The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health
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.
00:21:55 · Arpan Parikh, Chase
And then we think most importantly, Kin lets the user share those summaries and checklists with whoever's important in their life in real time. Right? So maybe that's a spouse. Maybe that's an adult child that lives across the country and is trying to help mom navigate her cancer journey. Maybe that's a home health aide who needs to know the latest changes to the medication regimen the cardiologist is making. So that's the core function of Kin today, an ambient scribe that takes notes and creates beautiful shareable summaries. And you can then imagine all of the really cool stuff you can build and hang on top of and off of that backbone. Right? Because just the conversational data creates an incredibly robust graph of our user's health, right? We get so many discrete data points about conditions and diagnoses and symptoms and treatments and medications and diagnostics. And as we stitch those together over two, five, 10, 20, 30, 50 visits, there's no single source of healthcare data in this country that has the breadth and depth of the data that we are collating on behalf of our users. And then that lets us actually create incredible experiences for our users. [00:23:04] S0: Yeah. No. I I think this kind of dataset is especially important for those who are... Who aren't in one place all the time. [00:23:12] S1: So just
00:23:12 · Arpan Parikh, Chase
[00:23:12] S1: So just [00:23:12] S0: for for an example, in my life, I've moved from DC to New York to Philly and having to navigate... Having... Seeing doctors in all of those places and the... Their EHRs aren't connecting on the back end and trying to gather all the different lab results, etcetera. It's it's quite challenging for someone that works in health care. So so, yeah, I I think it's a great problem that you're tackling. One thing I wanna dive into more is the fact that Kin is free for patients. So where, you know, what's your business model? Where does your revenue come from? How do you make it work if patients aren't paying?