AI-Powered Scheduling Revolution: Dr. Yousefi and Mesh AI in Health Tech Part 2 #startups

[Music] welcome to Delta the podcast that dives into the heart of healthare innovation each episode we bring you insightful

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opportunities Physicians spend quite some time of their training in residency or Fellowship which are considered the busiest years of their life however

managing their schedule efficiently can be logistic nightmare ensuring that residents are assigned to their right night shift taking into account their

preferences clinical requirements and the need for fair distribution it's not just a matter of convenience it's matter of patient care and Resident well-being

furthermore in many programs resident scheduling is one of the administrative tasks of Chief residents which could add up to their clinical duties another task

that has no benefit for their own professional growth this is where mesh AI steps in Dr yusfi and his team have recognized the critical importance of

streamlined resident scheduling in healthcare institutions Mesi groundbreak breaking platform is designed to alleviate the burdens associated with this process reducing staff scheduling

Time by remarkable 80% and eliminating the pain and the frustration that often accompany scheduling challenges in the last episode we talked

to Dr yusfi about the start of Mesi today we're going to discuss fundraising challenges in the healthtech industry the importance of pursuing mentorship in

the healthcare and finally inside that Dr yusf he gained throughout his journey stay tuned got when we were also talking

earlier you mentioned that your biggest investors um are your customers can you touch Pie about B fundraising I think as an academic person you applied for a grant and now as entrepreneur

fundraising is a challenge uh what has been your approach and your experience in when you secure funding for M and uh my my my understanding is you almost

like bootstrap this all of it um can you give me tips about fundraising and and how did you

bootstrap this company uh from nothing to where it is right now absolutely so I'm I'm really not the most intelligent person in this space um or knowledgeable

person in this space but I can tell you this uh for me just my background and there are different philosophies around fundraising and some are more adaptable to the situation we are in

right now in November December of 2023 with uh the the state of funding and how tight investors have become compared to 2020 to 2021 obviously different

philosophies different times timelines but my overall philosophy is being really Capital efficient being responsible with capital and uh and this

is the thing that we have embedded in everything we do at the company being responsible is one of the things we look for as I mentioned we hire people resourceful and responsible uh every single dollar matters and it doesn't

matter where that comes from from a customer H how would that go Circle back into feature development product development to help that same customer or coming from you know a safe or kiss

money through any other program that is supposed to help us grow we want we wanted to make sure that when we do this we are product Market Channel fit so we

took our time we experimented as much as needed and uh and we got to a place where we knew we had product Market Chan fit and that really changes the equation today we don't go to investors they

typically come to us and uh while we have just opened up the first investment round for mesh uh at a preed seed level uh we only talk to investors that we

think would add a strategic value to mesh so it's not just the dollars that matter for us it's what what their time Network expert

can do for uh for the product and the future of the product and the clinicians we serve and support today so um I while I'm not providing general advice My My

My overall philosophy that has worked for us is to be Capital efficient and really staying true to your philosophy and making sure that whatever money you

bring on the source of that money is going to be aligned with your underlying philosophies wow that's amazing I love how much you value it's not only about

the money it's also where the money comes from which is something I touch P because like when you bring money also bring some control you also bring some value depends on who are bringing so you might either lose control or you might

grow your network depending on where the money is coming from not all money is created equally that's that's so true I love that I'm gonna quote you not all money is created equally I love

that exactly I've seen this like I've seen it a lot I I spent so many times like I remember this startup where I was working with a group and

they were going to invest in in this startup but the problem was the founders have less than 30% and some sort of investor who does nothing have 50 plus

percent of the company and the problem is like how would you motivate the founders to do more work to grow the company they don't have enough equity in it they lost control

absolutely both Equity ownership and control absolutely key players and they could really ruin relationships at times

if they're not done properly and also take take the ship off its main track I love uh that Viewpoint that you offer

yeah I think also like going out and Building Things on your own could be sometimes challenging did you seek mentorship was there someone who helped you through this or did you do it the

hard way you figure things out by yourself it's been a mixed Ruben uh and unfortunately just mistake I think rather than repeating mistakes it's

always good to um to uh know the state of uh the art because entrepreneurship is despite you know the debate that has been going on for decades it's a

learnable skill and uh there are people who talk about genetics being big part part of it uh yeah just like everything else there's nature and nurture but I think the big part of Entrepreneurship

is the following the science of course the odds are against you and it's one in 10 or 20 companies that will go past this stage or that stage but you can you can do it right and you can follow the

science and system that is there and then you can minimize for the parts or control for the parts that you can control things that are out of your hand like pandemics and markets it's very hard to control them but you can at

least control your behavior right and what you do in response to these and how agile you are so I would say for us uh we made mistakes by by not looking into

the literature and seeking advice but you know people like Brian chesy from Airbnb Ben horovitz from uh U a16z those

are my favorite uh um people to go to or or follow when it comes to challenges um often often challenges are not new it

might be a new segment it might be a new person but the overall challenge it's been seen before done done before so it's always good to reach out through

media writings books as well as individuals if you have access to and ask for help and I truly believe in that right now uh making sure that you always have in fact this is from Brian chesy

one of the things that he talks about is that it's not it's not important to know the answer but at any moment it's it's good to know who is the best person on the planet who has the answer just

knowing that is the most important thing for growth uh and so that that really has stuck with me yeah I can agree more I think also when it comes to mentorship you you

don't need some sometimes to meet people um to learn from them uh lots of famous people like or people who achieved in this a space like wrote books and left

marks so just go and read it and that book is just it's going to be the concentrated experience of that person of course if you can meet with them um that's better but also not having a mentor that doesn't mean like you should

still figure things out on your own because like the road has been already established you have to figure out the signs I admire how much you read rupen

one day you should publish your list of favorite books in this space uh I will I'll pay for that I'll pay for that personally so i' like to see that list I

will I will I will share my entire ad and Kindle library awesome um so I I just want to also like ask about

so you've been doing this for a while and I'm sure you learned a lot I want to reflect on the lessons that you learn from this journey are there any key

lessons or insights you wish you had known earlier and what advice do you give an academic person who's sitting right now

listening to this podcast apart from the one that I mentioned really don't forget the importance of your team and find people that are complimentary to you and your skills but share the same vision and

philosophy because like I can use the analogy of religion you know making sure they've got the same religion almost but but how you know how they practice it it could be different and it should be

complimentary to you so that's I think that's the big one but um we touched on it already the other one that is very important that I had to learn this is the one I had to learn the the hard way

um is uh going narrow going focused and very narrow it's so easy to get uh pulled in different directions um because there's just so many things you

could do when you're building and uh when you're helping people uh people come to your life they cross paths with you they've got sometimes they've got exactly the same pain for which you're

building a painkiller sometimes that's not the case and really no knowing when to say no and and uh on that note one big advice that I have that I will never

forget and I share with you everybody is that when it comes to building yes of course investors are looking for multi-billion tens and hundreds of billion dollar markets that's fine and

dandy but the market we we attack the beach Head Market where you begin with should be much smaller in fact that's I think if you're looking at a market you're building for a market that is a billion dollar market you're probably

off earlier earlier stages you're probably building something that is going to impact maybe only a 10 million or 20 million dollar market and then it's from the learning and building and

getting uh credentials within that market that you can grow so of course it is very important to choose that market where you can see that's a subset of a much bigger Market you can see that

could grow that is important but you can't really think about the big Market until it's the right time and staying focused on that smaller Market or switching quickly to the next smaller

Market is really the key to success for a lot of uh um specifically software companies I would say I can't agree more I haven't founded

a company yet but this concept I heard in many books in many podcasts so far uh it takes discipline to focus on one thing and I think this comes also like whatever you're saying it it reminds me

of two books actually they talk about the same thing uh Peter Thiel in his book 0 to1 and blue oan strategy they both focus on one thing if you have a

big1 billion Market that means the competition is fierce and that's a red ocean it's a bloody ocean avoid that and

I think one of the most common um uh solar system companies uh where it's a billion dollar market but like no one so far has been succeeding uh unless like

they are Elon Musk uh so because it's a huge Market but the competition so Fierce you you can't find your Niche that's great those are those are two

great books by the way for that area yeah I could totally agree uh all right um so locating your

Target customer within the healthcare system can be very challenging Healthcare is different from selling something on Amazon where you know who's your customer Healthcare you don't know

who's going to pay for you and also persuading hospitals also to invest money in software that can handle things that already handled by Chief residents

is even more challenging can you share strategies and methods um that you employ to successfully convince

hospitals or program directors to try AI absolutely um so right now we're extremely fortunate and uh but as Louis Pastor said luck favors the prepared

mind it's probably not just luck for us the way it worked out was that you know we learned a lesson we made a bunch of mistakes we learned that we have to stay focused and uh when we started building

specifically for residency programs and a product that helps program directors and chief residents as much as it helps schedu Lee in in building what we wanted

to call adap Point collaborative scheduling uh we really uh learned that um if you do that well people will come right and people will talk so in fact

85% of our uh um demos today are coming through referrals Physicians that talk to other Physicians we don't really have to pay you know Facebook and Google and you

know expensive marketing traction channels to get to get leads majority are coming through referrals and people saying good things so we really at the

moment as we're expanding to you know go to much larger systems and selling more more Enterprise solutions that cover the entire residency programs of uh you know

um pgme programs or entire hospitals and very large Health Care Systems in Canada us that U Were launching and working

towards uh uh finishing uh the process it's been really that luxury that people had heard good things and they came to us so I think it really goes back to

that Focus uh your previous question rupen that if you keep focusing on certain individuals with very specific pain points and you do that well execute

well then then you can really benefit from that Network effect domino effect uh so that's really the thing that happened for us and we're really uh

fortunate to be able to uh grow on that wave got you um you've been in this space for a while um what trends or

emerging Technologies in healthcare or AI do you believe or do you think it it will have the most significant impact on Healthcare

and what strategies do you think also Mesi will Implement to stay in the ahead of the game that's a good one I think my answer is probably going to be a bit boring um

you know um the AI of mes is not artificial intelligence it's augmented intelligence I truly believe in in you know again I'm going to focus

on healthcare for now because going to be be a lot easier to answer the question within the boundaries of healthcare that you know Healthcare is is human focused human Centric and it's

going to stay that way but from Reading x-ray images and CD scans all the way to scheduling there is no doubt in my mind

that providing the tools to these resilient intelligent people we call Physicians and nurses and you know fellows residents it is going to be a

positive thing net for everybody there's absolutely no way around it this is happening as we speak so just making sure that when these people are making decisions being who be it who is going

to be the person who who will cover this particular anesthesiology shift on Friday or or you know what is my decision or opinion about this particular CTS scan that you could you

could enhance it you can reduce the errors you can improve the speed and quality overall by providing technology so um so I think AI is obviously going

to be a big part of it it's a buzz word that has been almost uh become synonymous with negative feelings right now because everybody tags along Ai and we're doing AI you go deep and this very

basic algorithmic work or machine learning work so we don't want to say uh that we're you know we're building the

next AI scheduler we're we're building the best easiest tool that we need today and now in in in relation to your question for the future we truly believe

the future is a future that we get rid of as much administrative and repetitive work as we can from our clinicians and really empowering our clinicians this is

the this this is the thing that I'm extremely passionate about rupen if you look at the trends you know when my grandfather used to tell me as a kid that hey things are messy now when you got sick when you were a small child

that would just give a call to a doctor and the best doctor in town would come into the house with the letter case will take care of you you know and so I think you think about this modalities of Healthcare from home healthare hospital

at home and and things like that and and you think about the trend over the past several decades what you see and we have numbers to back it up is that our clinicians are losing power they're

losing control these people who had the oath who are here to help patients the majority are here in this business because they love medicine can't make business decisions

anymore they can't even decide about very basic things from what medications they choose at times to what the followup should be next because of

business decisions because of the NBAs without any disrespect to NBAs Who Run Healthcare Systems I think that's wrong I philosophically believe medical doctors with appropriate business

training should lead Healthcare Systems because they understand it they they're they're in it for the right reasons so I think um where we're going is really in that direction really taking taking

these processes making them as easy as possible with what we call augmented intelligence I really appreciate you touched on a point that has been like bothering me for a while it's how the

healthcare system runs again nothing wrong with having an NBA nothing wrong with people with the NBA but the healthare system mostly runs with people with background of NBA without understanding uh how the healthcare

system work and that's how I tell like um other people like don't think people think that Physicians get paid a lot well we don't first amount of stress that we go through during work is

enormous we lose our 20s because it takes 10 to 20 12 years to become a physician and then eventually when you become a physician you are very wellp paid employee you don't decide which

weekends to work you don't decide which nights to take you don't decide where to see your patients you don't decide when to book your patients sometimes you don't even decide what treatment you can give to patients because the insurance or the government covers it or doesn't

cover it although you have all the reasons to give that patient that treatment which is very frustrating and that's why I'm trying to bring people like you to this podcast because like we

really need people understand how the healthcare system runs Beyond numbers that that that that really makes sense absolutely yeah beyond the numbers

yeah it's it's when when you're playing with people's lives putting everything into a bunch of kpis that have to do with money is is uh counterintuitive uh

you know people think that works but at the end of the day backf and we end up where we are yeah all right as we wrap up um is there

any additional message or insights you would like to share with the audience especially those who might be intrigued by the intersection of technology and Healthcare good one you

know having to spent the past 10 years in healthcare learning Healthcare right and I can say maybe right now after 10 years of reading as an academic which

who loves information and goes deep I probably know 5% of healthcare um and so that's that's that's where I am but in

that 5% I've learned how broken it is you know I I used to believe and I still believe that Healthcare is designed to be broken it's not broken and has to do with certain decisions that have been

made that you know I consciously use the word designed to be broken because there are people who are aware of it and are not willing to make a change for very

reasons um so um I've seen so much moral injury in healthcare um you know really decisions that people are making in they're too conscious they know it's not

right and they go home at night and um they are anxious and they're stressed and sad but they have to make those decisions to be able to continue working for the Healthcare Systems they work for

so um the message I have is that for people in healthcare ask people around you how they feel don't don't just assume they're doing okay ask ask them how they

feel I've lost close close friends to suicide in healthcare as well so ask them how they feel and uh and if they're

not happy about their schedule um this is my Shameless pluging tell them to check us out check M out and if he can help uh money has never been the driver for us we're here

to make a difference and if it can Empower you if it can make life better and reduce work life conflicts for you through collaborative scheduling we will

make it happen so just ask people around you how they feel and take care of it thank you so much this is so inspiring and uh I we've been meeting

for a while but like this is the first time I learned more about you than all the meetings combined and I'm so happy that we did this together thank you rupen thanks for inviting me for this always a pleasure thank you so

much