Jen Goldsack has spent six and a half years building the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) into a trusted voice for healthcare's digital transformation. In this conversation, she shares the inflection points that shaped the organization. And the real story behind them. Like the time a family office offered $4 million if DiMe would pivot to focus only on cancer. She said no. Then sat on the floor crying with her dog, knowing she'd just made everything harder. Or the org structure she championed for two years that wasn't working. And the courage it took to acknowledge it and rebuild. This year, she's been navigating all of it while fighting late-stage colon cancer. She talks about the brutal self-talk that preceded her diagnosis, what being a patient has taught her about the system she's trying to fix, and why the work feels more urgent than ever.

In this episode:

• Turning down $4M to protect DiMe's positioning as "expert generalists"
• The org structure shortcomings she wishes she'd caught sooner
• What it's like to navigate the healthcare system as a patient after 20 years working in it
• Hot take: Why longevity tech investment is "incredibly gratuitous"
• The signal she's watching: direct-to-patient pharma pathways

About Jen:

Jen Goldsack founded and leads DiMe, a nonprofit working to ensure digital technologies actually improve health, healthcare, and research. Her path to healthcare leadership started unexpectedly. She landed in the field during the 2008 financial crisis after competing in the Beijing Olympics as an elite athlete. Before DiMe, she built experience across two digital health startups (one successful exit), led digital initiatives at a Duke-FDA partnership, and conducted research at Penn. Today she sits on the boards of the Coalition for Health AI and Sage Bionetworks, and contributes to the National Academies' Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health. She holds three graduate degrees: chemistry from Oxford, history and sociology of medicine from Penn, and an MBA from George Washington. Beyond her professional credentials, Jen is a Pan American Games champion, former world record holder, and World Championship silver medalist.

Resources & Links:

Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) - https://dimesociety.org/

Follow Jen Goldstack - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgoldsack

Presented by Aytza

https://www.aytza.com/

How Dan Vahdat Built Huma: The Platform Approach to Healthcare Innovation

Enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at how bold vision, stubborn persistence, and platform thinking are revolutionizing healthcare, one disease, one regulation, one market at a time. Dan Vahdat, CEO of Huma, shares the story behind creating a platform that scales across diseases, regulations, and markets without losing sight of the big vision. In this episode:

• The origin story: From Johns Hopkins lab nerd to healthcare disruptor
• Why building a platform beats focusing on single-use cases
• The regulatory secret sauce: Configurable software as a medical device
• Common pitfalls: Do's and don’ts of vision, team-building, and acquisitions
• The future of healthcare workforce with AI: Reinvented doctors and vibing clinicians
• Practical advice for founders: Gut feeling, stubbornness, and when to listen
• Why AI hype is just noise, even at the biggest tech firms

Timestamps:

• 00:00: Welcome and introducing Dan Vahdat
• 03:30: From disease-specific apps to a scalable platform
• 06:51: Why Dan was driven to start a company
• 10:34: How Dan convinced investors
• 15:28: The risk of chasing one disease versus the platform play
• 20:06: Biggest mistake: Building in uncharted healthcare waters
• 36:49: Hot take: Healthcare workforce will be transformed by AI

Resources & Links:

• Huma
• Dan Vahdat

Connect with Dan Vahdat:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Presented by Aytza.

Most healthcare startups fail because founders chase every opportunity without knowing what to say no to. Kate Ryder built Maven into the first women's and family health unicorn by doing the opposite.

In this conversation, Kate walks through the inflection points that shaped Maven: strong early signals, the decision to wind down Maven Campus when demand did not translate into a sustainable business model, a strategic shift to B2B, and the path to building a virtual care platform that now covers over 28 million lives. She talks about what was actually going through her head when she made those calls, and what she wishes she'd known earlier.

We get into how customer signals shaped Maven's direction, the tension between product-market fit and strategic pivots, and why agility matters more than funding in healthcare. Kate also shares the mental model she used to keep investors confident during the moments when scaling felt impossible, and why she focuses on ROI per customer over headcount metrics.

This is a conversation about the decisions founders make when no one's watching. If you're navigating a pivot or trying to figure out what to protect and what to let go, Kate's perspective will stay with you. In this episode you will learn about:

• 00:00- Kate Ryder and Maven's mission
• 02:07 - The evolution of Maven's business model
• 04:35 - Challenges and decisions in the early stages
• 06:10 - The strategic pivot to enterprise clients
• 12:01 - Building trust and resilience in healthcare innovation
• 17:23 - Lessons learned from shutting down the campus health product
• 20:21 - The future of virtual healthcare and Maven's role

Resources & Links:

• Maven Clinic

Follow Kate Ryder:

• Twitter

Presented by Aytza.

Welcome to CEO Pajama Time, the podcast that offers a candid look at the behind the scenes decisions and strategic turning points every founder faces. Host Sari Kaganoff, CEO and Founder of Aytza, sits down with healthtech leaders to explore the most difficult choices they made while scaling and the key inflection points that defined their journey.