TJ Parker: You cannot be happy and successful at both startups and big tech
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 1:11:32
TJ Parker, co-founder of PillPack, reflects on individual personality fit for corporate environments versus startup environments after his tenure at Amazon.
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“The likelihood that you're both really successful and really happy in a huge company, and then also really successful and really happy in a startup is unlikely.”
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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.”