TJ Parker: Academic overachievers struggle to transition into startups
TJ Parker · TJ Parker: Building PillPack, The First E-Commerce Pharmacy, to Amazon's $1B Acquisition | E1022 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 5, 2023 · at 11:29
TJ Parker is the co-founder and former CEO of PillPack and a partner at Matrix Partners. He discusses how straight-A academic success rarely translates into thriving in high-uncertainty startup environments.
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“I sort of have come to terms with the fact that I think it's very hard for like the classic overachiever that sat in the front row every, you know, in every class and always delivered papers on time and always got A's in every, every one of their classes. To go from that reality into a startup, which is honestly like rewards a very different type of behavior and a different type of tactics.”
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More from TJ Parker
TJ Parker: Amazon's 'earned trust' culture assumes the worst of people
“In hindsight, that is, like, literally the opposite culture, right? It's like, It's kind of assumed the worst until you're proven otherwise.”
TJ Parker: A decade in corporate pharmacy would have prevented founding PillPack
“If I had been working in pharmacy for a decade as an adult, there's no way I would have started a pill pack, because there were very specific reasons it shouldn't have worked, and I think that's where the naivety is really powerful.”
TJ Parker: Healthcare is broken because companies don't build for end consumers
“The reason that most of healthcare is as fucked up as it is, is that almost no one is actually building for the customer that's, that is using the service”
TJ Parker: PillPack received termination notices from all major PBMs in 2015
“And through 2015 we got termination notices from all of the major PBMs, right, very obviously.”