Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
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.
00:06:45 · Charlotte Ross, Alexa von Tobel
[00:06:45] S2: And Jeremy, in addition to your kind of passion for the humanity behind every patient that comes through Solace, I think one of the things that stood out to us when we first met was your quantitative background, right? Like you went to Wharton, you worked in finance after college, and you know numbers really well. So could you talk a little bit about just like how that specific background has shaped what you do now and kind of how you built Solace? [00:07:17] S1: Yeah, you studied economics at Wharton. Like, again, you have a strong background in finance. Talk about that.
00:07:24 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:07:24] S0: Yeah. So I as you said, I I went to Wharton undergrad. I started out my career in quantitative finance. I did that for a number of years before deciding that it was fun to make the number go up, but it wasn't, like, my passion in life. And so I I I worked for start... A variety of startups where it turned out that skill set was really effective in growth and in growing companies. And I think there are people that have very strong quantitative skill sets, but they're very stuck on just calculations and numbers. And I think for me, if I had to kind of give a reason for why I've been effective and, I think, successful in what I do is numbers are representations of actual reality. And so when you're doing calculations or when you're making decisions based upon numbers and looking at the impact in the future, you really want to take the representations of the calculations and try and translate them into how reality is changing. And I think that, you know, part of what you do as a founder is you are, you know you know, it's like this... The famous quote, you're making a dent in the universe from Steve Jobs. You're you're kind of changing changing reality. And so the quantitative skill set is effective in so far as it helps me encapsulate the changes that I'm trying to make, whether it's on a company or whether it's on people, and then having that representation occur and be manifested in, like, the difference that's represented in the numbers.
00:09:03 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:09:03] S1: I want to transition to Solace just because obviously there's so much to cover there. You know, obviously we met you as you were out raising your Series A for Solace. In plain English, what is Solace doing for the world? All of us are sitting here as human beings who care about our health. What is Solace?
00:09:19 · Jeremy Gurewitz
[00:09:19] S0: Yeah. So Solace connects people to health care advocates. So we're a marketplace for health care advocates that's covered by insurance. Most people pay little to no cost at all. Right now, we're with Medicare, although potentially when we launch this podcast or we'll be announcing soon that we're gonna be launching commercial insurance as well. So if you have insurance through your work or even have purchased insurance in the marketplace, it's very likely that you'll be able to get Solace as well, which is something that's so incredibly exciting. The story behind Solace, and I'm sorry if I'm stealing your question that you're going to ask, but I think we've kind of alluded to it, I mentioned my mom. She unfortunately passed away from pancreatic cancer. And I got to see firsthand just how difficult it was for her to access care, even though she was a doctor, even though my family is based out of New York and had access to some of the best institutions out here. The experience was just really, really challenging. And I think after she passed away, I wanted to do something that would help people. And as I spoke to people, what just came out over and over again was how difficult it was for people to get access to care. This is something that even as I've spoken to people and even when I was fundraising, no investor ever denied that this was a huge problem. I think sometimes, I don't know what type of pitches you guys see. Oftentimes, there's probably some things you're like, Is that even really a problem? This one was a huge problem. I think people always had the question of like, could this work? Could we get it covered by insurance? Could this actually make a difference? But it was very clear to me after speaking to healthcare advocates and discovering them and seeing the impact on their patients that this was something that could have a real impact. I would speak to a patient and they would say to me, I actually had a really good experience with The US healthcare system, which is something you would never hear ever. Even with people that have the means, have the connections, there were always friction points, but healthcare advocates made it better. And so what we do is we've built a giant platform, you know, thousands and thousands of advocates, connect patients to advocates.
00:11:13 · Jeremy Gurewitz, Alexa von Tobel
And we've also built the tools and the software and even dare I say, the AI technology to help advocates be super, super effective. And I don't wanna... I'm sure we'll talk more about AI, but overall, we've just built this thing that just enables people to get the best possible health care and the best possible health care experience. And we've helped tens of thousands of people already. And we've been really lucky that a lot of people have found significant value in it. [00:11:36] S1: Jeremy, I want to go back. When Charlotte and I met you years ago before your series A, you were clearly a guy on a mission. It was very... Just meeting you, that was clear. And I remember asking one question, and I'm I'm gonna see if you remember what you said. But I said to you, Jeremy, why are you gonna be able to succeed? Like, why you against everybody else that could go try to note this? And do you remember what you said? [00:12:06] S0: Yeah. I remember this one. It's because I care more than anybody else very clearly.