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A lot of doctors wait for permission to fix what's broken, Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng put his own name on it and built anyway.

As head of critical care at The Ottawa Hospital and an ICU and palliative care physician, Kwadwo has built a research network, a podcast, three books, a supplement line, and an advisory practice, all under his own name. That visibility has cost him (speaking up during the pandemic brought attacks on his family and pressure on his career), and he says he would do it again.

In this conversation we talk about:

- Why he stopped waiting for permission, and how he backs his staff when they do the same

- What speaking up during the pandemic cost him, and how he handled the stress

- The self-funded $20-an-hour hire that changed his career

- Hiring people who complement you, not people who are like you

- Relentless self-forgiveness, and getting straight back to it after a bad outcome

- Why he thinks change in healthcare will come from builders and entrepreneurs

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Connect with Kwadwo:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwadwo-kyeremanteng/

- Advisory: https://drkwadwo.ca/advisory/

Most founders wait until they have something worth showing, Stanley Henry started posting with nothing to show at all.

After more than a decade in hotel management, including time with InterContinental Hotels Group, Stanley left it all, moved back to New Zealand with his now wife, and spent six months building a network from nothing before COVID lockdowns finally brought him his first paying client. That became Attention Seeker: an organic social media agency that grew alongside his personal brand into an education business and, more recently, a book deal with Wiley.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why no brand, no matter how big, can appeal to everyone
• Why he sells what he's tested on himself
• The conversation with his wife that turned posting into a real business
• How the agency and the education business fund each other
• What his upcoming book, Attention First, says about building without time or money

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway, it's genuinely worth it:
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Connect with Stanley:

• Attention Seeker: https://www.attnseeker.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanleychenry/

Most founders think building the product is the hard part, Anshuman Goswami learned the real fight starts once you're trying to get it onto a shelf.  Anshuman is an engineer turned entrepreneur from Assam, India, and the founder of NE Crafters, a company built around ingredients from Northeast India. NE Crafters started out developing a protein rich breakfast mix, but a spice sample at a government startup event turned into the company's real product, a chili oil made from Bhut Jolokia, the ghost pepper that once held the Guinness World Record for the world's hottest chili. The company formed in 2023 and moved into full operations in 2024.  In this conversation we talk about:  * How a chili sample at a government event became unplanned market validation for the whole business * Why he tests packaging and labels by watching what people buy in real stores, not by asking what they'd say * Splitting into two brands, one premium and one mass market, instead of compromising on a single product * Why distribution, not the product itself, is the hardest part of selling in India * Handling rejection and self doubt during the slow months * Making five heat levels of chili oil so the spice fits the person, not the other way around  If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.  Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway, it's genuinely worth it: https://goodbuildanyway.substack.com/  Connect with Anshuman:  * NE Crafters: https://www.necrafters.com/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshumangoswami02/

Lots of founders think chasing investor money is the safe path, Ellinor Bergman learned the safer path was walking away from it.

Ellinor is CEO and co-founder of Speldosa Interactive, an indie studio building cozy computer games. Before that she worked in community management and production inside the games industry, at a mobile studio where her whole team was eventually laid off. She and her colleagues turned that layoff into a new company, spent about a year chasing equity investors, and then decided that route wasn't a fit for them at all.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why they turned down the VC route after a year of trying
• Funding a studio through co-development and freelance contracts instead of investment
• The importance of shared direction and values
• How to tell a real player problem apart from a surface-level feature request

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway, it's genuinely worth it:
https://goodbuildanyway.substack.com/

Connect with Ellinor:

• Speldosa: https://www.speldosa.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellinor-bergman-speldosa/

Most biotech gets funded to treat disease after it happens. Nikole Kimes built a company to stop it from happening at all.

Nikole co-founded Siolta Therapeutics with her UCSF postdoc mentor, Susan Lynch, to chase a radical idea: that a defined set of naturally occurring organisms could reprogram an infant's immune system toward tolerance instead of allergic disease. She started as VP of R&D, then became Chief Scientific Officer, and only took the CEO title once it was obvious she'd already been doing the job: Steering a brand-new kind of live biotherapeutic through the FDA and into the hardest population to study: newborns.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why she never planned to become a CEO, and evolved into the role instead of choosing it
• The gut microbiome science behind preventing allergic disease before it ever starts
• Why dosing newborns with a novel live drug was seen as a dead end and how Siolta found a path through
• The fork in the road between building a probiotic food product and a regulated drug
• Why prevention is so much harder to fund than treatment, and how Siolta found investors willing to play the long game
• How the Bay Area biotech incubator community shaped building a company in a field that didn't exist yet

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway — it's genuinely worth it:

https://goodbuildanyway.substack.com/

Connect with Nikole:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikole-kimes-4b357786/
• Siolta Therapeutics: https://www.sioltatherapeutics.com/

Most founders think building the technology is the hard part. Dr. Chinmoy Hazarika learned that building something the world has never seen requires much more than great engineering.

After years as a practicing dentist, Chinmoy left clinical practice to found GentleDental.ai, a company building an AI-powered toothbrush designed to detect oral and systemic health issues while fitting seamlessly into people's daily routines.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How to build something that doesn't exist yet
• Knowing when to pivot—and when to trust your vision
• Why building in public attracts mentors and investors
• Finding believers instead of just hiring employees

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway:

https://goodbuildanyway.substack.com/

Connect with Dr. Chinmoy:
• GentleDental : https://gentledental.ai/
• LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchazarika/

Most founders think building the product is the hard part, Ben Spak learned the something else.

After years as a developer, founder, and Air Force veteran, Ben has launched multiple startups, killed products that seemed promising, pivoted more times than he can count, and discovered that the biggest challenge is finding customers.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why technical founders often avoid sales
• Knowing when to pivot—and when to keep going
• Building communities instead of products
• Why most startup ideas fail to find product-market fit
• The emotional side of building something from nothing
• What Ben is building with Builders.to

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more honest conversations with founders, builders, and operators about what it really takes to build something worthwhile.

Get future episodes, insights, and lessons from people who chose to build anyway:

https://goodbuildanyway.substack.com/

Connect with Ben:
• Builders.to: https://builders.to
• X: https://x.com/BuildersXOff

Dr. Rajalakshmi is helping build Path-iQ, a platform designed to modernize pathology workflows, improve collaboration between labs and specialists, and bring cancer diagnostics into a more connected digital future.

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