Venkat Mocherla
speaker
203 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Venkat Mocherla’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so it's come at the right time.
Yeah, I think, first of all, I'll say that people in healthcare, leaders, I would say, in healthcare, such as yourself and others,
are extraordinarily generous with their time so i actually think seek mentorship it's much easier than what people think um and you know if you do it the right way we all get into healthcare to make the lives of our loved ones better we want to make this a higher quality lower cost system and if you are in healthcare most people have gotten into it because they they really get into it because they they care about making life better for themselves their loved ones and their friends and so
I think that people are extraordinarily generous with their time and perspective. And this is one place where it's like Don Quixote with tilting at the windmill. You do not want to reinvent the wheel in a lot of places. There are some places that are spectacular for thinking about first principles, but there are some places where you do not want to reinvent the wheel.
So first thing is just seek mentors who've like been in that space, who've navigated it and can at least tell you the trials and tribulations of what they faced. The second thing, I think, Scott, is just having a dose of reality. I think, look, we're in an incredibly interesting time.
I've painted this very optimistic, rosy picture of abundance, not scarcity, and actually being able to do multiple new acts without requiring to raise a billion dollars. Now, I think so often, especially in my part of the world in Silicon Valley, you think about fundraising. first. And I think that is oftentimes not the right move.
I think what you should do first is really think about the customer. Maybe it's the patient, maybe it's the hospital, maybe it's the payer, maybe it's the government, whoever it is.
I think you have to really do your homework in, you know, I think my old firm used to call this the idea maze, but, you know, really do your homework and get to customers and try to talk to people even before you start something just to see if this is even worth my time. I think oftentimes I see a lot of people who've
you know, gone through that entire journey and now are like trying to figure out, you know, what is the actual customer issue? And I think that is problematic.
So before you tell the whole world that you, you know, you raised all this money and, you know, from these firms, do your homework and those, you know, angel investors or advisors or whoever that can navigate you to that right group of customers are worth their weight in gold. So that's another point. Second is obviously after you're customer problem and market, you should think about your team.
I think so often I see people just racing away with their co-founders. And I think, you know, the thing I heard is, man, you can get a divorce, but like getting somebody off your cap table is, is tricky. And so, Just know that not all relationships work from a founding a company and that's okay.
This is really a chemistry thing, but try to test it out in the early days to see what works and what doesn't for you and try to figure out your complimentary superpowers. I think that spend a lot of time thinking about the initial team that you want to go build with because successful companies do not happen overnight. they happen overnight after 10 years of work.
And so really in the early days of the company, you know, the first few years really try to think through that piece, especially your co-founder relationship. And then obviously, you know, identifying the right capital partner. I think there's, there's so many great ideas. I think, and there are actually a great amount of investors who are interested in partnering with those ideas, but
know again like a lot of these things you have to find the right match for you and necessarily i think not you know not necessarily optimizing for the splash of it all but rather the substance of the kind of persona that you want in your boardroom to go the distance really matters um and so i think in a lot of cases um you know in outside of healthcare you can start businesses that
radically try to disrupt and question things. And that's okay. Being in healthcare requires a tremendous amount of partnership and partnering with giants from day one. And that's okay because actually the giants are interested in partnership. Even health systems, right, which you know this really well, you might have someone be very locally competitive But they're naturally quite collaborative.
They go to conferences all the time and they talk to each other what they're doing. And so I think that taking that spirit right on, I think it matters a lot. So those are those are some some thoughts to entrepreneurs. And, you know, if if if any one of you is trying to start a company and if I can be of any help, I'd love to share more.
builders in this space i think um and this is obviously doesn't apply to um entrepreneurs or investors who've been in healthcare for a long time but i think um i i'll tell there's two groups of people i'd love to share some perspective on um you know at least from the sort of seed stage type of arena which is i think oftentimes problems that look really straightforward from the outside
It really warrants a lot of calls with the people on the ground because for everything that looks straightforward, there's a hundred nuances. By the way, it can be dealt with. And by the way, I think technology can play a big role in making those nuances much more transparent.
But I think actually doing your homework and not just waltzing in, you require a really humble mindset to invest in the sector because You know, it's the incentives matter, the funds flow matter. There's a lot of things that the nuances really tend to pay off.
And so, you know, not that most people don't do this, but I think that's another cautionary tale of something might look incredibly expensive. you know, straightforward on the outside, but is incredibly complicated for a hundred different reasons. And you should learn that.
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