a good place to wrap up on. And thank you so much, Eli, this has been super fun. And maybe we'll get to have you on later for an update.
Eli Ben-Joseph 33:52
Sounds great. It was nice to meet you both. This is fun.
Becca Szkutak 34:00
And that was our conversation with Eli. Dom, what did you think
Dom Davis 34:02
I really liked the company. And I really liked Eli as a founder too.
Becca Szkutak 34:06
Ya know, it's very sweet having someone start a company in an industry that they were like, yep, that's what I'm gonna do with my life. I'm going to be a doctor, I'm going to go to medical school, and then realizing that it wasn't for you and not just abandoning it entirely, but instead being like, actually, I cared about so much that I'm going to come back and found a company to make it better.
Dom Davis 34:26
I know, right? Like, I know, that was really, really cool. And it seems like him and his co founders, they found something that works and fits and there's a need for and there's a market demand and response to it.
Becca Szkutak 34:40
Yeah. And I thought it was super interesting sort of him finding these co founders because I know usually if they're gonna talk to companies about like, oh, who decided what co founder was going to be what they're all like, oh, so easy. Everyone leans to one specific side. Like of course, John was the CTO and Jennifer was the CEO and you're like, is it really that easy? So it's always either No, it's always nice when founders are very transparent about being like, oh, yeah, no two of us wanted to be the CEO. And we like, went back and forth and like figure out a plan that actually worked. Because, one, it's a sign that they can disagree with each other and sort of work it out, which is obviously a totally needed skill to build a company. But also just I think that's probably more common than people. Let us hear about
Dom Davis 35:19
Yes, I know. I was like, I want this I want what is it? The drama, The succession? I want all of it. Tell me the truth.
Becca Szkutak 35:26
I'm like, I'm sure almost every time like all the co founders want to be the CEO.
Dom Davis 35:29
Yeah, I was really happy to be honest about that, too. Because I'm like, what, you just start a company and no one was fighting to be the CEO. I was like, come on, you all want it the CEO job.
Becca Szkutak 35:37
I know. So it's always good to hear about people being like, no, yeah, you're right. Like, this is how it actually is. And it's like, okay, it's I love it. I love the transparency. But speaking on that note, something else that I thought was really great that he talked about is when it comes to their AI algorithm, obviously. I mean, I don't need to tell you this. I don't tell the listeners this AI is the soup du jour of the venture community right now. Like everyone wants a piece of it. People are being super irresponsible. Not everyone. Of course, a lot of people are building ethically and trying to make a real difference. But every hype cycle, you get the people sneaking in on the sides doing something that could cause real damage and be really unethical with new tech that maybe doesn't have the guardrails and doesn't sort of have what it needs to be successful. And the way that he talks about how they built their model just was so refreshing. And oh, no, it's still human team, which is exactly what we got when we talked with authentics a few weeks ago. So it's like really nice to hear of these, like companies in healthcare being like, No, we get how important this is, and need that human touch no matter what. So it's curious what you thought about that?
Dom Davis 36:40
No, yes. Once again, everyone who's like AI is going to take over the robots are here, once again, we have a founder saying like, no, humans are still very much here and need it to kind of like, moderate things. So I love that I love this thinking in terms of bias and talking about the repercussions and kind of how because healthcare moves so slow, they kind of have a lot of time to think and you know, train the models and play with them a bit and get them I don't know if right is the right word for an AI model. But like, there's there's time here, but they're really conscious of it. And so that's a positive. That's really good.
Becca Szkutak 37:16
Especially, I thought the most interesting part of this, for me was the fact that if the AI system gives a physician or recommendation and the physician doesn't take it, that it doesn't automatically train the AI model. Because yeah, that's I think, was so much healthcare stuff. Like I mean, God forbid, you look up what is wrong with you, if you have a headache, like how many 1000s of things come up? Like it's so smart that it could be like, Oh, no, like, maybe they didn't talk about this one thing that the doctor can see on the person and like, the AI would no accident write down like, I don't know, there's just like so many variables here, especially when you're talking about like diagnosing a patient that I thought having that extra like human touch to be like, No, we make sure it doesn't learn from itself. Because there's too much nuance is like, that's so smart, in my opinion,
Dom Davis 38:01
especially when like race and gender is put into it. It's like, we definitely do not need this AI model training itself. And so yeah, that was really cool. And also, what I loved about it was hearing his journey of pitching to hospitals, and also like pitching the actual company to investors. And what's their point when he was like, pitching to the hospitals was like, a lot easier.
Becca Szkutak 38:22
Yeah, no, that's always what's so interesting. Like, it kind of exposes one of like, ventures, weak spots, I've always found because if like, they don't think the company really like they were struggling to see like, why this company would be like, needed by hospitals. But then like, they pitch a hospital and the hospital is like, Oh, my God, we need this so bad. It's like, there's such a disconnect there then, because it's like, obviously, this company needs the funding to grow. Because it's got customers like begging to use it. I know that it is a long process to like, get them on board. But I thought that was really interesting. That disconnect kind of always fascinates me in different categories.
Dom Davis 38:55
I know. And it's like really prevalent all the time. And so that's why No, it was just funny to hear that the hospitals are like, yes, I've been waiting my whole life for this. I know.
Becca Szkutak 39:04
And VCs are like, no, no, no, I don't know if people want this. I don't know, maybe call hospital do some due diligence.
Dom Davis 39:11
I also loved that, you know, and that this was another healthcare founder that we spoke to that was, you know, doing all of this during the pandemic. And it was really interesting to kind of hear all the steps he had to go through talking to the hospitals during what is like one of the worst health crisis we will see in our lifetimes, and seeing kind of how slow things move, but also how the hospitals also saw how necessary this was, and it was like, Okay, we're going to do what we can to get this through the doors. And that was kind of like, I don't know, it's like drama tension a little bit,
Becca Szkutak 39:41
ya know, and it's funny too, because I'm sure like the slow sales process is like super frustrating for the company and also frustrating for the people at the hospital who probably like No, they'll end up implementing it, but it's like, you still have to talk to 12 people in the meantime, kind of thing like that whole. We have a process you can't get around it but at the same time it is also just always good to hear that the hospitals are taking like that much care in implementing new tech especially because obviously like we mentioned like this is taking such a ethical approach to bringing AI into the healthcare setting but a lot aren't. So it's like hospitals probably getting pitched like real out there startups are like data stealing XYZ. So as much as it's probably frustrating and was for regard like, as a consumer, like, I'm like, Okay, I'm not super mad that healthcare institutions are like that intentional about like, who they're picking to work with.
Dom Davis 40:31
I know, I actually loved it. Because like, I was in mind, I was like, how do you pitch a hospital? Do you just like, show up? And you're like, hey, I have this new thing. And then what? Like, how does that even work? I don't know.
Becca Szkutak 40:41
I know. And like, I always remember like, we think of hospitals as healthcare but this is the US like hospitals or businesses it'll surface the most part so it Yeah, I just like a really interesting customer. Like I wonder if they'll ever expand out and do like other types of health care providers. That may be like a easier sell if you got like a practice group of physicians or something. But hospitals are definitely like, seems like one of the hardest kind of customers to target.
Dom Davis 41:06
And, you know, there is one thing that I was thinking about in terms of talking about like doctors and mental health and stuff because it seems like there's this little aspect of the American dream where you know, you you want to be like a doctor, a lawyer banker, and you want to go into these really good industries and so hearing kind of how the state of what it means to be a doctor in the US today, it makes me wonder a little bit about that aspect of the American dream where it's like do people now I guess want to go behind the scenes more or do more of the technological aspects of it because being a doctor in itself is no longer what it used to be? Or what does it mean today now, but I don't know. No, it's
Becca Szkutak 41:43
such a good point. Like those are the kind of fields really like a similar flavor to the oh people in the US pushed going to college so hard for so long that like we're gonna have a shortage of people working as like electricians and stuff like that even though those jobs are like really great and really necessary and yet like just like changing that narrative like that one problem and now like so many people are turned off from it and it's it'd be a bummer if that happened in healthcare with like what we're seeing now with burnout and stuff but hopefully stuff like regard at least will help be able to change those narratives a little bit and won't keep some of those people who would be interested in doing it from not taking the plunge.
Dom Davis 42:20
Yeah, agreed. We definitely don't need a doctor shortage. We need everyone. You know, we need more stuff like this, right? Help them, help them.
Becca Szkutak 42:28
Please help them. Found is hosted by myself. TechCrunch Senior Reporter Becca Skuta. Alongside Senior Reporter Dominic Midori Davis founders produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Kell. our Illustrator is Bryce Durbin. Found's audience development and social media is managed by Morgan Little, Alyssa Stringer and Natalie Christman. TechCrunch's audio products are managed by Henry Pickavet. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.
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