Love it. And now you guys live together across the Bay Bridge, right? Are you sick of each other yet? j/k :)
@willimholte / @thetylerhayes - What's the most difficult challenge you've faced starting up that you didn't anticipate?
+1 sick of each other (and my brother @owenfi our CTO). Thankfully Oakland apartments are like seventy times the size SF apartments and we don't get too crazy.
As for challenges; when Tyler and I were talking about the idea my reaction was along the lines of 'that'll be impossible technically, and even if you can find a technical way to do it we won't be able to get past the regulatory hurdles in healthcare' — for the most part that hasn't been true. The technical stack we built is certainly complicated beyond most startups' products (as Tyler mentioned in his long post)—but tech is easy when you're using it to solve problems this obvious, you just have to work really ridiculously hard.
Similarly, HIPAA is patient focused, and we are helping people instead of institutions, so it helps us quite a bit. Example: if your doctor stores your record electronically (they almost certainly do) they have to give you electronic records—and starting in Sep '13 you can specify the format. So that's cool.
Really, I think the challenges we face are pretty similar to every startup—finding product market fit is an abstract process and there are a thousand different threads we can follow. We've certainly had people express concern about the nature of sharing health info, and many of those concerns are immature which can be it's own challenge—but it's also a gigantic problem for hundreds of millions of people—so that helps us cut through some of the non-sense.
A challenge more specific to health-startups is the lack of community support. There are tons of meetup groups, tons of conferences for health tech, etc… but lots of them are filled with cronyism and old-world thinkers, doctors who won't listen to anyone who isn't a doctor, people who don't take startups seriously, people who think the only way to make it in this industry is to follow the 18-24 month sales cycle to hospitals, and so on.
That's not to say the people in the industry don't want to provide support, pretty much everyone we've reached out to directly (and everyone who has reached out to us) is awesome, hard-working, and passionate about making the world a better place. It's just hard to find groups of them like you might find four nights a week for every other industry in SF.
Good news on that front: times are changing. There are some awesome groups (shoutout to healthcare.mn and healthcare.sv, which is smaller/newer) making waves.
On a personal note, I've certainly been challenged with productivity and creative block (which is a bullshit term but mostly applies) and all sorts of issues that come with growing something like this for the first time. I've launched products and helped make companies before—but the ones I had direct responsibility for were games or art related—I can't quite name the reason that's different, but it somehow is. Luckily, this is another easy problem to solve, as my co-founders are smarter than me and also have strong vision and can recognize the cause of these problems and help me get past them.
SORRYTHISGOTABITRAMBLY. I'm happy to expand on anything that didn't make sense.
Fantastic story on how you built Prime @willimholte@thetylerhayes. Would love to catch up with you guys when I'm in SF next (sometime around April/May).
Yes, this is the most thorough, well-thought discussion yet. We should start giving out awards. :)
Btw, @thetylerhayes, @willimholte, you might want to chat with my friend and CEO of Emissary, @staringispolite. Maybe there's a partnership opportunity or if nothing else, a new drinking buddy.
@rahulvarshneya We're around. Say hi! Our emails are on our Team page.
@rrhoover Until you have trophies we accept cash awards, don't even worry about it.
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