all right. I am so excited for you. Also listen to this episode of forward thinking founders Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know that we are officially starting an email list as he has some big plans for the podcast and will be telling people on the email list first and probably only the people email list. So feel free to sign up and get on the email list at F 20 are dot com That's F as in frank to zero or as in red dot com, and I'll see you over there. All right, How is it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Forward thinking that Founders, where we're talking two founders about their companies, their visions for the future and have the two collide today. I'm very excited to be talking to Darius Mance F who is the creator, the CEO of Brave Care. Glorious. Welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's very good. Thanks for having

me. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. I'm really excited to have you on the show. Especially because you're working on something unlike anything any other guests that has come on has been working on. So I would say that's a dive in. And with that, let's just learn more about what brave care is. Can you tell the audience

what you're working on? Yes. So what we're trying to do is just make the best health care experience possible for kids started with urgent care. And I could tell you more about Genesis of the company around, urgent care and the need for better after hours. Care for kids in sport through their parents. And ultimately we're working on now is expanding that two primary and remote care, but basically everything other than life threatening care for kids. Because it's apparent, it's like, literally the most important job you'll ever get in. We get no training for it. There's like no preparation. And unfortunately, you know, Googling for answers helps me professionally. But when it's around kids, health is just sort of like thanks, terrified. So trying to make health care better for kids,

definitely. It's so let's walk through a little bit into how it works. Then I want to hear a bit about the wise. So is this A Is this kind of a virtual location? You have a physical location in in an area. What does it look like? And how does it feel like for the kids that are going into getting Ah, I'm getting health care.

Yes, those, I guess some of that is that, I guess, or Genesis we will. You right now have one physical location in Portland, Oregon, with the intention of scaling two more physical locations. Because there's a lot of kind of the scenario that parents need to kind of care for their kid. You physically need to go somewhere. Um, my so thinking for health care in the future is that telemedicine will be amazing when there's some device in the home that you know, Alexa healthier Google health or whatever they're building that has all the attachments. For something to collect vitals remotely, they'll be able to do good diagnosis and treatment. But right now a doctor can't look in your throat or in the ears a certain number of things that really just can't deliver great care on, um and so what we're trying to do in terms of our remote cares just be there for information and advice for parents.

But we have physical primary in urgent care locations and the idea that we're building a technology platform that opens up that geographical boundaries that limits the parents and kids at that clinic and see so that parents across the country when it's midnight, you're trying to Google for cost. Sometimes they're just somebody there that has some context, maybe previously of your kid, and you can have a good experience figure out. Do I need to go somewhere or am I

OK to stay home right now? All right, this is super interesting, and I'm looking forward to continuing to dive in before then. I'd love to hear a little bit of the back story and why you decided to start this company.

Yes, for my I've been in the consumer tech products face for more than a decade. I started as both a programmer designer. The benefit of that was that I didn't have to convince anybody else to help you build something. And I could let my dumbest ideas fly. Um, but one of those were didn't intend it for it to be anything was a color community that really started is a hot or not for color, someone of a joke to you. Do you think this color is attractive and somebody else doesn't. But in the creation of that, I also let people create color combinations of 2 to 5 colors and the utility of having a shortcut for designers that we're looking for a color combination but also creating a creative platform for anybody to be able to come and put a couple colors together and put a name on it became a creative process that you have no skill required for eso color lovers. Uh, this is like early two thousands thrived is it is a community and destination went to O, if you will it at several 1,000,000 visitors a month at its peak were five time with the nominee for best community. Um, this amazing giant community that we build internationally and have a look at some point was like maybe a couple dozen countries in the world they didn't come to the site, but otherwise it was global.

And all of that is amazing, except that I've never made money. So this is this like oh, every vanity metric one could want to tell you to continue working on this thing was in place, and yet I struggled for years trying to make money. I just like advertising and the way that it works on the web. So I fought hard. Not just I'm part of that site with ads, which means I didn't make money. Uh, is this long trying to get partnerships? I eventually brought in a co founder who had color software. And at least we have We have a product that goes on, but probably nine years into that, um, the opportunity to get in a y Combinator in the winter 2010 bats and nine years ago,

10 years ago exactly from this patch, um, having come from the Pacific Northwest, really having no exposure to the start up world, I'm doing everything bad trying to fund raise and trying to build. I got to get you through this White Sea experience which opened up my network. I dropped out of college. I don't have an Ivy League degree. I don't have any sort of credential that opened the door for me. But getting NYC was this life changing founder experience where now I had access to all these things. Don't go the company. What we really learned from that was at the core of what we're trying to do. We're trying to make design simple and accessible, and we're doing that through these color palettes, and we built like a pattern making tool. But if we knew that,

that's what we're focusing on. And that's what I was bringing the community around this product, the best sort of paid product that we could build around. That was a marketplace for creative assets because all the other marketplaces were fragmented yet to go to a certain site for a font. But then a different one for a photo and a different one for a Power Point theme. Assumption is, if you're biting when he one of those, likely you're gonna want to buy another. So what we wanted to build was the best marketplace experience that felt like the community of NFC. But that was all digital creative assets. So we launched creative market out of this community we already have in color lovers. It was the overnight success at the end of my nine years of bleeding and struggling through color lovers ultimately was acquired by Autodesk in 2014 had sort of done a handful of things in the last five years that we could kind of get into. But I think where that goes is that, um ah, year and 1/2 ago, I found myself back in Hawaii,

where my wife and I hear from kind of unplugging from technology and ultimately found that I was depressed. It was hard for me to figure out, like, Why do I feel so awful? It's like, Oh, cause you enjoy building and making things in creating in the chaos. This will start of experience and I wasn't doing any of that. Hawaii is beautiful for for a number of reasons. But it's not the impairment that you know, supports building. So we moved back to Portland, Oregon. I wanted to be around great start of energy and culture, but at the same time of environment for my kids. And so coming back into that,

I found Thean separation event that I didn't know. I was looking for him, and it happened with my five year old. We went to a bike park. He split his gin. It's the first emergency care experience we had with any of our kids, and it is painful is that 1st 1 was because my little guys in pain. He's crying. He's scared. Blood is everywhere because the face bleeds a lot. We were fortunate to get handed a card to a pediatric. Urgent care. Nearby, I had a bunch of stigma about what urgent errors could be. Cause isn't it old? I've been to some not so great ones where I just needed like,

after hours care. So I had a bunch of this, like uncomfortable ing into it, have probably the best care experience I think I could have had in that scenario, Like a pediatric expert environment created for kids, I felt supported. I felt like he was getting great care. I came out of that going. While that was really amazing. The next weekend, my one year old had crew with Shrider. Group is a viral infection of the esophagus, which restricts basically airflow Shriners that it's all wet and pooping when she is breathing. So she was one of the time, you know, not able to communicate to me,

so I don't. I'm now trying to read these symptoms through a kid who's normally happy and healthy and looks like out of it. My wife is out of town, both of these weekend, so I'm feeling all of the pain of what a single parent goes through That doesn't have somebody to talk to you on or off the ledge of Do you need to go somewhere? But because I've been to this previous clinic the week before. The next morning I went back and I could tell by Cory, the doctor and now my now co founders reaction that this was a much more serious case. So we spent 2.5 hours there because the way that the care was administered mended, she was on the cusp. And if he had it in, you know, increased the medicine dosage, then she would have to go to NPR because they're further complications. But this this guy gave me the space to say, Look,

if you wanna wait here, you can Let's just watch. And it's basically I wasn't rushed through this. I was provided the sort of experience it was best for me and my kid, and I came out of that one going, uh, you know what? I really love little kids. Um, we just went to a Christmas party. It was a friend of a friend's and I'm pretty sure adults think I'm not burying nice or that I'm shy or something. It's just like adult social networking is exhausting for me. I'm a the kids table arm in the room with the kids, like I love spending time with little ones. And so I went, You know,

I I love kids. I want to focus. My time with them is the core customer, and I know that health care is so broken in so many ways that I could bring this consumer product experience that I've had having built two companies both exited. Let me bring that to his healthcare space. So had gotten Cory's number. I set up a couple coffee meetings with him and said, I just want to ask you all these questions. We figure out what's wrong in this space. Ultimately, what I found out from him was that there are 25 million E. R visits a year for kids. Nearly all of those were not life threatening. They shouldn't be in the e. R makes the bad experience for the people who really need the Ojai level emergency care that air there. But it's parents who are worried,

and if the you know, like, Oh, I might not have to go or there's something seriously wrong, my kid. Of course, you're just gonna default. Go. So there really needs to be better after cowers after our care options. So we said, Great. Let's focus on, you know, scaling and building a better consumer experience around pediatric. Urgent care. We started doing that beginning the year we raised a small $1 million you know,

a time large in hindsight, small pre seed round. And then right when we were basically at the end of that process, we got back in the white comment. So we just went through in the summer of 19 Batch. What? That was really amazing. As a really. Why? See, um, I think the two greatest values of this, like, philosophical approach of what is the biggest version of what? Your workout. Where do you deliver the most impact for the customer that you want to serve simultaneously?

What? Where the non obvious solutions that prevent other people from unit will do that. So I see it's all focused culture around like hacking solutions, you know, with and for us what we came out with it was a great, like, really urgent cares deeply needed. It's a good business, but it's hard to drive interest Gail into it. But by bringing primary care in, then we could be thoughtful about the spontaneous, productive lows in the because we're just waiting for people to show up in the urgent care and that we would be top of mind for anybody who's already insisting primary care patient, we already have this physical location, open staff with pediatric experts, and then the remote care on top of that just meant that we can drive further efficiencies for this location by opening up the audience that we conserve to be national. So without a model in mind,

said Great. I think therefore we're gonna have a more efficient get your clinics and if that's a patient's in return, capital faster and so painted this picture of ah true venture scale all while saying, you know the number one most important objective for us is excellent health care for kids, and it's good that we've made that clear to our investors from day one is not like a coolie built a three star quality health, but we did it nationally. It has to be the best health care possible because these were the most important things in our world. So that's where we we're in August. We and then went out raised of more than $5 million seed round on didn't end up doing Why sees Demo Day? Because we basically we're putting that round together, which is it was funny and they used for this audience. I'll tell the story last the first time I was going through, I see I was trying to fund, raise, struggling and, uh,

I think saw Lord knows itself say the gun road was fundraising at the time and raised like an $8 million round kind about the gate. I for years had a bunch of, like jealousy and hostility and frustration that, well, I I'm trying to build this business is a real thing. Why? Why does this guy just got to raise eight million for like, you know, as you have been around for that long, all of this just, like, built a judgment from afar. Um and I actually it was only like last year I reached back out. It was like and I can't believe I carried that for so long Like I'm sorry that that was even an energy I had. But when we announced our $5 million funding, I got a guy on Twitter that was clearly pissed off.

And, uh, I've typed a lot of Twitter replies into leaving them all, because at the end, I was just, like, actually get you. I think I've been there and I understand how frustrating is. And you don't have all the context of wire how we raise this Brown. You just see, you know, you got one clinic open. He raised all this money. This is gonna be venture scale to the detriment of KidsHealth. It's like very much not what we're doing. So now we find ourselves with the resource is in the team in place to actually go execute on this vision, which is to make you know, excellent health care for kids. That

is an excellent story. It leads me. Thio wanna ask tons of different questions at once, but I'll try to keep them in order. I think my my first question I want to go into is if you're open to sharing unless it's confidential. I've never talked to someone who's building a company that kind of starts with, like, physical locations and scaling physical locations. How do you plan to like the money that you raised? You plan on opening more locations. You from building attacked? Almost multiply that digitally, I guess. What's the next step now that you've raised a solid seed round?

Yeah, we have to open more locations. So part of what we agreed on with our investors, like why we raised this money is that we believe we have this more efficient clinic model. And therefore, when you open a location, you return the capital back invested faster than other people. It was like, All right, go prove it. So, you know, we're gonna open at least a couple of more locations here in Portland. Their audiences clinic. We have our license to use much of efficiencies that we could just scale out in Portland first. And so the idea is like, let's do that here.

Um you know, uh, this is also good found. Related of, like, I've never built a business that has physical locations. The half joke, which is a real joke, I'm said, is previous start up again. The two that were acquired was I really have to know what's our runway until we die And what's the captain on TV? Because, like on a bunch of consumer started, you're going to get acquired before you really have to understand how well the business works. So I have built financial models for my entire career, but they're like,

you know, the bare minimum to survive because I didn't go to business school. I don't know how to really do proficient forecast model, but this business is very different. So, you know, already bringing on expert, you know, finance people to help me build that bottle. But it is a very quick like crap. Like this is I need to go back to business school for this one. You need to learn a lot from other people on how we built this model. Um, because there's just a bunch of kind COGSA accounts receivable like really financial things that you don't normally have and just, you know, a funny Web startup that you're building so very much right now focused on ah Portland expansion. When we feel like we've validated that we can do that locally, we go raise the next round that helps us and regionally. And then if we're good regional expansion, the vision is ultimately to be a national health care brand.

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. That, um, additional question that I had, as you were telling me from the story have a Scott started is a two pronged question. So you did y see 10 years ago, a decade ago and you recently did y see again how in that decade, how has Y C changed and how haven't you changed as you observe yourself going through the same program a decade? A decade later,

we've both changed significantly. Um, I was also dating, but not yet engaged when I went through. So now married three kids, very different place in life. Amount of time and resource is I have for things on Dicey has also changed. And I think like this happens with any generational group. It's senior high school class or the college class or the company. It's like, Oh, when we were there, those were the good years and that somehow it's changed. You got worse. He just there, Look back with that lens. Um,

I think it was great when we first went through his life changing for me. Um, it's significantly bigger now. This by 40 Startup center First Batch is 200 plus in the second batch. At the same time, why she's put a lot of efforts into scaling their support. For those, 40 startups are the 200 plus startups. So where before we had amazing resource Ball grand and being able to do office hours with him, he's like a mad genius. So the office hours air like, you know, hard to wrangle because he's just so, uh, creative with his thinking and pushing you and you just like I don't know how to respond to that. So that was like,

this amazing resource, but there's kind of one of him now. They've brought on so many experience of their founders that you not only each there's multiple kind of groups inside the batch, you have your own. We had four sort of group mentors for us. One of them is actually here in my previous co founder, Creative Market, So it was pretty awesome to get to go back a second time with him. We were just in different roles, and then you have all of the other uh, you know, basically group partners and mentors in Y. C. So in that respect, it was even better. Part of the way that I think about it is a two time.

Why's he founder? Is that when I we sold a lot of desk in 2014 I had started another company called Site Box that ultimately got acquired by Johnson Johnson, 2017. But I didn't run that one. My best friend. I started with him and he was the CEO, so he ran it. I spent almost five years back in Hawaii like professionally killing my career, you know, basically not doing anything. I did a small start up from there, but it just was like going off to die professionally in the corner and what I see. Help me one. I think it's great for the company and again leveled up. Everything about where we're at now was because of that experience. But for me,

it was the fastest personal way from your regain. All of the professional men momentum that I had is a founder, you know. My network had gone pretty stale. I had been having meetings. I wasn't I. Even the four year changeover. Having raised my last seed round, huh? You know, the way those rounds were going put together Now, with mostly Safe's Carta, all these tools weren't available. The previous times was like, I'm not going to catch up on how all this stuff is happening. Um, so, yeah, incredibly different. Both life changing for who I was at that point in time when I went through that experience.

Yeah, that's fascinating. You're the first person I think ever see from onto the podcast to mention Paul Graham. And when just kind of what it was like working with him, even in a in a little way. And I'm a big, you know, just like a lot of people have a big fan of his essay is Ah, And that he is Imagine Yes s it's Ah, it's cool. It's like hear some stories how I wanna transition the conversation a little bit away from brave care and to the committee, the business function that you feel like you have a gotten a good grip on in your career. And, you know, before that we started recording. You said that was product. So I'm gonna start high level on just how you think about product in building profit developing product,

and then we'll get more knee shin specific. But let's start high level like product. Every company has a product or service. In this case, let's talk about products. How should someone think about building a product that people love? What goes into building

a product? Yes, this is This program is the perfect segue way here because, um, I was recently watching those the Bill Gates mine, uh, eggs on Netflix, this documentary, Siri's and I'm watching that. And again, I've been exposed to people like Paul Graham. I've been in rooms with just incredibly smart people, and I'm watching this documentary going like, I wish I was a smart is these people And I was telling my wife this check, Don't put yourself down, it's not Ah, I'm not putting myself down.

I'm just realizing that there are technically intellectual, incredibly smart people and that I was trying to get into like, well, clearly I'm not dummy. I have some talents, like, What's my version of that? And I think what I've come through without really thinking too much honored to find it. So this would be the experience of it is that there are these, like, technically intellectual founders. And then there is the intuitive intellectual, if you call it that. So for me, um, I have good intuition on my good gut skills may be a good sense of empathy and what it's like to be the person that's using something,

and over time, the more start of experience I've had, clearly, intuition is largely it gets better. The more experience and the patterns you can have to pull from that. What are the things that, uh, make this fight? The senses go. So probably my background is both being the first ever did. I was actually the CT like I was the technical co founder. I have designed co founder. Now that's laughable to me because I've written code really shipped anything like probably a decade. So I understand how things were built. Although I no longer write in any language that's useful. Um,

sign. I have empathy for the people that are building the product I have. Empathy is like a now more design product person of who's the user of this, and why would they want to use it? And my advice. I run a summer camp in Hawaii called Molokai for high school students trying to get them exposed to it. It's really storytelling because I think that's a universal life skill. Um, you know, it's selling your parents on the vision of why they should let you have a car or, you know, getting a job room into a college that you ultimately want order. Some day when you're either running a company or you're on a manager level of company, be able to come in a compelling way. Tell the story that lands with the person on the other end. Um,

in what I tell them, a lot is the best thing that you could do is just build the muscle to think through well, with the product being who's the customer of some pain or problems. So I just naturally of darkness all the time, and I have ah, no book where I have a little idea. I got at least run through the the full What is this and how would it work? Because I need to purge it from my mind, But I can't until I kind of get through. At least, um, you know well, who that customer V, what would they be willing to pay for? That is a value to them. I like branding and stuff.

So, like, what would the name of it be called Quick Little extrapolation of how many users are there and how much revenue could dissing generate that. I can kind of put it to that. But the more that I did do that, I think I'm just sharpening the skill of like, Well, then what is the thing we should be building? The other thing that I would say that in the realm of product which is gonna duel edged sword here for me is that I'm good at scene, uh, an elegant solution in a complex set of things which is both good and bad. My amazing co founders with brave care. Um, we just went through his connections recently thinking like, Well, I'm plus one person.

We also need the like, take one away person because we're going through a sort of like we should really do. This would be amazing if we did. That's like, yeah, and we could do this. And we could do this because in my mind I can see how they all work together, and the way that they were together actually reinforced and reinforces increases flywheel, and it feeds on itself. But then somebody needs to be like the Yeah, but right now we can only do one of those things. So let's just do the one and do it incredibly well. So it's It's good sound like really learning that about myself. Like that's my skill set, but I want to have somebody taken balance that help us understand, like little certain mental limited resources in scope.

But so for product. For me, I was just high level to find that is like, you know, it's not just what is it that we're building, but why people would want to use it? Because ultimately that will reinforce the what to go the better product.

So there's this thing called a heated debate but a general philosophical debate on product that I see on Twitter a lot, which is the kind of two sides, one side being the lean startup, talk to users, asked what they want, you know, to use her research and build to that on the whole other side. Being this like Keith for boys, Steve Jobs like? No, just like that. You have what you want to build and just put it out there and see what happens. But, like, you gotta you gotta put something new out there. Where do you fall on the spectrum from? Like, hardcore lean startup to Steve Jobs Put something out there and because they don't know what they want anyways, it

basically just goes back to that, like, intellectual founder versus into it. Oh, I fully appreciate. And I want I want to be the person whose data driven in that. Like, we've done all the market research and we talked, 0 500 customers in order to find this. But just my skill set. And where Eileen is just this intuitive sense of, like, especially this company. I'm a pair. I've got three young kids. I'm feeling all this stuff. Almost everybody else.

I talked to his apparent, So I feel like I'm not going blind into a space. Previous cos I was the designer was a creative like, uh, well, I feel like you have to invent yourself in the community in which you're building a product for and ultimately, like you live in that beauty. I it's harder to do it when you know, if I was building a you know, a female health product exclusively like, yes, I care deeply about my wife and my other people in my community, their females. That's just not me. So I have. Ah,

it's, Ah, gap of my ability to deeply empathize and understand. What the product problem is versus is apparent like I'm going to be. That's my number one job for a rest of my life. So I have That is the base of my sense of now. I ultimately have an assumption of what we should go build in that. With that in mind, I think it's important to build sort of like the well, let's build the version of this and get it out up there and see how people would respond to it and then continue to develop it. But the initial like core concept to me, I lied on the however you want a bucket that the jobs in, you know, just build it.

Definitely. Yeah, I think I think I lean more that way too, just because if you ask everyone in the market what they want, they're gonna tell you it orations of are currently exists and truly transformational products don't currently exist. There has got to be built. So another question along similar veins is it. I think there's this problem that a lot of founders have, that they have one products and it's doing very well. And it maybe it's it's finished the S curve. Maybe it's in the middle of it. They don't know. Um, but how do you, um, think about a second offering or a second product before before kind of competing the 1st 1 before completely completing the Esther of Give a Methodology on on how to know when to do a second thing?

No, there's no methodology there. Um, I think I painfully learned the opposite side of that, but we're building color lovers because we just kept trying to a layer stuff on to try and find something. The problems. We didn't kill anything when we tried something new. So it wasn't We didn't have one product line and successful. And then we're adding a second to reinforce the first end or open up the market. We're still trying to really find a true product market fit around revenue because, um, ultimately if you're building a business like you have to generate revenue, Um so as much as I do philanthropic work and care deeply about impact work what? I'm going to go the company. The number one thing is this has to survive. Otherwise, you can't do all the good that I want that company.

D'oh! Um, see, there's no methodology again. It just goes back to my intuition and pattern. Recognition of like this feels like people are using this and that. Either we're adding something to reinforce it or that this isn't working as fast as we eat, and therefore it's timeto open up the door on something else.

Then what would be kind of interesting? That is, I don't know if this is product. Maybe it's like product monetization are I don't know what category, but I love toe can explain a situation that I'm in a product decision that I currently need to make and have you kind of helped me think through howto make the decision. So, um, I am seeing similar to you. You mentioned at some point on this politesse that you're not a big fan of the advertising model where you just you know, plaster adds that don't have anything to do, and it's just not a good user experience. And I feel that way for this podcast. And I'd like to like, not rely on ads for the monetization. But I definitely would like this to to, you know, make money.

At some point, I'm trees. At what point in this situation would you think toe, like start testing subscriptions on, like blocking off content on and just blocking off with a pay wall and say, Hey, if you want this content, you know it's gonna be 10 bucks a month for five bucks a month, etcetera. That's what I want to do. But I don't wanna shut down the momentum. I don't wanna I don't want to screw up what I've already built. But what I've already built, it's not, you know, ever gonna make money on the current track. So how did he look? Think about that if you're willing to kind of give me some insight.

So the thing about product is, um I think what Ah, what I would think about for you is that content is like one of these, like, really hard things to monetize. Um nobody's really found the elegant solution. Old media is still suffering, you know, content pay walls for traditional journalism like it's all wrapped up in the same things. Um, but for you it will give you a very, very clear indicator of Are you delivering the value of that that audience wants when you turn on but basically the pay wall for the content. So the hard thing there is like you have to have enough users using it and in your community to really test out, um, you know the concept of, you know, people willing to pay for it.

I had a buddy that was building a startup that basically freemium millions of users, and it was doing well, but they were like, You know what? We know We we've got to do up a tear. And then should we do the free users and the paid? And they went through the ultimate tough decision to just say no, we're just going to exclusively to the paid. The nice thing about that is that all of the feedback you will now get around the things people care about and giving yourself indicators of what's the stuff you should double down and continue supporting is gonna be feedback from people who are paying you for your products, like ultimately, the people who most wanted. Um, I guess if you have hundreds of people in your community, you turn on paid service and then nobody's left over the hard truth of that. Is that the content in the way that you've been producing and sharing it in the value? The information didn't match either Iran on pricing,

You could make some tests there or the hard truth was that ultimately when it came down to pay for it, it wasn't that valuable. I don't think that needs to be incredibly negative. Like here in the wrong line of concentration. You shouldn't do what you're doing but ultimately ill and inform you of. All right. Whoa. What is it that people are willing to pay for where, where my creatively up for finding that one thing that people would be really stoked to have. So not exactly a clear answer. Therefore, you other than you're going to get some very honest feedback on your content in the value that your community sees. If you did, you know, basically the pay well content.

You're so right about it. Every piece of feedback that that I would get would be valuable, cause if someone has feedback, that means they're paying for the product. The service. So they're they're invested? Almost. So that's what That's a great point. I really appreciate that answer. So thank you. So I wantto I ask you a couple more questions, then we'll wrap it up. I wanna shift back two brave care and learn a little bit about what is your North Star. If you want to paint a big vision in over the next decade or two, what direction are you throwing it?

Yes, some of that. Even that can extension of a product. I went to a dermatologist earlier today, Um, the first visit I had with them. So I'm filling out these paper forms, and I'd like an allergic reaction to bureaucratic or wasteful things, Which is why I'm a founder. I like oly the future I believe we should have, and that stuff just drives me nuts. It's because it's inefficient on every possible level. This has to do with, like my skin and having grown up in Hawaii like potentially like a death risk of not catching melanomas and other skin issues. So, like incredibly important toe, have high fidelity,

you know, information and giving from this person. And it's like a survey that I'm answering. Oh, have I had that? Did this happen? I do this once a year. I don't remember. And I'm just going like we've passed all this digital health care stuff. We're moving towards it, and it's just not anywhere near where it should be. And similarly, when I got the appointment reminder, it's okay. We have two portals to go here for a 1,000,000,000. Go here for your patient records.

I'm not gonna go on that system. I don't want another log in. And I had copied pace of the whole message I posted to the team. Because in this industry that we're working in, I never want to say Well, you know, just incrementally better than whatever the industry standard is is okay. There's so much room to improve the health care experience that I want to make sure that we're basically saying, What do we believe it should be? What's the best experience? And then let's try and do better than that. Because even now we're limited in the imagination of what could possibly exist. But the more that we start executing on, the more everybody is aligned with the fact that there is, you know, experiences yet that have never been created,

that we're gonna move towards that. So the North Star at the high school is just, you know, um, excellent health care for kids, and that comes all the way through that care experience. So, you know, I've got a door jam in my house where all my kids heights are getting in on it. Although we've moved now. So I lost the door jamb and I lost that historical record. Um, all of those kinds of, like, lightweight data points should be getting tracked for your kids. I have an apple watch.

I got an order ring. I've always quantified self for me, and I'm, you know, basically done developed and just trying not to get fatter as I get older, but basically, I'm kind of done, but my kids, you know, they're in the highest developmental years of their life. Once you turn for you, move to an annual wellness exam. So one data point a year through your highest developmental years. That just seems crazy. So we have to build better tools that collect data along the way around. You know,

hide wait, developmental milestones of cognitive April. We should just be able to learn so much more about their development to do either early intervention. We're just better support your kid where they're thriving. That feeds into the wellness visits to reinforce giving parents guidance on how to support their kids. And ultimately, all of that information feeds when they're more serious carry issues in the future. There needs to be a consolidated, clean data set of all of this information so that the smartest healthcare reminds out through paediatrics base and say, Hey, we keep seeing these things happen. What are all the precursors? Whatever the interesting things that have happened in the past. And right now there's a pediatric office by my house. I walk down the street to get a coffee. I can see they're manila folders on the wall.

It's like this wealth of historical information and what we've learned about kids and their health is just sitting and folders or in file cabinets are now. It's been digitized. So, at least, is a digital folder sitting somewhere. But all of those systems air disconnected, and they're not in a place where we can have the intellectual geniuses we talked up for. Start building things on on top of that to, like save lives and better support the health of our kids. So ultimately, you know where your urgent your primary care, but the kinds of experiences were building will be, I think, super important for painting a better picture for how parents be better parents and that getting sick and health sick and injured is like That's a healthy part of a kid's development. It's okay to go through those experiences, but the care of those either illnesses or injuries, should never be worse than that experience that brought me in to see us. So that's where we're going.

That is a incredible vision and one that I would love to see come to life and also one that will require, as you obviously know, a ton of work and help to make happen. And that kind of leads me to my final question. You have a bunch of people listening to this this episode who they could be potential employees and potential customers, Central investors, you know, whatever it is that all just rude, willing to help and ready to help. So my question to you is what is something that forward thinking founders community can do to help you on your mission? Um, you know, over the next 10 years what? How can we help?

Cool. I won't appreciate that. Um, for anybody who also is apparent, you know, what we're really trying to understand is, um you know, what are those features that a parent would be willing to pay for it from a remote perspective like these are the kinds of things about my kids health that I feel like you're not getting tracked well, and if I have better access to this, that would be amazing. Or these are the questions from turns up out of his apparent. So I guess, you know, bringing in more information to help me used my intuition to figure out the parts that we vote from that on the other side of it, the same goes for people that are constantly looking at problems in trying to create better solutions. The same goes for your, like,

adult care and health. I think It's pretty bad that, like I probably supposed to get an annual physical. I probably don't do that like once you become an adult like I don't memory proactive about care for myself, and I think it's because it's not a high quality experience. It's not easy for me to participate kind of understanding, proving that incrementally. But for these founders, like what are things just even more broadly and health care for your personal wellbeing, things that you believe should exist and that we could bring into what we're doing with a focus on making kids happier and healthier. And there's I was like, Yeah, we had a lot of scale in front of us were 20 people. Now we're gonna double that the next. You know, uh,

however many months. So we're clearly growing in scaling on dhe for the people that you hear the idea of trying to really fix a broken industry, not thinking about what we're just gonna incrementally be a better version of the middlemen that makes a lot of money in this world. We really want Oh, Bill, what should exist? Not happily just monetize some friction in the current ecosystem. We wantto think about What's that best care experience. So for anybody who thinks like that and is interested in. But we know we have issued rolls to community in the marketing data science. Just a lot of a lot of rules finding the right people that want to support us from over go

all rights. You all heard it here first. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast and sharing one. Your vision for brave care and to all your product knowledge. I really appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, thanks so much, man.