# Founder10x - Product Market Fit Is Not Enough! - Adam Breckler, Co-founder, Better Health

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 3 Jun 2025, 33 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/103595174/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-3%2F401490137-44100-2-2eb91d411ecf8.mp3

Adam Breckler is the Co-founder and Head of Product at Better Health. Adam is a seasoned entrepreneur and product expert. At Better Health, he leads efforts to simplify access to medical equipment and support for people with chronic conditions, combining technology, peer coaching, and education to improve patient outcomes. ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com Better Health website - https://joinbetter.com/ Adam Breckler on X - https://x.com/adambreckler Adam Breckler on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambreckler/ 🎙️ Hosted by Prashant Choubey Follow Prashant on X - https://x.com/ChoubeySahab Follow Prashant on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab In this episode we talk about - - Early idea validation - Go to market strategy - Product market fit - Fundraising & hiring approach - Capital allocation - Taking care of mental health as a founder & lots more Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction to the podcast and guest Adam Breckler (02:12) Adam's background and early entrepreneurial journey (03:39) Origin of Better Health and initial idea validation (05:05) Discussing starting a startup with life partner (06:22) Go-to-market strategy in the early days (07:11) Fundraising and seed round details (08:50) Approach to finding and selecting investors (09:53) Initial hiring strategy and recruiting first employees (11:21) Recruiting senior talent and competitive hiring (12:28) Hiring strategy and resource allocation (14:19) Approach to building and maintaining company culture (16:22) Onboarding, performance tracking, and managing employee performance (17:38) Product-market fit journey and challenges (19:45) Understanding product-market-channel fit (21:01) Building moats and defensibility in the business (22:01) Key metrics the company tracks (23:23) Vulnerable moments as a founder and dealing with startup challenges (25:26) Managing personal mental health and work-life balance (27:14) Using a business coach (28:16) Managing family life while running a startup (29:18) Lessons learned from previous startup experiences (31:15) Most pivotal decision that changed the company's growth trajectory (32:49) Closing remarks and how to learn more about Better Health For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com Subscribe to VC10X on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

## Transcript

[0:00] Product market fit is not necessarily enough and sometimes
[0:03] like you need the the right fit between the product and the
[0:06] market in that Channel that you're going to deliver the
[0:08] product through. We've almost had to refactor our
[0:11] product market fit a few, a few different times in that journey
[0:14] as we expand the types of conditions that we serve.
[0:17] Every time that we've had to part ways with someone, you
[0:20] know, we've kind of been kicking ourselves for not doing it
[0:23] sooner. I think the hardest moment for
[0:25] me was at my previous company, Prism Labs, where we had to
[0:28] eventually shut it down. Hey everyone, this is Prashant
[0:33] and I'll be host for the VC the Next podcast.
[0:35] And today we have Adam Brick here with us.
[0:38] Adam is a Co founder and head of Product at Better Health.
[0:42] Adam is a seasoned entrepreneur and product expert at Better
[0:46] Health. He leads efforts to simplify
[0:48] access to medical equipment and support for people with chronic
[0:51] conditions, combining technology, peer coaching, and
[0:54] education to improve patient outcomes.
[0:57] In this episode, we talk about early idea validation, go to
[1:00] market strategy, product market fit, fundraising and hiring
[1:04] approach, taking care of mental health as a founder, and lots
[1:07] more. So without wasting any time,
[1:09] let's dive straight in. This episode is sponsored by my
[1:12] own podcasting agency called Podcast NX, where I help venture
[1:16] capitalists, asset managers, allocators and family offices
[1:19] and starting their own podcast and building a strong brand.
[1:23] Podcast NX is designed in a way to work well with the busy
[1:26] schedule of investors where we handle every aspect of podcast
[1:30] production so you can focus on investing.
[1:33] If you're looking to build a strong investor brand, starting
[1:36] a podcast should be right up your priority list.
[1:39] It's the only form of marketing where you can showcase your
[1:42] strong network. In other words, access to
[1:45] limited partners and founders and grow that network further.
[1:49] And contrary to what most people hear, it's still very early to
[1:52] start a podcast. There are at least 10X more
[1:55] newsletters and thousand X more blogs than there are podcasts in
[1:59] this world. You can learn more about our
[2:01] podcasting services at Podcast ten-x.com.
[2:05] I'll make sure to add the link in the description below.
[2:08] Enjoy this episode. Hey Adam, so good to have you on
[2:10] the VC10X podcast. How are you doing?
[2:13] Hey Prashanth, great to be here. Thanks.
[2:16] Yeah, it's a pleasure having you on.
[2:17] To start things off, can we first have a brief background
[2:21] about yourself and your journey as a founder that led you, you
[2:25] know, being the Co founder of Better Health?
[2:28] Sure. Yeah, happy to.
[2:30] So I think going going back to the early days, I like to joke,
[2:34] I started my career as a professional poker player, but
[2:36] that only lasted about six months.
[2:39] But that gave me a bit of a, a risk loving appetite and you
[2:42] know, turned me on to the whole world of making money online.
[2:47] So from there built a couple websites, cut, cut my chops as a
[2:51] a web developer and then joined up with an early stage team at
[2:55] mint.com as a web developer there and sort of got a taste
[2:58] for the the Silicon Valley startup scene.
[3:01] At that point. We left Mint after acquisition
[3:04] and then started a company called Visually, which was in
[3:07] the online information graphics design space with some of my
[3:11] colleagues from Mint. And then we ended up selling
[3:13] that about four years into the journey and moving on.
[3:17] Started AYC back company after that.
[3:20] This is like my second, I guess, venture back company.
[3:23] So started that one as a solo founder, which I, I, I don't
[3:26] recommend to most people, but that was an interesting journey.
[3:30] We went through many pivots, ended up ultimately shutting
[3:33] that company down after COVID, but learned a lot of lessons
[3:35] along the way and ultimately ended up starting better health
[3:39] around that time. Absolutely.
[3:41] So you are what the definition of a serial entrepreneur, You're
[3:44] just starting up after starting up and despite failures, you're
[3:48] just still motivated and want to solve something important,
[3:50] right? And now on to better health,
[3:52] right? So tell us about what the idea
[3:55] is and how you got the idea of starting better health and how
[3:58] did you validate that idea in the beginning stages?
[4:01] Yeah, sure. So Better Health was the
[4:05] brainchild of my my Co founder, actually, who's our CEO.
[4:08] She's also my wife. Her name is Nama.
[4:10] And she had the idea come to her based on an experience as a
[4:15] medical device manufacturer. So she worked for seven years on
[4:18] a novel intermittent urinary catheter design, got it
[4:21] manufactured, went through FDA clearance, all that all that and
[4:24] tried to get it out to market and found that all the existing
[4:27] distribution channels for novel medical products were gate
[4:31] blockers essentially for new innovations just cause of the
[4:34] way the industry was structured. So my, my role in the, the kind
[4:38] of early days was convincing her that she had a very unique
[4:43] position and insight into this market as both as a former
[4:47] software engineer and PM from the Israeli military, but also
[4:51] as somebody who had insight into this very specific $80 billion
[4:54] niche market within the healthcare context.
[4:58] And then helped, you know, put the story and the deck together
[5:01] and, and we raised a three and a half million dollar seed round
[5:04] and we were off to the races. Absolutely.
[5:06] That's quite interesting. Briefly talk about the decision
[5:10] of starting up with your life partner, right?
[5:13] There is a debate around it. Should you do that or should you
[5:15] not do that? The dangers of it, right?
[5:18] What can go wrong? What made you do it?
[5:20] Yeah, great question. So we we get that a lot.
[5:23] People are always curious, you know, I think for us like it, it
[5:28] worked because we were both entrepreneurs previously.
[5:31] We both had, you know, that respect for each other.
[5:32] We've both been Cos previously as well.
[5:35] So we had a a mutual respect for the role of CEO.
[5:38] And then on top of that, it was very clear based on our unique
[5:43] experiences and skill sets, how we could separate out the
[5:46] responsibilities. And the fact that I, I didn't
[5:49] see myself as ACEO this round made it a lot easier.
[5:52] So we have a very good division of decision making that we, we
[5:56] make within the company, which I think helps with that.
[5:58] We also had a few role models, you know, of, of different
[6:01] friends, also entrepreneurs that had the head had done this sort
[6:05] of thing and they had recommended it to us.
[6:08] And so far, so far so good. Yeah, that's quite amazing.
[6:13] Talk about how you thought about the GTM, the go to market
[6:16] strategy in the early days and how that played out and how you
[6:20] tweak that as the requirements came in.
[6:23] Yeah, sure. So when we when we just started
[6:26] our go to market was primarily through direct to consumer
[6:29] channels. So you know Google ads search
[6:32] Facebook trying to reach consumers where they were.
[6:36] These were like the most desperate consumers that we're
[6:40] looking for an A new better solution to receive their
[6:42] medical supplies. And so we were able to to get
[6:45] some early traction through those channels as well as you
[6:49] know be able to to leverage some of the experience that we had
[6:51] each built up previously, you know, building direct to
[6:54] consumer businesses. And so that was our initial go
[6:57] to market for better health. Yeah, quite interesting.
[7:01] And you mentioned how you raised 3.5 million seat down.
[7:04] So was that the very first funding that you take in or did
[7:08] you have any safe rounds before that at all?
[7:12] No, that was the, that was the first round we raised and that
[7:14] was off of a slide deck, you know, towards the end of 2019.
[7:18] So you know, different, different times, but you know,
[7:21] we had already validated through Namas prior experience the the
[7:24] market and the need. So I feel like it was kind of a
[7:27] shortcut for us to to get started.
[7:30] We didn't have to go through some of the typical trials and
[7:34] tribulations and pivots that early stage start-ups have to go
[7:37] to when they're they're low on funding.
[7:38] So we're able to kind of hit the gas from day one because we had
[7:41] already validated the the market need.
[7:44] Right, quite interesting. And how, how did you think about
[7:47] fundraising, You know, how did you come to that number that,
[7:50] OK, 3.5 million is what we need right now, right.
[7:54] What went into that vision that there's the number we should be
[7:57] raising for the sea ground? Yeah, To be honest, I think, you
[8:01] know, part of it was just driven by the market at the time.
[8:04] Part of it was driven by, you know, other comparables, other
[8:08] other rounds that we had seen, you know, raised by by different
[8:12] friends and entrepreneurs at the time.
[8:14] Part of it, you know, was just wanting to give us enough of a,
[8:18] a cushion for the the seed to, you know, have a few different
[8:21] shots at, at cracking different gross go to market channels.
[8:25] So we felt like that was a good number to give us that sort of
[8:29] flexibility in the early days. Absolutely.
[8:31] And on fundraising where you also trying to get on some
[8:35] strategic investors early on, do you have like a target list or
[8:39] any system or process in place for you to approach fundraising?
[8:43] I know you're experienced founder, so you'd have a more
[8:47] defined and defined approach to how to go about this.
[8:50] Yeah. So with this round, it came
[8:52] together pretty pretty quickly. We we didn't have like a, we had
[8:56] like basically a short list of investors that we wanted to
[8:58] speak with. One of the investors that ended
[9:01] up leading the round or Co leading was 88 VC.
[9:05] And they they came through a recommendation from another
[9:10] entrepreneur that that we're friends with that they had
[9:12] recently funded as well. And so that was one of our first
[9:16] initial pitch meetings and they were, they were in to lead from
[9:20] basically the the early days. So that made the entire process
[9:24] a lot, a lot faster. So at that point, you know, we
[9:26] were more in a position to be able to to pick what other
[9:30] investors we wanted to bring around the table once we had
[9:32] secured that lead. Absolutely.
[9:34] My next question is around hiring, right, another important
[9:38] aspect of any business, right. So how do you go about
[9:42] recruiting your first few employees into the company?
[9:46] What were those key roles that you identified that need to be
[9:49] filled, and how did you find the right people to fill those
[9:52] roles? Yeah, so we had the first few
[9:55] key hires. One of the ones that we made
[9:58] right off the bat was ahead of OPS, you know, named Danielle.
[10:02] She was with us from the very early days.
[10:04] You've been, you know, pre, pre product and everything.
[10:07] And you know, as, as we close the round, we, we were able to
[10:10] kind of convince her to, to join.
[10:13] After that, you know, we brought on a few other engineers to
[10:17] start building the product. One of one of them was a former
[10:21] entrepreneur actually and, and now current entrepreneur that we
[10:25] were able to recruit on a part time basis.
[10:27] This is something that I, I feel like is, is often a nice hack to
[10:31] be able to work with really highly capable people that maybe
[10:34] you either don't have the funds or don't have the ability to
[10:37] hire full time to your venture, but you know, you want to be
[10:40] able to, to work with them. So he was in between companies
[10:43] and he was able to work with us part time in order to get some
[10:45] of our technology infrastructure off the ground.
[10:48] So just keeping an open mind towards more creative kind of
[10:52] hiring methods, I think paid off in the early days.
[10:56] Absolutely. And as the company has sort of
[10:59] matured over time, there is a need to bring in some senior
[11:03] folks as well. You know, some folks that are
[11:06] highly competitive in in the hiring market, you have to
[11:10] compete for them really hard. How do you go about, you know,
[11:13] recruiting for those roles? What are the kind of bugs you
[11:16] try to entice them with or the other factors that you can
[11:19] entice them to get them to work for you?
[11:22] Yeah, I think for us, you know, it comes down to the mission and
[11:25] that that's what we're we're selling to people.
[11:27] And that's, you know, that's the the, the sort of the core belief
[11:32] in the in the mission is what people are are signing up for
[11:35] when they join better health. And if the mission resonates
[11:37] with them, you know, we can we can recruit people that are
[11:42] probably even out of our sort of like pool of, of talent just
[11:47] because they they really resonate with the mission.
[11:49] So I think that's the biggest advantage that we have is like
[11:51] we're a mission oriented company and that helps us a lot in that
[11:53] regard. You know, I think this as soon
[11:57] as you're competing with the open AIS or or Googles of the
[12:00] world as a startup, you've kind of lost the game because you can
[12:02] never compete on compensation, right?
[12:05] So, you know, that's sort of losing battle.
[12:08] Absolutely. And how do you think about
[12:10] hiding as you scale the organization, right.
[12:13] So you raised the first round, 2.5 million, I believe you've
[12:16] also raised subsequent rounds. How do you think about how much
[12:20] of this funding we'll allocate to getting talent in, how much
[12:24] of it into marketing and how much of it to other things,
[12:26] right? How do you do that math?
[12:29] Yeah. So you know, we've, we've
[12:32] typically I'd say like we've, we've hired, we've tried to hire
[12:39] to support growth and not into anticipation of growth in a lot
[12:42] of functions. So, you know, we, we in the
[12:44] early days had had to hire up a lot on the operational side to
[12:47] support some of their growth that we were getting, but
[12:50] weren't right yet ready to, to fully productize, so to speak.
[12:55] And so now, you know, we've kind of shifted that a little bit
[12:58] since then. So as we've taken on more rounds
[13:00] of funding, we've been able to, to grow the, the engineering
[13:03] team and grow our, our technology infrastructure to be
[13:06] able to support more like scaled, scaled growth.
[13:09] But in the early days, you know, you're kind of Wizard of ozzing
[13:12] it a little bit. So we're, we're definitely doing
[13:14] that. And I think, you know, we've,
[13:16] we've kind of transitioned off of having to do that as much
[13:19] recently. But in terms of allocating
[13:22] resources towards hiring, you know, we, we, we like to, to
[13:26] use, I think it's the, the Keith for boy analogy is very apterior
[13:29] of like barrels and ammunition. So like hiring like 1 barrel
[13:33] that, you know, you can kind of give a really large set of
[13:36] responsibility to. And then they hire ammunition,
[13:39] you know, on their team to kind of shoot them in there in the
[13:41] right direction. So that's that's the sort of
[13:43] hiring philosophy that we have and just differentiating between
[13:46] those two 'cause they're often times very different profiles of
[13:48] people. Absolutely.
[13:50] And with hiring, another thing that sort of comes in is
[13:54] culture, right? And somewhat early stage startup
[13:57] culture is by definition somewhat different from a
[14:02] startup that is more mature, maybe Series A series, right?
[14:05] So how do you navigate the culture as the founder?
[14:09] You try to dictate how to shape the culture of the organization.
[14:13] Or do you like to 1st observe and see how the organization
[14:16] behaves and then just make tweaks to it to put it in the
[14:19] right direction? Yeah, I think, I mean, my my own
[14:22] philosophy on this is, is like culture, Yeah, it should come
[14:26] from the founders. And like if you're if you're
[14:28] letting it sort of cut, you know, come from the too much
[14:32] from the bottoms up and be like emergent, it's it's not going to
[14:34] really solidify. It's it's going to be hard to
[14:37] kind of gel. So we've always taken the
[14:39] approach of, you know, we're going to try to set the set the
[14:42] culture talk very explicitly about, you know, who's a good
[14:46] fit for this culture and who's not.
[14:47] And we do that in the hiring process.
[14:49] And the, the, the, now the, the way we describe the culture to
[14:54] candidates that we're, we're interviewing is that it's a,
[14:57] it's a blend between Israeli military culture in terms of
[15:01] being very direct. But it's also has the, the flip
[15:06] side of it in terms of like the, the niceties of American
[15:10] corporate culture where, you know, people are also nice.
[15:12] So it's sort of a balance between the two.
[15:13] And that's the way we describe our culture.
[15:15] And I think that resonates for for a lot of candidates.
[15:18] Absolutely. Have you faced any candidate who
[15:22] was really promising candidate but wasn't particularly aligning
[15:25] with your culture? What call did you make then?
[15:28] Did you still choose to hire them or did you let them go for
[15:30] that? Well, I think in, in those cases
[15:33] that we've come across, because we're so explicit about what our
[15:36] culture is like upfront and, and transparent about it, people
[15:39] will, will opt out. So they'll, they'll, you know,
[15:41] sometimes it doesn't happen often, but they'll tell us like,
[15:44] you know, that that sounds great for you guys, but like that's
[15:47] not that type of culture that, that resonates with me.
[15:50] So, you know, that we haven't had, I mean, there's been some
[15:54] cases where we've had to, to part with people later that we
[15:56] have hired because they're not necessarily a cultural fit.
[15:59] And you find that out later. But for the most part, we we try
[16:01] to screen screen that out in the early conversations.
[16:05] Absolutely, yeah. And so let's talk about the
[16:08] stage after you've hired folks, right?
[16:10] How how do you think about onboarding and then training and
[16:14] tracking the performance and then eventually fighting them if
[16:17] they are not performing right that after hired process?
[16:23] Right, Yeah. So I think, you know, we, we, we
[16:26] definitely prescribe to the higher slow fire fast sort of
[16:30] methodology. I think every, every time that
[16:32] we've had to part ways with someone, you know, we've kind of
[16:36] been kicking ourselves for not doing it sooner.
[16:38] And you know, you always, you always know it too, right?
[16:40] Where the, and sometimes people will just leave voluntarily when
[16:44] you're starting to apply more, more pressure and, and trying
[16:47] to, to really, you know, boost their performance if they're
[16:50] underperforming. So we've had cases like that as
[16:53] well. But I think I think the meta
[16:56] learning there for me is always just through multiple companies
[16:59] is like you, you always know and you just got to trust your, your
[17:02] gut feeling that things aren't working out and be decisive.
[17:04] And it's best for the people that are involved on the other
[17:07] end as well. If you're upfront about that
[17:09] sooner than later, because then they can move on to their next
[17:11] thing and figure out a better role somewhere else where
[17:13] they're a fit. Absolutely.
[17:15] Yeah, that's insightful. And talking about PMF, right?
[17:19] The phenomena that the startup world loves, right?
[17:23] What does that look like for you?
[17:25] So to talk about the two phases of it, initially when maybe you
[17:28] were figuring out what is BMF for us, right?
[17:31] And the trials and tribulations of that.
[17:34] And then once maybe you reach that or approaching that, what
[17:37] did that feel like? Yeah.
[17:39] So I think, I think for us, because we, we serve different
[17:42] populations of patients with our company for different
[17:45] conditions, we've almost had to refactor our product market fit
[17:49] a few, a few different times in that journey as we expand the
[17:52] types of conditions that we serve.
[17:54] So you know, the first example of product market fit that we
[17:57] felt I'll share with you was with this population of folks
[18:02] that have ostomies. They call themselves ostomates.
[18:04] So they, they need these medical supplies, you know, everyday.
[18:08] And so, and there's a lot of issues they come across in terms
[18:12] of leakages and irritation, skin irritations and things like
[18:15] that. So we put out a few ads on
[18:17] Facebook and we saw in the comments section that people
[18:22] were turning it into like a mini social network and asking for
[18:25] help and tips and tricks from the community on Facebook, like
[18:28] within the Facebook ad. And that's the moment where we
[18:31] saw, you know, there was a really strong pull from the
[18:34] market and that we developed a whole peer support program to
[18:37] support those people as part of our core product offering that
[18:40] unlocked a whole new type of product market fit for that
[18:44] category that we hadn't had before.
[18:46] Right, absolutely. And what does product market fit
[18:49] when you have achieved it feels like?
[18:52] Is it like numbers are flowing in automatically, your metrics
[18:55] are going up and to the right? What does that feel like?
[18:59] Yeah, I mean it, I think it's like what is the expressions
[19:03] like you know it when you see it, right.
[19:04] So you can, you can see it in the numbers, you feel it
[19:06] viscerally in the, in the response that that patients or
[19:10] your customers are giving to you.
[19:12] I think for, for US, one of the more the nuanced ways that that
[19:18] we experience product market fit was trying to build through
[19:22] different channels. And so often times, you know,
[19:24] what we found is we need to establish product market channel
[19:27] fit. Product market fit is not
[19:28] necessarily enough. And sometimes like you need the,
[19:31] the right fit between the product and the market and that
[19:35] Channel that you're going to deliver the product through.
[19:36] So we've had to, like I said before, rediscover product
[19:39] market fit through each channel and each condition that we've
[19:42] decided to expand our product offering into all.
[19:45] Right. So you do you mean to say that
[19:48] there can be multiple channels and that product market channel
[19:51] fit will look different for different channels or are you
[19:55] saying that you also need to find that singular channel that
[19:58] works best for you and try to double down on that?
[20:01] I think ideally you find one or two that are like really strong
[20:04] and and double down, but sometimes you know you need
[20:07] more. So when we made a transition
[20:10] from their direct to consumer channel to our partnership
[20:12] channel, that was a really pivotal moment where we had to
[20:15] rediscover that product market channel fit.
[20:17] The product was essentially the same, that the end patients were
[20:22] the same patients, but we had to rediscover how to unlock that
[20:25] Channel with some changes that we had to make to the product to
[20:29] accommodate that. And that was, you know, that was
[20:32] a big, big learning, especially within the healthcare world, you
[20:36] know, going from direct to consumer world where you're just
[20:39] dealing with patients and then sometimes with payers now having
[20:42] to layer in providers health systems complicates things quite
[20:45] a bit. So you need to to figure out
[20:47] very quickly how to navigate that and you know, distribute
[20:50] your product through through that Channel.
[20:52] Absolutely. And how do you think about
[20:55] building more within the company to make it a defensible business
[20:59] against competitors? Yeah, I think, I mean for us,
[21:04] you know, most start with the the network effects that we can
[21:07] create. So you know, we're we're sort of
[21:09] a marketplace of sorts where we have the payers, providers,
[21:12] patients and then we're layering in manufacturers to the mix too.
[21:16] So we, we, we, you know, the more connections that we can
[21:19] make across all those different parties and be that central hub
[21:22] for, for connecting them, the, the more network effects that we
[21:26] can create and the more stickiness there.
[21:28] I think another aspect or like regulatory or hurdles.
[21:33] So there there's a non, you know, trivial amount of
[21:35] regulation you need to comply with as a, as a healthcare
[21:38] company and as a covered entity. And so, you know, getting
[21:42] insurance licenses, you know, putting in place all the, the
[21:45] safeguards around HIPAA compliance, all these things
[21:48] are, are also moats that that wouldn't allow a, you know,
[21:50] competitor to come in and start start off from from day one.
[21:55] Absolutely. What are the key metrics that
[21:59] you obsess over at Better Health?
[22:02] We have two primary ones, 11 is NPS.
[22:05] And so we're, we're proud to, to you know, about our NPS score,
[22:09] it's been steadily climbing into the, into the 80s now.
[22:12] So it's 86 currently. It was in the 60s, which was,
[22:15] you know, very high at the time over the past year.
[22:17] And we're very proud of the fact that we've gotten that up very
[22:20] high. Patients definitely love, love
[22:23] the product. We, we also measure retention
[22:26] very closely. So all of the different
[22:28] retention cohorts over time, if you think about retention in our
[22:32] business, a lot of the patients that we serve have chronic
[22:35] conditions and they need these supplies for the rest of their
[22:38] lives. So the retention should be very
[22:40] high in theory. So when a patient, you know,
[22:42] leaves us for whatever reason, typically the, the number one
[22:46] reason actually is that they no longer need the products or
[22:49] they've passed away. And so that's, that's what we
[22:52] call or non regrettable churn rather.
[22:55] And then regrettable churn is when, when the we do something
[22:58] wrong. And you know, that happens
[22:59] sometimes too. And we we lose a patient for,
[23:01] for some reason that's on us. Yeah, absolutely.
[23:05] Yeah. That's, that's quite interesting
[23:06] how you think about that. And so as a founder, you always
[23:10] have some really vulnerable moments, right, Your weak
[23:13] moments, you can say a difficult moments as a founder, right.
[23:17] Can you recount on some of those moments and how you tackled and
[23:22] went through that? Yeah, I think, yeah, I think the
[23:25] hardest moment for me was at my previous company PRISM Labs,
[23:28] where we had to eventually shut it down.
[23:30] You know, we've been through many pivots, survived a crypto
[23:33] winter and then, you know, ultimately lost a runway towards
[23:37] the, you know, end of or beginning of COVID.
[23:40] And then, you know, that was, that was a really tough moment
[23:43] because we had kind of survived through multiple pivots and, you
[23:46] know, gotten gotten some decent traction along the way and
[23:48] shutting down the the company was, was really tough.
[23:51] Absolutely. That that's probably the worst
[23:53] that can happen to a founder, right?
[23:55] So how, what, what were the consequences to that?
[23:59] You know, how did that make you feel and how did you overcome
[24:03] those feelings or dealt with those feelings?
[24:07] Yeah, I think, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's really, I think
[24:10] the hardest part was before deciding to do it and then after
[24:15] that you, you, you kind of realize, OK, I made the right
[24:17] decision. You know, was speaking with some
[24:20] of some of my investors at Prism, Imad from Mercury,
[24:24] actually, he was a Angel investor and he, he gave some
[24:28] really good advice that like, you know, you shouldn't keep
[24:31] going on on fumes if it's, if you're doing it just for, if
[24:34] you're investors, like, you know, they've he was, he is, he
[24:38] said, you know, your time, your time is the most precious asset
[24:41] here. So you should, you should figure
[24:43] out how to go on and start a start a new venture.
[24:46] If, if that's the best path for you, like, don't worry if you,
[24:49] you lose my money. And so that was that was really
[24:53] cool of him to say and sort of like open me up to the the
[24:56] possibility of us, you know, shutting it down, but, you know,
[24:59] moving on and doing something else.
[25:01] Absolutely. And now that again, you are a
[25:04] founder of venture backed fast growth startup it, it again
[25:08] takes an emotional toll and it's sometimes too much to take.
[25:12] So how do you take care of your personal mental health while
[25:15] you're into it and, and the different practices, if at all,
[25:19] that you take up to, you know, find some sanity among the in
[25:24] the chaos that you're operating in?
[25:26] Yeah, yeah. So that, that's a challenge.
[25:28] You know, Nama and I have three young children together also.
[25:31] So, you know, we have, we have a lot that we we share in there.
[25:36] So I'd say the, the one thing is just staying, staying well fed,
[25:43] healthy, exercise a lot. So as much as we can at least.
[25:47] So like to do some strength training and play tennis when we
[25:50] when we have time and you know, get get sleep when, when
[25:54] possible. Absolutely.
[25:57] What I have seen is that when you're really stressed out, you
[26:01] also don't want to exercise, even though you know that's
[26:03] going to make you feel better. Has that happened to you?
[26:05] What do you do in that case? In that case, I, I just have my,
[26:09] my personal trainer show up and then he forces me to exercise.
[26:12] So that's, that's my hack there. Just pay to have some
[26:15] accountability. Oh yeah, absolutely.
[26:18] Have you also thought about like, business coaches?
[26:20] I've heard coaches in the business world and that can be
[26:23] really helpful when you're going through tough times.
[26:25] Definitely, yeah, we have a we've, we've, we've used a coach
[26:28] for about most, most of the journey of better health
[26:32] actually going back to even right after we raised our seed
[26:35] round about four, four, 4 1/2 years.
[26:37] So that's definitely, definitely helpful.
[26:40] And we've used it across their leadership team as we've we've
[26:43] scaled the same, the same coach. That's quite interesting.
[26:46] So is the coach exclusive to Better Health or are they also
[26:50] working with other companies? They work with other teams,
[26:52] yeah. They're like a fractional, you
[26:54] know, coach. So they have other other
[26:56] companies that they work with as well.
[26:58] That's interesting. I was actually reading the book
[27:01] The Trillion Dollar Coach where they're describing the practice
[27:04] of Bill Campbell, right. And that's quite interesting.
[27:07] So can you give give me an insight into how that works in
[27:09] practice? You know, are you having like
[27:11] meetings with them every month, every week?
[27:13] How does that work? Usually bi weekly and then
[27:16] sometimes they'll come in towards a more like a hands on
[27:19] strategy session or something with the, the broader leadership
[27:23] team. So they have the, you know, it's
[27:25] great because they then have the contacts from each of your
[27:28] individual coaching sessions and then they can help work with the
[27:31] group together. Got it quite interesting.
[27:35] And and you mentioned you also have kids, right.
[27:37] So how do you manage around that because both you and your better
[27:42] half, that's that's a great name for your wife better half.
[27:47] She is. She is the better half, yes.
[27:49] Yeah. So since both of you are at the
[27:54] very helm of the company, you know everything.
[27:57] All the responsibility of the company is on your shoulders
[28:00] practically. How do you manage that with
[28:04] having three kids, right? I don't know how old they are,
[28:07] but still, having kids is a big responsibility.
[28:09] How do you manage that? How do you manage your time?
[28:11] Do you like take turns in, you know, spending time with them or
[28:14] you have, you know, some help, a lot of help?
[28:17] Yeah, we pay for, we pay for help.
[28:18] We have grandparents that helped quite a bit and then we have a
[28:22] nanny as well. So that goes that goes a long
[28:24] way. I would say that the other
[28:26] aspect of it that's unique to our situation, like I mentioned
[28:31] that we were both CEO's previously and we both had young
[28:33] kids and put separate startups. So to come from that, which was
[28:37] even more of a challenging environment because you have
[28:39] your own companies that you're both dealing with and you have
[28:42] to be sort of the the Co founders, you know, partners of,
[28:46] of the other spouse. So that was even more
[28:48] challenging than now where we have, you know, a single company
[28:51] that we're both have all our eggs in the same basket and and
[28:54] rowing in the same direction. So it definitely simplifies
[28:58] things a bit from that perspective.
[29:00] Yeah, absolutely. And as a serial entrepreneur
[29:04] yourself, what mistakes do you think you made in your previous
[29:08] tense as a founder? And also some lessons that you'd
[29:12] like to pass on to other first time founders that you think
[29:17] they should avoid making. Yeah, I think one that comes to
[29:20] mind that I've been thinking of recently and find myself
[29:23] discussing quite a bit is around building building too much or
[29:27] falling into the building trap. One of my my mentors in in
[29:31] previous investors, Sean Burns wrote an article recently that I
[29:34] shared about this concept of especially for product focus
[29:38] founders. It's very easy to get caught in
[29:40] the trap of trying to build your way out into the product market
[29:43] fit. But often times you have a more
[29:45] fundamental misalignment or issue with your, your business
[29:50] plan. And so, you know, taking a step
[29:52] back to to kind of evaluate that more objectively before going in
[29:57] and building an MPP or trying to, you know, add the next
[30:00] feature in the next feature in the next feature in the hope
[30:02] that that's what's going to be unlocking product market fit for
[30:05] you. I think is a trap that I've
[30:06] fallen and I see a lot of other founders do as well.
[30:09] Absolutely. Is there anything else from your
[30:12] previous change that you think that now you are an evolved
[30:15] founder, so you're doing it this way, but previously in your
[30:18] previous change you did it some other way?
[30:21] I think the, the other thing that comes to mind is, you know,
[30:24] as I mentioned, with, with better help, we had a very clear
[30:27] idea of the market need and an understanding of it from day
[30:30] one. Whereas with Prism, I think, you
[30:32] know, we, we're more interested in just exploring different
[30:37] spaces and creating products. And that was what the driving
[30:39] force for why we started the company instead of having a
[30:42] really clear point of view on what was the market and who is
[30:46] the specific user that we wanted to build for upfront.
[30:49] And I think that let us in that direction of trying to pivot,
[30:54] but not having like that North Star to, to build towards.
[30:58] And so I would say that that was another lesson that I learned
[31:01] the hard way. Absolutely.
[31:03] So coming to my last question before we try to close this out,
[31:07] looking back, what was the most pivotal decision you made that
[31:12] changed your company's growth trajectory?
[31:16] I would say it was making that decision to to go down the B to
[31:22] B to C path with better health. We had, you know, seen solid
[31:26] growth from direct to consumer, gotten early traction and
[31:29] established clinical evidence for our solution.
[31:32] But then making that decision to start partnering with the
[31:36] healthcare systems and the providers and the payers
[31:38] directly was one that we had to build a new muscle for in terms
[31:42] of the go to market. But that's really started to pay
[31:45] a lot of dividends now as we scale.
[31:47] So, you know, making that decision to kind of what got us
[31:51] there isn't necessarily going to get us to the next step or that
[31:54] next inflection point. And so, you know, having the the
[31:58] courage to be able to make that decision to kind of pivot the go
[32:01] to market I think was a good decision in hindsight, probably
[32:04] one that we should have done even earlier.
[32:06] Right. Just to follow up on that.
[32:09] So what was the point where you realized that OK this B to C
[32:12] approach isn't working and we should rather take AB to B to C
[32:16] approach? I think it came around the point
[32:19] where you know, we would see that we would spend incremental
[32:22] dollars on marketing and it wasn't driving nearly as
[32:25] efficient gains in terms of customer acquisition.
[32:29] So we started seeing that that ceiling that you often see in B
[32:33] to C world where you know, you spend more dollars and you're,
[32:36] you're getting less return on your ad spend.
[32:38] Got it. Makes sense.
[32:40] All right, so now let's close it out.
[32:42] So where can people learn more about what you're doing?
[32:45] Get better health and where can people learn more about you and
[32:48] for your journey. Yeah.
[32:51] So you can check us out on joinbetter.com and I will tweet
[32:56] from time to time or on the X at Adam Breckler.
[33:01] Awesome, I'll make sure with all those links in the show notes
[33:04] below. Thank you so much for making
[33:06] time for this Adam and sharing your valuable insights from your
[33:10] founder journey all through different startups and I wish
[33:14] you all the best. Thank you, I enjoyed it.
[33:17] Awesome.

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