Iman Abuzeid
Co-founder & CEO, Incredible Health. On 4 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutivescientistoperator@imanabuzeid ↗LinkedIn ↗incrediblehealth.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Dr. Iman Abuzeid co-founded Incredible Health in 2017, an AI-enabled career marketplace connecting hospitals with permanent healthcare workers. After an $80 million Series B round valued the company at $1.65 billion, she became one of the few Black female founders to lead a venture-backed tech unicorn.
4shows
2appearances
19statements
4resolved
2supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
10said about them ↓ Everything Iman Abuzeid said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Abuzeid adopted a privileged white male alter ego to project confidence
“I pretty much adopted an alter ego, and this alter ego actually happens to be a white male who, you know, who is highly privileged as well, because I had observed how members of that demographic operate. Like, I see them walking into a room, and the amount of …”
Diversity pipeline problems are an excuse; talent is evenly distributed
“When people say it's a pipeline problem, it sounds like a little, like an excuse to me. It's BS, honestly. If you look at the US or, you know, the world, talent is evenly distributed. Opportunities are not.”
Abuzeid: Homogeneous tech teams contain mediocrity by missing top talent across demographics
“I do truly believe that talent is evenly distributed, so what that means is that every single demographic, you're trying to hire the top five percent of white male men, or you're trying to hire the top five percent of Hispanic women, and so if you have a bunch…”
Abuzeid: Story and market vision drive VC deals, not traction
“I learned very quickly that traction isn't what gets deals done. What gets deals done is an amazing story with a huge vision, with a huge market that you're pursuing, and a very unique insight about how you're going to achieve it.”
Pitch tier-three investors first to practice before meeting tier-one VCs
“You need to meet the Tier three investors first, then the tier two, and end with the tier one. It's very much like job interviews where, like, you practice on companies that you don't care about as much, and so the companies you really want, you leave them tow…”
Every startup CEO should hire a professional therapist to manage anxiety
“Honestly, I have a therapist, and I generally encourage all CEOs to just get one. There's a lot of anxiety and stress in this job, so whatever external professional support you can get is probably going to be quite helpful.”
Abuzeid: Assertiveness and confidence, not substance alone, close investment checks
“Even if your content and your substance is fantastic, adding that confidence and assertiveness is extremely helpful as well. And that really is what ultimately Ends up getting checks, or sales, or people signing up for your team.”
Black female founders receive just 0.1% of VC funding
“I think black Female woman get zero, one percent of VC dollars, which is effectively zero.”
Turn imminent VC pitch rejections into free strategy consulting sessions
“Usually, you know, 10 minutes into the pitch that they're probably going to say no. You can just tell from their demeanor and how they're asking questions and stuff. But I'm like, you know, I just need to sit here for another 40 minutes, right? So I'm just goi…”
Abuzeid: MBA finance classes and credibility benefit startup founders
“Listen, outside of the VC community does give you some credibility. Like when you're selling to enterprise customers, for example. Two is that it's specifically the finance and accounting classes you take are incredibly helpful when you're building a business.”
Abuzeid: Unresolved startup hiring mistakes must be terminated within weeks
“Now, if after a certain period of time, and unfortunately in a startup, it cannot be very much time, because time is money here, and we got to move really fast. So within a matter of a few weeks, actually, if it's not resolved, then they likely need to leave t…”
Abuzeid: Incredible Health projects 300% to 400% growth this year
“I mean, incredible health grew 400% last year. We're on track to grow another 304 hundred percent this year.”
Abuzeid: Incredible Health rejects exclusivity requests to maintain employer neutrality
“We always say no to those requests. And we explain that we operate like Switzerland, you know, like we're neutral. And we don't have any preference for one employer over the other.”
Abuzeid: Startup pivots should be celebrated, not ridiculed
“Pivots are extremely tough to go through psychologically. What it means is that, you know, we have to basically change the entire company and change what we're doing altogether, but they're very common, right, in Silicon Valley, and I guess they should be cele…”
Abuzeid: Managing personal psychology is a startup CEO's primary responsibility
“Ben Horowitz in his book, Hard Things About Hard Things, one of the first things he says is the number one job of the CEO is to manage your own psychology. And I've, now that I've been like in the trenches here, like it's so true.”
Abuzeid: Incredible Health manually onboarded its first 40 nurses without software
“I think the first 30 or 40 nurses we just recruited through our networks, frankly. There was no software, like you said to your point.”
Abuzeid: Incredible Health offers free continuing education and salary estimators
“We do offer free continuing education to every single nurse in the country. We have free salary estimators for every single nurse in the country. We have an advice platform or a community built into our apps where nurses can give each other highly personalized…”
Top VCs add value by introducing founders to their LP executives
“Whether it's Obvious Ventures or Andreessen Horowitz, both have introduced me to hospital execs. Some of them are even their LPs, and that's been extremely helpful with helping us grow our business.”
Abuzeid: Incredible Health launched supply and demand simultaneously in SF
“So we started with both. We went after supply and demand at the same time, but we stayed geographically very focused, like many other two-sided marketplaces. When we started, we were only live in the San Francisco Bay area.”
The other half of the tape: Iman Abuzeid's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 2 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jeff Jordan 8
Statements about Iman Abuzeid, by other people (2)
Jordan: Incredible Health could have gone from Series A to IPO
“Iman at Incredible had the just had this dream of, she called it A to IPO. She arguably could have never raised a B round and gone public. The business has that kind of momentum. And because she was quote unquote accidentally profitable, the bookings came in w…”
Jordan: Incredible Health Had More Cash Pre-Series B Than Post-Series A
“Incredible health went you know, we did the a, they went three years without raising while the business was going very well. And when Iman finally did raise earlier this year. She had more cash in the bank when she raised than she did when after we funded her.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 8
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Iman's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Incredible Health | 0 | 0 | 50% 1/2 | full record on How I Built This → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Incredible Health | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 a16zLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Incredible Health | 1 | 5 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 SAASTRLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Incredible Health | 0 | 0 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |