Entrepreneurial Resilience in Building Teladoc
One of the questions that the VCs ask us all the time is, you know, if this was such a great idea, then I'll take the Teladoc example because it's one everybody recognizes. If it was such a great idea, then United Healthcare or Blue Cross or one of the big companies would do it. And I'll give you a really good example of why they didn't. When we first started the company, Dr. Brooks and I went to the board of medical examiners, told them with great passion how telemedicine was going to change the world. And the board of medical examiners listened to us politely. And then they said, if you build this, you will go to prison. And so now imagine an executive from United Healthcare sitting in that meeting, what would they have done? They would have said, okay, we're done. It takes the entrepreneurs who are willing to say, Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but let's figure this out. Let's get through this problem. And in my particular case, when we went to that board of medical examiners, it was me and two of my founding doctors. And one of them, I was never able to clean up off the floor. He just said, I'm done. I'm not risking my license. The other one, it took a little while. And together we built, you know, this engine that became Teladoc. But solving the harder problems, I think Matthew kind of nailed it. If you think about, you've got to surround yourself with people who believe in it, who know how to get it done, who know how to move forward, no matter what they throw at you
25 июн 2024
