Balaji Gopalan

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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: It's Toronto's podcast on the Canada's podcast network.
[00:07] SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Leslie with Canada's podcast and today we're interviewing the Lodgy Gopalin.
[00:12] SPEAKER_00: The Lodgy leads business development and strategy as the co-founder and CEO of MedStack, a digital
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: application platform for the health fair industry.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: Prior to that, the Lodgy launched the Blackberry BBM service and led platform strategy, the
[00:27] SPEAKER_00: D2L, NIMI and event MOBI.
[00:30] SPEAKER_00: As an expert in product management and software platform ecosystem design, biology is also
[00:35] SPEAKER_00: well respected startup educator, advisor and mentor.
[00:39] SPEAKER_00: The kit for the role of ecosystems in industry transformation and entangling tough problems
[00:43] SPEAKER_00: like improving health care.
[00:45] SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Belagie and Tavr, so happy to have you on Canada's podcast.
[00:49] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
[00:51] SPEAKER_01: Pleasure to begin.
[00:52] SPEAKER_00: Why don't you start with just telling us a little bit about yourself and MedStack?
[00:56] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
[00:57] SPEAKER_01: So MedStack is a company that's dedicated towards accelerating the innovation pace in the
[01:05] SPEAKER_01: health care industry.
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: So the thing we lift at is if you look at health care itself, which we can get into the
[01:12] SPEAKER_01: digital realm, one of the biggest challenges in the industry from the perspective of things
[01:16] SPEAKER_01: that people feel every day, but as well as economically in terms of the money spent is
[01:21] SPEAKER_01: the advent of chronic conditions.
[01:23] SPEAKER_01: And chronic conditions is a broad term that means a lot of things, but some examples
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: are the challenges we face with cancer and mental illness and diabetes and heart condition
[01:32] SPEAKER_01: and lots of other conditions that are all characterized by complex symptoms, long-term
[01:39] SPEAKER_01: treatments and a lot of people involved in the care of the patient.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: And this is an increasing percentage of the overall cost of health care in lots of
[01:49] SPEAKER_01: different countries around the world.
[01:50] SPEAKER_01: The reason this is relevant is because if that's the kind of relationship that the health
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: care industry needs to have with the patient, whether you're talking about hospitals or
[01:58] SPEAKER_01: clinic networks or insurance companies or public health organizations, then you need to take
[02:04] SPEAKER_01: advantage of technologies that can help you deliver care faster.
[02:08] SPEAKER_01: And this is where modern technologies in the right of the cloud become really interesting,
[02:13] SPEAKER_01: because the cloud allows you to do things like, you know, have a constant relationship with
[02:18] SPEAKER_01: the patient, even if not actually in the facility.
[02:20] SPEAKER_01: It allows you to help make decisions faster through things like artificial intelligence
[02:25] SPEAKER_01: and simple data tools.
[02:28] SPEAKER_01: And then it allows you to actually have data in a place that then allows a lot of people
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: rightful access to to deliver care to that patient.
[02:36] SPEAKER_01: So think of transitions from one kind of care facility to another, especially in our
[02:40] SPEAKER_01: valued sort of aging population.
[02:42] SPEAKER_01: And so we looked at this problem and said, well, how do we bring more cloud tech to health care?
[02:48] SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting, just from the perspective of outside of the health care,
[02:51] SPEAKER_01: so there are some people who have this notion that health care doesn't like tech.
[02:57] SPEAKER_01: That's actually simply not true.
[02:59] SPEAKER_01: There's an increasing amount of money being spent on technology in the health care realm.
[03:04] SPEAKER_01: And actually, an increasing amount of money is spent on cloud in the health care realm as well,
[03:08] SPEAKER_01: which is why all of the big major tech companies in the world.
[03:12] SPEAKER_01: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Apple are all building healthcare arms to do
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: them things. So it's really cool to actually all do them completely different and complete
[03:23] SPEAKER_01: complimentary. We think it's really encouraging for focus on this industry and there's a bunch
[03:27] SPEAKER_01: other metrics we look at. Like the percentage of startups over here that are actually
[03:31] SPEAKER_01: health care focused versus not is increasing.
[03:33] SPEAKER_01: Why? Because we all have family members or personal experiences either on the patient
[03:38] SPEAKER_01: side or on the provider side in this realm. I want to see it work better.
[03:41] SPEAKER_01: The thing we've realized is that getting the stuff to market is really, really hard.
[03:47] SPEAKER_01: And if you look at sort of my background, yesterday kind of where I came from,
[03:50] SPEAKER_01: and you mentioned Subbitrate kindly in the beginning, I have this both fascination with
[03:54] SPEAKER_01: technology that help other people build stuff. Whether there are workflows like, you know, like VVM or
[04:01] SPEAKER_01: some of the education things that was built at D2L or more specific kind of hard developer
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: platform stuff like, you know, stuff we did with a push service that I built at Blackberry.
[04:12] SPEAKER_01: And then some things we did in Imi. I think this idea of multiplying innovation avenues where
[04:17] SPEAKER_01: solutions are very, very specific to a particular workflow, to your problem because
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: people are all different and things you go through all different. It's really interesting.
[04:25] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there's a Silicon Valley term for this called a Pics and Shubbles business.
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: And I really like that. You know, it's a good, odd for some people because Pics and Shubbles
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: businesses are often relegated to the backup conversation, right? So the analogy I use is,
[04:41] SPEAKER_01: if your plumbing is great in your house, you don't really talk about it.
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: Because that, of course you talk about it. You know, hey, I'm no hot water in my house,
[04:50] SPEAKER_01: so I can't wash my dishes. But I have a pleasant home and I enjoy living in it and part of the
[04:56] SPEAKER_01: reason for that is because the plumbing works really well. That's how we think about ourselves.
[05:00] SPEAKER_01: And this comes from, you know, the work I've done building platforms in a bunch of different
[05:04] SPEAKER_01: industries, platform strategy. It's such an overuse word, but platform in the sense of
[05:11] SPEAKER_01: brokering relationships and doing different businesses and stuff together is really fascinating.
[05:16] SPEAKER_01: My working product management led me to kind of explore this. And, and, you know, there's some great
[05:21] SPEAKER_01: books and reading and examples of the coolest companies in the world. They're all platform companies,
[05:25] SPEAKER_01: right? So whether you're talking a bit Uber or you're talking a bit Twilio or even Mastercard or I
[05:31] SPEAKER_01: change these all platform companies. So I wanted to do that, but I always knew I could do something
[05:36] SPEAKER_01: bigger with it. And then I came up with a healthcare problem and it was the genesis of MedStack. And
[05:42] SPEAKER_01: we have as a thesis a fundamental belief that it's these early stage companies that are going to do
[05:48] SPEAKER_01: the most interesting things in an industry traditionally known for its cautious approach to risk.
[05:55] SPEAKER_01: And so we're trying to enable them to meet the requirements of their industry much faster.
[06:01] SPEAKER_01: And so that's where we started and what we realized was the biggest challenge they all had was data
[06:05] SPEAKER_01: security. Is data security? Yeah, yeah, which is unsurprising because there is nothing more precious
[06:11] SPEAKER_01: than our health information. You know, if people know about our health, they can beat us and they can
[06:19] SPEAKER_01: get access to things that are intimate and sensitive and we want to have protected not just
[06:24] SPEAKER_01: monetarily, you know, especially like at the US, the private health insurance industry. This stuff
[06:29] SPEAKER_01: has a dollar figure attached to it. But even emotionally and personally, privacy isn't everybody's
[06:34] SPEAKER_01: conversation right now. When you look at the consumer upper over privacy breaches that happen with
[06:41] SPEAKER_01: companies like Facebook and stuff they got involved in around the US election and they've come
[06:46] SPEAKER_01: out of things or were involved in the reaction from the public was emotional. Okay, we're worried that
[06:52] SPEAKER_01: people I don't know who's going to know what this worries me. Now as soon as you have health
[06:58] SPEAKER_01: and you get into some really, really sensitive things that can affect whether people get employed,
[07:03] SPEAKER_01: the relationships they have with their families and have the load things,
[07:08] SPEAKER_01: economically, health record is worth 35 times out of a credit card on the black market.
[07:12] SPEAKER_01: Because we don't realize this, you know, especially in the US, if I get your health data, I can be new
[07:16] SPEAKER_01: and I can get all of your health care for on your dime for me. And so this is a result in
[07:23] SPEAKER_01: conservatism on the part of the health care industry itself. And as a result, barriers to adoption
[07:31] SPEAKER_01: of digital technologies of the health care industry, actually otherwise, this really needs
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: to address this current conditioning capacity. So we do immense to act as we make that process,
[07:40] SPEAKER_01: more trustworthy for both sides, more transparent and easier to adopt.
[07:45] SPEAKER_00: Well, that's amazing. And that was that was like a great response to who you are and like MedStack
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: and how you guys came to be. But I do have a question like what made you decide to become an
[07:58] SPEAKER_01: entrepreneur in the first place? You know, it's interesting because I I never had a specific
[08:04] SPEAKER_01: design for it, you know, and you know, a lot of people will tell you that they became an entrepreneur
[08:11] SPEAKER_01: because I don't like having a boss, right? And and I want to set my own destiny and I never thought
[08:19] SPEAKER_01: of it that way. I actually don't believe that entrepreneurship or an entrepreneurial mindset or
[08:25] SPEAKER_01: innovation is relegated to a particular size of company when we were working on some of the early
[08:33] SPEAKER_01: consumer stuff at Blackberry and this is, you know, put the context for yourself in the audience.
[08:38] SPEAKER_01: Early 2000s, the iPhone would not be invented for the three years. So the mobile industry was
[08:46] SPEAKER_01: flip phones and business pda's and that's all it was. It was, you know, besides the consumer phone
[08:52] SPEAKER_01: industry, which was I make phone calls, they sent text messages and download ring calls. That's
[08:56] SPEAKER_01: the only thing I'd be able to do with the phones. You had these kind of higher end or more powerful
[09:01] SPEAKER_01: devices that was Blackberry, Palm and Windows mobile and maybe danger. We were blazing the trail
[09:10] SPEAKER_01: and then Blackberry was not a startup at the point. We were kind of a startup inside the company,
[09:15] SPEAKER_01: but we did stuff that nobody had ever seen before. We brought mobile strategy to internet companies
[09:20] SPEAKER_01: who had no idea what to do with it. We really asked this is a Facebook when they first started,
[09:24] SPEAKER_01: we talked to Skype, we talked to Yahoo, we talked eBay and we told them how have mobile work and I
[09:31] SPEAKER_01: mean just us, other people they just you were, but we were a bigger company. So I think innovation is
[09:35] SPEAKER_01: possible at lots of different levels, but I had gotten involved as an educator and as an advisor
[09:42] SPEAKER_01: with a number of companies and even in my work in these larger organizations working with startups.
[09:47] SPEAKER_01: For example, when I was at a desire to learn, I was in charge of the strategy for helping
[09:53] SPEAKER_01: our education platform work with tiny little ed tech startups and how do we integrate them into our
[09:59] SPEAKER_01: work and do our offering. So I became very fascinating by the role these small companies play in a very
[10:06] SPEAKER_01: stripped down kind of like we're doing one thing and we don't have time to do lots of things and we
[10:10] SPEAKER_01: have to do one thing that you're quickly to be able to survive. And this opportunity came to me
[10:15] SPEAKER_01: and I was fascinated by a couple of things. First of all, a chance to do entrepreneurship and
[10:19] SPEAKER_01: quite frankly in my early 40s, I was like, this is probably the only chance I could get. I say no
[10:24] SPEAKER_01: and there'll be two later, but I'm again, another one. One my partner brought me the opportunity
[10:28] SPEAKER_01: for from head stack and the second was I really liked the idea that it was a startup work to build a
[10:34] SPEAKER_01: startup and this that kind of community ecosystem play was fascinating to me. And finally,
[10:41] SPEAKER_01: I had read an article a couple years prior written by a famous product visionary and
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: venture capitalist about how entrepreneurship has a social responsibility to do the world's hardest
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: things. And why do we have a social responsibility that works hardest things? The world's hardest
[11:06] SPEAKER_01: things are governed by the status quo that doesn't move very quickly. And so if you think of it from
[11:12] SPEAKER_01: an industry perspective, there's always sort of five and you can think about this, but they typically
[11:15] SPEAKER_01: roll up into five. And so five are healthcare, education, financial services, energy and government.
[11:23] SPEAKER_01: And other kinds of startups are important, but those five, if we transform those industries,
[11:30] SPEAKER_01: those will change the world because they touch us every single day. And there's a role of technology
[11:35] SPEAKER_01: investment that's in the world in that place. And so that really resonated with me. And I thought,
[11:42] SPEAKER_01: yeah, if I'm going to do the hard work and all the risk of being an entrepreneur,
[11:46] SPEAKER_01: I want it to be in something that matters. And boy, it wouldn't be cool if I was an entrepreneur
[11:50] SPEAKER_01: working in a hard industry, helping other entrepreneurs and can remember working hard at this
[11:54] SPEAKER_01: point. And so that's where the leap of faith came from. It wasn't, I want to be an entrepreneur
[12:00] SPEAKER_01: and let's find a company. It was literally, I shifted from being a big company person
[12:05] SPEAKER_01: to being an entrepreneur because of the idea itself. It was enough to compel me to do it.
[12:10] SPEAKER_00: That's amazing. That's different. Like a lot of our guests, we ask them if you think that
[12:15] SPEAKER_00: entrepreneurs are wired differently. And I think, like, what do you think about that?
[12:19] SPEAKER_01: I think entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial mindset is wired differently,
[12:23] SPEAKER_01: that it's not defined by your job title or the size of company you work for.
[12:28] SPEAKER_01: Those of us in an innovation role, whether it's a startup founder, a developer, a market
[12:36] SPEAKER_01: strategy, it's a business developer, a product manager, what have you. As long as your role is not
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: defined by constant, but the answer to the question is a different way. This is one of the things
[12:45] SPEAKER_01: that I teach in my class. And I actually recently went toward a very early stage company on
[12:49] SPEAKER_01: the product strategy and I was following this. Maybe for listening, I don't know. But if the
[12:56] SPEAKER_01: market is static, so in other words, if legislation doesn't change, technology input doesn't change,
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: capital landscape doesn't change, and customer needs don't change, which is true in some rare cases,
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: then all you need is cross-sacred innovation. How do you do input, output more efficiently?
[13:18] SPEAKER_01: And input, output is on a set of functions, which are essentially where it takes to build something,
[13:23] SPEAKER_01: engineering, marketing, sales, and support. Those four things. Design can be considered a fifth.
[13:28] SPEAKER_01: But as soon as those factors change, then you have to be constantly creatively thinking around,
[13:35] SPEAKER_01: well, how do I deal with what I don't know? How do I deal with limits on what I have?
[13:40] SPEAKER_01: And how do I make the world understand very quickly that I've done something special?
[13:45] SPEAKER_01: Those questions apply, whether you're working for a big giant company or a startup.
[13:49] SPEAKER_01: So when you talk about entrepreneurs, you'd wire differently. It's people who survive in those
[13:54] SPEAKER_01: countries' questions. So if you had asked me two, not two years ago,
[14:00] SPEAKER_01: quite, it's been working two years already. If you'd asked me 10 years ago,
[14:04] SPEAKER_01: are you an entrepreneur? I didn't know how I would have answered that question, because I wasn't one,
[14:09] SPEAKER_01: but I don't know if I realized I was one, because I thought of myself as an office person,
[14:13] SPEAKER_01: but operational efficiency is part of entrepreneurship. So if you'd asked me 10 years ago,
[14:18] SPEAKER_01: do you want to be a founder? I probably would have said no, just because I really liked being
[14:24] SPEAKER_01: the person responsible for delivery and not the person responsible for governance, if that makes any sense.
[14:32] SPEAKER_01: It was weird. So the answer to you may be one of your subsequent questions. In advance,
[14:38] SPEAKER_01: I have learned way more in the last five years than I did in the previous 15 years put together,
[14:42] SPEAKER_01: because I think pushed into sort of a governance type of role. But yes, I do think entrepreneurs
[14:47] SPEAKER_01: are wired differently, but I also think that there are entrepreneurs in startup to know there's a big company.
[14:53] SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting way to answer that question, and it gives a lot of insight to our listeners, too.
[14:58] SPEAKER_00: So thank you. But I just wanted to ask you, when did you actually get started? It was three years ago.
[15:04] SPEAKER_01: You started Ben Stagg? And that's not because now it's coming up on our fifth birthday in next
[15:08] SPEAKER_01: April, we'll be starting with a result. Yeah, since 2015. I mean, I tell myself this repeatedly,
[15:17] SPEAKER_01: because it's not going to be cliche, but it feels like 30 years, and it also feels like three minutes.
[15:23] SPEAKER_01: There's not been a single day where I could feel the time passing. In other words,
[15:30] SPEAKER_01: like the date started the same way that it ended. It's been change every day, but it's been
[15:36] SPEAKER_00: four and a half years of change. Good change? Different change, right? There's ups and downs.
[15:42] SPEAKER_01: Up and down. Not all good, all good, because whether the result was net positive from a financial
[15:49] SPEAKER_01: perspective, which is definitely not always every single day you will learn something. Some of
[15:55] SPEAKER_01: learning is hard, which learning is really depressing, and some learning makes you like,
[15:59] SPEAKER_01: oh, I just need to go to bed. You learn something, and so you grow as a person.
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: That's like going to school. I feel like, it really is like going to the best university in life.
[16:13] SPEAKER_01: It totally is. It's like, there's never been a bigger learning experience more professionally than
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: what I've done in the last few years. So I should think here's just a little bit, but I wanted to know
[16:23] SPEAKER_00: your Toronto. I want to know what do you think are the benefits of doing business in Toronto?
[16:29] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question. Yeah, well, first of all, let's define Toronto. So I look at Toronto as
[16:38] SPEAKER_01: the quarter between like, Ashla and Hamilton. Part of the reason I define it that way is because we
[16:44] SPEAKER_01: consider ourselves from a geographic perspective to be a Toronto slash Hamilton company, but let's call
[16:50] SPEAKER_01: all of it the GTA. And it's important to character us that way. Yeah, people talk about this
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: weird kind of like tension between Toronto and Waterloo, which I think is quite silly because
[17:03] SPEAKER_01: in the old stage, we're kind of one big place. Maybe it's arrogant to call it Toronto, but let's
[17:08] SPEAKER_01: call it whenever we want to call it. So we are a business that sells into the US. We have been
[17:14] SPEAKER_01: from the beginning, and we are also a company that's been talking Silicon Valley. We were in 500
[17:19] SPEAKER_01: startups a couple years ago, 2017. We moved down there, but myself, my partner, head of sales,
[17:27] SPEAKER_01: marketly, we spent a lot of time down there. And you know, we've been to Austin, and I've been to
[17:33] SPEAKER_01: Seattle, and I've been to New York, and Chicago. I think we have the best innovation ecosystem in
[17:38] SPEAKER_01: the entire world. And I can say that with that experience. So for a few reasons, some of which are
[17:44] SPEAKER_01: well known, but are worth articulating again, we have some of the best kind of hard talent here
[17:51] SPEAKER_01: from a technical perspective, whether you're talking about, you know, software from Waterloo or AI
[17:57] SPEAKER_01: from Toronto, or even AI from Montreal, which comes here as well. That is helpful. The second thing
[18:08] SPEAKER_01: is that our pedigree as Canadians is in older industries, healthcare, energy, financial services,
[18:16] SPEAKER_01: our B.C.'s, the biggest company in Canada. And so we have a natural tendency to want to take on
[18:21] SPEAKER_01: bigger problems. If we didn't have that what back then would we have? Well, other innovation
[18:28] SPEAKER_01: ecosystems, they stem from a background in media. And I don't mean to put blue media industry,
[18:35] SPEAKER_01: you know, but I think of the hardest problems we have to solve in the world, and the hardest
[18:41] SPEAKER_01: problem is itself are quite often not media problems, although media can be used as a channel
[18:45] SPEAKER_01: of selfless problems. So, you know, our background is in natural resources, oil, wheat, and
[18:53] SPEAKER_01: wood and other such things. We have a strong affinity for financial services because of some of
[19:02] SPEAKER_01: the economic factors where our population is laid out, but also the conservative way in which
[19:08] SPEAKER_01: Canadians typically think. You know, we get excited by banks and insurance companies and stuff like
[19:12] SPEAKER_01: that. And this lens ourselves, I think, to taking on when you talk about people deciding to be
[19:20] SPEAKER_01: founders, I think, I don't know if I can't prove this statistically, but I think we have a
[19:25] SPEAKER_01: little more likely tendency to take on harder problems. So I think the combination of those things,
[19:31] SPEAKER_01: along with the collaborative attitude in our culture and across the port of attitude in our culture,
[19:39] SPEAKER_01: along with the tendency to look at the long game, and then finally, you know, I mean, it can be
[19:47] SPEAKER_01: controversial, but I do think the net game from our government support for innovation, all those
[19:54] SPEAKER_01: together puts us in a really, really interesting position relative to the rest of the world,
[19:59] SPEAKER_01: in terms of the kinds of things we're going to do, whether you're talking about Silicon Valley or
[20:05] SPEAKER_01: whether you're talking about China or India, this is the place to be. We're very, very, very proud to be a
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: Canadian and Ontario Toronto company, and we should get to manage all those things.
[20:20] SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's any challenges of doing business in Toronto or GTA?
[20:24] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, they're not insurmountable challenges. We do get asked the question,
[20:30] SPEAKER_01: oh, do people take your lesson seriously because we're not based on Silicon Valley? I don't think so.
[20:35] SPEAKER_01: I think those days are over. We do wish those were contacting Canada, we wish we had more
[20:42] SPEAKER_01: whales, so we're all cheering and Shopify on because they're kind of carrying that torch for us
[20:48] SPEAKER_01: right now, and then maybe Hootsuite and a couple of others. And then there's a couple of sleeping
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: giants, even the health service, you may not have heard of, but they're doing some really, really amazing
[20:59] SPEAKER_01: things. But industry-wise, we had our hopes for North-Halloween, we had our hopes for Black
[21:05] SPEAKER_01: Bay Area, and it's not bad news because all of them actually led to ecosystems of amazing
[21:10] SPEAKER_01: companies being formed around them, and that's the same as true for what we'll see sort of
[21:17] SPEAKER_01: going forward. So I think that is not a problem. I think we are sometimes our own enemy, and
[21:24] SPEAKER_01: I heard a very compelling statistic, which I keep saying I got to go and find the reference
[21:29] SPEAKER_01: and write it down and read it again, but it was really interesting to me. There was a study
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: that was done a couple years ago where they normalized for stage of company. So they looked at,
[21:40] SPEAKER_01: you know, a standardized timeline for companies founded on the state and how many months
[21:45] SPEAKER_01: allapsed to find a time. Look to companies in Canada and look to companies in the states.
[21:50] SPEAKER_01: And they realized two really important statistics over the time period of this company.
[21:56] SPEAKER_01: It is more likely at the same stage for a company in Canada to be acquired than it is for a company
[22:02] SPEAKER_01: in the US. But it is also more likely that the percentage spend of that company in terms of
[22:09] SPEAKER_01: its capital. So let's assume they have the same amount of money. It's not that all of the
[22:12] SPEAKER_01: answers that American companies raise more money. Let's assume they have the same amount of money.
[22:16] SPEAKER_01: The percentage capital spent in Canada on sales and marketing is much, much lower.
[22:24] SPEAKER_01: So what that means is that we have developed a bit of a complex that tells us that we're not a
[22:30] SPEAKER_01: real company unless we have tons of engineers. And in fact, most engineers, and I see this all the
[22:36] SPEAKER_01: time. I see it in the founders that I talk to. I see it in the investors that I talk to. That's
[22:44] SPEAKER_01: you're not a real company unless you've got all of these. And I'm forgetting, they want to
[22:48] SPEAKER_01: have a PhDs you have. I'm not saying anything against people in those roles because they're
[22:54] SPEAKER_01: really, really important. But our ability to push ahead and show the story to our market is muted
[23:01] SPEAKER_01: because of it. So what isn't happening is that we are tackling hard problems, as I said earlier,
[23:07] SPEAKER_01: that need to be solved. And we're actually solving them. Like our tech is good. Our products are great.
[23:13] SPEAKER_01: Our science is fantastic. But because we haven't told the story,
[23:17] SPEAKER_01: somebody who can tell the story comes along and goes, that company is going to, the tech is going
[23:22] SPEAKER_01: to change the world. Someone's going to buy them out. And it's unfortunate because we end up
[23:26] SPEAKER_01: celebrating it as a victory. Hey, look, X, Y, Z got acquired by ABC. But that's actually not a
[23:32] SPEAKER_01: victory. Victory is the company grows and stays Canadian and changes the world as they do again,
[23:40] SPEAKER_01: the way that Shopify is redefining the e-commerce for the entire planet and is really a retail
[23:45] SPEAKER_01: competitor to Amazon. Meanwhile, in other ecosystems, the product came up as mature. The
[23:52] SPEAKER_01: tech may not be as good, but they have more people talking about them. And so therefore,
[23:57] SPEAKER_01: we're able to survive longevity because we are running a commercial business for customers,
[24:01] SPEAKER_01: which are really the only thing that matters. Canada has not done anything to us to cause that to
[24:07] SPEAKER_01: happen. It's just part of our personality. So we have to get in front of it. I've taken it to
[24:12] SPEAKER_01: heart. Half my team is business, half my team is tech. And I think that's unfortunately
[24:17] SPEAKER_01: rare in our ecosystem. More of us need to figure that out in the numbers to lie.
[24:22] SPEAKER_00: So Amish, if there's a little right now, I just wanted to know, like some of your ideas,
[24:28] SPEAKER_00: some of all of our ideas come when we're least expecting them and when we're like,
[24:32] SPEAKER_00: recharging or something. So what do you do to kind of reset your charge?
[24:36] SPEAKER_01: Well, the short answer to that question is not enough.
[24:39] SPEAKER_01: No. But yeah, I have no secret. My team actually had to do an intervention with me.
[24:47] SPEAKER_01: Really?
[24:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a few weeks ago, it's kind of funny. My right-hand man and our team are ahead of sales and
[24:55] SPEAKER_01: operations. He pulled my laptop in a meeting and went into Slack and started unsubscribing
[25:02] SPEAKER_01: me from a whole bunch of stuff. And it was like your family coming in and taking where you're
[25:09] SPEAKER_01: being controlled. You better fix your life.
[25:12] SPEAKER_01: Taking my body control.
[25:13] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. Well, and it was necessary, right? Because I tend to be somebody that's been involved
[25:18] SPEAKER_01: in everything. And partially because I want to celebrate and learn and those kinds of things.
[25:25] SPEAKER_01: Focus is really important. So what kinds of things do I, well, my life is pretty,
[25:32] SPEAKER_01: personally, it's pretty straightforward. There's my work, combination of the nature of the work
[25:38] SPEAKER_01: that we do, how important it is, the state of a company, the fact that we are an office-less team
[25:44] SPEAKER_01: means that being engaged in work is easy, which is good and in fact, which why I mean some of
[25:54] SPEAKER_01: those interventions. But it's definitely like that kind of attachment is not what I expected my team.
[26:00] SPEAKER_01: I encourage my team to disconnect, celebrate my co-founder because he's not like me and I learned
[26:05] SPEAKER_01: from him. He's actually unplugged every Saturday. And boy, I wish I could be more like that.
[26:11] SPEAKER_01: But I've learned how to do more of it because I'm watching him. So my work takes up a lot of my
[26:16] SPEAKER_01: brain power. And then the remainder of it is my kids. They're a big part of my life.
[26:26] SPEAKER_01: My older daughter tends to get a little frustrated. She's like, how do you do? I don't know how to
[26:30] SPEAKER_01: talk about what you do. Well, that's not that important. Let's talk about you. So I try to do my best.
[26:38] SPEAKER_01: And being an entrepreneur, fortunately allows me some flexibility because my life is not defined by
[26:43] SPEAKER_01: you or valid by being in a desk at nine o'clock in the morning. So I have some flexibility.
[26:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. You know, I get up early in the morning and make the lunches at the school, talk about
[26:52] SPEAKER_01: today. And then what little I have left beyond those two things, I'm a musician. I mean, not
[26:59] SPEAKER_01: nearly enough if I try, as I like, I actually kind of let it go in the fall of this year,
[27:03] SPEAKER_01: which I have a regret. What do you play? I play guitar and I sing in the right music. Wow.
[27:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So when you play rock and roll, you don't have too much time to think about pricing.
[27:15] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that forces me to disconnect and then I try to get a little bit of exercise in here
[27:20] SPEAKER_01: and they're not really enough. But I do those four things kind of covering everything that I am.
[27:24] SPEAKER_00: It's important. And it's kind of a balance on your team of people who like to kind of balance
[27:29] SPEAKER_01: that that culture too, right? Yeah, absolutely. We really, really pride ourselves on pursuing
[27:36] SPEAKER_01: diversity. It's a very, very high priority for me and my partner. And so, you know, we're
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: more or less balanced in terms of function. Not quite as balanced as I'd like to be in terms of
[27:50] SPEAKER_01: gender, but we're getting there, about 40% female. We have a number of immigrants in our team,
[27:56] SPEAKER_01: and we're also quite age versus well. I mean, I'm the old phoenix. I got a bunch of people
[28:02] SPEAKER_01: of below 30 and my team too. And despite us not being in an office together every single day, we
[28:09] SPEAKER_01: learn a lot of it each other. And our families and our backgrounds and the kinds of things we're
[28:13] SPEAKER_01: interested in. I actually have a few musicians of the team. So in our summer retreat, we all jammed
[28:17] SPEAKER_01: together with you. Thanks. And some interesting things that we do sort of be on that, which
[28:24] SPEAKER_01: helps to make better ideas. And you got people coming from different backgrounds. Exactly.
[28:29] SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to flip to the future of your business. Sure. I want to know where do you see your
[28:35] SPEAKER_01: business in five years? So we've been talking a lot of events in the team and my background
[28:42] SPEAKER_01: in product has we often thinking in terms of the value proposition statement, right? So for
[28:48] SPEAKER_01: customer to find this way, whereas this problem, we are this and we do it well because of these
[28:52] SPEAKER_01: reasons and different for our competitors because of this. So everything I do kind of comes back to
[28:57] SPEAKER_01: that whether it's that statement or the business model, Canvas or what have you. To the world, we
[29:03] SPEAKER_01: look like a hosting company. That's our business model. So you pay us for servers essentially.
[29:08] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. The servers are enhanced with all the security and privacy requirements of the healthcare
[29:12] SPEAKER_01: industry. But our mission, which I've been talking a lot about in this call, is beyond that.
[29:18] SPEAKER_01: We see success as more early stage tech companies choosing healthcare as a realm to work in.
[29:26] SPEAKER_01: So what are all of the things they need to be successful? And like any two-sided marketplace
[29:32] SPEAKER_01: or multi-sided marketplace, in our case, being the innovators on one side and the industry on the
[29:37] SPEAKER_01: other, hospitals and insurance companies, health organizations, etc. We want to increase
[29:44] SPEAKER_01: the number of transactions between them and the number of players involved. And so we start by
[29:51] SPEAKER_01: curating a large enough market that the other side of the market becomes interesting.
[29:54] SPEAKER_01: That's why we're focused on onboarding as many companies under the host platform as we possibly
[29:59] SPEAKER_01: can. They all have this problem. None of them don't. As long as and even on the board, the borders
[30:06] SPEAKER_01: are getting less fuzzy, right? So you could argue, well, if you're just like a consumer wellness
[30:10] SPEAKER_01: solution, who does like diet tracking, do you need complaints? Well, yes, because consumers themselves
[30:15] SPEAKER_01: are worried about privacy. Oh, I don't have very, and maybe some hospitals that I don't have very,
[30:21] SPEAKER_01: very sensitive data in my pocket, it doesn't matter because the hospitals have been hit with risk
[30:24] SPEAKER_01: so many times, they will make you have compliance anyway. So we're focused on getting as many companies
[30:30] SPEAKER_01: in the platform. I have a target of a number that I want to hit by the end of 2020. And then we can
[30:37] SPEAKER_01: attract interest from other people who want to service these organizations in their mission,
[30:42] SPEAKER_01: which could be the hospitals themselves, I use hospitals and proxy, but healthcare enterprises
[30:46] SPEAKER_01: themselves coming to us and saying, we have an ecosystem of companies that will all pass our privacy
[30:50] SPEAKER_01: expectations. How many of them meet our innovation needs? In fact, can we give you our innovation needs?
[30:56] SPEAKER_01: We want to change our emergency department. We like to change the way we do handle radiology
[30:59] SPEAKER_01: images. We like to change the way that we onboard nurses. What have you? Can you find companies
[31:05] SPEAKER_01: who work with us? So we become a channel for these companies into their customers.
[31:10] SPEAKER_01: Other things become service providers to that transaction. So it could be their
[31:14] SPEAKER_01: elements shops. It could be design firms. It could be people who handle patient consent.
[31:20] SPEAKER_01: It could be medical researchers who are interested in this innovation ecosystem. We become a
[31:26] SPEAKER_01: place to go. In other words, I'd like men's stock to be the platform you go to to get everything
[31:29] SPEAKER_01: you need if you're moving into the bathroom, including funding maybe. You know, that's what we
[31:33] SPEAKER_01: often do. That's where we want to take it. Some of those things will build. Many of them we will
[31:40] SPEAKER_01: not because there's other people doing that. But we know that the cloud has to be a fundamental
[31:47] SPEAKER_01: tenant to these companies winning. Healthcare itself is moving to the cloud. We've exposed it. It is
[31:53] SPEAKER_01: moving to the cloud because healthcare enterprise IT managers have enough to worry about with the
[31:57] SPEAKER_01: internal systems. They don't want to keep onboarding more nurses today. I've got responsibility for
[32:02] SPEAKER_01: the cloud providers are all making healthcare a priority segment for them and we're helping
[32:06] SPEAKER_01: you do this. And so the compliant hosting will always be a foundation. What we want to do is
[32:12] SPEAKER_01: build suite of services on top that help these companies. Of course, in so doing move to
[32:18] SPEAKER_01: large and large organizations is not a lot of large organizations. The most interesting stuff
[32:22] SPEAKER_01: is happening really stage stars. A few of them who have been with us since there is inception
[32:28] SPEAKER_00: or now much bigger companies. So what do you think is the greatest challenge that you face so far
[32:33] SPEAKER_01: in your business? Well, I mean, we have a lot. We're taking on something pretty scary. We're taking
[32:44] SPEAKER_01: on privacy. We're taking on cloud. We're taking on healthcare. The combination of those
[32:48] SPEAKER_01: things itself is pretty scary. So we face a healthy amount of skepticism because of it. I don't
[32:57] SPEAKER_01: hear over and over again that you're doing something that might be almost impossible to do.
[33:01] SPEAKER_01: But I think that's also that also motivates and encourages and encourages me. I think
[33:08] SPEAKER_01: there's uncertainty because we're at the beginning of a very big revolution.
[33:13] SPEAKER_01: The healthcare industry will be overturned. Tons of policy changes that are happening.
[33:19] SPEAKER_01: Value-based care, potential universal pharmacary, Canada. And then unique challenges in the industry
[33:26] SPEAKER_01: be it antibiotic resistance to community care in maybe remote parts of the world to social
[33:36] SPEAKER_01: determinants of health. These are all questions that cause the industry to change. They're more
[33:41] SPEAKER_01: lapid pace than they've ever faced before. And then meanwhile, you've got the technology evolution.
[33:48] SPEAKER_01: What is the world of container orchestration, means of NEDSAC? What does microservices
[33:54] SPEAKER_01: serverless technology, all these things are stuff that we're thinking about. My team just came
[33:59] SPEAKER_01: back from a DevOps conference and is brimming full of ideas and things that are happening in the industry.
[34:05] SPEAKER_01: So change is a challenge in itself, but that's not different than in the other startup that exists.
[34:12] SPEAKER_01: We're always wondering about one of the advantages and the risks of being an infrastructure
[34:17] SPEAKER_01: company. Under the covers is the world of the future owned then by people who have visible
[34:24] SPEAKER_01: solutions or is it owned by Pex and Chalice companies like the Coss. I think we like who we are,
[34:31] SPEAKER_01: but there's always some uncertainty. And it's easier to swallow when you see something
[34:35] SPEAKER_01: capable and something behind it. So these are some of the things that I think about. And it
[34:43] SPEAKER_01: requires a little bit of a counter-intuitive mind scientist, mad scientist mindset. So we have to
[34:48] SPEAKER_01: populate the team of people like that, which I love the folks we've got working for us. We're
[34:53] SPEAKER_01: all a little bit crazy in terms of what we do. And that's why we do it. So these are the sorts of
[35:01] SPEAKER_01: things that both excite me and draw my attention kind of at least a bit. Yeah, it sounds like
[35:06] SPEAKER_00: you're really resilient team as well. You have to be. So if you could go back in time,
[35:11] SPEAKER_00: what advice would you give your 20-year-old self? Just to throw you off the 20-year-old self.
[35:19] SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what I was 20. I was in university. Well, okay, so let's answer the question that way.
[35:28] SPEAKER_01: What was I doing when I was 20? When I was 20, I had designs on being a researcher in a very
[35:37] SPEAKER_01: different industry than I'm in now. And I was pretty sure like I knew that's where I was going to end
[35:43] SPEAKER_01: up. So my first piece of advice to myself would be, look up, from down here and look around you and
[35:52] SPEAKER_01: realize that your future rely in places that you don't expect and to be best prepared for that.
[35:59] SPEAKER_01: Measure your personal success and your goals every day by the number of new experiences that
[36:06] SPEAKER_01: you can have. Just go and do more, discover more, create more, risk more, fail more, learn more,
[36:13] SPEAKER_01: meet more, and then not for any sort of intent. Really, just like the more you have experienced,
[36:21] SPEAKER_01: the more opportunities will just come to you and you'll just fit them all because you'll have done
[36:25] SPEAKER_01: them already. So that's probably one piece of experience or advice I would have. Obviously,
[36:31] SPEAKER_01: if you ask anybody in their mid 40s, what advice you give them when they were in the
[36:35] SPEAKER_01: twins is like, hey, just enjoy the ride, man. Yeah, enjoy the ride. You know, now is the time
[36:44] SPEAKER_01: because later you may not have the time. Don't go up too fast, you know.
[36:49] SPEAKER_00: That's really important advice, but we relevant to everybody. So what's the best piece of advice
[36:55] SPEAKER_00: that you've ever received from somebody else? Wow, there's been a lot. I'm trying to think of the
[37:00] SPEAKER_00: one that comes. It's hard to come up with like the actual words of advice, but well, you know,
[37:06] SPEAKER_01: I mean, the one that you hear a lot, but you can never really hear enough and you need to kind
[37:13] SPEAKER_01: of remind yourself of what we'll open up again is when things look bad, you'll be shocked at what
[37:19] SPEAKER_01: actually turns around tomorrow. Don't give up. Take a breather if you need to and look like this
[37:27] SPEAKER_01: is not like city advice I got years ago that, you know, I've lived by every single day. It's
[37:32] SPEAKER_01: advice I probably got somebody three days ago and I needed that and I probably needed again
[37:37] SPEAKER_01: three days. You kind of need to hear it every day, which is like because you're in a world of
[37:42] SPEAKER_01: rapid change either because the world is changing, you're changing, your business is changing.
[37:47] SPEAKER_01: You need to sort of take a breather and go, people have been in worse stickier situations. They've
[37:54] SPEAKER_01: actually pulled out of it. Okay. So I think that's really, really helpful to know.
[38:01] SPEAKER_01: Blink and you'll miss it. So pay attention to what's going on around you. Appreciate stuff that's
[38:07] SPEAKER_01: going around you. Don't be too hard on yourself. I think I'm getting better at that, but I do need
[38:14] SPEAKER_01: to be reminded of it because I always want more out of every single day that I can possibly get
[38:19] SPEAKER_01: out of it. And it's lots of advice and more than when I look at people who have lived those
[38:27] SPEAKER_01: tenets that I admire, so they must be in some right. Yeah, and they've learned something along the
[38:33] SPEAKER_01: way. Yeah, yeah. So look, I want to be like like that. That's kind of how I think. Those are all
[38:39] SPEAKER_00: great pieces of advice. So you might have noticed this from previous interviews, but now we're
[38:49] SPEAKER_00: happy to fire. We've got eight questions in a row and just answer them top of your mind.
[38:54] SPEAKER_01: I have a bit of a failure of being to verboth. So I'll try to be consistent.
[38:59] SPEAKER_00: Sure. Certain suite for these ones.
[39:02] SPEAKER_00: So if you weren't doing what you're doing now for work, what would you be doing instead?
[39:09] SPEAKER_01: I would be a product management leader at a technology enterprise. What I do before, and I love
[39:19] SPEAKER_00: what book are you currently reading or what books do you recommend?
[39:23] SPEAKER_01: I'm even going to ask me this question. So one of one of my failings is I don't read enough,
[39:28] SPEAKER_01: and that's my failing. Mine too. I read my kids books that have resonated with me. I read before
[39:38] SPEAKER_01: my partner is not reading it and we're talking about it. The hard thing about hard things.
[39:43] SPEAKER_01: Really awesome book. It reminds you that about the best stuff that I've talked about today.
[39:49] SPEAKER_01: That's really useful. Another one that I read once really quick book, but it always kind of
[39:54] SPEAKER_01: sat with me is he's called Back of the Nacken and talks about how you react to people with ideas.
[40:01] SPEAKER_01: Whether you are some of you creates ideas, somebody with edits ideas, or some of you celebrate ideas,
[40:06] SPEAKER_01: and using the whiteboard as an analogy. So I've always kind of played that back.
[40:12] SPEAKER_01: That's really cool. Yeah, back to me. And then the checklist manifesto was a book that I read that
[40:19] SPEAKER_01: really reminded me that things that you think are easier that you do every day mean not to be
[40:23] SPEAKER_01: easy. It's really easy to make stupid mistakes. For good for yourself if you do, and then build
[40:28] SPEAKER_01: the processes by which you can do them better. So I'm trying to incorporate some of that. Thank you.
[40:33] SPEAKER_00: Awesome. Those are good recommendations. Do you listen to audiobooks or anything?
[40:38] SPEAKER_01: A little bit. So I'm trying to be better of it all of this stuff. And
[40:44] SPEAKER_01: for sure, I surround myself by people who are much better learners than I am and drink this stuff up.
[40:50] SPEAKER_01: To be honest, we talked earlier about decompressing. In the few moments I have to read or to
[40:58] SPEAKER_01: to listen to stuff. To be honest, I engage in music because I don't have a lot of chance to do it.
[41:04] SPEAKER_01: So I have a few modes in the subway. I always tell myself that today is the day. I know it's in
[41:08] SPEAKER_01: a audiobook podcast and all that's not for me. You're putting it on your playlist.
[41:13] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I can't at home because we're busy with all this stuff that's going on there.
[41:18] SPEAKER_01: And when I'm at work, I'm at work. So I totally understand that. I'm actually a similar
[41:22] SPEAKER_01: to people's learner. It's not really ashamed of it. And it's not what I have a stack of things
[41:26] SPEAKER_01: and stuff that I want to do and try. But yeah, that's the reality when I do it.
[41:30] SPEAKER_00: But you enjoy it, right?
[41:33] SPEAKER_00: Are you a morning or a night person?
[41:36] SPEAKER_01: Both. I actually can be. I must myself the question before too. If I had the choice of when I would
[41:43] SPEAKER_01: be most effective probably night, but I am not like I'm not somebody like dragging a stuff
[41:52] SPEAKER_01: in a bed and goes like don't talk to me any coffee and I can actually be effective first
[41:57] SPEAKER_01: thing in the morning if I have to be. But am I my best first thing in the morning probably not.
[42:05] SPEAKER_01: I think I'm more like everything else is shut down and I'm going to sit down and shake
[42:09] SPEAKER_01: about things. And it's weird because I I pull a lot of late nights and I've noticed an interesting
[42:14] SPEAKER_01: cycle myself is like when I finally have the chance to sit down, and you can be pretty late and I
[42:19] SPEAKER_01: start working. I have like this first this period of like really poor productivity where I'm like
[42:25] SPEAKER_01: falling asleep in my laptop and I'm not being effective. And for some reason at some point I hit
[42:29] SPEAKER_01: this like moment and all of a sudden I just wake up and I'm like really effective. I don't know
[42:34] SPEAKER_01: what the trigger for that is. You know something happens in my nervous system or something like that.
[42:39] SPEAKER_01: You know why I tried to make you go to bed and you're not going to go to bed okay.
[42:43] SPEAKER_00: If you had to pick one word to describe yourself what would it be and why?
[42:48] SPEAKER_00: That's hard. This is like I find this is one of the weirdest questions for people.
[42:53] SPEAKER_01: One word to describe myself. Yeah. Transient? Transient. I mean but transient because I think
[43:01] SPEAKER_01: it's a way of answering your question while copying out of answering your questions.
[43:07] SPEAKER_01: Which is transient in itself. Yeah I just think like I don't think I'm the same person I was a
[43:14] SPEAKER_01: week ago or even you know a few days ago. Every day it feels like this moving target and I don't
[43:22] SPEAKER_01: mean that in a negative way. I'm constantly constantly. Even though I don't read enough I'm constantly
[43:27] SPEAKER_01: learning. So you know is there like one thing that there are values I have that I that
[43:35] SPEAKER_01: define who I am. Those don't change. But I don't I don't think like to pick one of those is
[43:41] SPEAKER_01: defining who I am as it is as appropriate sort of saying the way that I represent them and use them
[43:47] SPEAKER_01: and the decisions that I make those are always changing. Constantly evolving. Yeah. Learning. Yeah.
[43:54] SPEAKER_01: Which hey you know it's not a bad place to be when you're when you're you know that it's more
[43:58] SPEAKER_01: expected when you're early on life. I guess I'm I'm proud of myself for being able to do that even now.
[44:04] SPEAKER_01: What's keeping you up at night these days if anything? I really believe in what we do and and you know
[44:11] SPEAKER_01: the reason I believe in what we do is because I have really really incredibly courageous
[44:20] SPEAKER_01: and persistent and determined customers who are doing some really really important things.
[44:27] SPEAKER_01: And they're all motivated by personal experiences all of them. So they they really care about
[44:33] SPEAKER_01: being successful. And I kind of take it a bit personally like you know just I'm here to make them
[44:38] SPEAKER_01: successful and I want to make sure that they are and they got such a long way to go and they got
[44:42] SPEAKER_01: deep science that they're trying to product cars and they have hospitals they need to sell to and
[44:47] SPEAKER_01: they have patients they need to convince them there's so much ahead of them. And so I I'm often
[44:52] SPEAKER_01: thinking about like I don't want to let them down. And what can we do to deliver better
[44:56] SPEAKER_01: service or can we do to deliver better product a more easy to understand business model. And
[45:08] SPEAKER_01: to do that in the energy that you have to have a great company. So I spent a lot of time thinking
[45:16] SPEAKER_01: about my team. We're not a big company and we're all 13 people and myself included. But
[45:20] SPEAKER_01: those are the 12 I spent a lot of time thinking about all of them. And what can we do to make sure
[45:26] SPEAKER_01: that they want to wake up in the morning and join this crazy journey which they do crazily enough.
[45:32] SPEAKER_01: And and how do we how how do I help them to understand the amazing work that they've done to help us
[45:37] SPEAKER_01: get what we are and be proud of it and own it in all of the ways that motivate them and
[45:42] SPEAKER_01: visually. So I think of it all those things. I knew this was a long game. You know we have
[45:50] SPEAKER_01: amazing customers on our platform today covering what it's already said but so much more than I
[45:53] SPEAKER_01: wanted you. So how do we make sure that we have the time the space to realize all those things
[46:00] SPEAKER_01: that that keeps me up the nights. My question to you is do you sleep at all?
[46:05] SPEAKER_01: With all of that. Not enough. Not enough. You know and I'm trying to work on it. I
[46:13] SPEAKER_01: didn't do better job. I will never for a single second ever recommend anybody that I
[46:19] SPEAKER_01: can't mind daily schedule is one that anybody should emulate. In fact there's others that I should
[46:24] SPEAKER_01: emulate. I know the troubleslicking. You ask me what keeps me up at night. I should be
[46:33] SPEAKER_01: in the middle of the day. When I do go to bed I actually I'm pretty good. Yeah.
[46:38] SPEAKER_01: That's the same. Yeah. That's where I've met a fork of a question. I just don't. That's my problem.
[46:44] SPEAKER_01: I've not really came. That's more I wanted to this day and this this thing I want to do to make
[46:49] SPEAKER_00: sure tomorrow better. My second last question to you on that note is what is your morning routine
[46:54] SPEAKER_01: evening routine kind of look like? Morning routine. Let's stay morning routine. So I don't know how
[47:00] SPEAKER_01: detailed you want me to be. But I get up at the same all weekdays to get up almost sometime
[47:06] SPEAKER_01: every day which is pretty early. I do a quick check just so I know the status of things. I probably
[47:16] SPEAKER_01: don't check my calendar which is I've kind of read today that's something I need to do more of.
[47:21] SPEAKER_01: More just messages. What's happening in my ecosystem in the few hours I was in sleep with my
[47:26] SPEAKER_01: customers with my team. I'm having those two. Not a lot of like I don't read the news in the
[47:32] SPEAKER_01: industry. It's more in cycle of having their business. Yeah. And then I put up a phone down and
[47:37] SPEAKER_01: and the rest of the morning is focused on my children. So I make the breakfast, make a lunch,
[47:43] SPEAKER_01: make sure the bag is in contact with school. I walk my kids to school a lot of times during week,
[47:49] SPEAKER_01: not every single day but mostly for weeks. And then once that's done then kind of my day starts.
[47:55] SPEAKER_01: So most of the week it's like heading into town and being a tronolose there's a computer involved
[48:03] SPEAKER_01: or heading into calls or meetings or what have you sitting down and answering emails and
[48:08] SPEAKER_01: to exact messages. Maybe going to the gym. And then I blink and then it's time the day's over.
[48:15] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So my last question to you. This is something that we ask all of our all the guests on the
[48:21] SPEAKER_00: show. So you probably have heard it. But there's a small tropical island in the middle of the ocean.
[48:27] SPEAKER_00: Let's say it's off the coast of Fiji with only one phone booth and no internet. We drop you off
[48:33] SPEAKER_00: there with no technology at all. Anytime you can use the phone booth on the island to call the boat
[48:37] SPEAKER_00: to come pick you up. How long would you last before making that phone call? And what would you do? Until then.
[48:43] SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely too mind the answer to that question because my first instinct would be,
[48:51] SPEAKER_01: how ready am I to be in this island to cut off from the world from the perspective of my responsibilities.
[48:58] SPEAKER_01: I'd almost like, harder me wants to go. I'd like to call and make sure my wife and my kids,
[49:04] SPEAKER_01: my family are okay and my business is okay and then hang on. Let's go. Okay. It goes okay.
[49:10] SPEAKER_01: Because you didn't know I was going to be on the salon. But if you do and you're okay with that,
[49:16] SPEAKER_01: do you mean for me if not then you know stand on the beach, pick my shoes off, stare at the ocean,
[49:25] SPEAKER_01: have had a life-long fascination with the ocean in the water and just breathing the air and listen
[49:30] SPEAKER_01: to the waves and the seagulls. I would force myself to give myself some time. It's too easy for me
[49:36] SPEAKER_01: to be engaged with all the things that go on. So from forced to not be, how do I listen,
[49:44] SPEAKER_01: learn to listen to my heartbeat and the voice in my head, what would it be if I just took a deep
[49:50] SPEAKER_01: breath and dealt it out in the song on the island by myself, Akipela, you know. What would the animals
[49:55] SPEAKER_01: and the birds think of that? What would a conversation with myself be like? I guess my answer to your
[50:03] SPEAKER_01: question would be, it wouldn't be immediate if I thought like I had the permission to do it.
[50:09] SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't be a long time because I don't feel the need to run away from it. But I do think I would
[50:16] SPEAKER_01: be, I would welcome the opportunity to force myself to be this connecting for a day to a few days.
[50:24] SPEAKER_00: Everybody answers that a different way and it's so interesting. I really love your answer.
[50:29] SPEAKER_00: That's the end of my questions for you but I just want to do you have anything else that you
[50:33] SPEAKER_00: to share with our listeners that you haven't shared already? Look, this is a show about
[50:39] SPEAKER_01: entrepreneurship in Canada. So first of all to all of everybody who is listening and everybody who
[50:46] SPEAKER_01: has participated in the show and those who will thank you for what you do. Thank you for supporting
[50:51] SPEAKER_01: this initiative. Again, we've got the best entrepreneurship community in the whole world here.
[50:56] SPEAKER_01: So it all needs to be celebrated and keep up the good fight.
[51:01] SPEAKER_00: I second that. Thank you. Where can I listen to respond to you online?
[51:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm on, obviously, MedStack can be found at MedStack.co. We are pretty active in our
[51:16] SPEAKER_01: community so you'll see us in just a bit every sort of startup or tech or entrepreneurship or
[51:21] SPEAKER_01: especially digital health focused event that happens across our great country. I'm on Twitter,
[51:28] SPEAKER_01: Balagy Gopal, in 73, usually talking about digital health, literally talking about DevOps,
[51:36] SPEAKER_01: security and startups product management and you can find me and us on LinkedIn as well.
[51:44] SPEAKER_00: All right, well, thank you so much, Balagy. We're so glad that you could come on the show and
[51:49] SPEAKER_00: talk to us today. I'm really honored. Thank you very much. It's been fun.
[51:53] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Canada's podcast. Like, comment and subscribe to all our
[51:58] SPEAKER_00: channels to get the latest podcasts from entrepreneurs across Canada.