With Dr. Levine we learn:
How he leveraged his connections to unite with his fellow CCRM New York co-founders
The “Aston Martin” amount of money invested to validate the business concept (and how that number was chosen)
The first people hired (and why)
His criteria for establishing new partnerships with other firms and businesses
How he gets founders and executives of elder care companies to come knocking on his door (and what the heck elder care can teach us about reproductive health)
And more…
Company Name: Nodal
Dr. Brian Levine’s Social Media: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok
Transcript
Dr. Brian Levine 00:00
I started actually seeing that my participation, this was actually could be construed as me being complicit in the current system, I actually felt super responsible for trying to fix it. And because I saw what I think, is a very tangible, easy to use solution that helps reduce the cost and make it more accessible for people. I felt like that is completely in line with the oath that I took when I graduated medical school, which is to do no harm.
Griffin Jones 00:34
Finally, starting that idea that you have for a tech startup, almost every fertility doctor seems to have one of these ideas. And for some of you, it is bugging you crawling around in your head. So I decided to bring on someone that is going through this journey. Right now, you might know Dr. Brian Levine, he's been on the show before. He's the founder of CCRM, New York. So we talk about that establishing an established business, Dr. Levine has had his take on building something in New York. But CCRM is an established company versus what it's like to be the founder and the founder of something that isn't a practice network, but as a tech company that serves the verticals of which his practice sometimes overlaps. We talk about the concept for the problem in this case having to do with surrogacy, but I'm more interested in Dr. Levine's rules for how he articulates the problem and the solution. We talked about the connections that Dr. Levine leveraged to both explore the concept and unite with his co founders. We talk about the Aston Martin amount of money that the three of them put in to validate the concept and how they chose that number. We talked about the first people they hired and why there are rules for structuring market research talk about Dr. Levine's strategy for approaching a two sided marketplace. have Dr. Levine tell us about what he's doing with the money he's raised, what he plans to raise next, and who he's looking at selecting to partner with him, or at least what criteria he wants for those individuals or firms. And we talk about how Dr. Levine has done deep investigation into different verticals. To understand how those lessons can be applied in the reproductive health space. He shares how he gets execs and founders of elder care companies to talk with him and what the heck, eldercare could possibly teach us in reproductive health. If you're a fertility doctor or someone else in the reproductive health space considering starting a tech startup, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Brian Levine. Dr. Levine, Brian, welcome back to Inside reproductive health.
Dr. Brian Levine 02:34
Thank you so much, Griffin, I'm super excited to be back again.
Griffin Jones 02:36
The first time we spoke it was about starting a practice group within a network setting. You started the de novo CCRM in New York, and we spent the that episode talking about running that operation starting that operation. Today we're going to talk about what it's like when a physician does something even more entrepreneurial, perhaps in a related space. And so let's talk first about maybe some of the differences. So you have started a program for that's in the surrogacy space that in many ways seeks to disrupt the surrogacy space, the first your venture with CCRM, you, you were operating a system that was established, certainly with your own flair, but you weren't the first CCRM practice. And you deliberately went with a group that had an established system. So how did those two things differ? And maybe even before we dig into that, let's let's just dig it into what gave you the itch to start something new in the marketplace?
Dr. Brian Levine 03:50
Sure. So,you know, as we talked about last time, the approach that I took back in 2015 was not the standard, and it was not the common approach. Typically, fellows were graduating from their fellowships, and they were moving on to going on to an established program, typically not academics and a couple of us into private practice. For me, I felt like there was a need to kind of change the model. And CRM afforded me the opportunity to have an incredibly tech driven approach, where I thought we can infuse some high touch Customer Care. And I think that's what we've been doing now for the last seven years since we opened the doors here. And it's amazing to think that it's been seven years since we opened the doors. As surrogacy was legalized in New York State, which happened in February of 2021. I was super excited. I kid you not I was like the single most excited person ever. Because before that, we had to ship all the embryos out for people who are doing gestational surrogacy. And then what happened was after about five months of doing this in New York, I realized very quickly that my patients were being preyed upon. And what I noticed was that the model of so Argosy in the United States, was not just unique the experience that I was having, it was a common experience across the board, which is that it was becoming price prohibitive and time prohibitive. And so I had no desire to start a business, I had no desire to be entrepreneurial, again, like the CCRM is very good and life and the practice is pretty amazing. But this problem, I couldn't unsee it. And I couldn't fix it. And because of that, it's why I took that step to kind of build something different and to fix something.
Griffin Jones 05:29
Maybe I'm making an erroneous assumption. But I've got to believe that you've seen many problems that you feel like you could contribute to fixing in some way that are a pain in the neck for your patients, that there's some solution that could be better if you pursued it, I got to believe that you could go down a list in your head of those things. And that more than one thing has irked you in the in the eight years that you've been running a practice. Why this one?
Dr. Brian Levine 05:58
So all the other issues that I've seen in reproductive health and the delivery of fertility care, are exciting and frustrating, and all the things in between that get, you know, under the skin of an entrepreneur trying to fix something. But when I started seeing the supply and demand economics as what was taking hold of servicing, and I started actually seeing that my participation, this was actually could be construed as me being complicit in the current system, I actually felt super responsible for trying to fix it. And because I saw what I think, is a very tangible, easy to use solution that helps reduce the cost and make it more accessible for people. I felt like that is completely in line with the oath that I took when I graduated medical school, which is to do no harm. And so to answer your question, why did I jump in with two feet and my wallet into trying to fix this problem? Because I felt like if I didn't fix it, I was part of the problem.
Griffin Jones 06:56
So it starts off with a feeling of responsibility that you part of the problem that you're not fixing it you can visualize this solution, how did you begin to explore it.
Dr. Brian Levine 07:05
So started, like most entrepreneurial activities happen, which is with a formative phone call, I called my friend who had an incubator in Florida. And I said to him, Hey, if you find any businesses in the services space, let me know, I'm happy to invest. I'm happy put some money behind because I think it's a broken system. And he then pushed me a little bit further. And he said, Well, what's the solution? And I said, Well, look, if a life insurance or health insurance company can underwrite risk on me, in a matter of minutes to figure out how I'm going to live for 20 years of premium payments. I think we could underwrite someone's uterus for 10 months using very similar databases. And that approach is what I said to him. And then he said, the most powerful thing ever. If you can articulate the problem, and you can articulate the solution, it's your responsibility to actually move forward and try to do it. So I did.
Griffin Jones 07:54
So how did you articulate that solution?
Dr. Brian Levine 07:57
What was it about the problem that you were seeing that made you say, we can do something similar to how insurance companies are underwriting their customers? So I think today, right now, everyone talks about the entire system being supply constrained, everyone says there's a shortage of surrogates that a shortage of capable individuals who are able to actually carry a pregnancy to full term. And because there's a shortage of supply, the costs have gone like through the roof. So I felt like if you just got more supply out there, the cost would have to go down. Right, if you make it more affordable, more accessible, while the access can be about supply, and that would dictate the economics and make it more affordable. It was a feed forward approach, fix the supply, you'll reduce the cost, reduce the cost, you'll improve the times and the wait times. And truthfully, as a doctor who was on the other side of it, he was not aware of how crooked the system had gone. I mean, if it had gone, not even crooked, I'd say it wasn't broken, because it's untracked. And what was happening was that, in reality, surrogacy services in the United States were being served to really only the 1% of 1%, who could ever afford that. And that's not why I went to medicine. That's not why I wanted to healthcare, and go into healthcare just to serve a very small population. I became a doctor because I want to help people in general. And so to me, I felt like if I could figure out how to supply the system with better surrogates, and really do what I call top of the funnel, then I thought that if we can do top of the funnel well, and we shorten the funnel, well, then ultimately we'll be able to make a meaningful outcome at the end. Was it really one phone call that one for that one phone call? It wasn't multiple phone calls and deliberating and looking at things from different angles? No, because actually got even it got even weirder than that. So when I said to my friend, John, who's the guy who I had that phone call with, and I said to him, this is the problem. This is the solution. And he says to me, Look, if you can articulate it We need to fix it. He then said to me, Hey, Brian, let's start the company. I said, I don't know, how did you do that? And he goes a simple you need money? And how much money do you think you need? I said, I don't know. He's like, I'll tell you right now, you'd have a million dollars. So why don't you me and some other guy put our money together. And let's do this on Monday. And this punk was on a Saturday. And with minimal approval for my wife, before I knew what I was wiring him effectively the cost of an Aston Martin, to start this company within 48 hours.
Griffin Jones 10:27
What made John such a confidant that one he was your main phone call and to that when he did propose going into business with you that you jumped on it?
Dr. Brian Levine 10:39
So John has a serie is a serial entrepreneur. And he had incubate a number of companies in the past. And he's a tech guy who I trusted. I've known him for a number of years. And, you know, like most things this world is, you need to have a friend that you trust, and there needs to be an element of excitement. And the trust and excitement that was there was the right combination. And I think the right prescription for what I needed to get me out of my comfort zone.
Griffin Jones 11:02
So this can accelerate things for those that might be considering venture if you have people that you trust. And if you don't have people that you trust with subject matter expertise in business development and venture capital in tech, then it makes sense for people to start networking and start making these relationships beyond simply their medical colleagues, because they might need the connections to move a little bit faster. And this could have been John, for you. It sounds like it was I want to get to the jumping in with the money. But how did he make you articulate the problem to him? And why was that sufficient enough for him. So this is your space. He's in a different space, tech finance. And somehow you were able to articulate the problem clearly enough to him that it was worth him wanting to do to be part of and put in some of his own money. What was he looking for?
Dr. Brian Levine 12:05
I think he was looking for a problem that was easy to understand. And I think when you start talking to people about health disparities, which is probably something we don't talk about enough in the fertility world, right. I mean, right now, it's June, and it's Pride Month. And we don't talk about the rates of infertility and LGBTQ plus population, because we don't know them. And right, we don't understand a lot about the health disparities. But when you start saying to someone, there's a real system, that's not fair. And you tell someone that it's really designed to help a very small subset of patients. And as a clinician, it frustrates me. And he started telling him about all the broken promises, and I tell him about all the tears that I see in my office. And the tears and the broken promises, and the frustrations were all related to the cost of surrogacy to the time associated with surrogacy. And I told him that I think there's a way we can fix this with tech. He's like, amen. He's like, You just gave me an elevator pitch without even realizing it. I'm in. Now, I do have to tell you, there was more than one phone call, actually called one of my oldest friends from Cornell, where I went for undergrad. And I said to him, Hey, Scott, tell me why I shouldn't start a company. And he's like, What are you talking about? I was like, here's my concept. Tell me why I shouldn't do this. And what he said to me was, Brian, you should do this. And I'll write your first check. And he was my first investor.
Griffin Jones 13:32
So how did John come up with and then offensively three of you come up with the magic number of half a million dollars?
Dr. Brian Levine 13:42
Completely pulled out of the air. So completely, he said to me, luck, I've incubated, you know,
Griffin Jones 13:49
What I think the three of us can scrape together without having to get too much buy in from our wives.
Dr. Brian Levine 13:55
Correct. He's like, I think you made a ton of companies. And $500,000 should give you enough runway to figure out if this is a viable opportunity or not. And that should give you enough runway to hire two or three employees to really do the market research you need to do and to put the infrastructure in place and to build a brand. And he goes and that's the right number. And to be honest, he was completely right. Right. That was exactly the right number spot on was, you know, you could probably start a company for much less. But we want to be effective and efficient and have first mover advantage, which we have today.
Griffin Jones 14:26
So you put in half a million dollars together. What did you do with the first half million?
Dr. Brian Levine 14:33
We hired two people. And the first two people we hired our Chief of Staff, Talia who's still with us today and Odle. And then we hired VP of engineering. And the first guy who is with us was amazing. And in fact, the entrepreneurial bug bit him so hard, that after being with us for 10 months, he started his own company. And so he actually left nodal to go start his own company, but we're able to hire an Unbelievable VP of engineering to come right in behind him. We've been amazing with us today. And ironically, since childhood best friend.
Griffin Jones 15:07
The VP of engineering makes sense because you're building a tech platform and you want more tech brain in the organization early on, Chief of Staff seems could see mod for an organization that had two people why Chief of Staff?
Dr. Brian Levine 15:21
Great question. So I think a Chief of Staff is an underappreciated swiss army knife. And knowing that I need to spend my time and days running both a fertility clinic and running a company, ie to have someone who has a skill set that can be multifaceted. And so when we look for this, for this person, this chief of staff who was our first hire, we wanted to make sure that he or she ultimately, as a she had all the right tools and resources at their fingertips to help start and grow and scale a company. And so it's actually the beautiful, most perfect title for someone who does everything from, you know, the initial scheduling to the accounting to the design, to the hiring, the marketing to hiring the general counsel. And to this day, because this person was intimately involved in every single hire is the appropriate title for them today, still, to this point to be a chief of staff.
Griffin Jones 16:15
It's a hard set of skills to find, because you're looking for someone who is as entrepreneurial enough to help build something from the ground up, but not so entrepreneurial, that they're the ones that are already doing it themselves. So how did you how did you select this person?
Dr. Brian Levine 16:35
So we went through the classic entrepreneurial workflow, which is you tried to find someone who had health experience in the past, who had the entrepreneurial bug within them, who was early enough in their career that they were willing to take, you know, a leap of faith, and most importantly, was a good fit for us. And we got so lucky through our network of friends of friends that we found Thalia, who's with us still to this day. And to be quite frank, I view Talia as the future leadership of this company as we grow this company continuously. And it's amazing to see that she's taken her entrepreneurial skills to help start really with us from zero and to build and to grow and to stack and to scale this company to what we are today.
Griffin Jones 17:16
So this initial funding, you hired two people, you're proving the concept, what did you do to prove the concept?
Dr. Brian Levine 17:22
So what we ended up doing was doing a ton of market research. And it was good old fashioned market research. So Talia and Kyle who started with us, the two of them started calling agencies. And they started asking questions, how does it work? As it how do we do this? They started calling fertility clinics, what do we do next? How do we get started. And they literally did market research from ground zero of what's it like to be a patient or intended parent to learn all about how the process goes. And then what we did was we did all of our research in a very structured way. And we organize our research answers, using spreadsheets and data sources and whatnot, to really help synthesize to make sure that we were asking the right question and that we were poised to answer that question appropriately. You see, what I've watched happen to all my friends and my friends of friends, who started companies where they haven't been successful, there seems to be a common denominator across the board. And it's called mission creep. mission creep is a very dangerous concept. It's almost a utopian concept where you think you're going to solve one problem. And then you realize you have these tools at your fingertips and you start branching out to solving everything. That's the jack of all trades, and masters of none. And as a 43 year old founder, I realized very much so that you need to be focused, need to have a focus that's on a specific goal on a specific mission, a specific approach. And that was the goal from the beginning. And so I want to make sure that our approach was data derived and was rooted in the research that we did, which it was,
Griffin Jones 18:58
What data were you sticking to and what little bells were trying to distract you?
Dr. Brian Levine 19:04
The data that we stuck to and we started asking people wait times, we started calling up agencies and saying, How long is it gonna take Alan's gonna take to go from hello to baby? And that was typically our number one question. And what you can see that we are started setting confidence intervals and you know, median time to start doing statistics on it. And then we started asking other intended parents, we started joining Facebook groups of support groups, how long is it taking you? How long are you waiting? And then we started realizing that there was actually a disparity between what people were quoted and what people actually were getting. And the little bell they were trying to distract us was everyone's like, don't focus on wait times, you know, focus on donor egg, focus on donor sperm or things like that. And what we kept saying to ourselves was focus on Saturday, see, focus on supply, focus on widening the funnel, focus on shortening the funnel, solve one problem at a time and that's what the job of a leader is. Right? The leaders do. Be the infectious optimist, which is what I've been doing my whole career as a fertility doctor, right, helping people understand there's possibility when they think they lost all hope and opportunity. And then also helping people understand the problem at hand and that the problem was is within grasp. And that's what I do every day at nodal right, I help the team understand that they are fixing a broken system. And then their hard work is going in directly to the efforts of helping people ultimately achieve their goal, which is either just start grow or complete their families, this obviously,
Griffin Jones 20:32
Isn't easy to do, because you have to be so receptive to such a small amount of feedback, do you know what I mean? You have to be maximally receptive to a minimal amount of feedback, and it's your job to vet what that is exactly, because you can't ignore everything part of what you're doing is proving concept and you need to understand what the market is telling you and then you need to assess product market fit and all the more so but you'll you'll get everyone's opinion in there, you'll get them prioritizing their own problems or or some other thing that they see in the marketplace. And and you're hearing things like oh, focus on donor egg and, and a few others, what arguments were they making to you? And how did you decide to tune them out, at least for now?
Dr. Brian Levine 21:20
So everyone was saying the same two things. And by the way, that can be VC companies. Or it could be friends or could be fellow investors, which is the TAM is too small. The industry is too small. You're fixing a niche. Why focus on a niche when you can focus on you know, blue ocean as a guide, you don't understand. The current system of surrogacy today in America only addresses 8% of men need 92% of the people that hope to use surrogacy as a way to grow or start or complete their family can not do so. And the reasons they say they cannot do those things are because it's cost prohibitive, time prohibitive, and emotionally expensive. So focus on the problem that we have, and as a company stay focused on that problem. And then of course, we can spin off other derivative companies with the same tools that we're building today. But focus on the problem at hand.
Griffin Jones 22:15
Jeff Bezos could have picked any number of categories to revolutionize ecommerce he started with books, you have your reasons for, for choosing surrogacy and ignoring the what are currently distractions, at least for the time being until you've established what it is that you're trying to build. So you've proven the concept, at least on the market need side from the market research at this time when you still just have two employees and that initial seed money that came from you all? Or did you have anything yet to assess product market fit? Did you have any kind of prototype? How did you build that?
Dr. Brian Levine 22:53
So we initially learned very quickly was that if we said to an agency, hey, if someone comes with their own surrogate, we give them a discount? They all said yes. And we said, hey, if someone comes to me with surrogate, will you help them get across the finish line? And they all said yes. And very quickly, we understood that we could be collaborative, and not just competitive to the current system. And understanding collaboration in the setting of competition is really important. And once we knew that, we had that there. The next question is, well, how do you do it? And the answer was a two sided marketplace. Right? The answer was letting service onboard themselves, letting them be able to build a profile for themselves. And because I believe in equality and transparency, I felt like you need to put the power back into the woman who's the surrogate. So by offering an opportunity for her to make the first move, Allah Bumble, or she picks intended parents that she wants to work with, instead of being assigned to an intended parent, we felt like was a great way to change the model upside down, and to offer them and also empower people to be more engaged on the platform.
Griffin Jones 24:03
It's hard with two sided marketplaces, because you need two sides. You need the Uber drivers and the Uber passengers you need the Airbnb guests and the Airbnb hosts, you decided in your two sided marketplace? Let's start with Sarah gets. And is the reason that you did did you perceive a greater shortage of surrogates or greater challenges in recruiting surrogates than intended parents and you feel that you felt like by giving them the opportunity to make the first move that you could make more headway on that side of the marketplace?
Dr. Brian Levine 24:38
So we felt pretty quickly in our company's trajectory that it was important to give opportunity and agency to those women who are taking the greatest risk to their own family. By definition, a surrogate must be a mother and we know that these women who are unbelievable partners in helping to grow family and start families need to be shown that I think the brighter side of the transaction, they need to understand what's going on. And I think they need to understand that they are in control. And so the only way that made sense to me and again, this was our thought as a team of three at the time. But how do you give someone controls you let them make the first move? And that's what we did. And that's what we've done to this day was really letting them make the first move.
Griffin Jones 25:28
Technically, what went into the first prototype? Or the first maybe if it was even pre prototype, but demo?
Dr. Brian Levine 25:35
So the first, the first prototype was that could we build a platform where people could just onboard themselves? So that's pretty standard that you can build that out? The second part was, could we throw out a little marketing or a little test kitchen to see if we actually could attract potential people who'd be interested in becoming a surrogate, or learning more about surrogacy? What we learned very quickly with some very quick AV testing, that we were able to message and market to people the right way. Ultimately, the big marketing push happened six months later, but that was the initial AV testing was, could we build this? And could we build a marketplace?
Griffin Jones 26:11
How much time passed between initial seed funding of your 500k between the three co founders, and when you decided to raise additional money? It was approximately six months. Who did you go to first? And what did you develop in your, your pitch deck? How did you build that?
Dr. Brian Levine 26:30
So one of the rules was that the pitch deck had to be 10 slides or less. I realized that everyone, my role, I realized that everyone is busy, and they have a lot of time. And if we cannot articulate the problem and the solution in 10 slides, and we have no right raising money, we have no way starting a company. Because if we couldn't be succinct, we couldn't be effective. So the goal was to build a 10 deck slide, which we did. And I went out to friends and family. And these are the people who've been rooting for me since I started with CCRM, New York and the people that I'm rooting for me, since college and grad school and med school and residency and fellowship. And I went up to my friends and family and I said, Hey, guys, this is crazy. But I can't unsee this problem. And I'd love to have you on this journey with me. And initially, we thought we'd raise just $1.5 million. That's what we thought we needed. And I was gonna do it all BSafe, which is financial structure that comes from the Y Combinator, what we learned very quickly was that doing this via safes was a very easy way to do the transactions. And the challenge of getting 1.5 million was actually not that big of a challenge. In fact, they sold the 1.5 million in three days. What I learned very quickly was that we were very good at fundraising because everyone knew someone wanted to use surrogacy as a solution. But no one actually knew how broken system was until they were educated by us marriage Jack and our story. So then what happened was I basically went around and I said, Hey, guys, I am so sorry, I didn't actually mean to raise at 1.5, I actually was hoping to raise a little bit more money, because it appears that there's a lot of people here who have similar thoughts to you, which is, let's fix this broken system together. And I want more people like you around the table. And that's how we ended up raising the remainder of the money, which was $4.7 million in the end.
Griffin Jones 28:19
That's all from one round? So it was about that the seed round? Or is the second one an angel round? Or tell, tell us about that?
Dr. Brian Levine 28:26
I mean, I think the nomenclature people use all the time, it's just silly, but the initial was about 500. The next one was around 4.2, in the end, that we raised. And so you add all together, there's your four, seven, but you called you know, initial capital, and then he called Seed past that, but we haven't done an A, obviously, is that coming next? I think the future is a series i i have some very specific KPIs I'd like to see us hit before doing a series I think that in this current economy, need to be so respectful of the markets. Because we're in a weird time, I was incredibly lucky that I started a company in a very favorable economy. And if I would have started this company six months later, or a year later, I don't think it would have had the same success in my fundraising opportunities. And so to me, I'm actually going to set a very high bar for the Series A, which is gonna be important. The most important thing for me and this next round of funding that we hopefully will do with our Series A is that the VC partner that we picked to do this has to do this with someone who wants to be our partner from the A to the B, someone who wants to be our partner for the big picture for the long road who's willing to be there as a partner, shoulder shoulder. And of course when you do a series a with a lead, that ends up becoming the most important individual because you end up usually having them be a board seat member. And I think a board seat members are working board seat, and that's really important to us. I'm making a note because I want to talk about what that Working board see my look like and how you select for the people that you want to be on your board. But let's talk about those KPIs is that there's certain KPIs that you want to hit before you raise more money. Tell us more about those. So again, it's in partnership with the right VC and the right time, but I think there's gonna be certain dollar amounts are gonna be certain volume of mounts, you know, doing enough matches, making it up, or producing enough revenue, being profitable. There's certain numbers we have to hit before we actually get there. Are you giving yourself a timeline, or is the money that you have the timeline, so the money that we have right now is given us a good amount of runway. And we're in a really good spot right now where we're comfortable that we can keep building and scaling and growing with enough runway to go. And I think, from a big picture perspective, we need to take a, I'd say a top down view of how the markets are looking and how the partners are looking, right? It's all about finding that not just product market fit. So finding that company market fit. And timing is everything. And so I'm a very patient person, as I think you know, and so I'm willing to be patient to find the right partner at the right time to do this successfully. And quickly.
Griffin Jones 31:08
Let's talk about what you want that partner to have. Because partner is one of the most ambiguous words in business, the word partnership is so ambiguous, one of the things that I'm writing in our editorial guide is inside reproductive health expands news coverage, not just the podcast, but covering the trade media happening on the business side of fertility field, and writing this so that the journalists know, the word partnership is used all the time, you have to figure out what it actually means. People say partner, because they don't want to say they bought a company when they acquired one, it can mean a capitalist merger, it can mean no merger acquisition whatsoever. It's a strategic partnership, like a joint venture. And so when you say that you want, you're the the firm that ends up leading that series A to B with you from A to B, and ultimately, to serve on the board and to be a partner with you what specifically do you mean?
Dr. Brian Levine 32:05
I want that individual company to put enough capital and that they have a real meaningful ownership opportunity in our company, where they will get to enjoy the upside, and the win. And that they will also feel like they're taking risk with us. So they understand the importance of that investment. But most importantly, is they're completely aligned with our success. It's easy to write tickets for someone to write a check, it's hard for someone to come up to four board meetings a year, it's hard for someone to be in the in the dugout, and in the trenches. And to actually give real critical feedback, we want someone who's not just gonna say, hey, everything you do is great. We want someone who's gonna say what you're doing is good. But we can get you to great if we scale you in this way. And we need someone who has experience
Griffin Jones 32:55
You have someone with experience in the reproductive health space, or within healthcare or tech or what kind of experience?
Dr. Brian Levine 33:03
So I think it's, it's different, right? So every VC has a different, you know, flavor, and a different approach. It's about finding a VC that is willing to be nimble with us and patient with us, but also has experienced in scaling marketplaces and healthcare to the right place.
Griffin Jones 33:22
When you're approaching the the next phase, what do you find yourself learning the most about now? What What have you spent the last month or two studying the most with regard to new concepts or, or areas of business?
Dr. Brian Levine 33:37
I love this question. Because I would say that for every 100 questions, I get 99 knows, which is the best, right? You know, you talk to someone, get feedback, talk to a company feedback. So one of the things I do is I I've joined a support network of other entrepreneurs and founders to ask them and to learn from them, because we're all kind of going through this crazy founders world together. And so learning about just other companies and how they've grown and how they've scaled and how they've become a little more market resistance, a little more tough on his time. But for me, actually, I'm really obsessed right now with studying elder care. I've been studying elder care companies for the last six months. And the reason I've been studying elder care is that in this country, there's a lot of great companies that are out there that are helping address loneliness. And they're helping do case management for the elderly. And insurance companies have really helped these companies scale in a meaningful way. That's really cost effective. And I view a lot of parallels and similar as to how we take care of elder care and do case management and social work care for the elderly, and how we can actually manage circusy in a digital transformational platform. Learning to look at actually how we can do case management light instead of doing the traditional analog system. How do we digitize this? How do we do high touch high feel How do we take care of grandma safely? Using a digital tech platform? Well, why can't we just turn that upside down and read instead of reinventing the wheel, just retool that wheel, and figure out how we now can do that for the surrogate, but the gestational carrier for the intended parents. And so I've spent a lot of time studying elder care right now. And studying social work, and studying case management systems, because I view so many parallels between that and the system of surrogacy.
Griffin Jones 35:31
Oh, interesting. I wouldn't have thought about that and go looking into elder care and social work for the purposes of learning more about case management. How are you taking in the information? Are you just following blogs of people that lead in the space? Are there books out there? Are you trying to dig into company records that are public? Are you one of the guys on the other side of the consulting call that you and I both get some times when it's people entering the reproductive health space? And you're on the other side of that call calling people that are in the elder care space? How are you taking in the information?
Dr. Brian Levine 36:06
So I won't deploy capital for those consulting calls, because they're really expensive, so much that I do one better. I go into websites and find the founder. And I just ask them the honest question. A I'm not in your space. I think there's some parallels here. Can we do a 30 minute chat. And I reached out to everyone, and I dig on LinkedIn. And I dig through website, and he just cold email people. And a lot of them are met with no response. But some of them are. And so there's a company out there called Papa that I'm absolutely obsessed with. And I met with Andrew and I got to talk to the founder and talk to him how he did and how he scaled his business and his b2b solution and how he was able to take this company from, you know, dollars to hundreds of dollars to 1000s to millions to billions. And you know, how did he get his valuate from that, but what did he do? And he and I now have, you know, bonded over this. And, you know, I talked to someone who did this and another service profession, I talked to someone who just did, you know, a mental health platform for management for psychologists for writing notes. Because right, every surrogate needs psychology screening. And if we could figure out a way to digitize a lot of this analog stuff, we can make it both reproducible and reduce the cost and make it safer. And so it's all cold emails, and cold calls. And if I find a phone number, I call it and find, you know, phone number, I typically try to text it first, and LinkedIn, and anything that's free at my fingertips.
Griffin Jones 37:32
How are you balancing this new pursuit that you have with your current business with your current role as a an individual contributor and a manager in your current business, not just a part of the not just part of ownership? And you're proud dad, I see you on LinkedIn, you're a really proud father. How are you determining what amount of time gets allocated and where?
Dr. Brian Levine 37:59
I set boundaries. And that's been really hard lesson for me this year. Last two years now, I set boundaries about everything. I'm here, I'm here, when I'm in my office, seeing patients I'm seeing patients, I don't get distracted. And I have a full schedule. And I see patients, you know, I still put in my 40 hours a week here. But then when I finish my day, my clinical day, I'm 100% nodal nondistracted. And I have an incredible team. And we now have 15 people. And our team communicates through slack, which is an unbelievable asynchronous tool for allowing for continuous communication throughout the day and night. As you probably know, I'm a painful early riser. So my morning routines have been optimized allow me for jumping into notable for anyone else's awake, when I don't eat much sleep. So most nights at home, I'm at home on the computer once I can get my kids to sleep. As you know, bedtime is incredibly precious to me. So after bedtime with my kids, I'm on nodal. And what I'm able to do is because I have an incredible team of people who help support each other, and I'm able to impart the clinical side of it, it works. This is not the model for everybody. But for me and for the nodal team. It's been an unbelievable way for us to build and scale this business.
Griffin Jones 39:17
You have a lot of venture capitalists listening to the show, you have a lot of executives listening to the show, but I'm thinking mainly of your colleagues, many of the RAS who they will tell me over a drink. I'm thinking about this, you know, there's something that's bugging out and that sound like it originally bugged you. Let's conclude with that thought, how would you like to conclude about starting an entrepreneurial venture within the field of reproductive health, but is isn't building a clinic? It's building a different kind of solution. How would you like to conclude with that theme to that audience?
Dr. Brian Levine 39:54
So as doctors, we spent our entire lives educating our calls and training to solve problems that are put in front of us. Don't let yourself get pigeonholed to only clinical problems. Take a step back and look at the systems that we work within. And I think the best advice I can give everyone is find someone who's willing to say no, but someone who's willing to say yes. And so the reason I spoke to my friend John to ask him about starting nodal, and telling him about the problems and him telling me start a company, and then I spoke to my friend Scott saying to him, Scott, tell me why shouldn't do this. You got to find people are going to be honest with you. And make sure that you can describe your problem to a lay person and let a non Rei let a non doctor, not your spouse, kick the idea around, of course, talk to the people within your clinic and network, make sure this is kosher and okay with them. Right, I had made sure that I talked to everyone here and made sure everyone knew what was going on. And I've been completely open and transparent since day one. But most importantly, you don't get to become an REI without a lot of support friends and family. And what I learned from starting nodal was that I had a lot of support around me. And I have a lot of support around me both for CCRM and also now for nodal and it's super exciting. So tackle those problems, because there's a lot of them that need fixing.
Griffin Jones 41:15
Dr. Bryan Levine, thank you very much for coming back on to Inside Reproductive Health.
Dr. Brian Levine 41:20
Thank you, Griffin. This is always so much fun. It's great to see you.
Sponsor 41:23
You've been listening to the inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you are ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society. Visit fertility bridge.com To begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Thank you for listening to Inside Reproductive Health.