Provider Trust and Whole-Health Platform Strategy

Transcript

Transcription
Ravi
0:25
It's. Sam. That. It? So. Hi Shilpa.
Shilpa
8:48
Hi Ravi. How are you?
Ravi
8:51
Being late. I was with the CTO and we ran over so I apologies. Hopefully K pinged you.
Shilpa
8:57
He didn't, but it's all good.
Ravi
8:59
Okay, I pinged him, but he may not have seen it in time. Thank you for making the time. I am Ravi. I lead our technology optimization team at Hims and Hars. I've just about six months, so I'm still new in the company and learning. This team is basically coming together to start building a solid foundation or platform for our clinical and customer operations, which is basically the the company. And we're here today to talk about the senior director role that we're hiring to lead this team. So I have your resume in front of me. I would love to get like a 30 second overview of anything you want to highlight in your resume so far.
Shilpa
9:40
Absolutely, Ravi. So pretty much I've been working in over 14 years doing product management and leading teams. Most of the products I've worked in is highly technical, but I want to say my job is very much around how do you bring in the human aspect to these highly technical products. That could be a combination of empathy, understanding of where the customers are going, different things and how do I productize it and working with teams, cross organizational teams to build that.
Ravi
10:14
Okay, great. This conversation is 30 minutes for us to just to get to know each other. So less of a formal interview style, more of just a two way conversation conversation. So if you don't end up going the full 30 minutes, please don't take that as a sign of the interview. It's just intended for us to, you know, have a quick chat after this conversation. You know, we'll have more formal process as we move you forward. So with that said, I would love to begin with maybe in your, you know, recent past if you can highlight to me one or two key deliverables that you would say, you know, this is what people will remember me by. This is my legacy for delivering these products and in, in previous roles.
Shilpa
10:56
Okay, it's a very interesting question because I truly believe my legacy, part of the work has yet to be done. But if you call it out, I would say it's not as much about the technology part or the features or the products that I build that I'm the most proud of. It's about the people aspect of building the people side of things. You know, I kind of, I've had junior PMs come in, not sure if product management is what they want to do. Kind of like helping them navigate what it is to be a PM in the technology space, help them identify what of their strengths will work for this role and what they need to change if they want to continue to grow in the role. I have really amazing PM's work with me, teach me. So I think it's all about the people aspects if you want to pick a technology one. I joined ELO Touch as a director and one of my tasks was it's a hardware company. It's a 75 year old hardware company. In fact they were the first company to do touchscreen. A lot of people think it's Apple, but it's elo. And so they have kiosk touchscreen solutions, point of sale systems, and they wanted to build a software platform for it. So I came in, helped the groundwork on what does that mean for the company and kind of build it from ground up. So that was exciting.
Ravi
12:25
Okay, so tell me a little bit more about like what did you actually deliver? What was like the specific outcomes. Can you walk me through a little bit of the key items?
Shilpa
12:34
Okay, yeah. So when I joined elaview, they were really good at doing hardware and they spoke hardware inside out as a company, but they never done SaaS. And so they wanted to understand what, what will it take for them to build an MVP solution. And they wanted to be very lean about it because the focus of the company was definitely on hardware. And so it was not just only a function of what does MVP look like, sitting through sales calls, customer interviews, doing user interviews and kind of figuring out what competitive products are the customers using, what are that should be the MVP feature running early stage, you know, prototype testing with customers and understanding feedback bring that in the product. I think the major shift that needed to happen or what I got excited about that work was the, the mentality shift that needed from a hardware focused company to move to a SaaS platform. You know, convincing the team and the leadership about recurring revenue from SaaS versus a one time sale hardware and building long term relationship, how that can translate into SaaS. And so it was all about how do you reduce friction from moving hardware to software and how do you pitch it to your say we had restaurants, McDonald's was one of our customers. So kind of how do you convince these big players on not just buy our hardware but also buy our SaaS platform?
Ravi
14:00
Got it. So what was the outcome? Like what did you actually end up doing in that company? Like how do you, what was the outcome of this influencing.
Shilpa
14:07
So within the first year we build An MVP product and onboarded over, I want to say, good 80% of our hardware customers into the MVP product. Towards the end, another six months, they became paying customers. And we had a revenue projection that was across these multiple franchise we were working with anywhere to hit from 18 million to 20 million. And so that's a course of over five years, which is the contract locking period we had set in place. And so that was one of the bigger deliverables. And also is like when you place the hardware order itself, bringing in the SaaS order as well.
Ravi
14:50
I see. So bundle.
Shilpa
14:54
Yeah.
Ravi
14:54
So how do you price.
Shilpa
14:56
Yeah, to your point, Right. How do you price the bundling depending on what hardware they pick? And how do you kind of make it the sweet spot for sas? So that's what kind of the work was.
Ravi
15:07
So did the company then pivot into monetizing the SaaS platform?
Shilpa
15:11
Yes. So then the sales deck completely changed. Right now you're no longer just selling hardware, but how do you integrate SaaS into it? Then it's about there's a certain style in which the team sell hardware. How do you soften it to move into software? And sometimes the pitch has to start with SaaS and then move into hardware because some customers start started getting excited about the SaaS piece. And so it was like these different flavors of how do you sell the same product that we had to build into the company.
Ravi
15:41
Got it. So you led the transformation from them just selling hardware to software service.
Shilpa
15:48
Yes. So that was a major strategy change for the company. It's a global company. Yes. Sorry, go ahead.
Ravi
15:55
No, go ahead, please.
Shilpa
15:56
Yeah, no. So because it's a global company, the Dynamics is very different from US market to European market. So I had to kind of be in the ground, understand what the customers really cared about, and build that into the company.
Ravi
16:09
Yeah, so that's. That sounds like a, you know, major transformation of a company, not just a strategy shift, like you fundamentally changed the company. So then help me understand, like, why leave the company that you're actually creating such a big transformation in?
Shilpa
16:25
So at that point, Castle pushed me. Like, I happened to know one of the team members, and they had worked with me previously, and they were going through a similar transformation at Castle. And so they wanted to bring me in to understand how I can, like, shift how the dynamics of the team was reorg, et cetera.
Ravi
16:46
Okay, got it. So tell me about your role at Castle.
Shilpa
16:49
So Castle is basically clothing as a rental service company, and I had never done fashion technology. And so I was like, okay, let me give This a try. Basically what they, what Castle does is since COVID we had customers who not owned owned a single piece of clothing. And so you know, they'd been traveling and so we would ship products. They would pick from the Guinea B or the Castle website and kind of ship it to the location and they could ship it from anywhere in the world they were traveling in. So that's kind of like the overall business model I was bought in to transform how we would work with these retail companies such as one of the customers was Express, another one was H and M. How do we bring in these bigger brands that was exploring borrow model and kind of, you know, help them get their inventory onboarded onto CASL platform. When does that revenue, how much is that revenue share happening? So kind of talking with these bigger players and onboarding them, understanding what business model works for them, building the SaaS platform accordingly, who owns the logistics, etc. The operations piece of it and streamlining it was part of my work.
Ravi
17:55
Got it. So then as a, like what did you, what was your end deliverable at Castle?
Shilpa
18:03
So interestingly enough, we had started these early conversations with these big, you know, customers who understand E commerce and how to transform that shift from how they viewed traditional store based model to borrow model, integrating that into their platform. So we had kicked off it for Express. We're in the process of bringing building it up for H and M and that's when Castle folded. The CEO got called out for financial fraud and so the company folded at that point.
Ravi
18:34
I see. Okay, got it. All right, thank you. So I'm going to pause here. I'm. I'm now the interviewee. You're the interviewer. You're welcome to ask me any questions about me, about the company or the team in general.
Shilpa
18:46
Ah, okay. So I do have a few questions for you Rohi. And what do you think is the biggest operational bottleneck for the company at this point? Is it the clinical side, the customer side or it's cross functional team things that you're seeing?
Ravi
19:06
Yeah, I think the biggest bottleneck for us is our core platforms are very antiquated. So when this company started, it started in a very transactional mindset. So you come to us, we give you medication, you go away and that's about it. Just keep doing a onetoone transaction. Very quickly now the company is pivoting towards more of a whole health model. So we announced yesterday we're doing cancer screenings, we have blood testing, we have a whole bunch of other things that enable you to basically take care of your entire health. But the platforms don't support that level of continuity of care and being able to look at a patient holistically versus the separate transactional treatments that the company was built upon. So the biggest challenge is getting the platforms to meet the needs of the, of the evolving business, which then impacts every part of operations that we have.
Shilpa
19:58
Got it. So in addition to scaling the platform, how do you bring in that aspect? So because you know, conventional healthcare, you very much meet the patient and the doctor and you know, you meet each other and you get that insight into what works. There's a human aspect more to it, but for a telehealth that's kind of like disintegrated. And so what that translates to eventually is how much do I trust this platform? Right. How are you building in components to kind of enable or like bridge that gap?
Ravi
20:30
Yeah, so that is some of our secret sauce is we're building a lot of systems that take into account explicit and implicit preferences. How do we match you with a provider where you have commonalities? How do we make sure that there is some trust that is built in inherently by the nature of the provider and you having some shared qualities that you value as a customer. So building those customer models and then having provider models or position models of who they are, how they talk, how they interact, preferences. And can we create more of that community virtually, which, you know, obviously doesn't exist because you're not talking to somebody live, whether even it's a telehealth setting or a in person setting. Yeah.
Shilpa
21:18
So interestingly enough, one of the startups that I'm working with in the telehealth space, they kind of came to this user testing and understanding that, that it's important at some point to give a face to the clinician at the other end. And that's kind of like how they're pivoting their whole product line. Do you agree? Based on your six months of understanding of the product, how important do you think that aspect is that human to human, like at least a face to the thing, because I use him and I know that's not necessarily how the product is packaged at this point?
Ravi
21:55
Yeah, that's a good question. I think it depends on the type of treatment. Right. So depending on the type of treatment you're seeking from hims, you may want to have a more personal connection with the provider or in some cases you actually prefer to not have a human connection. And we see this very distinctly in the types of treatment. So if you're coming in for something that is more of a medical necessity, long term treatment, let's say heart health. Then you want someone that you know, you can see, you can touch, you can feel, not like touching, like literal touch, but like know who that person is, see them face to face and have a connection, say, okay, this person's going to take care of my health. If you're coming in for like the sexual health flow and you just want, you know, eating medications, then you're probably like, I don't want to talk to you because I actually, you know, it's fun. My medication would go away otherwise I would have gone to my primary care and gotten that medication there. Right. So I think it really depends on the workflow that you're coming into and how much you want that interaction to be.
Shilpa
22:57
That totally makes sense. Okay, I got another question for you. Is something else also I'm like trying to figure out as. As. As I explore the space with AI and introduction of AI. Ethical AI is a big topic because some of these black boxed AI models necessarily doesn't give take into account a lot of different things that a person would take into. Like a clinician would take into as. And when you're exploring AI models etc, does hems take into account how an ethical AI model would work versus an ethics of a person or a human would work?
Ravi
23:41
Yes. And to give you a direct answer, we don't use AI to make any kind of clinical decision. All clinical decisions are made by humans. And there's a reason for that because you can trust AI to have a benign conversation. We don't, we're not at the maturity state to trust AI to have clinical conversations or clinical decisions. So no clinical decisions are made by the AI. All clinical decisions go to a human.
Shilpa
24:10
Got it. Okay. Okay. But do you think there's a future, just your personal opinion, where it's going to be completely overridden by AI and only when it gets flagged as a human come into play?
Ravi
24:22
I'm sure that that state is not very far out. I know there are other companies who are already experimenting with that. There are companies who automatically read like your radiographs, your MRIs, CD scans with AI and they can probably find things faster than a human can. Yeah, I think there, there is a world where that is true. The, the one thing that I've always held true is science is the best guess. Right. And I think you have a science background too. So we don't know a lot of things about medicine. We have good guesses A lot of the medications today on the market actually say we don't fully understand the mechanism of action, but we know this medication helps this area. And like if you see medical ads, they'll all put that disclaimer like it's not fully understood how this medication actually works. So I don't know if AI is going to fully take over patient care in all aspects. I think in some transactional aspects, where you're reading an mri, finding a fracture, finding a lesion, finding a tumor like that, that might be much easier because there is known truths to compare against and train against. But because it's the best guess, there's not always a known set to train a model against. I mean, eventually singularity will hit and we'll get smarter than humans, but that's a different point.
Shilpa
25:37
Yes, yes. Oh, I completely agree with your take on this. Okay, my last question for you. I think we are.
Ravi
25:42
Okay.
Shilpa
25:42
We're not short of time. Okay, so my last question to you is the product Hims and Hers is very much geared around like an age factor where you know, it's not the younger crowd until the 30s, they're still hopeful. They know they have better control over on their health. But closer to 35 and you feel like, oh, I will, you know, I need external help to manage all of this and the chaos in my life is not helping. You know, it's a very realization phase. That's when this usage of the hymns and her product kicks in. Do you think Hims and Hers is going to. And now you're getting into preventative care with labs. It's interesting, but do you think again, you know, it's, it's very much around, if I put the sentiment the right way, it's a very fear based, you know, you're tapping into that sentiment of fear of the customer.
Ravi
26:31
Right.
Shilpa
26:31
As a product, you're trying to tell them like, hey, don't feel so scared about this. You know, this is going to reassure you or don't worry about this, what you're scared of, you know, this is what's going to help you, you. But the biggest market that's untapped into this whole fear sector is elder care. Is that something you personally think is a space that Hims and hers, your personal take on the strategy, that should explore into it or you think, no, this is like the sweet spot and this is where it matters. Once you get control over your preventative health right now, you don't care about that age factor because you're good then, right? Like longevity, everything just is an after effect of like what's your personal take on all of this?
Ravi
27:10
Yeah, so just my personal take from previous background. So once you get into geriatric health, which is like the older health elderly care, there are n number of complications to manage. Right, right. And typically the average geriatric patient in the US is on like six different medications at the minimum. Right. Oh, sorry. On average, not minimum. So you have to manage not just their, whatever chronic condition they may have, but also all the other conditions that they are may not be chronic, but that still exists or they may still take medications for. That takes a lot of system maturity or platform maturity to actually do effectively. So I don't know if you're, if you are in that state or space just yet. I'm sure eventually we'll get there, but it will take a lot of process maturity to happen before that kind of access is unlocked.
Shilpa
28:08
Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. But I also feel like my personal like read on all of this space. I feel like especially for a company like Hims and hers, that's tackling something that you're seeing when you're younger, you go like, what if five years from now, okay, I grow my hair out or like, you know, lose my weight and get all these things under control, but what if I hit 55 and then, you know, him cannot correlate all of these other things I'm seeing and kind of give me a good, you know, like for my geriatric health, like an overall schema that it kind of kills a purpose or kind of like brings down my confidence in the product. Yes, it's a very interesting thing.
Ravi
28:46
Yeah, it is, it is. Yeah. And we're working towards building like a true whole health profile. But I don't know if you're going just the direction. I think when this population, which is in the 30s and 40s right now, graduates to geriatric, maybe by then we'll be would have graduated to that care because we would want to maintain the continuity of the patients. Right, Absolutely. So, but anyways, thank you for, for the questions. A couple next steps. So what happens from here, here on out is once we are done with all the initial conversations like this one, we'll invite you and a short list of people to come to a more formal interview loop, which is typically three to four interviews back to back, and then we can make our decision from there. In either case, you should hear back from Gabe, who's your recruiter. Probably not this week, but probably by middle to end of next week. And in the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to email him. He'll be happy to pass those on to me.
Shilpa
29:35
That sounds perfect.
Ravi
29:37
Okay. Thank you so much for your time. Sorry for being late.
Shilpa
29:40
All right, thanks then. Bye. Bye.