Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
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.
00:34:28 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:34:28] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the thing is there's tons of companies that are working to solve these, like, very nitty gritty, the the terms interconnectivity or interoperability problems within health care. And so in the future, and we think it'll be through Solace, all of your health records, all of your information will be in one simple place. There will be tools to kind of demonstrate kind of what's happened, what you need, and given the latest information, what you should be doing. And And all that will be encompassed by your healthcare advocate who you have a strong relationship with and who's going be able to help guide you on every step along the way. So that's very clearly where healthcare is going to go. And I think when you think about that in the future, there's all sorts of really positive things that come from that. Because when people aren't constrained like right now, people are so tightly constrained in terms of like everything is super tight. There's no availability for anything. You're so desperate to see somebody. You're willing to take pretty much anything. In the future, when everything is beautifully oriented, everything is really nicely done using AI tools. Like, we're not like an AI doomer by any stretch of the imagination. We believe AI can be a tool for good. It's not going to be the only thing. There's some people that want to believe that it's going to be like Blade Runner where there's AI. AI is going to run everything, which who knows? I personally don't think that's going be the case. I think AI is going to be a tool that's going to be used super effectively for people, but it's not gonna be the only thing. And so having the advocate that has all of that at their fingertips, that's like the connective tissue across The US healthcare system where you as a person, when you're going through your own healthcare experience, everything is beautifully oriented. Like if you think about the top tier consumer experiences, pick your consumer app of choice or your consumer experience where you're like, this is an excellent, excellent experience. You could think about luxury brands or high end hotels. That's the way healthcare is going to be in the future. And our mission at Solace is to make that a reality.
00:36:26 · Charlotte Ross, Alexa von Tobel
[00:36:26] S2: And I think you touched upon AI a bit. And I think your superpower at Solace is the product and just how robust and expansive the product is. And obviously, we believe alongside you that there's a real element of humanity that needs to exist in the process. But talk a little bit about how you are infusing AI into the patient experience via your product roadmap. [00:36:54] S1: And I want to piggyback on that and just add. So there may not be a better example of a critical, extremely scary life moment of a decision where people want a human. Right? Like, I think Solace may be, like, a perfect example of when a person wants a human. How do you think about when you get a human and when AI supports it? And how do you think about that as you guys develop the product?
00:37:19 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:37:19] S0: Yeah. So it's very clear to me that when people have very, very narrowly tailored questions, want to Google, I don't know, how many red blood cells are in a drop of blood or something. Yeah, obviously, AI is how you go to that. But when you have a broad problem that you need a solution for, you want a human. And especially when it's broad and uncertain and honestly really scary, a huge amount of of not only just desire, but also value is having a human being organizing the entire thing. And so when we think about kind of health care advocacy in the future and what Solace does, person to person relationship, person to person contact, especially when you're dealing with a Medicare population or even somebody who's really sick. I have to say, my mom's experience, she was someone who knew everything about felt like to me knew everything about health care and, you know, was a physician and honestly served as an advocate basically for many of her family members. When she got sick, she did not have... She wasn't the same person anymore. She didn't have the capacity to do that. And that's something that I think so many people forget is that when you're going through that, you need somebody to be able to take care of you and handle kind of these types of things. So to us, the person to person relationship is incredibly powerful, and, like, I I don't see any kind of risk there. Now, Charlotte, to answer your question about kind of like, well, how do we use AI? We think that AI can be useful in so many different ways. So we have AI copilots for our advocates. So if advocates have particular questions about very narrowly tailored things, they can ask the AI. We have our own proprietary dataset. So basically, we have a huge clinical team. We have, I mentioned, researchers and doctors and people who know so many things about health care. We've created our own data set that the AI can refer to. So that includes clinical information, very carefully sourced and vetted research, as well as the information that we have about how advocates are helping patients in reality. And so that's one of the things that I think people don't appreciate. You guys appreciated it when you invested, but just the opportunity about having that compounding data moat is something that I think is really, really powerful because we take, everything goes to the platform.