#getheal

TL:DR: I’m headed to Santa Monica to join Heal as VP of Growth.

Heal provides medical care from board certified physicians in your home or office, on-demand. It’s cliche, but think of it like Uber for Health Care.  Heal launched in April, 2015 and now serves all of LA, Orange County, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Oakland/ East Bay, and San Diego, with further expansion planned in 2016. Heal is much, much, more than just the convenience of seeing a physician at your home.

Modern health care has always been on the provider’s terms.  Patients typically wait more than 2 weeks for an appointment, race across town to sit in a crowded waiting room for ~42 minutes, to see a doctor for just 7 minutes.  It’s not at all surprising most people don’t go to the doctor unless they really need to.  Or that people choose an ER or Urgent Care clinic and pay more, rather than wait for an appointment.  Heal changes everything, no waiting, no schlepping and better care, for way less cost (time/money); otherwise know as “better, faster, cheaper.”

While it’s still early days, the team at Heal has pulled off some amazing stuff, such as amassing a world class team of physicians, in-network provider status with most major insurance plans, and a few major corporate partnerships, in an astoundingly short amount of time.  The team is lean, humble, and very dialed into the massive vision of fundamentally improving the health care experience.  My job is to drive growth throughout the entire funnel / customer experience.  It’s my biggest role yet and I’m exceedingly excited and grateful for the opportunity.

The new job also brings me and my family of five now (see pic), from the Bay Area (Sonoma County to be exact) to Los Angeles (Santa Monica to be exact).  With the change of locations we have an opportunity to change some of the stresses of our daily lives and optimize for greater happiness.  I’ve lived in Sonoma County for nine years and the Bay Area since I was eleven. I’ve commuted in every direction, to Napa, Mountain View, Downtown SF, the Mission and more.  I’ve used every possible combination of transportation to get to and from work and every possible form of work situations.  While I’ve been extremely fortunate with many flexible work options, I haven’t been super happy with the tradeoffs of working remote or long commutes.

Our first apartment in Santa Monica is exactly a 4min bike ride from the front door to the kid’s school and an additional 8 minutes along a dedicated bike lane to work.  The founders of Heal (Nick Desai and Dr. Renee Dua) also recently started a family, and while I’m certainly not signing up for a 9-5 kind of role, it’s great to know that family is at the center of Heal’s mission and baked into the DNA of the company.

Fortunately startups still orbit around the Bay Area and it's not actually very far away.  Yes, we’re going to miss things about the living in the Bay, specifically family and our community of friends, but we’re very excited about this new opportunity.  I’m personally looking forward to checking out all the awesome coffee shops, beaches, and other fun city stuff in and around LA.

I’m aiming (soft committing) to share my experiences in both driving growth for Heal and moving to a big city with a family in future posts.  

Transparency & personalization.

It's been 9 days since I have had nicotine. I quit cold turkey, armed with a bottle of water, and pack of gum, and a pack of Jolly Ranchers. (Kind of annoyed at the new formatting of my all time-favorite candy, by the way...) This worked well for me for the first 5 days, but I was faced with my first big challenge on Saturday. I was at the one-week mark, and I was having drinks by the fire next to someone who was smoking. I didn't want to use an e-cig that had nicotine in it after being completely without it for a week, but I didn't want to break down and give in, either. I bought one of the cheap vapor cigarettes that you can find at the gas station, 10$, and they taste fruity. That did the trick for me. I used it once this morning on my way to work as well. They help strictly with the psychological dependency. My past attempts have shown me that around 10-14 days in is when I am weakest, so it's not a bad idea to have it around. I don't feel any cravings at the moment, at least. The fear I had is that I would pack on the pounds. Last time I tried this I put on 5 in one week. I was able to keep my diet clean all last week, and my snacking under control. I managed to hit the gym on breaks instead of risk smoking or visiting the vending machine. The weekend was a little tougher. Less exercise, more convenience foods... I did replace wings with spicy shrimp! That's gotta count for something. Calorie-wise, you'd only eat about 2 wings to equate what is in an entire bag of shrimp. 

Anyhow, focusing on week 2, as I chew on my heart of palm and get excited for my 10 minutes on the treadmill at break time.