Big Picture Medicine

Konstantin started Kaia Health after paying $50,000 to cure his back pain at an elite pain rehab centre. It worked. But it seemed stupid. Why did this need to cost $50,000? Kaia Health has since raised $125M and helped 625,000 users. 0:00 The 90 second story 1:22 How did he grow 20% every week? 2:15 Market timing is everything 7:43 We never put pressure on this making any money 10:51 How does an app cure back pain? 14:43 US vs Germany for digital health entrepreneurs 16:40 Go to market of Kaia Health 19:51 Why raise so much money? 24:57 The hero license Links Kaia Health: https://kaiahealth.com/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Jon Ronson is one of the most interesting people alive today — period. He’s the author of the Men Who Stare at Goats, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test — which spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His two Ted talks have been watched 20 million times, his books have been brought to life by George Clooney on the big screen, he has written screenplays for Netflix blah blah blah. Don’t believe me, listen to a pitch Jon wrote for ‘the Psychopath Test’. If you are not dying to hear what happens next — then, I don’t what to tell you… 0:00 Jon's pitch for the Psychopath Test 1:41 Jon's story 6:00 Strategies Jon used to bypass career gatekeepers 7:03 Would Jon Ronson be on Substack/podcasting 12:05 Does Jon Ronson pay attention to analytics? Post mortems 16:26 Startup philosophy applied to storytelling 19:08 Writing Advice from Tim Ferriss: Jon's opinion on doing interesting things to write better 24:59 Does Jon Ronson like being famous? 28:49 Analysis of 'The Psychopath Test' pitch to Ira Glass 37:30 Should you make decision based on what would be a good story 38:48 Jon Ronson's habits for creative success

Max Parmentier is the CEO of Birdie, a Series B AgeTech startup who have raised $52M from the likes of Sofina, Omers Ventures and Index Ventures — and captured 10% of the UK market whilst currently scaling into Europe. 0:00 Intro 2:37 Shopify vs Amazon model in AgeTech 7:26 Product pivots: D2C never wins 11:56 Predictive AI AgeTech 13:58 I pitch an idea to Max 19:34 Lessons building Birdie 24:13 Leaving money on the table for purpose Links Birdie: https://www.birdie.care/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Tom Wicher is CEO of DrDoctor — who have served over 20M patients and just raised £10M in their recent Series A round. But he spent the first 7 years bootstrapping, and diverged from his colleagues: Opting for the slow and steady gentle disruption path. Why? 0:00 Gentle disruption beats move fast and break things 3:36 Picking a problem in healthcare 5:44 Behavioural change theory 7:52 Stop treating patients like kids 10:30 Systems-level efficiency vs personalisation 13:02 Why don't patients show up for their appointments? 16:02 Overbooking: Learning from airlines 18:54 Carrot or stick: Motivating health behaviors 22:35 There's no big conspiracy in healthcare 26:24 PIFU model of patient booking 28:14 Sometime it's better not to empower patients 31:16 Habits/frameworks that have helped Tom succeed Links DrDoctor: https://www.drdoctor.co.uk/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Drug discovery is becoming more expensive and producing less results than ever before (Eroom's Law)—why? One of the ballooning costs are clinical trials. Pharma/biotech often outsource their trials to CROs (contract research organisations). But many CROs are incentivised to make trials as bloated and inefficient as possible. That means more money and less results. Meri Beckwith is building the anti-CRO: Lindus Health—to solve this problem. 0:00 Intro 1:39 The big problem in drug discovery 4:10 Why do CROs exist? 7:24 The incentive problem in drug discovery/CROs 10:57 Pharma are anti-startups 12:11 How much a clinical trial costs 15:11 How can you compete with big CROs? 17:26 Are you going to build your own drug pipeline? 18:56 Lessons from VC to Founder 23:42 Brand/PR/Positioning as a biotech startup 29:03 Billion dollar ideas in bio/health 31:33 Habits that have helped Meri Links Lindus Health: https://www.lindushealth.com/ Meri Beckwith: https://twitter.com/meribeckwith Mithi Thaya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithi-thaya/ Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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

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 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/