Aoun: Spinning Forward's CarePod assets into a seed startup is viable
Adrian Aoun · #74: Winding Down From a $400M Fundraise, or How to Move Forward After Forward (with Adrian Aoun) · More or Less Podcast · Nov 22, 2024 · at 59:44
Following the wind-down of AI doctor's office startup Forward, founder Adrian Aoun reflects with Jessica Lessin on the viability of spinning out CarePod assets into a new venture.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 19.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And so I think if you took those care pods, if somebody wanted to go buy those assets, maybe me or somebody else and spin that into a new company, that's not what I'm working on right now to be clear. But if you did, I actually think that would be a good idea. Just seed fund it and give it a few years to go figure it out. Cause it's not fully solved, but I think there's something along that path. That's going to be a good idea.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Adrian Aoun
Aoun: Healthcare technology adoption only occurs in service of billing
“Technology adoption in healthcare only really goes in service of billing.”
Aoun: Silicon Valley needs more arrogance, not less
“I think we need more arrogance in Silicon Valley, not less. And by that, what I mean is not this outward obnoxious be an asshole kind of arrogance, but look, it takes a special kind of arrogance to sit down, look at something like healthcare and be like, well,…”
Levchin backed Aoun's NLP startup provided it avoided neural networks
“I remember pitching Max Levchin to invest and Max goes, I'm totally in. I'm all for this company. As long as you tell me you're not using neural networks, because those things don't work. And I'm sitting there thinking all we're using is neural networks. And I…”
Aoun: Purely virtual healthcare companies like Teladoc will not succeed
“All these virtual care companies that took off during, call it, you know, 21 during COVID all those Teladocs of the world, I said, they aren't going to be able to succeed in the long run. Because fundamentally, healthcare is physical, right? Like, you can't de…”
Aoun: Physical healthcare clinics are not a venture-backable business model
“And frankly, what we learned is you can make clinics like a reasonable business. They're not really a venture backable business is what we found. These are not like, this is not, you're not going to go find a tech company building clinics everywhere everywhere…”
Aoun: Almost all recent retail acquisitions of primary care clinics failed
“Well, over the last kind of call it 12 months or so, pretty much every single one of those has failed. Right. And so Walgreens just completely wrote down village MD CVS. Well, you know, they just fired their CEO. You can go look at their stock Walmart, shut th…”