Healthcare Skipped The Internet And Went Straight To AI | Alamin Uddin, NexHealth
Alamin Uddin is the co-founder and CEO of NexHealth. Today, NexHealth’s healthcare infrastructure serves 89 million patients. But at one point, the company had $4,000 in the bank and a maxed-out Amex card. We talk about why 75% of dentists still keep a server in the closet, how healthcare skipped the internet, cloud, and mobile and went straight to AI, why most healthcare systems have no API, funding the company with side hustles, the $36k customer pre-pay that saved the business, how 81% of new AI healthcare startups are built on NexHealth, where he thinks AI value actually accrues, and outlasting OpenAI. Thanks to this episodes sponsors! Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.com Flex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital Amplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.com Merge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turner Monaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/ Timestamps: (0:00) Healthcare skipped 3 platform shifts and went straight to AI (4:10) 75% of dentists still have on-prem servers (10:05) How data interoperability holds back healthcare innovation (16:02) Why everyone blames Epic (20:15) Building the developer platform for healthcare (24:36) Why everyone fails to fix the problem (29:11) Fragmented markets enabled developer platforms (32:32) Working as a receptionist at a doctor’s office (36:13) Building a prototype on Twilio (39:15) How incumbents went from blocking to partnering (46:05) Canvassing Soho dentists door-to-door (53:47) Reverse-engineering 40-year old databases (56:21) Funding NexHealth with side hustles for two years (57:30) The scheduling wedge no one could match (1:02:20) Raising $391k from professors and customers (1:03:46) Running out of cash, why customers kept churning (1:07:45) $4,000 in the bank and a maxed-out Amex (1:11:12) The $36k pre-pay that saved the company (1:13:24) NexHealth’s three businesses today (1:20:18) Payments and the “admin-day” problem (1:26:15) 72% sales win rate (1:28:27) The term sheet signed the week before COVID (1:30:26) Spending half the Series A on an acquisition (1:33:47) Raising $176M they didn't need (1:37:28) Why starting before 2022 is an advantage (1:42:22) Where AI value accrues: chips, models, the action layer (1:44:55) 81% of AI products are built on NexHealth (1:48:24) Staying patient for three years after ChatGPT (1:51:25) Competitors building on their API (1:54:02) “We’re a tech company, not healthcare company” (1:56:09) Hiring from outside healthcare (1:58:34) Shoes, email over Slack (2:01:21) What AI changed inside the company (2:04:16) Inspiration from Microsoft in 1977 - 1990 Referenced NexHealth: https://www.nexhealth.com/ Build on NexHealth: https://docs.nexhealth.com/ Careers at NexHealth: https://www.nexhealth.com/careers The Secret 3-Step Master Plan to Cure Healthcare: https://www.notboring.co/p/the-secret-3-step-master-plan-to Follow Alamin Twitter: https://x.com/alfromnexhealth LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alamin-uddin-95284889 Follow Turner Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/