Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:00:00 · Jeremy Gurewitz, Alexa von Tobel
[00:00:00] S0: We had a patient that came in and they needed a kidney transplant. And so they were in the hospital and they were joking with a friend and they said, I couldn't wait to have a beer when this is all over. And a nurse overheard this and wrote in the chart that this guy was an alcoholic and he got kicked off the organ transplant list. [00:00:16] S1: Oh my gosh. [00:00:17] S0: And so luckily they came to Solace, connected him with an advocate and went through this incredibly cumbersome process to change chart. Then eventually got him back on the place on the list, ended up getting a kidney, ended up saving his life. And so while that's an extreme example, there are countless cases where bureaucracy, poor processes end up resulting in far worse healthcare outcomes for people than they would otherwise get, and healthcare advocates solve the problems that people face.
00:00:44 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:00:44] S1: Welcome to Inspired. I'm Alexa von Tobel. What if when you or a loved one gets a terrifying diagnosis, something serious and scary, you didn't have to figure out insurance, find the right doctors, and navigate our broken healthcare system all alone? Jeremy Gurewitz believes healthcare advocacy should be a right, it's not a luxury. He's a founder and CEO of Solace, which just raised a 130,000,000 series c and is now valued at over $1,000,000,000. Solace connects patients to healthcare advocates covered by insurance, helping tens of thousands navigate the scariest moment of their lives. Jeremy's mission is deeply personal. That is why he started Solace. Charlotte Ross and our Inspired team and I are proud to back Jeremy. We've been a teammate since their series a, and we're always in awe of his relentless commitment to helping patients when it matters most. In this conversation, we're gonna talk about how Jeremy built Solace from the ground up, why The US healthcare system is broken, and what's coming next as AI transforms how we navigate care. As both an investor and a friend, I am so excited to share Jeremy's personal story. Let's dive right in. If you're running a startup, we know things like managing equity and communicating with investors are always top of mind. Carta has built a connected suite of tools that over 40,000 companies use to do just that. Their platform of software helps you lay the groundwork so you can focus on building. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com. And with that, I'm so excited to welcome our friend Jeremy. First of all, Jeremy, Charlotte and I are so thrilled to have you here today. We are obviously very early investors in Solace and have been your teammate from the beginning. And I'm just so excited to talk about, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to talk about inspired founders, quite literally, people who wake up every day to make the world a far better place on behalf of tens of millions, if not billions of people. And you very much are one of those. Your mission is so profound, and that's what I think both of us, when we met you, it really clicked. So I wanna start from the beginning, Jeremy. Just again, thanks so much for coming on today. Tell us a little bit about your childhood. And have you always been an entrepreneur? Let's start there.
00:02:52 · Jeremy Gurewitz, Alexa von Tobel
[00:02:52] S0: Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on here. Super excited to be here. And yeah, as you said, you guys have been with us since basically the very beginning. It's been wonderful to work with you. I'll give the plug right now for any founders who are considering working with folks you need to at least be having conversation with Inspired. So we'll just kinda get that out of the way. But I'll I'll repeat it again. [00:03:11] S1: Yes, later. Love you. We did... We didn't we didn't pay you to say that. Thank you.
00:03:11 · Alexa von Tobel, Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:03:11] S1: Yes, later. Love you. We did... We didn't we didn't pay you to say that. Thank you. [00:03:15] S0: Well well, it's true. So, yeah, when I when I think about my childhood, I think a few things come to mind. First of all, and, you know, we'll talk about kind of my mom and my whole... My my family story in a bit. But my parents always really encouraged me to just go for whatever I felt was right and important. My mom had this saying of have like, a bad day and... Or whatever. And she'd say, tomorrow, walk out with your right foot forward. And it was like this, like, thing of just, like, go out there and, like... You know, especially on my mom's side of the family, like, comes from a super accomplished family. Her dad, so my grandfather was actually the first chiropractor in the state of New York. He actually had license number one. He developed the field of chiropracty as something that was super important. Just growing up, like, the... My entire family just really encouraged me to go for things. And so, you know, when I think about, like, childhood, it was just, you know, whether it was, you know, I wanted to spend a summer doing research somewhere. They just said, go forth, we'll figure out a way to make it happen. It was really just encouraging me to pursue something that I believed in, I think is what kind of has set me up for success here.
00:04:28 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:04:28] S1: Well, first of all, I think in honor of your mom, that quote is officially now burned into my head. If you have a bit bad day, start tomorrow on the right foot. That's a that's a beautiful quote. If we think a little bit about sort of a story or a moment in your life that you almost credit to be one of the ones that is kind of a pillar of how... Where you draw strength from as you try to do very hard things in your life, Solace being one of them. Is there is there, like, anything that you think of as, like, a direct line from your past to your future?
00:05:06 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:05:06] S0: So I I think I, again, go to my mom. And I I guess, you know, we'll talk about, again, the story behind Solace. But my mom's passion for the work that she did was very significant. And I remember her saying... Because, you know, we would get up in the morning, she would take us to school. And, you know, she would... She was a doctor, and so she would have kind of a full day. And I remember, you know, she was kind of, you know, tired one morning and had an extra large cup of coffee and was kind of, you know, getting herself, like, ready for the morning and just kind of, like, kinda, you know, giving herself some motivational kind of talk. I was asked her, like, mom, like, what... What's going on? She's like, there are people that are seeing me. And, you know, for them, this is their life. And so it's, you know, regardless of what I have going on, they need to see me as the best possible version of myself because they're putting their lives in my hands. And so my mom was a radiologist. She was diagnosing breast cancer in women, and she felt that the the patient doctor interaction was so critical. And so I thought about that a lot. I thought about that various times in my life as I've been working with people and certainly with Solace when speaking in front of people and almost kind of regardless of what I have going on. It's being there for people is something that really kind of I remember very deeply.