The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health
00:11:15 · Arpan Parikh, Chase
Like, that is what we know. And there's no one on the planet better in that than... Better at that than us, at least for now. Maybe AI will change that. But we don't learn anything else. And and business school and Wharton and HCM in particular really opened my eyes to that, right? It's like, there's so many facets and nooks and crannies and niches of the American healthcare system, and unless you actually know what those are and you know your unknown unknowns, like there's no way to be an effective advocate for patients. So I think it was like an incredibly valuable couple of years and ultimately enabled me to make this pivot in my career, pivoting away from being a full time patient facing physician and pivoting to spending more of my time or most of my time building, you know, initially it was service lines and business lines and then companies, and then starting a company with the aim of making access to care more efficient and making the quality of care better. [00:12:12] S0: Yeah. Yeah. No. That that journey makes makes a ton of sense. Jumping now to to Kin, the company that you you just co founded. So I think two things about just the sort of origin story are a bit unique. One is that you have three cofounders, and the other is that one of them is your brother. [00:12:32] S1: Yeah. [00:12:32] S0: So I guess a two part question here. How did you how did you come to have three of you that were starting this business, and how do you kind of go about that day to day? And then what has starting a company with your brother family been like?
00:12:47 · Arpan Parikh
[00:12:47] S1: Two good questions. So the way we came together is super interesting. The idea for Kin came to me while I was sitting in this exact chair, this exact desk in mid August of twenty twenty five, right, so thirteen, fourteen months ago. You And know, one of the first folks I called up when I had that idea was my brother, Amit, who's now my cofounder. There's three siblings. He's... I'm the oldest. He's the middle. And then we have a younger brother in San Francisco. Amit had just moved back to LA from New York, like, literally weeks before. So, again, you know, talk about serendipity and and things being unplanned. It was like we were now back in the same city for the first time in a couple of years, and we just started jamming on this idea. Right? I I had become obsessed with it. And then I slowly, you know, show... Showed him the light and he became obsessed with it as well. And we ultimately made the decision that, like, we have to... Like, this is the time in our personal lives and our professional lives and our career from a macro perspective, to take this bet, right, to take the leap. So we decided to go all in on this, ultimately wind down and resign from our full time jobs at the time and do this. We're both physicians. He's also a double board certified psychiatrist. And as you said, he's also been a digital health executive for the last five to six years running a couple big venture backed mental health companies. Neither of us is technical from an engineering and development perspective, right? Or technical from the perspective of medicine, but not from software, and Kin is a software business, right? So we knew that was something we were going to have to solve for in a very robust way. And, again, serendipity, know, came into our lives. We... I should say, I got connected to Trevor Bezdek, who is one of the cofounders, and he's the former co CEO of GoodRx and lives just up the road here in Santa Monica. There was a Wharton student, Max Drescher, who, at the time was doing his summer internship in LA between first and second year at Wharton. And I haven't cleared this with Max, but I'll just tell the story here. So, Max had reached out to me maybe like four or five times and I not intentionally had blown him off. You know, I was busy building SOL and like, who's this Wharton student who wants my time?
00:15:03 · Arpan Parikh
And I almost always respond to this very quickly, as I hope you can attest to, but Max somehow fell through the cracks, but he was persistent. Like on the sixth time I was like, all right, Max is persistent, like, let's see what he's all about. And so we went for a walk in my neighborhood here and, I was like, wow, Max is an incredibly thoughtful human. He's a fellow Midwesterner, which I vibe with, and I like the way he rolls. And so we became friends. And so in August, when I had this idea, he was one of the first people I called up. And he was like, Arpan, you're not gonna believe it. I was just with Trevor Bezdek. And because he's... You know, Max is an incredible networker and had gotten some time with Trevor. And Trevor is thinking of doing something in this space and you have to talk to him. So in true Max fashion, he immediately started a text thread between the three of us. And then in true Trevor fashion, literally, you know, let's say it was a Tuesday afternoon, Trevor was like, come to my office Wednesday morning, like tomorrow morning in twelve hours. So I showed up, pitched him on what me and Amit wanted to build at Kin, and he was like, this is incredible. Like, me and my partner, you know, his cofounder was... Is Doug Hirsch, have been thinking about doing something in this space. Your approach of using conversation as the source of truth that feeds the model is actually really, really interesting from an engagement perspective. Like, let us help you and join your team in in building Kin, and how can you turn down two guys like Doug and Trevor who asked you to join your team? So we decided we would work with them. And then as we embarked on the hunt for the third piece, the third leg of the stool, right, the technical cofounder, Trevor was like, hey. We have this person in our network, Kyle, who was one of the cofounders of one of the first telemedicine companies to ever exist, right, hey, doctor, which GoodRx had actually acquired. So he's an incredible engineer. He's a business builder who's exited a health care tech company, and and he's in LA. Checked every box. So Trevor connected us. Me and Amit met Kyle for a coffee date, and the rest is history. So it, again, came together in a way that nobody could have predicted, but, you know, what an incredible trio to build what I think is a really, really cool business.
00:17:21 · Arpan Parikh
And then to your second question of what's it like building a business with my sibling and with family, you know, I I definitely got some side eye and comments over the course of, like, the initial days and months of this. Like, are you sure you wanna start a company with your brother, with your family? And, like, you know, there's gonna be conflict and all this stuff. And, you know, me and Amit have talked about doing something together for a long time, and it never really fully worked out either from a, you know, professional career timing perspective, from a personal perspective, from a geography perspective. And so, you know, we had started a Substack together maybe, like, two years ago, and, like, that was so fun. And that was, like, just, like, a de minimis activity. Right? And so now when we had the opportunity to, like, actually do something together with an idea that we thought was actually really good, it was a no brainer for us and for me in particular. And it's been incredible. Like, you know, we have literally known each other for thirty five plus years. And I think there's a level of comfort and also a level of, like, candor that comes with that kind of relationship that is hard to replicate otherwise. And, you know, folks are like, well, I'm sure there's gonna be conflict. And it's like, there's always conflict between co founders. Like, that's unavoidable, whether your co founder is your brother or not. Right? And I actually think us being siblings helps us navigate conflict in a way that's more productive and and seamless than it would be otherwise. So it's been, it's been super, super fun. And and speaking for him, I don't think either of us would change that decision if we went back in time and had the opportunity to do so.
00:19:05 · Chase, Arpan Parikh
[00:19:05] S0: Yeah. Love that story. It's also showing the power of the the Wharton MBA network, so always love to hear stories like that. [00:19:12] S1: Always. Always. There's, like, so many examples of that over the course of just my own professional career and Yeah. You know, the last seven years since I left Philly. [00:19:20] S0: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, let's pivot just to talking more about Kin, helping our listeners understand the business model. So for those who aren't familiar, can you just walk us through what Kin is and Yeah. Really what you're trying to solve for?
00:19:35 · Arpan Parikh
[00:19:35] S1: Yeah, in its simplest format, Kin is a patient and caregiver copilot for healthcare. It's something we strongly believe has to exist and the world has needed for decades and no one's ever built it and we're here to do that. So what does that actually mean? Because like Copilot for healthcare can mean a million different things, right? Today, Kin has one core function and we think it's actually, you know, it's the most important function that patients and caregivers need, which is it's an ambient notetaker, right? For listeners who use granola, like this is granola for patients. And just like double click on why that's important, like we know from the published literature, the average American, number one, does not understand the majority of what their doctor tells them. And this is like, we're assuming English proficiency is not an issue here, right? Like they understand English, but they literally don't understand a technical conversation that happens with their doctor. And number two, we know even what they do understand, the average American forgets somewhere between fifty and eighty percent of what they remember by the time they reach their car, the parking lot after an appointment. So when you combine those two things, you have patients who, number one, don't fully ever understand what's happening in their healthcare journey, and number two, what they do understand, they forget. How can we be surprised that we don't have great health outcomes in this country? Right? I don't think we have a clinical problem in this country. I actually think we have the best clinical care on the planet in this country. Right? The technical expertise of physicians and healthcare professionals in this country is matched by no other country in the world. But where things fall apart is when the patient leaves the exam room. And guess what? That's where all the work happens is when the patient leaves the exam room. So we believe arming every American with a completely free notetaker that helps them functionally records the conversation, right, that they have with their doctor. And then within ninety seconds to two minutes, they get a beautiful, simple fifth grade reading level summary because that is the average reading proficiency of an American today of what the heck the doctor just said. They get a checklist of the things they have to do when they walk out.