Big Picture Medicine
by Mustafa Sultan, MD
The health entrepreneurship podcast — focusing on big picture stuff.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: [email protected]
Episodes
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#141 $1.1B exit... then a MedTech with 12mo of runway called — Joe DeVivo (Butterfly Network)
Part 2 with Joe DeVivo, the MedTech CEO who sold InTouch to Teladoc for over $1B and promised himself never to do another turnaround. Two years later, the board of Butterfly Network called w/12mo cash left. Here's how he did it.
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#140 Should the NHS Trigger the £330M Palantir Break Clause? An Insider's Take
Tom Bartlett spent 22 years inside the NHS. For three and a half years, he led the 150-person engineering team at NHS England that built the £330M Federated Data Platform with Palantir. He left a month ago and he's the only insider speaking publicly about what the platform actually does, what it...
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🔥News: The New Healthcare AI Broker, Palantir Under Fire and Big Tech's Drug Discovery Mirage
Jared Dashevsky, MD (Healthcare Huddle) and Ala Alenazi, PhD (Kinnevik) join Mustafa to discuss: The rise of the AI Broker (a middleman that's about to emerge) Palantir's £330M NHS break clause OpenAI as pharma. We also discuss why drug discovery needs a "Human Genome Project 2.0"
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🔥 News: Sequoia's Services Thesis, Kalshi for Clinical Trials and the PCP Apocalypse
Jared Dashevsky, MD (Healthcare Huddle) and Ala Alenazi, PhD (Kinnevik) join Mustafa to discuss: Healthcare spends 75% on services and 3–4% on IT -- yet every AI startup is pitching a copilot. Sequoia's new thesis: the next trillion-dollar healthcare company won't sell software at all. It'll just...
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🔥 News: Peptides, OpenEvidence and World Models in Healthcare with Ala Alenazi, PhD and Jared Dashevsky, MD
Jared Dashevsky, MD (Healthcare Huddle) and Ala Alenazi, PhD (Kinnevik) join Mustafa to discuss: The wellness industry is now four times bigger than pharma -- and peptide parties are the new IV drip bars. What's going on there? OpenEvidence built a $12B company on physician search, but everyone's...
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#139 Oura's $11B Bet, What a Gaming Exec Learned Building in Healthcare (Jason Oberfest — VP Healthcare at Oura)
What can healthcare learn from Candy Crush? A lot. Jason Oberfest (VP Healthcare, Oura) used gaming psychology to build a first-of-its-kind digital health company (backed by Kleiner Perkins) — as well as roles at MySpace, Apple and more. Now he's bringing that playbook to Oura, following their…
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#138 Six Lessons On Building a $100M Healthtech Company (Steve Kraus — Bessemer Venture Partners)
What does it take to build a $100M healthcare company? Honestly, no one really knows — and the people who do don't tend to talk about it. But Steve Kraus and his team at Bessemer have actually studied it. They've analyzed hundreds of venture-backed healthtech companies and published the research....
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#137 $1.1B MedTech Turnaround CEO – Joe DeVivo (Butterfly Network)
What actually happens after you sell a company for $1.1B and never need to work again? Joe DeVivo is a legendary MedTech CEO who sold InTouch to Teladoc in a $1.1B deal and is now President, CEO, and Chairman of Butterfly Network. Joe has a very specific reputation in the industry. He steps in…
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#136 Nabla, AI Ambient Scribe ($120M Raised) — CEO, Alex LeBrun
In 2023, Alexandre Lebrun pointed two exits in conversational AI at Medicine. Nabla raised $120M and spread to 130+ orgs and 85,000 clinicians in record time. But in the ambient AI game -- it seems like distribution beats all. How will Nabla win? Links Nabla: https://www.nabla.com/ Dr Mustafa...
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#135 $1.4bn Startup Tackling Loneliness, Papa (CEO, Andrew Parker)
In 2017, Andrew Parker launched Papa with a 1-800 number, offering 'grandkids-on-demand' in Miami. By 2021, the company was valued at $1.4bn (backed by SoftBank and Tiger Global). This is a YC-backed gig economy company operating in the regulated elder care market at unicorn scale. On paper it...
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#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…
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#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...
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#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...
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#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…
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#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?...
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#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…
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#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...
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#127 Gentle Disruption Wins in Healthcare — DrDoctor CEO Tom Whicher
Tom Whicher 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…
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#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...
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#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...
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#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.…
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#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...
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#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...
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🔥 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…
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#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...
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🔥 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…
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🔥 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)…
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🔥 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...
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🔥 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...
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#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...
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🔥 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…
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🔥 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…
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#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…
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🔥 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…
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🔥 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...
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🔥 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...
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🔥 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...
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#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...
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#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…
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#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...
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🔥 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...
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#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…
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🔥 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...
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#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…
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🔥 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…
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🔥 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,...
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#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...
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#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...
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#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…
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🔥 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...)
About this show
The health entrepreneurship podcast — focusing on big picture stuff.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: [email protected]
Hosted by
Mustafa Sultan, MD