Accomplished entrepreneur Graham Stanton helped build one of the most successful digital fitness companies in the world. Tune in as Peloton’s co-founder and former SVP joins his old high-school classmate, Justin, to talk about the wild ups and downs of Peloton’s success, his experience as a young tech entrepreneur, and what he is doing now in accounting software, as CEO and co-founder of Avise.

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(2:49) - What got Graham hooked with programming and technology - “I liked the logic of it. I liked the ability to create things without, you know, starting not with much. So yeah, that captured my interest when I was fairly young.”

(08:21) - Graham’s thoughts on the role of college and MBAs in today’s day and age - “There's a definite mismatch if you're viewing college purely as preparation. But yeah, I’m not gonna be like Peter Teal going out there saying that college is evil and a total waste.”

(14:34) - A little bit of luck and a little bit of skills: How Graham got into a general management position at gifts.com - “One of the reasons I went that route rather than working for a really big company as a software engineer was that I knew I get exposure to all aspects of the business.”

(16:20) - How Graham got involved with Peleton - “We're all internet technology people and then here we were starting this hardware and content company but from the technology standpoint.”

(22:24) - The early days at Peloton - “I mean this was technology, but most of the VCs just couldn't connect that. Even the ones who could, were nervous about hardware.”

(26:58) - What kept Peloton going through tough times - “We never had a doubt. For us, there was never a moment of like, maybe this wasn't a good idea after we know the product's really good and that was an objective thing because we were all using it.”

(31:24) - The big leagues: How Peloton grew and how it changed - “I think the thing that really, stood out to me from that time, is that it felt like every six months the company was a completely different company and that was just keeping up with the growth.”

(38:38) - Peloton’s impact on health - “In my time there, it was very important to us that we never talked about Peloton as a weight loss device and not just for like regulatory reasons, but just because that wasn't the purpose. We kind of took it on faith that this would be good for you.”

(41:08) - Graham’s advice for people in the growth stage of their startups or business - “In our situation, the general approach that I think worked was just making sure to keep enough gas going.”

(44:17) - The inspiration for Avise (+Pizza talk!) - “Let's find something that's been overlooked, get really into it and make it better for people.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Graham on LinkedIn

Learn more about Avise

Learn more about Peloton

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Being an entrepreneur and a physician is no easy task, but Dr. Benedict Nwachukwu is proving that success in both business and medicine is possible. Dr. Nwachukwu is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). He has spent much of his career caring for athletes and professional sports teams, including the Brooklyn Nets, NY Liberty, Chicago Bulls and the White Sox. He is also the co-founder of the digital health platform, Best In Class MD (BICMD), and the Team Physician of the Brooklyn Nets & NY Liberty. Tune in to hear how  Dr. Nwachukwu balances his busy medical & entrepreneurial career.

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:49) - Ben’s early inspiration - “When I had the opportunity at 16, I volunteered in a hospital in my mom's hospital, actually, where I assisted in certain patient care duties and started immersing myself in healthcare and really got the bug there.”

(05:28) - Making the decision to get his MBA - “I knew that that actually was something that made it the right decision because ultimately change is hard and to do the right thing you often will meet resistance. And so that gave me the courage to do it.”

(09:06) - What it takes to be an innovator - “I would say that if I could go back to a younger me, and if I could give advice, I would say take better advantage of cultivating the relationships and the networks at business."

(18:31) - Betting on yourself: The challenges and failures Ben had to face to get where he is - “You know, up until this point, and even this very day, you have sort of your micro failures and macro failures that you have to push through. ”

(23:04) - Best In Class MD: Ben’s new platform and how it came to be - “I had been thinking of this idea in residency, around the idea of how do you improve connectivity in orthopedic surgery, ”

(32:59) - Walking both worlds: Finding the balance between being an entrepreneur and physician - “We do track to make sure that, you know, I'm still a good doctor while I'm still a good entrepreneur, so you have to balance and you have to hold yourself accountable to be a good doctor.”

(32:29) - The next steps (+Pizza talk!) - “I think that at this point we are a great solution for, you know, expert medical opinions, medical record reviews. Our goal is to evolve, to be a care manager, care management company.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn

Learn more about Best in Class MD

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab.

On this episode of The Slice, Dr. Ami Bhatt, Chief Innovation Officer at the American College of Cardiology and Director of the MGH Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program joins Osso VR CEO Justin Barad, MD to discuss her early foray into telemedicine, including the hurdles and challenges with implementation and utilization, as well as how the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically changed perceptions of remote care.. Dr. Ami also shares her inspiring life’s journey, where passion and focus have been central to becoming a fearless leader and highly determined innovator. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(00:58) - Introducing Dr. Ami Bhatt, Chief Innovation Officer at the American College of Cardiology and Director of the MGH Adult Congenital Disease Program: “Such a wonderful thing, right? That it's recognized as a field and it needs focus and it needs attention, and it needs people to train in it and understand how to do it and talk to each other.”

(04:37) - Building a new field: “The adult cardiologist hadn't really seen this before. This was a new field. It was a blossoming field of people who had grown past age 18 and now needed care.”

(09:34) - Passion and focus: “You can have passion about a hundred things, but at some point, you need to focus to really get something to the next level. And I think it's probably that combination of what I was raised to think about that ended up making me who I am.”

(14:00) - Innovation in Telemedicine: “There's that phrase necessity is the mother of invention. Right? And I feel like my phrase is a little different. It’s desperation is the mother of innovation.”

(17:31) - Empowering patients: “You say you want patients to be motivated. You want them to be empowered, but if you keep stripping their power, putting them in a blue gown, putting 'em on a table and in a nice cold room, you can't empower people if you keep stripping them of their power.”

(24:53) - Ami’s path to Chief Innovation Officer: “When you start getting good at something, people expect it to be perfect. And it's never perfect. There's always the next challenge.”

(30:44) - The importance of technology in healthcare (+Pizza talk!): “It falls on us to get them excited, to teach them, to help them understand why a lot of the things that we're doing makes sense for the patient, makes sense for the system and in fact, makes things better.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Ami on LinkedIn 

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Shiv Gaglani is CEO and co-founder of Osmosis, a wildly popular open-source health education platform used by millions of current and aspiring clinicians.. In this episode, Shiv details his mission to expand access to medical education around the world and reflects on some of the most challenging decisions of his entrepreneurial career. Justin and Shiv also discuss the perks and wonders of game-changing educational tools revolutionizing the way the industry approaches med school. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:06) - Choosing a degree in health policy and engineering - “Healthcare was kind of in my blood, but then I grew up in Cape Canaveral, Florida where the shuttle is takeoff. And so a lot of my classmates, their parents were engineers at NASA.”

(05:59) - The moment when health education changed forever: Shiv shares how the idea to create Osmosis came up - “Osmosis probably is best known now for our massive library of educational videos. We have over 2100 videos that cover basically all of the first, all of the didactic aspects of med school.”

(10:58) - The complexity of health education and digital learning as a flexible space - “What makes me most excited about health education is not just training providers and clinicians and caregivers but going even further and training the general public to take better care of their health.”

(18:43) - The ongoing learning mindset and the goal of making health easier to understand - “The vision of Osmosis is that everyone who cares for someone will learn by osmosis.”

(26:48) - Shiv reflects on the moment when he decided to become an entrepreneur  - “What other worlds could we live in where two people in Baltimore could come up with an idea that then years later, people in Sudan are learning from? It's so cool.”

(34:08) - New paths of learning and the value of knowledge beyond tests and degrees  - “There's no right sequencing. That's one of the core pieces of advice. Let go of self limiting beliefs about when you should be doing something and how you should be doing it.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: (Below are just our most common links, not all will apply)

Connect with Shiv Gaglani on LinkedIn and Twitter

Learn more about Osmosis

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Dr. Raymond Hwang is the Medical Director of Hinge Health and Assistant Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Hwang and Justin talk about his work inside Hinge Health, a rapidly growing med-tech startup, and how his business school experience helped shape his clinical philosophy.

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(02:07) - The genesis of Dr. Hwang’s interest in engineering and medical science - “The people I hung out with were always people that tend to be big thinkers, who were trying to solve problems. We always had grandiose ideas of art or problems we'd focus on our technologies.” 

(06:31) - Comparing the medical school experience versus engineering education - “A lot of our classes were taught by MIT professors who were in the biomedical engineering department. We had a lot of exposure to various labs at MIT and part of our program was to work in a lab and actually perform some biomedical research as part of our MD curriculum.”

(10:34) -  Embracing the business aspects of medicine: The social taboo around choosing an MBA path as a physician - “He told me that his program has basically banned their residents from going to pursue MBAs during their two-year research block because so many of them are leaving clinical medicine and not coming back to the program.”

(15:10) - The helpful ways in which an MBA can impact a physician’s career - “One of the long-standing benefits of business school for me was having this pretty large group of people that I had learned next to for a couple of years.”

(18:31) - How business school got Dr. Hwang involved in technology and innovation - “I started to work with small companies in an advisory role, both from a clinical perspective, but also from a business perspective to help work through some product development and commercialization questions.”

(21:01) - What it means to be a good startup advisor - “I think thoughtfulness and cultural fit are probably the two biggest things. I'd want my advisors to be people who will have conversations with me and listen to my problem.”

(26:29) - Becoming the Medical Director for Hinge Health: Dr. Hwang’s work inside the company  - “Part of the goal is to make sure that patients understand the condition or stand with what's most appropriate, get them on the best treatment possible as early as possible so that they get on that recovery path sooner.”

(30:20) - Dr. Hwang’s advice for new entrepreneurs interested in the med and tech field - “I would really encourage anyone who's interested in starting a company or working in an advisory capacity to pursue opportunities that are truly good fit for both your interests and what you know.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Raymond Hwang on LinkedIn

Learn more about Hinge Health

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab

Dr. Michael Ast is an internationally renowned orthopedic surgeon and the Chief Medical Innovation Officer for the Hospital for Special Surgery. In this episode, Dr. Ast discusses his new CMIO role at HHS, his background as a former gymnast, and his guiding principles for driving healthcare innovation towards the speed of technology innovation to better serve patients. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(03:47) - Dr. Ast reflects on his time as a gymnast - “You wanna make everyone great. And so it was an interesting thing that I learned sort of the hard way through a patient's experience when I was 14 years old”.

(07:15) - How Dr. Ast’s residency years got him interested in entrepreneurship - “I found myself asking questions like When you're a doctor how much money do you make? And I got one of two responses either: ‘Oh my gosh, no one's ever asked me that before, we don't talk about that stuff. Or: ‘Learn to be a doctor. The rest will be fine’.”

(13:22) - The mission to spread high-quality medical knowledge on a mass scale - “You look at these Twitter threads and it's fascinating because a complicated case gets posted and 15 people respond and they're all a little different.”

(17:46) - Dr. Ast on the obstacles he faced at the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey - “I had two options I could just give up or I could really push for it and see what happens. So I did what people will jokingly say I always do when I have a new idea: I made a PowerPoint presentation.”

(29:49) - Discussing the intense fear of failure among the healthcare professionals and Dr. Ast’s return to HSS - “HSS has a Michelin chef. The food is great. You couldn't pay a million dollars for the view from the patient rooms of the Easter river of HSS. It's perfect. Patients never wanted to leave, until they learned that hospitals aren't great places for healthy people.”

(33:17) - “Make sure you’re having fun with it”: The keys to acquiring patience as a physician and an innovator - “When you're doing something that you enjoy, you're gonna keep doing it, even if you fail.”

(35:25) - What it means for Dr. Ast to become Chief Medical Innovation Officer for HSS - “It's built on these sort of four fundamental pillars, right? It's clinical excellence, education, research, and innovation. And the way I think of innovation's role at an institution like ours is to learn from those other three and see where we can make things better.”

(40:56) - Dr. Michael Ast’s favorite pizza - “There's always this New York City vs Chicago thing. That's a separate debate. Obviously, New York City Pizza is s better than Chicago pizza.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Dr. Michael Ast on LinkedIn 

Learn more about Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS)

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Amy Raimundo has over 15 years of experience as a VC investing in MedTech, diagnostics, and digital health startups. In this episode, Amy shares where her love for health and Medtech began, her passion for connecting female leaders in the medical device and healthcare technology sector, and how she has seen women leadership roles in Medtech evolve through the years. She also talks about the data evolution in healthcare, her experience with startups, and how the medical device world has changed over the last decade. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(1:42) - Amy’s first steps into the healthcare technology world - “My first job out of college was doing management consulting for health systems because it was sort of the perfect blend of the two.”

(03:56) - Data download marathon: The unconventional story of how Amy got interested in medical devices - “I slept under a desk that night to keep the thing processing so that I could fly back on Monday with new data.”

(08:02) -  Inspired to be more: On female leadership recognition in medtech & Amy’s MBA experience - “Junior high and elementary school people are completely influenced by what they see and whether or not that inspires an interest or makes them think ‘Oh, that could be me’.”

(18:25) - Working in Evidation - “Where we started was in a windowless room. Seven of us sit around a U-shaped table with what I call cath lab lighting.”

(23:58) - The newest ways connectivity and medical software are creating better devices - “I used to travel around with, you know, a plastic model  and go to conferences, cross the ocean to get an opportunity to train somebody briefly.”

(29:13) - Witnessing the rise of healthcare technology from the operational side and as an investor - “It’s really important to have the operational level touchdown to why something is gonna happen and why something is not going to happen, because I want to impact change, and I want to have an influence on that.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn

Learn more about Kaiser Permanente

Learn more about MedtechWomen & GirlsInc.

Evidation

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

How does an orthopedic surgeon with no experience in the corporate world become the executive VP of a Fortune 500 company? In this episode, Dr. Ken Yamaguchi joins the show to talk about his prominent career as a medical innovator, from his college experience to his work inside Centene, a $120 billion company. We also talk about how his work is driven by the ‘kaizen’ philosophy, what it means to stray from the traditional path as a doctor and the rise of clinical decision support as one of the most important trends for the future of medicine.

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:05) - Introducing Dr. Yamaguchi: His college experience and the events that led him to orthopedics - “There was certainly a gap at that time in terms of information as compared to the knee and hip. So there seemed to be an area of opportunity where you could really make a difference.”

(06:19) - The ‘kaizen’ philosophy: Dr. Yamaguchi keys to creativity and innovation. - “What I'm saying is pretty well documented in research and other in just personal experience that the best ideas usually come from younger people.”

(10:22) - A curiosity-driven leader: Explaining the purpose behind Dr. Yamaguchi’s MBA - “I realized that there was a huge world of information that physicians don't even have a clue about. There's not much in our training that helps us to understand how to manage people.”

(14:49) - Clinical insights into designing better implants: Dr. Yamaguchi’s work in medical device design and the pivotal moment when he joined Centene - “As doctors, we say ‘we want this widget and that widget’. And we never put in the context of the costs of the widget and those things become extremely important in today's world.” 

(20:32) - Learning curve inside Centene and walking away from the traditional doctor’s path - “Even in the business world, I talk to people and they go, wait a second. You went from absolutely no experience in corporate America, in a public poor profit environment to being an executive VP of fortune 50 companies. How did that happen?”

(26:30) - Clinical decision support and other exciting technology trends to look after - “The knowledge information that we need to know in order to take care of people will surpass what a brain can utilize and become more what a computer needs to assimilate for us.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Dr. Ken Yamaguchi on LinkedIn 

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Episode description

Dr. Cory Calendine from the Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee has become a viral TikTok sensation. Otherwise known as the ‘Bone Doctor’, he’s not only a master in the art of cutting, but he’s also an expert in tech development and robotics for surgical improvements. In this episode, Dr. Calendine explains how concepts like AI and IoT combined with a new global sense of connectivity is revolutionizing the public conversation around medical optimization and the orthopedic solutions’ industry. 

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:28) - Dr. Calendine’s introduction to the medical world and his decision to become a surgeon - “These people have gone years with disability and you have the ability to kind of participate with them and kind of meet them where they are. It's a cool thing to do.”

(05:19) - A deep look into Justin and Dr. Calendine’s life: Hobbies, family and life changing events - “I don't really have hobbies even now, except for absolutely anything that my daughter or son are into. Even cheer, man, I get into it. I'm like the ultimate cheer dad.”

(9:12) - On the similarities between being a baker and being a surgeon - “There are reasons why we knew certain things. You can't reinvent the wheel every day, but there also has to be a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of like ‘how can we change this?”

(14:15) - Dr. Calendine’s perspective on technology development and the acknowledgement of healthcare’s front line  workers - “You can be nameless, but have a powerful impact on millions and millions of people at this level.”

(20:33) - How connectivity is transforming the public conversation around medicine and the orthopedic solutions’ industry - “Because of our technology solutions to get access, I think there is an appreciation that the needs of those top 1% of all the hip and knee replacement guys in the country are not the needs of the common man.”

(30:12) - A specialized eye: Innovative tech improvements for a better,  more accessible way to practice medicine - “What really drew me to my work and in telemedicine was really the intent of the technology. And that was to democratize access to the very best of it.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Dr. Calendine on Youtube, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram

Avail Med

Jiro dreams of Sushi (movie)

Learn more about Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee.

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab. 

Changing paths is never easy, but if that decision allows you to generate a transformational impact that can benefit millions of people, then it's worth a try. In this episode, Dr. Sunny Kumar, Partner at GSR Ventures joins the show to share his entrepreneurial journey and talk about how to make the medical field a more versatile and innovative space. Plus, Sunny talks about his role in GSR Ventures and why New Haven’s style pizza deserves more praise!

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(00:47) - Sunny’s first approach to entrepreneurship and how it relates to innovation - “We had discovered that with the closure of one of the largest grocery stores in the area, there was no access to fresh fruit for all of downtown New Haven.”

(04:36) - The first pivotal moments that led Sunny into the healthcare path - “While I loved the basic science, I found the application to medicine -to the human impact that came with that- to be incredibly rewarding.”

(09:25) - Connecting research with business: Sunny’s MBA experience inside Stanford GSB - “These emerging technologies looked like they could dramatically change how medicine was trained and practiced. How patients interact with their physicians. But this has not yet been widely adopted.”

(19:48) - Wave Medics: The story of Sunny’s second startup - “The beauty of this was that you could use the smart speaker to interact with the patient, collect information, a process that information and then use that processed information to guide treatment.”

(26:30) - Transformative impact: Sunny’s advice for people thinking about switching their career paths - “I believe many of our programs can put trainees down a relatively narrow path without a lot of visibility into what those alternatives may be.”

(33:12) - A phase of change: What does the medical path need in order to become more versatile? - “Most of medicine is done in an institutional setting where administrative decisions aren’t made by the physicians. My view of the world is that physicians are increasingly recognizing that.”

(37:06) - What is GSR Ventures and how is Sunny helping them grow? (+Pizza talk!) - “I work with companies that are raising anywhere between a million dollars to $15 million from us with the goal of building technologies that are going to have a transformative impact in healthcare.”

EPISODE RESOURCES: 

Connect with Sunny on LinkedIn 

Learn more about GSR Ventures 

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! 

The Slice is produced by Sterling Shore and Rachael Roberts at StudioPod Media, and Shauna Davis at Osso VR. Engineered by nodalab.