Starting a Company: Mission Impossible
Starting a company is hard, even in the best of times.
But during a period of economic uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, political divisions, and a global pandemic -- it can feel impossible.
In this episode, I talk to Sami Inkinen, a founder who has run companies in both bull and bear markets. Sami was the co-founder of Trulia (IPO) and now Virta Health (valued at $2B).
Sami was born on a farm in Finland. A physicist by training, he started his career as a radiochemist at a nuclear power plant. He holds a Master of Science in engineering physics from the Helsinki University of Technology, and an MBA from Stanford University.
Topics covered:
The benefits to starting a company in a downturn
When to raise money, when to focus on top-line growth, and when to focus on unit economics
Practical tips for founder mental health
Making hard decisions under pressure
Rowing from California to Hawaii, completely unassisted
Listen
Transcript
Halle: All right. Hello listeners and welcome to the Heart of Healthcare Podcast. Today I'm talking to Sammy Inkinen, who is the founder and CEO of Virta Health, the first company with the treatment to reverse type two diabetes without surgery. Virta Health has raised over 360 million and is valued at 2 billion.
Previously, Sammy was the co-founder of the leading online real estate app, Trulia, serving as it's COO and president and board member until it's i p o and eventual sale to Zillow. He has operated companies through the 2000 downturn and the Great Recession and has valuable insights on what it takes to weather economic uncertainty as a leader, which is our topic today.
Sammy, welcome to the.
Sami: Well, thank you so much for having me and aging me with those references to year 2000.
Halle: As our wise elder, can you? No. Just kidding. Why don't we start, before we kind of dive in on, on what's happening and how you kind of see your job as a leader changing through these times. Can you just give us, um, some color on your background and what ultimately led you to the work that you do today in he.
Sami: Yeah, sure. Well go. Going back to once Upon a Time, so I was born and raised in Finland, grew up on a farm. Uh, parents didn't even go to high school, so I didn't have a lot of like, role models, what to do in life professionally, uh, so to speak. Uh, but I was always pretty good at sort of physics and math and.
That kind of pulled me out of the farm and studied physics in fact, and started my career in a nuclear power plant, uh, which is my only scientific claim, def fame, I guess. And then in parallel, I somehow, I got into computers very early, even when I was living on a farm. And that has kind of been my hammer, if you will, or the tool that I've used most of my life professionally.
So software and te. And then long story short, I came to America 2003, so I've now been here for almost 20 years. And as, as you mentioned in your intro, I got lucky that I was able to sort of follow and execute my immigrant and entrepreneur's dream. In that we started a company called Trulia and it was an amazing.
10 year journey from about 2004 until 2014 for me. Um, so that was an amazing journey. But anyway, so now I'm running a healthcare company, Virta Health. So that kind of came about pretty accidentally. I was not looking for starting another company and very, very brief of what happened to me was, I always thought I'm the last person to deal with type two diabetes or pre-diabetes because I was very athletic and doing a lot of sports and racing triathlons, and in fact won the world championships as an amateur in, in triathlon.
But despite that, I discovered that I was actually on my way to becoming type two diabetic, and I was already pre-diabetic. This was 2011, 2012. That kind of pulled me into this whole world of medical health and diabetes and met with bunch of scientists who kind of opened my eyes to what could be done and the disease would be reversible, and I kind of came out of cross eye retirement.
I've questioned that decision a few times afterwards, but I thought, wait a second. If you can address type two diabetes at scale. You know, somebody should win a Nobel Prize for that. So it just felt like it is work worth doing. And here I am, I guess seven, eight years later since we started Virta
Halle: And is the Nobel Prize your goal? Is that the end goal?
Sami: Well, I, I'm definitely driven by just impact, human impact, not accolades or anything, but it's kind of like an interesting note, start to think about. If you do something like this, you know, somebody should receive that. It doesn't need to be anybody from rural actually,
Halle: yeah. And are you guys US based but, uh, going global?
Sami: Currently exclusively treating patients in the United States only, but the plan certainly is to go outside. It's just always this question of when there's a lot of complexities when you have a, a growth company, , what not to do on what to do.
Halle: Okay. So what's more messed up in the us, our real estate industry or our healthcare industry?
Sami: It's very simple healthcare.
Halle: Okay, and real estate has, has a lot of flaws I think, as well.
Sami: Yeah, I think you could say that. Well, I will say I, I think the floss and the frustrations as a consumer and observer suddenly pulled me and my co-founder Pete at. Trulia to build Trulia for residential real estate. It was a very opaque market. It felt like as a buyer, seller, renter, potential buyer, seller, renter, it's like you're in a room without lights and the professionals have all the information and there's a crazy information asymmetry, which usually means that as a user you are kind of screwed.
And that kind of pulled us in. Now I have many different reasons for founding VER focusing on type two diabetes reversal, but I would say there's a lot of the same kind of stuff happening in US healthcare, very opaque, you know, pharmaceutical pricing, cost of any treatment, and it's not really consumer driven.
So I would agree with you. It's, there's a lot of parallel.
Halle: Yeah. So, all right. Let's just dive into the topic of the day. So starting a company is really, really hard, even in the absolute best of times. How would you, as someone who has started companies in the best of times and run them through the worst of times, describe kind of starting and running a company in a time of economic uncertainty like,
Sami: Yeah. Well first I would say kind of repeat what you said, which is, Pretty much by definition, building a company from scratch is a mission impossible. It is very, very, very hard because it's sort of like a tiny little flower at the bottom of a. I don't know, a rainforest where small trees, big trees, and midsize trees, and everything else is trying to kill you.
So the default expected outcome for any startup is a failure. That's just a statistical, uh, Fact. So, uh, I think it's very important for every founder to realize that as rewarding and fantastic and awesome as the journey might be it is very, very, very hard. To your specific question, starting a company in a downturn, so we started truly a 2004, 2005.
It was definitely a downturn. Virta Health, I kind of started in. The market was picking up 2014, 15. But now, in a downturn, I would say in early stages, there are more benefits to starting in a downturn than there are handicaps. Just based on my personal experience, and I'll just mention a few. One is when there's less noise, less marketing noise, uh, it's, it's actually easier.
To get attention to substance and something that's working. So that's sort of a one thing, and that applies to commercialization and hiring people and even, even fundraising. The second thing is you're kind of forced to make the business truly work. And what I mean by that is you have to focus on cast efficiency, unit economics. business 1 0 1 early when it's hard to find money when the capital is tight. And then the last thing I would say is, is I mentioned recruiting briefly, but sort of team building. This is a cliche, but having now started three companies, it all comes down to people. And the first 10, 20, 30 people that you hire are so crucial and critical and in a sort of a bull market, there's a lot of fair weather.
Um, startup people and, and founders. But when it's downturn, it's the true believers only who even consider joInkineng a startup. And that's actually highly, highly beneficial for the early years of, of a startup. So if I had a choice, I would start my company in a downturn. Absolutely.
Halle: For those who are kind of in that position of they've started a company but haven't fundraised yet what are your thoughts around kind of best positioning? Should you wait until you get more traction or just try to go out there and, and begin talking to investors?
Sami: Yeah, I'm, I'm sure one can argue either way, but again, All three companies that I've started. So I started one 2000 just before the Dark com. Boom, crashed. We get some money before then, Trulia, then Health. This has been venture funded companies, all venture funded companies. So I have raised a ton of money, seed Series A, that whole thing.
So that is kind of the experience I've had. So based on this three time experience, couple thoughts. Again, this is my personal experience may not be the perfect advice, but I would say one. Delay the initial fundraising as long as you can. Maybe counterintuitive, and why do I say that? It, once you take outside money, kind of everything is on the clock and you will start spending that money, whether that's hiring just one employee or whatnot, and then you have a burn rate If you can iterate anything, even the initial seed of the product or idea.
Product, market, feed, whatever it is that you do without outside funding, you have the ultimate flexibility and the clock is not ticking in terms of burn. Whether you don't fund it at all or put a little bit of your own money. So that would be one. I personally would say delay raising outside capital as much as long as you can.
Um, and then the second thing is once you take money, this again may be counter, I. , I would say take as little money as, as, as you can, uh, especially in the very early days for the same reasons that I mentioned for sort of delaying fundraising. So that, that would be my, my advice. And then it's a whole different story once you have something that's truly working and, and you know that there's the initial strong signs of product market.
Then it's a different story and if you want to raise outside capital, it can truly be transformative that you can hire people and accelerate getting customers and so forth. But that period of idea and actual product market fit, that's sort of a death value. And I personally have found that it's better not to have a lot of capital sloshing around while you're in that sort of no woman's land or no man's land.
Halle: And is that because you don't want too much cash, that you can be cash conscious? Or is that because you don't wanna give too much of your company up
Sami: Well, certainly both are important, but I would say. When trying to find a product market fee, it's very uncertain. It may be that it takes 30 days or it may take 18 months. And when you take outside capital and before the company, tru becomes profitable, which may be many years down the road, it's the venture model is built for sort of linear or exponential scaling.
And if you suddenly have like a 12 month delay, it usually means. Everything falls apart. And just to give you an example from a Verde experience, we operated the company more or less for like a year before we truly took outside money seed round. And I'm very happy we did that cause we kind of changed our business model once or twice and.
Went forward and backwards and sideways and all kinds of things before we really knew what we would need to build. And if you are on a clock, you've taken, I don't know, 500,000 of seed funding from real seed investors, it's, it gets very complicated when you're running outta cash and you're supposed to raise heresa, but you don't have anything to show.
And what do you do? You kind of go hibernation mode, and it's easy to do that when it's just you and your co-founder or co-founder.
Halle: So it's has been really hard for founders who are in this, what you call the no, no woman's no man's land. Especially those that are getting close to the end of their runway and might need to raise more and are kinda looking at the market and looking at their business model and saying, oh shit, I'm not there yet.
It is extremely stressful. It is. I mean, even founders that I know that are otherwise doing well are extremely stressed right now. What are some just practical tips that you have for fellow founders for maintaInkineng your mental health during these inherently stressful times?
Sami: Yeah, absolutely. That that is a good question. And maybe first thing I should say, I'm not a medical doctor. I don't play one on the internet. I don't play one on podcasts. So if, if, if you need. True maker help talk to, uh,
Halle: I Maybe that's the advice. Yeah. Get a therapist is a great piece of advice.
Sami: Yeah. So, but I do have experiences in that, you know, I've been, again, I'm gonna h myself, but I, I've basically been an entrepreneur for 20 years, pretty much nonstop, and it's been very, very hard, uh, for 20 years nonstop.
But here I am breathing and talking, and I haven't. A complete fall apart for whatever reason. So, so at least I have sort of an n equals one experience of getting close to the edge, but not going over the edge. And so maybe there's some things that I can share from my, my personal experience. There's, there's sort of not of number of things that I, I do.
And do you want me to sort of run through a few things that I've done? Um,
Halle: Yes.
Sami: So in, in no . Particular order let me start from a dis mental trick. So, agency is one thing. So literally I repeat to myself when I have to do something hard or unexpected things happen, which is all the time is I remind myself, I say, I choose to do this because X, Y, Z, and avoid saying, oh my God, do I need to go?
You know, fundraising trip on a Saturday, and I have two toddlers little kids at home. That's just a little mental trick. But as founders, suddenly we are choosing to do things. It's not like we were forced to. And so that's a little mental trick, but I found that it gives me tremendous agency. And it's not easy.
Oftentimes I'll go, oh my God, seriously, do I need to deal with this HR crap? And then I remind myself, okay, wait a second. I choose to do this because we want to reverse diabetes A people and I'm in a unique position to do this. So that's kind of, that's the one.
Halle: a framing, a reframing.
Sami: framing. So, so that's one. The second one is a totally different direction. The foundation of metabolic health, meaning health in general, is, to me it's 95% a solution, and that to me is sleep, nutrition, and exercise. And hopefully, I don't sound like a grandmother or mother repeating that, but it is so important. I notice in myself if I have one night, I haven't slept optimally, I'm like one third more likely to be upset and grumpy and whatnot.
You know, I've just try to do that all the time. So nutrition, sleep and exercise has been a huge part of my life. And I think one of the reasons I, I kind of haven't fallen totally fallen apart over the last 20 years. Uh, and I think that's underappreciated for some people. It's almost, well few people these days, but it used to be batch of honor to pull all nighters and not sleep.
And, uh, no, no, no, no, no. You don't wanna do that. You need to treat yourself like a professional. If you try to be a leader of a high growth company, in my opinion. So that's the second one. And then, let's see. I think the third one that's been very helpful for me is that I try to cultivate multiple, kind of quote unquote identities inside my own head.
And what I mean by that is it's very easy as a founder, Especially if you are not like you don't have a partner and kids and welcome family, let's say in your, your twenties, for example. Not age matters to feel like the company's everything you have. That is you, that's your identity. That is everything.
And in fact, I think for some founders, that's almost like a batch of honor. Like, oh my God, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep everything, the company's all everything I have and I'm proud of it. That's very bad. It works when everything's going up to the. That never lasts. And so for me, you know, I have two little kids, five and seven year old girls.
So one identity is being a parent father, I have an identity of being athlete. I hang out, exercise, compete in cycling and stuff like that with people who couldn't care less what I do for a living. And, and so I found that very helpful. So if you can on a daily basis has perspective that Yeah, I kind of do different things.
And the one thing actually, nothing defines me, but the one. The profession doesn't sort of exclusively define you as super helpful. And then the, the, let's see, what else? Two, two more things. Hopefully I don't speak too long. You can stop me. Uh, the fourth one is having a peer group of other leaders, founders, CEOs, I found super helpful.
So I've been a member of ypo, so young presidents organization for the. 13 years now since, actually 14 years now. Since 2008. And so one example that we have is, is a forum which is highly confidential. You know, eight to 10 people, the same people meet for four hours every month. We talk about personal life, family, professional.
That's been, I'm exaggerating to say live saver, but pretty much. To me. And uh, I also have an executive coach, and so having peers and people who you can relate to you and help, I found super duper helpful. So that would be one. And then the last one I mentioned, which we can have a whole new podcast about that, so I don't wanna talk about too much, but to me, just meditation, you know, I've done a number.
10 day, four day one day silent meditation retreats, and I try to meditate like five, 10 minutes every day. Just understanding how the mind works is just a total game changer. Like honestly, that should be target school to first graders. So anyways, that's a long laundry list of things, but I don't think you can just kind of show up and hope for the past.
It's very, it is not normal to try to build the company from scratch. It's not normal. And so if you don't do all these things to kind of fortify yourself, it's expected that you fall apart.
Halle: Yeah, I think, um, you know, when I was in my twenties, I, helping run rock health, I thought my superpower was that I was young, I could operate on very little sleep and I didn't have children. And so I just put in a lot of time, I mean, at the office, seven days a week, late at night. And I thought that that was my advantage.
And you know, certainly there were some benefits to it, but my relationship suffered. Um,
Sami: Uhhmm
Halle: Build, the friendships that I should have been, building on, um, my, personal life was not that fun. , um, you know, I was hanging out more with my coworkers than my spouse. And you know, I think now I, I'm, I'm.
In the opposite part of my career where I'm spending more time on other things than on work. And I find that I'm actually, every hour I put into work is, is far more productive hour. I'm not just doing it to, to show up and show everyone that I can hustle, . And so I, I find myself a little bit more balanced.
Productive. But I certainly fell into the Silicon Valley trap that many, many people fall into, which is feeling the need to hustle and work late and, and just kind of show that you can do it. Cuz you don't have to, you don't have to, you don't have to sacrifice your personal life, um, to be successful.
It is gonna be a lot of hours though, but it doesn't need to be seven days a week. You can give yourself a day or two on the weekend off.
Sami: Yeah. A a, absolutely. And you mentioned the word productivity. I, I, I I find that it's, there's like a lot of productivity porn in Silicon Valley and it's almost like the, a religion people's, you know, looking for their self worth to be highly productive. And, you know, I, I hear people saying like, I wonder if I can have kids cause I'm gonna be less productive and.
Wait a second. Is there gonna be something on a tombstone when you die? Like the most productive woman or man in the world, like it, it literally is like a religion. Um, and, and so you have to be able to see outside of that. Now, there are facts that, again, I go get, go back to this. If you wanna be best in the world or opposed to best in the world, or build a company from scratch or be professional.
It's not like a part-time job. You, you have to invest the effort and the focus, but it doesn't mean that's the only thing you do. Professional athletes don't pull all-nighters before Olympic games, for example. Uh, it does mean that you need to choose to say no to a lot of other things. Uh, but again, you have to choose and want. Um, and I, I think that is necessary. It's, it's hard to, there's very few people who can be a CEO of three companies. I'm not gonna make a reference to anyone who's trying to do that, but
Halle: Yeah.
Sami: reality is that doing hard things.
Halle: how they like it.
Sami: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Halle: Well, I think it, when you love what you do and it's fun doing it, it sometimes is hard to break out of the work mode. And so my next question for you, and this is something that I have not figured out, so I hope that you have the secret for me, and I hope it's not meditation because I haven't been able to get meditation at work for me.
But here's the question. How do you. Work off your mind like taking a shower where you're not coming up with a list of things that you need to do for work. Not being at the playground, watching your kid, but like in the back of your mind replaying an incident with hr, et cetera. How do you actually like turn off work so you're not thinking about it all the time when you're doing something that you're obsessed with and love?
Sami: Yeah, I, it is, it's not easy. Uh, but I, I do have a solution.
Halle: Okay,
Sami: 1 99 a month. Subscribe to my, no, just kidding. Um, I, um, I, I do think it's very, very, very important. And again, for somebody it may be like a batch of honor to never switch on work. And this is kind of part of the productivity point that people say, oh, I'm thinking about all the time.
Last thing I think is, is my work when I go to bed and when I wake up, like, no, that is not good. And most, many of the things that your brain solves it, it happens on the background anyway. Well, I, I have two ways of doing that. . Um, and yes, the second one is, is what you don't want to hear. The first one is, it is possible to fill the brain with something else.
And the examples that I would give to me, one is sports. When you exercise hard enough and do like above threshold intervals when you about to throw up or whatever, running or cycling or something. That is one way to do it for me. So you basically force your brain to be occupied with something else, um, at the level that it just cannot think about anything else.
And then sport is one thing for me. It's, it's, if you go easy jogging or hiking, yes, you can be very distracted, but if you do something very, Hard and dangerous or whatnot, even like mountain biking, it kind of forces out. So that's one way to do it. It's probably the easiest for most people and
Halle: Okay, but what if you're not athletic? Is there
Sami: me.
For me, yeah, for me as well. Um,
Halle: or a game or something that's
Sami: think, um,
Halle: version of
Sami: yeah, for some people it's art, it's music. Um, I, I, I'll give another example that's kind of related to sports, but cause I grew up in Finland, everyone has sauna, or sauna, as we say in Finn. That is one place where you're sweating and you're super hot and then you, I don't know, take a freezing cold shower, jump your lake, jump into a lake and go back to sauna.
Is that's, One of those ways as well. So if anybody wants to try that and people who play music, guitar, piano, violin, whatever you have, you have to concentrate a lot. So anyway, so that's kind of the one group that works for me. And then the second one is I, I, again, I'm not kind of, meditation solves everything, but understanding the nature of the mind and how the brain has a life of its own.
And being able to just observe a thought come to my mind, and the same thing happens to me all the time. Like he mentioned like, oh my God, I said that to this investor. How stupid was I? I wasn't able to raise the round. And they said, no, I should have said this and that, noticing those thoughts usually isn't the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that we get attached to them and then we narrate them for three hours in our. And so if you can meditate and realize, aha, there's a thought coming about, I don't know, customer or producting or internal HR or conversation you had with an investor where you embarrassed yourself, if you can notice that and just let it slide rather than start narrating that for four hours on a Saturday morning, that is possible.
That is absolutely possible, and that is one of the things where meditation. And so if you can do that on demand, it's very liberating. And so those of your listeners were sort of software developers, which I used to do way back when. It's kind of like debugging your brain in a runtime mode. So if you write code, you can put it into a debugging mode and you can see it the code line by line.
If you can get to that point in your mind that you can see the thoughts come in. and you can kind of observe them from a distance, if you will. It gives you the option to say, well, that's an interesting thought, but I'm just gonna let it slide and not gonna start the three hour self narration. That's just gonna create misery on a Saturday or Sunday when it's completely irrelevant and unproductive.
So, so those are the two ways, but yeah.
Halle: On, on meditation, like where do you start to learn and how long does it take until it, it's working for you?
Sami: I dunno,
Halle: It's, I mean,
Sami: so I, yeah, I don't think necessarily everybody's journey is different, and I'm not a meditative master, but I, I will briefly mention that I, probably, my lowest point, sort of happiness wise was. 2012 when my company truly went public, this may sound so counterintuitive, like, oh, company's successful, we make a bunch of money, and I wasn't working full time.
Like, wow, that's like a dream come true, and now you can do everything. But it was kind of miserable. And I was wondering why is that? How's that possible? This is kind of what everybody tells you. Like you work hard and you make tons of money and you're happily ever go after. But surprise, surprise doesn't usually happen.
And so I realized that there's probably something I can learn about my mind and uh, actually with my wife. Um, we went to a 10 day silent meditation retreat in Taiwan of all the places, it's easier to be silent when you don't speak Mandarin Chinese, so . So that, that was my start of my meditation hobby exercise, I, I would say, and that was very helpful for me.
Now, I don't think you have to go to a 10 day silent to, to learn some of the basics, but Yeah, so I've been kind of meditating ever after, but that was a very helpful kickstart rather than trying to, you know, download an app and listen to it for 15 minutes and realize that it did nothing.
Halle: Yeah. Might be something to try before having kids. I can't imagine. Doing that now with a child. But yeah, something that, um, so you're not the first person to recommend meditation to me. Um, but now you're, you're getting me more interested in thinking about that as a, a good way to quiet my mind. . So one thing I wanted to talk about is just the weight of pressure that you have.
Constantly. As a leader in a fast growing company, people need you and constantly need you, and you're constantly, I say you're a firefighter, you're constantly fighting fires, and I once heard pressure described as a privilege and to not look at it as a negative thing, but kind of as a neutral factor that will determine kind of the growth of your organiz.
How have you kind of gotten to your position with just the immense pressure that there is being a CEO of a a unicorn. And what sort of tips do you have with dealing with pressure and specifically situations that are just really difficult where there's a lot at stake.
Sami: Yeah. Um, in some ways I could kind of repeat the same couple of things I mentioned, what I do to be able to withstand and absorb the pressures that unquestionably are thrown your way at the unexpected times. But obviously I'm not gonna repeat the same things, but I'd say those four, five fundamentals that I, I.
Are basis for me. And, um, but let me take this to a slightly different direction around the agency. And this may sound like a very roundabout way, but I think you probably know or remember this one kind of a crazy adventure that I did right before starting VER Health was rowing across the Pacific Ocean with my wife un unsupported, yet yes, rowing and unsupported in the robot from California to Hawaii, which.
Um, let's see, 45 days and three hours. So it was a long trip. The reason I
Halle: checked in. I checked in almost every day on your blog. It was so exciting to watch.
Sami: when, when are they going to die? Luckily, it did not happen. But the reason I'm, yeah,
Halle: you could do it.
Sami: um, meaning neith there, um, but again, it proves that it's important to marry the right person. The, the reason I mentioned this story, I was not yet sure if I want to start another company.
At the time when we pushed off with the boat, Virta was kind of in the making, but it was very much hesitating for the reasons you just mentioned. Cuz I knew how uncomfortable and painful. It can be and will be to be a founder, CEO of a fast grow company. Whether it's successful or unsuccessful, it just ease all the time.
And I was very hesitant to do that. It's almost like a slightly chronic pain and you get out of the pain and you know that, oh, if you eat too much candy, you're gonna get the chronic pain back. It's like, well, I'm not going, I'm definitely not gonna do that. And the rowing obviously was very uncomfortable physically to row 16 hours a day and during that row, I can't explain how it happened, but it hit me.
I really internalized that. The periods in my life when I have felt uncomfortable, not too much, not like a masochistic way or to the point that you are falling apart, but like pushing against the comfort or discomfort. Those have been the most rewarding. And gratifying peers in my life. It's like leaving Finland and coming to America and not knowing anything was honestly kind of scary.
Starting Trulia and building that company with amazing people over 10 years was hard, but it was, it was kind of gratifying and the role was the same thing. And so I realized that this kind of. Discomfort and pushing against your, beyond your comfort zone a little bit is actually a wonderful way of living your life, as long as it's not too much.
And so that's been an important reminder to me when I have these moments, which happen all the time, practically daily, that I have agency and I chose to do this, and I'm growing and I'm doing something. Obviously reversing diabetes is unquestionably a good thing. And so that's one thing that's been very helpful for me to ground myself.
And I'm doing this for a reason. Momentary discomfort is often just a sign that I'm trying to do something that is hard and I'm learning. Um, so that's been very helpful for me. And then all the other things that I already mentioned, like having that perspective that this is not all there is surrounding yourself with peers and yada yada y um, Um, yeah, I think it's important.
Halle: it gets easier. I mean, the first time I had to let someone go, I stayed up all night, the night before. I had just a knot in my stomach. I was so, I, I was just so upset. I was about to not do it even though it was the right thing for the company, just because I didn't wanna have to do it.
And then I did it and, you know, with the help of HR and lawyer and, uh, you know, did it the right way. And then it was over. And then I like took a deep breath and I was like, oh, I can do hard things . It's not, you know, it's almost sometimes the anticipation of the unknown. And then once you kind of get through it, you build that muscle and as you get further and further in your career, you realize those sort of conversations, they're still hard, but they're normal and you'll get through it and everyone will be.
Sami: Yeah, that, I think that's, that's, that's a great point. It's like anything, it's like public speaking. I suddenly grew up as a kind of a geek introvert and this idea, but like, I hated public speaking in any shape or form. But and yeah, you don't become a Tony Robbins if, if you weren't built for that.
But if you do it a hundred. In, I don't know, 300 days and you're forced to, then suddenly it's like, okay, it's fine. Like that's the last thing you're worrying about. And it's the same thing in all these motions that you have to go through in, in building a company. And you mentioned one there. It sadly, you have to depart ways with employees, whether that's a big play off or one-offs.
And when you go through those many times over it, it does become easier and you realize. It's kind of your job description and you can get over it. But some of these things never get like very easy. And one of the things is telling someone that you have to depart ways. It's, I don't think anybody likes that, but it's part of the job description.
Halle: Yeah. I think, uh, I have been I like to, I just, by nature, I avoid conflict and I like to be liked. And so kind of getting over that and, and recognizing that about myself, uh, which is, you know, through coaching and therapy, has helped me kind of realize that, um, you know, you have to, you have to.
You have to want it more than you're afraid of it. And you have to be brave and do things that are uncomfortable because it's, it is part of the job. And if you wanna be successful, you have to do the job. So,
Sami: Absolutely.
Halle: But it's hard cuz then you, you know, that someone's gonna be upset and we all wanna be liked.
Sami: Um, well, I certainly
Halle: Yeah.
Sami: it's one of things I, things I'm working on personally to not take things to personally. Obviously yeah, you, you wanna be empathetic and sympathetic and it's, it's okay to feel, uh, what others might be feeling, but when you're a leader, uh, you, you. You have to know when to take, take things personally and when to just realize that you just have to move forward.
And statistically, when you have hundreds of employees, I always tell to my, my managers, I'm like, just roughly, think about it this way. There's a one person chance that. A person has a crazy crisis on a given day. So if you have a hundred employees, just back up the envelope, you can say that every day somebody's gonna have a crazy crisis.
And don't take it personally. Uh, it just means that when you have a large enough team, you're kind of dealing with these things all the time.
Halle: Going back to our earlier conversation, you said you thought it was a good time to start a company. What do you think about specifically in healthcare and where we are as an industry today?
Sami: Yeah. I think I would decouple the capital markets in a funding cycle from. Evolution of healthcare as an industry. And what I mean by that is I think there's so much to be done and improved in a US healthcare, and that's probably not gonna change for another many. I don't never, I guess there's always room for innovation.
There's so much room for innovation, both from a kind of structural and cost perspective as well as, you know, new technology, whether that's digital or biotech. That it's always a good time or now is a good time, I should say, to, to start a company in healthcare. Absolutely, a hundred percent. And you didn't ask like, where's the opportunity?
I think this opportunity everywhere. So that's that. And then on the funding cycle side, oh, I think it's everywhere. I, yeah, I, uh, it's, uh, and, and by the way, I think the. Often the most successful companies are built when somebody starts something that just seems like, doesn't even make any sense. And we are like, people like me are like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
I've been in healthcare for seven, eight years, and like, that doesn't make any sense. It's almost like we started Virta addressing diabetes 2014 people. Wait a second. There's like thousand diabetes companies and we've already at scale, like there's nothing to be done and that's actually the best time to do something transformative, innovative, disruptive, when nobody else is kind of looking.
So, so that's on healthcare side. And then the capital market cycles, I honestly think about, for the most part, them as like a weather. You wanna make yourself a weatherproof, whether it's. Sunny or rainy, you can go and walk outside and hike and run and whatever. Make yourself a weatherproof and the economic cycles come and go and I, I wouldn't time companies starting based on those cycles.
But that said, I, again, I already mentioned, I do feel that downturn is a better time for a very, very early stage company. Then the boom times.
Halle: yeah. It's almost like living in San Francisco and you have to wear layers. You have to be
Sami: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna make sure yourself weatherproof. And then once you get further, obviously be in like where we are now. You know, raise hundreds of millions of dollars in large scale. Cash force and revenues, and then you have to be much more conscious of the capital markets in that, like if you need capital, like when you go fundraise, like it sort of plays more into how much you focus on profitability versus top line growth.
But I always say it's when you're starting, at the end of the day, you're trying to build a product that solves the problem and it that just doesn't, it's no different whether money is easy or hard to come.
Halle: Yep. Amazing. Well, any parting words for our audience?
Sami: Well, one thing that I always love to promote is, uh, starting a company and I just promote entrepreneurship and sometimes in the Silicon Valley gets a bad draft, but at the end of the day, it's the innovators, people who, who throw themselves into the ring. Who move the world forward. They create jobs, they create tax dollars, they solve problems, improve human lives.
So I'm a huge proponent of. People taking that risk and starting something. And if you are debating whether now's the right time, the only time better than today is yesterday. And particularly if you are coming outta school, grad school or undergrad and you, you know, like, oh my God, maybe I should work for a big company for five years before I start my advice.
Um, you only become more risk averse as time goes by. The more kids, the kids, the lifestyle. So now is the best and the easiest time, like Absolutely. So if you're just coming outta school, say grad school now is the best time to start a company. You will never ever be this open to taking risk in in the future.
Halle: yeah. And hungry for success.
Sami: Exactly. Exactly.
Halle: I love that. Well, Sammy, thank you so much. I know you are extremely busy running Virta, and we appreciate your time today.
Sami: Yeah. Thank you so much. Very much enjoyed.