🎯 Here's what (successfully) exited digital health startups have in common
Plus: Help me name my book 🙏
What does it take to build a digital health company that IPOs or sells for $100 million+? We wanted to take a closer look at the patterns behind our sector’s biggest “success” stories, so we analyzed data from 61 companies that exited.
We looked at:
Company info - number of years to exit, location, if the CEO at the time of exit was a founder or not
CEO background - age, gender, where they’re from originally, educational background, immigration status, and prior business experience
Click below to see what we learned 👇
PS: I’m cleaning up the spreadsheet to make it shareable. If you are a paid subscriber and want access, shoot me a note.
🎧 New podcast episodes
Lessons from an $11B Healthcare Exit | Oak Street Health Founder Mike Pykosz
The Low Down on Full Body MRIs | Ezra Co-founder & CEO Emi Gal
Can We Make Companies Care About Your Health? | Building H Co-Founder Thomas Goetz
Meet the Shkreli Award "Winners" | Lown Institute President Dr. Vikas Saini
Help me name my book 🙏
This weekend my son asked me how long I’ve been working on this book. I told him 14 months, and I hope that it will be out later this year. He told me it took his second favorite author, Dav Pilkey, seven years to write his first book, so I’m actually going pretty fast. 🥹
The reality is that it takes an author their entire career to write a book.
The ideas, stories, and strategies I’ve written about come from everything I've learned from my peers over the years. My role has been to synthesize and share these learnings, building upon the foundation laid by those who have dedicated their lives to making healthcare massively better.
My goal with this book is to equip readers with the tools, strategies, and mindset that will help them succeed in this space. While I wrote this primarily for entrepreneurs and innovators looking to make an impact in healthcare, this book is for anyone who wants to understand and improve our system—whether you're a provider, patient, investor, or simply someone who cares about the state of healthcare in America.
The book is titled Massively Better Healthcare, and I’d love your help picking a subtitle!
It would probably help to tell you more about the book, so let me describe its three parts:
Part I, "US Healthcare: Make It Make Sense,” is an overview of healthcare. I discuss what’s ailing our healthcare system, do a deep dive into critical stakeholders and their modi operandi, and talk about healthcare’s sleeping giant. This foundation is necessary because we need to thoroughly understand the problems before we can effectively solve them.
In Part II, “The Anatomy of Healthcare Innovation,” we take a closer look at healthcare innovation. In doing so, I share the four pathways to innovation and a simple checklist for evaluating new opportunities. We look at the reasons why innovating in healthcare is hard, and hopefully, I can convince you to use this difficulty to your advantage. Finally, we’ll discuss failure and why things sometimes go sideways.
In Part III, "The New Rules of Building Massively Better Healthcare," we dive into the four big lessons I've gleaned from the remarkable founders and healthcare leaders with whom I've had the privilege of learning.
By the end of this book, readers will hopefully have new insights and inspiration for making a real, lasting impact.
So — which subtitle is better?
A: Massively Better Healthcare: The New Guard’s Guide to Tackling U.S. Healthcare's Biggest Challenges
B: Massively Better Healthcare: A Guidebook for Innovators Transforming U.S. Healthcare
I’m also open to new ideas if you have one!
As always, thanks for subscribing.
Halle
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For your subtitle, shorten is to “A Guidebook for Innovators.” The rest is redundant to the title.