The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Aoun: Concierge medicine ($15k–$40k/year) should not be venture backed
“I think that you can kind of bifurcate the market and you can say,
You can say, Hey, I want to go super expensive, 15, 20, 30, 40,000 dollars a year per person.
Don't venture back it.
and say, I'm going to build a nice, like slow growth, reasonable business.
…”
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: Continuing to lead people after hope is lost is unethical
“When you're asking investors, when you're asking customers, when you're asking employees to follow you and believe in you, The second you don't believe that you have a chance of success, you're being unethical and having all these people follow you.”
Aoun: I would have quit Forward rather than run a zombie company
“If you had told me to just sit in that company, I would have quit that company. Like, there's no way I wanted to sit in a company where I already don't believe in the future, but I've somehow managed to get it to continue for in perpetuity.”
Aoun started his next company immediately due to investor demand
“Tuesday morning after this all happened, I said, I'm taking a break. And by Wednesday morning, because the investors said they want to come in and the employees said they want to come in. I said, I'm starting a company like without, and not only am I starting …”
Aoun: Forward burned $500M and investors immediately offered next checks
“We just burned, you know, not quite half a billion dollars on an idea, and every, no, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people's reaction is, What are you doing next? Let's do it again.”
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: Forward intentionally avoided becoming experts on legacy healthcare systems
“The industry of healthcare, we have never chosen to become experts on it. And kind of intentionally, right?”
Aoun: Healthcare peers cut burn but have no technology or future
“The amount of peers in our space that did that, that have no tech story, have no future is pretty real. Some of them have continued because they're like, well, we don't need a bunch of money, but they're not interesting businesses.”
Aoun: Routing routine care to automated pods is highly scalable
“A doctor fundamentally doesn't need to be dealing with like your colds, your rash, your flu, your normal checkup. Like you should save the doctors for the most important complex things. And if you kind of detach them from the doctor's office where you start wi…”
Aoun: Vertically integrated startups cannot easily cut burn through layoffs
“If you're in a vertically integrated business like us, like employees are a cost. Don't get me wrong, but they're not 80% of your cost, right? They're 30 or 40% at best. And so, you know, we have everything from leases to AWS contracts to you name it, and we c…”
Benioff urged Forward to drop hardware and sell pure software
“Benioff is one of our big investors. And I and I've known for many, many years and Benioff was like, just take this damn software. He's a software guy, right? He's a SAS guy. Take this damn software and sell it.”
Aoun: Spinning Forward's CarePod assets into a seed startup is viable
“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.…”