Inconvenient Truths

Over the last several months, I have had the opportunity to connect with a handful of founders / CEOs and their boards in healthcare and Enterprise SAAS, to help them work through some tough situations. Paraphrasing a few conversations, each of which points to a deep rooted problem (or reality) they have had to accept and solve for

1. "I want to spend as much time in my board meetings as in a public restroom"
Yep, thats because your board is full of referees. You need to find coaches and operators on your board and engage them, even if you can't avoid the tenement landlords

2. "This is the 2nd head of sales I just fired. He brought in this top notch consulting firm that charged $100K and we still can't sell"
Yep, that's because you can't outsource understanding and laying out your specific buyer's journey - after all you were the one who sold the first 10 deals! And definitely not to a consulting company or other zoo-fed lions who get paid no matter whether you succeed or not

3. Healthcare specific: "My customers keep complaining about the product UX - how they have to work across two screens. But the EHR and their IT teams make it so hard to integrate with <fill your favorite EHR name here>"
Yep, no kidding - welcome to healthcare. Your customers generally have no power to / or won't stand up to their EHR provider, they'll keep blaming you. Find a way to get the minimum data required and provide such high ROI that they'll incorporate you into their workflow

4. "You keep saying "product marketing before sales". I don't get it".
Yep there is a LOT more to marketing than demand generation. And sales needs a bunch of support beyond a leads list. Allow me to explain

5. "Yeah we don't have any case studies or customers with provable ROI but that's ok there is a lot of market demand".
Yep, you're a high churn business waiting to happen

6. "Implementation takes so much longer than we thought" [Especially true of healthcare].
Yep, getting data from the EHR alone can take weeks, workflow alignment and change management can take months. Your economic model needs to account for more implementation support and longer cycles

7. "OpenAI just launched feature x. Oh boy!" [today they bought an eval company].
Yep, the giants will own a lot. Without proprietary data or unique domain knowledge, there won't be too many other legs to stand on

8. "How come those guys raised so much funding even in this environment?! They don't have a single case study. And a founder who hasn't built anything successful!"
Yep, they have sugar daddies you don't. Accept it and work harder

9. "We are so good at solving complex cross-department problems in hospitals. Just need to find the budget and a sponsor".
Yep, good luck. Name one patient navigation company you'd like to be

10. "My market is getting so crowded".
Yep, that can be a good sign that you are solving a real problem. Move faster, differentiate, this is likely a land grab