Episode #4: Startup Advice from Clarify Health Solutions Co-founder Todd Gottula
For our first interview of this podcast, we couldn’t think of a more insightful and generous guest than Clarify Health Solutions Co-founder Todd Gottula.
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In this episode you’ll discover:
What startups spend a ton of money on that is usually a waste
Which of the 3Ps are most important for growth
What key piece of advice Todd would give to a startup raising its first significant funding round
How important paid advisors are to the success of a startup—and when to lean on them
How to set pricing for your tech
Keep scrolling for a transcript of this episode.
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Read the transcript:
Todd Gottula (00:00):
You have to have a very transparent and explicit conversation with any advisor about the expectations being commercial.
Announcer (00:07):
You're listening to Decoding Healthcare Innovation with Carrie Nixon and Rebecca Gwilt, A podcast for novel and destructive healthcare business leaders seeking to transform how we receive and experience healthcare.
Rebecca Gwilt (00:19):
Welcome back to this week's episode of Decoding Healthcare Innovation. I am here and joined by the president and co-founder of Clarify Health Solutions healthcare analytics company that works with healthcare and life sciences companies to generate real world insights that empower physicians and care teams to deliver great care. I do with that ton.
Todd Gottula (00:41):
You did great. Thank you for having me.
Rebecca Gwilt (00:44):
So many other companies in the space that we work with, this is really a company that's driven to produce better patient income outcomes rather and ultimately a healthier world, and we all want that. So I have worked with Todd since just after he and his co-founder and the CEO of his company Jean Drouin, and started the company in 2015. I want to say since then it has been my absolute pleasure to work alongside them as they have grown to be a hugely successful data analytics company. Todd's got over 20 years of achievement driving growth and innovation and profitability in the high tech sector, and he works alongside his amazing team at Clarify like I said, to lead us into in a healthier world. So as I thought about the first guest that I wanted to have on our new podcast what guests could add the most value to the innovators out there who are grinding and hustling and chasing a mission I immediately thought of you, Todd. Not only have you been incredibly successful but you're one of the most kind and generous folks that is out there. And so I really appreciate you joining me today. I can't wait to talk about a little bit of what you've seen and learned as part of your career.
Todd Gottula (02:07):
Wow. Well, thank you very much for that introduction. I should have you introduce me everywhere I go, <laugh>, very flattering. But yes, honestly, the pleasure is all ours on with regards to working with you. It's been in incredible to see the impact that you've had in helping us grow our business successfully across all of the different aspects of the work that you're supporting us. So thank you.
Rebecca Gwilt (02:29):
Well, I appreciate that. I really do. Okay, so let's start with you. We'll get to Clarify, but let's start with you. Tell me a little bit of your backstory. What landed you where you landed in 2015 at the start of this?
Todd Gottula (02:45):
Yeah, so I've been doing enterprise software development design used to code anymore, although I missed those days for about 20, 25 years. And in 2014, I was the CTO of an organization called Advent Software, which prior to its acquisition was the largest provider, independent provider of financial services technology. So think portfolio accounting solutions, trading network connectivity research management platform. So essentially anyone who's doing portfolio management on behalf of either institutions or individuals, they need software in order for them to be able to account for what they're doing and report on their activity. And Advent was the provider of those solutions to about 4,500 customers worldwide. And I was the CTO of that business responsible for all of the products and all of the delivery across all of those customers globally had been at the organization for about 13 years not only as the CTO but prior to that with a business partner.
(03:45):
I built up about a 200 million business unit focused narrowly on the alternative asset industry. So think hedge funds, private equity firms hedge fund administrators and so forth. And then was given the opportunity to take over responsibility for all the products. And we had built an incredible, about 500 million recurring revenue business really healthy gross margins, public company. But one of those things when you're a public company is that you're open for offers from other organizations to acquire and every board has to take any inbound offer seriously. And one of our competitors put in an offer at about 50% above market price and the board has a fiduciary responsibility to represent their investors and ultimately ended up selling the company. And so that put me in a place to have the opportunity to really consider new options. And doing work in the financial services sector is, it's exciting, it's fast moving but when you talk about mission we often joke that although we identify with folks in the back office and portfolio managers and we're helping them make them more efficient, sort of an internal joke, which is you're helping rich people get richer.
(04:57):
And so myself and I say we myself and a group of software engineers that I've worked with, not only at Advent but at a prior organization in the late nineties that we took public wanted to do something really inspirational. And so we were exploring opportunities either in the education or healthcare segments. And as serendipity would have it the great fortune of being introduced to Jean co-founder and CEO, he had an inspiring vision for how we could bring technology outside of the healthcare industry into the healthcare sector to really have sustainable impact on the lives of individuals by helping those that provide care or provision care to them do their jobs more effectively with more insights. And so that is sort of the foundation of Clarify.
Rebecca Gwilt (05:42):
So this is what I wanted to ask you about. So your sort of the Clarify origin story, did you guys start with a concept or did you start with a built piece of technology or did you just start with a team and a vision? What did that look like?
Todd Gottula (05:54):
It really is the latter that you just said there. It's team and a vision. So Jean had a very successful career at McKinsey over 15, 20 years. He ran London's Health System as an adjunct from McKinsey to the NHS for about eight years. Came back to the states, founded McKinsey's Healthcare and digital analytics group with the intent to inside McKinsey build a technology platform that would allow McKinsey's consulting arms to do better work and provide the types of insights that organizations were needing in a much more efficient way. But delivering work more efficiently in a consulting company is sometimes at odds with <laugh> where you're trying to go as a revenue growth of a consulting firm. And so ultimately he realized that he needed to step away from McKinsey and do it independently. And so the vision was to build an enterprise analytics platform that could span the diverse needs of providers, payers, and life sciences organizations from one common technology stack and one underlying set of data assets. Now that's an incredibly high bar, and we can talk about through this conversation the gift that we earned to get the right to build that platform with the support of our incredible investors. But that's what we set out to do, which is really to do something that no one else has done successfully, which is to build a platform upon which you can instantiate multiple business applications to have the type of sustainable impact we're having now.
Rebecca Gwilt (07:20):
Yeah, I love that there are so many founders out there who think they've got to purchase IP or they've got to have a product ready before they have conversations with investors and move their business forward. I guess you guys didn't follow that mold.
Todd Gottula (07:39):
Well, there's a several aspects of the Clarify story that make us very unique. And I say I use the word gift intentionally, which is that the original seven engineers were in a place where, because with the sale of Advent, they were successful and were in a place to be able to commit to start building Clarify without compensation. And so the founding team, Jean, myself, and the core engineering group worked for the first eight months for free. And so you've got really talented folks who have a tremendous amount of experience where the design pattern's actually quite similar. What we were doing in portfolio accounting is actually quite similar to the platform that we've built to Clarify the difference being instead of accounting for trades in financial services, you're sort of accounting for healthcare events, but you're still asking similar questions. And so that was one of the gifts, which is the ability, the freedom to be able to work with that team to build the initial versions of the platform without requiring capital.
(08:46):
And then the second is that because Jean and to a lesser extent myself had really strong relationships with high net worth individuals who wanted to support us, we were able to raise capital with a pretty early version of our platform and a vision and raise substantial capital. And so that again, is another form of the gift that we were given to be able to really build a platform before creating products as opposed to what often happens is that you got to go out there and start delivering customer value and generating revenue, which makes it very hard to take the time and spend the capital to build a platform. Often what you see is people have a couple of business applications and they come back later and try to build a platform to sit underneath those products, and that is a very, very difficult engineering challenge.
Rebecca Gwilt (09:36):
Do you have any advice for startups who possibly don't have the network of high capital, high net worth individuals that are trying to start something that is?
Todd Gottula (09:51):
Well, so the way I painted the story is obviously not exactly how it went. We had to demonstrate even to our early angel investors that there was on the near term horizon 12 months or less, the fact that we were going to be delivering value to somebody so that you can't get away from that. You do need to be very specific about how you're going to solve certain business problems for, because we're, at the end of the day, we're building businesses that said, be very transparent about the fact that if you see a heavy capital investment having an inflection in your future value, your future enterprise value, be very transparent about that. Don't try to hide it because there are plenty of investors out there that understand that platform plays are really the way to generate the long-term enterprise value in any industry. But often founders try to hide that fact.
(10:48):
They try to focus on the fact that there's going to be an immediate return on the investment. And then investors are surprised by the fact that, oh, well, what do you mean you need to burn another 5 million to build a platform? Now look, you got to kiss a lot of frogs, and I'm not the only person that ever says that. I mean, you have to be prepared to do hundreds of meetings even when you're successful, you're still going to do 20, 30, 40 meetings when you're out doing your series C or later rounds. I think Jean, for, Jean and I for our series C, we tallied this up. We did 220 meetings. Some of those were second and third meetings, but 220 conversations and that was it, series C. Yeah. So I know I kind of rambled there, but I would say that if I were to net that back all out, the most important thing is to have the connections to get the meetings to do your pitch. And you got to be prepared to do it over and over and over again.
Rebecca Gwilt (11:46):
Yeah. Yeah, it's great advice. It's great advice. And I actually want to bring it back a little bit to talking about the team. Cause I know you have such great respect for your team and as a founder myself, I know that the right team is absolutely key to success, but finding that team and adequately supporting that team is one of the toughest challenges that I face. I would love to think about I would love to talk about thinking about building a company of individuals and how maybe that has changed since the beginning till now.
Todd Gottula (12:21):
Yeah, so again, this is the <laugh>, sorry to be redundant, but this is the other. Another gift is the incredible relationships, personal relationships that I had coming into the Clarify experience with really, really talented engineers and product managers, my closest friends, and we've been doing this type of thing for all of our careers. The CTO of Clarify, Justin Warner, he and I met when we were 17 and 18 going into soccer sort of pre-season work before we started college together. So we've literally known each other longer than we haven't known each other. And so our purpose is to support each other and each other's families. And it's really incredible to not only have that purpose, but also to have then the purpose of Clarify layered on top of that because we're not only supporting that goal of making sure that we are able to ensure that our kids can go to college and that we're successful as families, but also having putting a real dent in the universe.
(13:35):
And so that philosophy of this dual purpose then has been extended to the overall, the extended Clarify team and everybody that comes onto this journey with us, I say the same thing, which is that you're now part of this family, and my job is to ensure that you have the information that you need to bring your best self to work, but also that I see you holistically and that the company sees you holistically because you're not just the person you are at work and you're making a commitment to join us on this journey. And it's not just yourself, but if you have a partner, it's your partner. If you have children, it's your children. This is a massive commitment that you're making, particularly with an earlier stage organization. And so it's my responsibility to do whatever I can to give you the transparency of the information and to provide a holistic experience so that it's fulfilling for you. And so that's what then builds the trust and the loyalty to the purpose that allows us to then be incredibly successful. Because as a founder yourself, there are moments where you need to ask incredible things from your people. And you can't do that unless you've built the foundation of trust and loyalty and trust and loyalty is not a professional thing. It's a personal thing. And so you have to connect personally with people while respecting obviously their privacy. But this isn't just a job, it's a mission.
Rebecca Gwilt (15:10):
Yeah. I mean think that's probably going to resonate with a lot of people, especially after what we went through in 2020. We absolutely did ask a lot of the folks that worked here. I know the same thing happened there at Clarify. And I do think that things are changing a bit as it relates to the way that companies and their teams interact and what the expectations are. And I'll say that I'm on the internal communications for Clarifying. You guys do a great job of being enthusiastic and supportive of your folks. And my guess from what you're saying is that that's been the case since the beginning.
Todd Gottula (15:56):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Rebecca Gwilt (15:58):
So second thing that I think that I can connect you with you on is in my work with mentoring startups, one of the things I try to remind founders of is that the company that they think they're building might just look completely different in five years. Sometimes there is a roadblock or a larger opportunity that they missed at first, and that they'll need to remain nimble and be okay with shifting vision. I know my law firm looked very different six years ago than it looks today and we were nimble enough to change, and I think it was for the better. I, I'd love to know if that's something that you faced when you guys were building, Clarify and if you have any thoughts about what it looks like to make these kinds of pivots.
Todd Gottula (16:54):
It's just been up and until the right, ever since we started, I dunno what you're talking about. Yeah, no, everyone in that's starting a company I will experience the type of change that you just alluded to. I think it's universal. I don't know of anybody I've ever talked to that said this is what we're going to start doing and therefore we've finished and we achieved exactly and landed exactly what we thought we would. And I think the biggest thing, so one of our advisors was Dr. Jack Cochran, who used to be the president of the Kaiser Permanente Foundation, which is the physicians at Kaiser. And he was always driving home to Jean and myself. That learning has to be a part of any organization and particularly an organization in healthcare because the pace of change is this really dichotomous experience in healthcare because there's so much rooted in the historical practice of medicine.
(17:56):
But then with the advancement of technology, our insights and what is knowable about the delivery of healthcare and the receipt of healthcare is advancing at a pace that is far outstripping the appetite to change. And so you have to learn in both dimensions. It's not just about learning the new stuff, but it's also learning about the way in which medicine has been practiced in the past and the controls and the safety and the concerns that individuals have about changing practice. And so that obviously applies, and I'm not the only person that would say that the only constant is change. When we started the company, our vision, and it is still to a certain extent, but how was much more explicit, is to change healthcare outcomes for every individual that we can possibly touch. Now, when we originally got going, we were doing patient engagement and care management in addition to the analytics.
(18:50):
Unfortunately, the economics are such, and it's a sad state when you analyze it about the healthcare industry and the United States that although through capitation patient engagement and care management was actually driving down costs, it was rewarding clinicians who were providing higher quality, more efficient care, and patients were having a much more enjoyable, if that is a possible word, but at least knowledgeable and informed journey through joint replacements, cardiovascular procedures and so forth. But unfortunately, the programs changed. It was working as intended, but with a change in administration, we went a different direction and those economics fell apart. And so organizations didn't have the same rewards and therefore they couldn't afford the types of technology that we had developed. And so we had to pivot. And when we pivoted to being a broad-based analytics organization, we didn't know exactly what was going to stick. We knew that we had a platform that could do a lot of things, but we didn't know exactly what was the most pressing need of the buyer communities that we were targeting.
(19:57):
And so we had to spin up a whole library of potential solutions and take 'em out into the market. Massive amount of engineering went into building V1s of 12 products, and now we do a subset of those because we found the ones that really resonated, which really goes back to the fact that I am completely cognizant of the fact that we were given an amazing opportunity to have the funding to do that. It's very rare that organizations are given that type of capital because it obviously took a lot of humans, <laugh> writing code packaging, that getting the sales meetings or the pitch meetings to have the conversations to figure out what was resonating or not resonating, and then going through the process of actually shutting down solutions that people had invested a year of their lives into because it didn't have the market traction. Also a really, really challenging experience. But that's what it takes to get to the place where we are today, where we have a subset of the products that we originally envision that are having real impact in the lives of those individuals that are provisioning or delivering care. And we're having commercial success.
Rebecca Gwilt (21:15):
I mean, you've been in the FinTech world and now in the health tech world, and those two industries are just so highly susceptible to changes in regulatory rulemaking stuff, statute, big overhauls that can actually sort of disappear a business model. So it sounds like that's what happened to you. We've got a ton of clients that part of what forms the basis of their company being able to function is a physician fee schedule code that might disappear next year, which is a really scary place to be if you're in the health tech sector. But I think what I take from what you said is keep your eyes open, understand before you continue to sink something into something that's no longer viable, that you need another option and then just head first in figure something else out. I mean, it didn't sound like your company stopped in fact, you created a significant amount of additional value.
Todd Gottula (22:19):
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great playing back of what I was saying, and maybe I would layer on top of that given that part of the audience that we're focusing on is folks that are starting their own organizations or growing their own businesses, is that don't underestimate your relationship with your board, particularly if your board's primarily your investor base, because that will make or break what happens to you when the inevitable speed bump or roadblock gets put in front of you. And we were fortunate enough to have, now, I don't want to make it sound like it was easy, but we were fortunate enough to have a set of investors that when we needed to have in a source and additional capital, that they were supportive and that they understood, and they were a long with us, they were side by side with us on the journey so that they understood what decisions we were making, how we were deploying that capital maybe not always excited about how much capital we were deploying, but at least understood the decisions we were making. And so we're not surprised by the outcomes and therefore the next steps that we had to make based on those outcomes and now are incredibly excited that the fruits of those labors are paying off.
Rebecca Gwilt (23:39):
Yeah, and I'm actually interested in your thoughts on the importance of advisors in particular paid advisors. I know you've had some pretty significant ones since the beginning. Not everybody has that kind of access, but I'm interested in your thoughts for emerging companies who know they need allies and advisors who know various parts of the industry that unpack their business, and when's the right time to start putting that group together and what does that look like?
Todd Gottula (24:12):
Yeah, so advisors have been incredibly important for our success and our growth particularly over the course of the last 12 months. What I would say is that you have to have a very transparent and explicit conversation with any advisor about the expectations being commercial. So if you're bringing on advisors in a commercial capacity, I understand that there could be reasons for advisors on helping you build and design your technology or solution. Putting that to the side because that's more like paid subject matter expertise. I'm talking about advisors who say that they have access to C-level individuals at certain types of firms. So you say, I know a lot of CEOs at hospitals, or I know a lot of CFOs at hospitals. So there's two really, really important learnings there. One is be explicit about is the Rolodex represented your actual buyer or decision maker?
(25:09):
For us CEOs of hospitals are actually not our buyer, it's chief strategy officers, or it's the individual who is responsible for the physician relationships management at payers, it's product owners or people that actually build and maintain the networks or those that maintain physician relationships. So talking to the CEO of a blue is not, that's not going to add value for me because that individual is not going to tell their people what to do, and they're even most likely not even the person who signs the contract. So first it's qualify the Rolodex, and then the second thing is that you have to put 'em on a performance incentive plan. So actually pay them based on the closed deals that you bring through. And this is the test, because if an advisor is not willing to do that, then that's not the right advisor. Again, this is, I'm focusing specifically on advisors that you're having a relationship with.
(26:10):
You're considering relationship for commercial success that you know have to put in the right degree of rewards and accountability. And then I would counter that by saying then be willing to pay a lot because as an growing company, the right relationship established by an advisor with a warm contact that's going to support your business through thick and thin, you have to consider that valued at your multiple not based dollars. And those types of relationships are worth a lot of money, <laugh> a lot of enterprise value, and they're going to help you build out your products or your solutions so that you'll grow more successfully elsewhere. And so that's the other side of it. If you're going to get an advisor to be on almost like a commission structure, whether it's dollars or equity, you then have to be willing to pay handsomely when those opportunities realize.
Rebecca Gwilt (27:06):
Yeah, and I like that you pointed out that there are sort of different ways to compensate folks. I think a lot of especially folks that meet with advisors very, very early on when they're starting companies are, they just assume that they should be paying out equity to advisors. That's suggested sort of seems normal to them. But I do talk to my clients about the fact that equity is the most expensive thing that you can provide to somebody, especially at the beginning of your company, and that there are other ways to compensate folks that really provide value. So anyway, so I have a lightning round here. These were the top questions. I got a lightning round for you. And then I have one final question. So buckle up. Are you ready?
Todd Gottula (27:50):
I will do my best.
Rebecca Gwilt (27:51):
Okay. Okay. Alright. First question. What is something that startups, especially tech startups spend a ton of money on that you don't think they should?
Todd Gottula (28:05):
I realize I'm not being lightning about this. We spent a lot of money on conferences, the sort of pay-to-play meetings with prospective buyers and the sort of, you want to meet a bunch of CEOs, come down to Laguna Beach and you get 15 minutes lightning around with the CEOs. None of that stuff was real for us arguably ever, but certainly until we had products and we spent healthy six figures on that kind of stuff, yes, we didn't get a return on.
Rebecca Gwilt (28:45):
Love that. Love that. I always like to hear people say marketing because there's tremendous amount you can do in unpaid marketing, especially these days relying on relationships, et cetera. Okay, love that. So
Todd Gottula (28:58):
I will say to my, so my chief marketing officer doesn't kill me now. It's incredibly important. That was early stage.
Rebecca Gwilt (29:07):
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And also my marketing person, <laugh>, Betsy, shout out, we love you. We do not underestimate your value. Ever, ever, ever.
Todd Gottula (29:18):
Yes.
Rebecca Gwilt (29:20):
Okay. But I still get emails, do you want to buy this list of XYZ?
Todd Gottula (29:26):
None of that stuff. Yeah,
Rebecca Gwilt (29:27):
Yeah. Don't do it. Okay. Yeah. So second question successful companies not just in the tech industry, but in the tech industry too, focus on the three Ps, people, process and tech and sometimes a fourth P for performance. What do you think is the most important of these?
Todd Gottula (29:43):
Hands down people.
Rebecca Gwilt (29:45):
All right. What is one key piece of of advice you would give a startup raising its first significant funding round outside of friends and family?
Todd Gottula (29:55):
So interview the funder as much as they're interviewing you. Really get down to the details as to what it is that they're going to do to help support growing your business and ask them for references and specific examples of where they've changed the trajectory in a positive way for one of their portfolio companies.
Rebecca Gwilt (30:17):
Awesome. Okay. This one's a little less lightning, but I got it. As a suggestion from the Women's Health Innovation Consortium, which was excited to hear this interview today. How do you think about pricing tech and what trends in pricing and healthcare are you seeing?
Todd Gottula (30:35):
So first and foremost, price to the value you're creating. So really understand the unit economics of whomever it is that's buying or licensing your software or platform. And then second is particularly as an early stage company, don't try to maximize your take. The whole idea is to get your foot in the door and in healthcare master service agreements are worth their weight in gold, meaning the actual Ts and Cs that allow you to sell the first thing and the third thing and the seventh thing to the same customer. So don't overprice your first thing, get in the door, demonstrate value before you try to realize value. Then go back and continue to grow your relationship once you've got the trust of the buyer. The other thing is don't overcomplicate it, right? I've seen pricing models that are like, well, it's based on beds and then geography and then the day of the week, and I'm like, no, no, no, no.
(31:32):
Very simple. It has to be very explainable and it has to be incredibly predictable because the other thing about healthcare is that there's not a lot of variable budget. It's a very fixed budgeting cycle. And so even though you may be priced to beds, don't expect to be able to, or beds bads example. So members, right? PMPY, that's a pretty traditional method of pricing. Don't expect that you can realize a monthly or quarterly change in P PMPY in your dollars because they don't have the budget for it the buyer doesn't have the budget. So build in annual resets and expect for those economics to be captured at peer at a more lengthy period but again, in a simple predictable way for the buyer.
Rebecca Gwilt (32:16):
Are you a fan of, this is a corollary. Are you a fan of the non-paid pilot?
Todd Gottula (32:21):
No, not at all. So I believe that you have to have your buyer put some form of skin in the game. So I would much rather do a full master service agreement with a fee schedule, with a termination for convenience and delayed payment terms ideally with some small upfront cash consideration so that they have to go through the process of getting approval to work with you but then accept the responsibility that you're going to deliver value before they actually have to commit to working with you.
Rebecca Gwilt (32:57):
Awesome. Okay. So this has been obviously incredibly insightful. I'm super grateful that you took time out of what I know is an extremely busy schedule to share some of the things that you've learned. And I'd like to wrap up with just one more question. I imagine folks listening to this would love to be sitting where you are sitting now and are working very hard to get there. What do you know now that you wish you knew back in 2015 might have made a difference for you?
Todd Gottula (33:31):
That's a great question.
Rebecca Gwilt (33:34):
Thank you.
Todd Gottula (33:35):
A couple of things. The first is that my background is public companies, and so I didn't have an appreciation for something that you and I talked about earlier, which is just the sheer amount of time investment that's required to solicit capital. That is an incredible responsibility of the whomever it is on the leadership team that's taking on that. And that was Jean, myself and then our chief of staff who's now our VP of strategy, Neechi Mosha. And so with that responsibility though, comes in a really amazing opportunity to listen and learn because these are really talented folks to whom you're pitching, and they're going to give you feedback about what's resonating, what's not resonating about the way in which you're positioning your company. And so first part is didn't understand just how many meetings we were going to have to do and how constant it is.
(34:36):
It never goes away. The second though is that how important it is to create the link between how you're pitching and presenting your company to investors and how you pitch and present your company to prospective buyers. Because there's a lot of learnings. And I think I've seen other companies pitch one way to investors and then pitch to buyers. And at least for us, once we brought it all together and we're doing real-time sharing between both sides, the flywheel really started, really started spinning. And then the third is maybe not a learning as much as a validation, which is just how important the investment into your people is. And also just how hard it is when you're in a small company. You're moving so fast, everyone has got 130%, if not more on their plate than what they thought they could be doing. And so I guess I'll turn it into an active recommendation. We were late in investing in our people function, and we kind of cobbled together that role as a lot of startups do because they're like, oh, well, if I'm going to spend a dollar, I'm going to spend it hiring another salesperson or another product manager.
(35:53):
If I could do something differently, I would've really invested in the people function a year earlier than what we did, or maybe even more. Because having an independent group of folks really focusing on the transparency, the services, the training and listening to the team's needs is just so valuable when people is the most important. Your people are the most important <laugh> part of this overall experience and this journey. And without them feeling really, really incredible about their experience, it's difficult for them to then give their all, which you're demanding of them all the time.
Rebecca Gwilt (36:36):
Yeah. Well, so I love that the thread through a lot of this has been the importance of relationships. Mm-hmm. Founding teams, not founding teams, the people in the organization. I really, before I started my career in government and we were always focusing on the American people, the people were our focus. And I could not have predicted when I went into tech how human it would become. And I think folks like you, Todd are really the reason behind that. And I am grateful to know you, and I'm grateful for your time here today. And for those of you listening, thank you so much. You can add us on whatever you want to add us on, on social, and we'll put show notes for you to read, and we hope you let us know what other kinds of things you might want to ask CEOs, like Todd, and we'll try to get 'em on the podcast. Thank you so much, Todd.
Todd Gottula (37:34):
Well, thank you very much for having me, and thank you. More importantly, probably for the partnership that you and your firm has represented for Clarify, you've definitely been instrumental in our success.
Rebecca Gwilt (37:45):
Thanks so much.
Todd Gottula (37:47):
Great. Thanks.
“Don’t underestimate your relationship with your board because that will make or break what happens when the inevitable speed bump gets put in front of you”
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Learn more about Clarify Health’s healthcare analytics platform, which allows you to identify business opportunities that are hidden from plain sight with on-the-fly exploration of the most comprehensive collection of real-world patient journeys.
Read about Clarify’s recent $115M Series C funding to accelerate the adoption of on-demand healthcare analytics.
Discover how podcast cohosts Rebecca Gwilt and Carrie Nixon’s firm, Nixon Gwilt Law, helps digital health startups prepare for fundraising with the Pre-Raise Prep Package.