Personal Update: I’m joining Heal and moving to Santa Monica.
TL:DR: I’m headed to Santa Monica to join Heal as VP of Growth.
Heal provides medical care from board certified physicians in your home or office, on-demand. It’s cliche, but think of it like Uber for Health Care. Heal launched in April, 2015 and now serves all of LA, Orange County, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Oakland/ East Bay, and San Diego, with further expansion planned in 2016. Heal is much, much, more than just the convenience of seeing a physician at your home.
Modern health care has always been on the provider’s terms. Patients typically wait more than 2 weeks for an appointment, race across town to sit in a crowded waiting room for ~42 minutes, to see a doctor for just 7 minutes. It’s not at all surprising most people don’t go to the doctor unless they really need to. Or that people choose an ER or Urgent Care clinic and pay more, rather than wait for an appointment. Heal changes everything, no waiting, no schlepping and better care, for way less cost (time/money); otherwise know as “better, faster, cheaper.”
While it’s still early days, the team at Heal has pulled off some amazing stuff, such as amassing a world class team of physicians, in-network provider status with most major insurance plans, and a few major corporate partnerships, in an astoundingly short amount of time. The team is lean, humble, and very dialed into the massive vision of fundamentally improving the health care experience. My job is to drive growth throughout the entire funnel / customer experience. It’s my biggest role yet and I’m exceedingly excited and grateful for the opportunity.
The new job also brings me and my family of five now (see pic), from the Bay Area (Sonoma County to be exact) to Los Angeles (Santa Monica to be exact). With the change of locations we have an opportunity to change some of the stresses of our daily lives and optimize for greater happiness. I’ve lived in Sonoma County for nine years and the Bay Area since I was eleven. I’ve commuted in every direction, to Napa, Mountain View, Downtown SF, the Mission and more. I’ve used every possible combination of transportation to get to and from work and every possible form of work situations. While I’ve been extremely fortunate with many flexible work options, I haven’t been super happy with the tradeoffs of working remote or long commutes.
Our first apartment in Santa Monica is exactly a 4min bike ride from the front door to the kid’s school and an additional 8 minutes along a dedicated bike lane to work. The founders of Heal (Nick Desai and Dr. Renee Dua) also recently started a family, and while I’m certainly not signing up for a 9-5 kind of role, it’s great to know that family is at the center of Heal’s mission and baked into the DNA of the company.
Fortunately startups still orbit around the Bay Area and it's not actually very far away. Yes, we’re going to miss things about the living in the Bay, specifically family and our community of friends, but we’re very excited about this new opportunity. I’m personally looking forward to checking out all the awesome coffee shops, beaches, and other fun city stuff in and around LA.
I’m aiming (soft committing) to share my experiences in both driving growth for Heal and moving to a big city with a family in future posts.
P.S: Heal is hiring a Market Maker (community/ biz dev) in the SF Bay Area and always looking for great physicians to join us. If you’re excited about Heal’s mission and can help us grow, please reach out.