Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:27:45 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:27:45] S1: Jeremy, I know you recently just raised a round and you had sort of a wild amount of interest in queuing money to Solace. And you've always been very, very thoughtful and measured about when to take capital and how to take capital because you care so much about your mission. Tell us a little bit about this latest round and this exciting new announcement.
00:28:08 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:28:08] S0: Yeah. So we recently announced the round, raised a $130,130,000,000, I get to say that fully from... Led by IVP participation from all our investors. I think we were really lucky that just even from our existing investor base, the round was deeply oversubscribed. We ended up actually raising more than we expected just from interest from existing investors. And and, obviously, IVP, incredible investor. Really excited to have them on board and lead this round. And, yeah, I think we had we had reached a point where we've made, I think, really substantial progress. The company is growing at an astronomical rate, and the additional capital will allow us to invest in the platform. So I'll give the plug now, hiring basically for every conceivable position, especially software engineering product design. So if you have any anyone listening to this that's interested should definitely go to our careers page and and check it out. So it'll allow us to invest in the platform and allow us to start investing in awareness. You know, we've been super targeted with the way that we've done our go to market. We've tried very hard to lean into word-of-mouth, referrals, SEO, and some very limited targeted advertising because we've been solely focused on Medicare population. As we expand our go to market, as we release commercial, we're... We want people to be aware that Solace exists. I think you you mentioned this previously where, you know, I I mentioned Solace to people and I hear the same thing where it's, I wish I had known about Solace when blah blah blah was... What had happened to myself, to my friends, to my family. And so now with this round, the goal is to begin sharing that Solace exists to people. More broadly, we're considering the best way to do that. And so when people have challenges, they know that Solace is the first place that they should go to connect with their health care advocate, and it's going to lead to better outcomes for themselves and for everybody involved. And so that's one of the main purposes in the round.
00:30:03 · Alexa von Tobel, Jeremy Gurewitz, Charlotte Ross
[00:30:03] S1: By the way, I'll give a plug right now if you're out there and you wanna work for a company where every day you can go to work and feel really, really extremely good about the work you're doing, go work for Solace, where every day you show up and you're helping somebody in their worst and scariest moment feel safer and more stable, which is pretty good reason go to work. So... [00:30:23] S0: Yeah. We feel inspired every day going to work. [00:30:27] S2: As you think about growing the team, and I think you have around 300 now, you may get to 1,000 employees by the end of the year. You obviously operate with an extreme sense of urgency towards this mission. How do you think about building that into the culture as you guys scale?
00:30:44 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:30:44] S0: It's really interesting. So we are a remote first company. So we do have an office in Redwood City, you know, in the Bay Area. And so some some people choose to work out of there, but the majority of the company is remote. And I think the way that we've been able to scale so effectively, even with all the people that we've hired as a remote company, it's it's very hard and has its challenges. The way we've been able to do it though is to operate with a really high trust culture. The way that we operate with a high trust culture, and I get asked this sometimes, and I always tell people it's kind of the same thing, which is people know that when you lay out a plan, you execute on that plan. And that's something culturally that's really, really important that people know your word is your bond. And so that allows people to move really quickly. I think, you know, I I know I've worked and hopefully you guys haven't had, but if you work for a company that's low trust, there's all this bureaucratic nonsense. It's like, per my last email, you have indicated that you're doing this, and therefore, my expectation is you're gonna... Like, all of this overhead nonsense doesn't doesn't exist at Solace because we operate with super high trust. We strongly believe in documentation. So we we write everything down. We have the saying internally. If if if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. And so that allows us to move super fast. And so I think those are kind of some of the the key tenants for us where we operate super quickly, we operate super high trust, and then we really, really try hard to hire people who are committed to the mission. I think there's a lot of places for people to work. And obviously, we're doing well. But if you're here just because we're doing well, this isn't going to be the right place for you. We want people who really, really care about what we're doing. And I think if you have that, that's what enables, I think, such a strong culture where you know that people operate with integrity, you know people operate high trust, and you know people are here for the right reason. I think that results in us being like a really fantastic place to work and we get a lot done.
00:32:42 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:32:42] S1: I wanna talk a little bit about where healthcare is going, and as as really a pioneer in a new category, and as Charlotte said, it's really the Uber, Lyft, but for critical health support. And you've created a marketplace where people can come and get support. Let's just quickly step back. So The US today spends over 5,000,000,000,000 a year on health care, nearly 18% of GDP, yet patients are still relying on phone calls, paperwork, and waiting. Just sitting there waiting when something goes wrong. And being a human being on this planet who's had lots of people in my life have major health issues, it's really scary, and that waiting is scary. When you specifically look at healthcare navigation and advocacy, how do you think this layer could change over the next decade and kind of dream with us? What do you want to build in this space?
00:33:31 · Jeremy Gurewitz, Alexa von Tobel
[00:33:31] S0: Everybody in The United States will have a health care advocate as part of their care journey. It's very clear to me now that this is going to be the case. It's going to be covered by insurance. It's going to be a natural part of treatment to the point where, like, if somebody doesn't have a health care advocate, you're gonna be like, oh, how come you don't... You didn't connect with your health care advocate? So that's very clearly the case. That's Solace's mission. Everybody can share the well, the health care advocate is part of their care journey. We talk about kind of our our core values here of empowering patients, improving outcomes, and restoring the promise of the health... US health care system. And so all of that is super tightly linked. And so, you know, I could talk a lot about all of that that entails. So I mentioned before that we've built a huge amount of tools for health care advocates. There's going to be so much in the future. And so I think you gave the current state of health care, which is really challenging in so many different ways. But I'm actually a huge optimist in terms of the future. [00:34:25] S1: I like to hear it. I like to hear it. Keep going.