Do Physicians Make the Best Startup Founders? (with Dr. David Lortscher)

This week Kristin and I are talking business; specifically, how doctors go from having a great idea to actually building a company around it. We're joined by Dr. David Lortscher, a board-certified dermatologist, co-founder of Curology, and author of Why Doctors Win: The Doctor's Guide to Creating or Joining a High-Impact Startup. David breaks down why so many of the most successful healthcare companies of the last few decades, including Intuitive Surgical, Gilead, Regeneron, UpToDate, were founded or co-founded by physicians. He makes the case for why more doctors, nurses, PAs, and other clinicians should be in the room when healthcare companies get built, instead of leaving it entirely to people with zero patient care experience.

We get into the real differences between venture capital and private equity, what VCs actually look for before funding a startup, and the story behind how David built Curology, including the surprisingly counterintuitive pay structure that helped it scale to treating millions of patients. Kristin and I also talk about our own version of this, how she basically became CEO of Glaucomflecken so I could keep doing what I actually want to do, which is make dumb videos and still practice ophthalmology four days a week.

Takeaways:

Over half of the top 100 most successful healthcare startups founded in the last four decades had a physician founder or co-founder.

Venture capital funds early-stage companies with high growth potential, while private equity typically buys existing businesses and tries to make them more efficient, often through cost-cutting.

A successful startup needs both a transformational product and a clear path to winning the market, not just a clever idea.

Physicians don't need to quit clinical practice to start a company if they have a good support system and trusted co-founders.

The two things every successful startup needs are a truly transformational product and a clear path to winning over the market.

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LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/DavidLortscherMD

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