Yelp for Doctors

Yeah, hi, and thank you — thank you for having me on this podcast. This is so cool. It's literally a dream to have an audience of doctors who are maybe interested in other things. That's really exciting.

Anyway, I studied medicine in Austria, in Vienna, and in Paris. Then I finished medical school and started working in Austria in the main hospital, specialising in trauma surgery. Then I moved to the UK because of a love — I followed my heart. I started as a junior doctor, first in Oxford, then I got into the core surgical training programme, and then I ended up in London, in trauma and orthopaedics.

I was in a situation where I wanted to have a mole removed. I always worry I'm going to die of melanoma. I don't know why — it's weird, it's not even quite normal, but I was worried about it. I wanted to have this mole removed on a Friday off. It was Monday, and I thought, I'm going to invest in that, I'm going to have it removed. And it was very complicated — very complicated to get an appointment and to make the right choice. I'm very impatient.

So here I am, a doctor, and I find this journey very complicated. What about people who have more serious things going on and aren't connected? That's how it started. I really wanted to do something about it. I spoke to my co-founder, Suman — well, now co-founder. He was my registrar and I was his SHO. We worked on this idea, and we founded Doctify. That's how I got there.

My parents are both doctors, and interestingly, when I decided to be a doctor — at the age of eight — and then got serious about it when it came to choosing university, they actually said to me, I remember, "Are you sure you don't want to be an entrepreneur?" Which was so weird. I didn't even know that word, because my parents were both doctors. So I think they saw something a little bit creative in me early on.

But yeah, I was totally set on being a doctor. And once I had seen an operating theatre, I was completely focused on being a surgeon. So this whole entrepreneurial thing wasn't on my mind. But when I came across that situation I just explained to you, I just wanted to solve a problem. I was focused on solving that problem — I want to help patients when they're in that situation, help them make the right choice for them. Very simple things, like giving them a listing. That was the initial thing that drove me.

So once I had the idea of wanting to solve that problem, we found a group of people who were happy to invest in us. I think it was easier at the time, maybe because it was still a little bit part of the dot-com boom, so people were very bullish with ideas. I'm so grateful for having found these early-stage investors, and they decided to invest. It started off at half a million to make this work.

And here's something about Doctify: one could think it's a bit of a marketplace, all about getting doctors on there who are paying — but it's not really like that. We're more focused on working with healthcare providers. We work with a lot of clinics and hospital chains to help them gather patient feedback to improve the care they provide. So the platform has almost become an outcome of the data we collect with them. It's a wonderful thing to do, working with all these healthcare professionals who want to improve transparency and help patients make a choice.

But in terms of other people doing the same thing — there's one sentence I find really helpful. There have been other companies selling coffee before Starbucks. Okay, Starbucks, I'm not so sure how well they're doing right now, but it's incredible, right? We were all going into these cafes, and suddenly there's this green brand appearing everywhere. Whatever idea you have, you've got to think about doing it better. And being persistent. It's just about those two things, really.

Honestly, I remember visiting a friend and going, "I'm going to do this." Suman was up for it, and we spent a sick day designing this plan. Then I visited a friend who had done a business, and he said, "You've got to make a business plan." I said, "What is a business plan?" I wasn't clued up — is it "clued up"? Yeah. I had no idea, so he started laughing. He was very grand about it. And then I Googled it, and I was like, this business plan is a PowerPoint presentation — how difficult can it be? A business plan has the following components: market size, trajectory. You can Google it. I thought, okay, I can do that.

So with this business plan, we went to see people. And there were people who saw two doctors with an idea that made a lot of sense, so they decided to invest behind it. Then we got an ex-banker to work with us, to be the numbers person. That's how it started. But I think doctors are really suitable to doing any of this, because you just have to problem-solve. None of this is rocket science. You can learn it — I don't think you can learn any of it in a business university, you can't.

It wasn't easy, and it's still not easy. It's an incredible thing that, in every good and bad way, demands so much of you. And your idea by now has to be a little bit — you have to have an idea where there's a gap, or an area where things aren't done very well. You have to have a better idea than just replicating what's there. But if you put your head to it, if that's the one thing you want to do, I think you can do it. You just have to have that belief. I really believe that whatever I put in my head, I'm just going to get there.

Would it be more difficult than I imagined? Yes, probably. Would it take longer? Yes, probably. But I'm going to get there.

I'd say my mother. My mother really taught me early on that my life is in my hands. She wasn't holding my hand all the time. I remember, at the age of 11 — I mean, I shouldn't say this on a podcast, but it was a different time, guys, a different time — she told me, "Here's my signature. If you feel like you don't need to go to school one day, whatever you decide, okay, this is your life." But I was a good student, right? So more and more, from an early age, I felt life is in my hands, and it's on me to do something about it, or with it. And then I realised that if you put your head and mind to something, you can achieve a lot. Not everything, but a lot.

First of all, I think the experience of a patient is so important. I'm going to give you a very sad example, but I think it's very powerful. This summer I lost a baby. She was born a bit early, and then she lived, and then she died. So, really horrible. But we're fine, and everything. I've just seen my obstetrician, and I'm so grateful for him. He's been with us on this journey for weeks and weeks. It had a very bad outcome, but he is an incredible doctor, and because the experience with him was so good — he was there for us — I feel much better about everything. The outcome wasn't bad because he did anything wrong; the outcome was bad because it was bad. But I just want all of us, especially as doctors, to realise how important the experience of a patient is.

I hope you haven't had a lot of healthcare issues, but when you have anything going on with you — and any doctor who would ever listen to this — be very conscious, when you are a patient for a minute, about how it feels and how vulnerable you suddenly are. It's so crazy. We have to see that, we have to listen to it, and we have to constantly improve so that the patients in our hands have an experience as optimal as it can be. So that's one thing: experience counts.

The other thing is, we're building two other data points I think are really important. One is that when you look at reviews on Doctify now, yes, a doctor might have 300 reviews and a rating — but it also shows you what that doctor has been reviewed for. Out of the 300 patients who left reviews, what did they review? Then you start to see what a doctor is doing on a day-to-day basis — their specialism comes through. It's another data point: aha, out of 384 reviews, these were patients who had cystic fibrosis, say. So it showcases the specialism.

And then the last thing we're doing, which I'm so excited about in the years to come, is asking doctors to connect with each other and tell us who is known for what, or who they'd recommend for what. So now you start to understand a doctor — you get a picture of the experience you'd have, but you also understand what they specialise in. That's really interesting.

Exactly. That's the data point we're collecting, and we're now making a big push on it. It's not about "oh, who would you recommend?" — it's more like, who would you send your relative to? That's the type of question. I'm really pushing that at the moment, and you'll see a lot more of it.

And then the last thing is, I have a vision of adding outcome questions to the reviews. You're already asking the patient — okay, this patient reviewed that doctor for a hysterectomy, say — and then you can ask outcome questions as a follow-on. Technically we could start to collect some outcome data. It's very complex, but it's something I'd love to do in the years to come.

Yeah. First of all, my co-founder Suman, and then someone else called Paul in the beginning, started to convince doctors to come on this journey with us. I remember sitting there — the platform had launched, we got an agency to build it — and then Paul and Suman got some doctors to work with us. And suddenly the first two reviews came through. I remember that moment: I walked into the office and it was like, "The first two reviews have come in!" It was unbelievable.

So it wasn't a case of "I build this thing up and then the other thing follows." It's a constant "oh my God, there are five doctors working with us... oh, two reviews have come in." It's really climbing two different mountains at the same time. Very difficult, but you just keep going.

We made so many mistakes, oh my God. It was really not straightforward. But we just had this unbelievable drive, and it was addictive. It was so exciting. Was there one hack? There wasn't one hack — there were a lot of mistakes. For example, we got a lot of doctors and clinics on and said, "Use the system, and pay us in six months," or whatever. The problem is, when you give something for free and people don't pay for it, they won't use it, and they'll never pay for it. So we made a lot of mistakes. But with hard work and this vision and passion, people started to come on board, going, "I'm going to give this a try."

There's a good book for anyone wanting to build a company — it's a bit of a Bible, I'd say — called Crossing the Chasm. It's a famous business book. I didn't read it at the time, but many years later. Essentially, when you start something, you need to find the innovators — those few people who love a new thing and want to play with someone starting something. They're the ones who come on in the beginning and help you refine the product.

I can say this to you, as doctors: when you're sitting in one of those departmental meetings in medicine and you hear about the friends and family test outcome — ask any department. The friends and family tests in the NHS, done in pretty much every department, are very positive. Except in A&E, they're usually above 90% "would recommend." In A&E it's more in the low eighties, but the patients are grateful.

That's one of the other motivations for why I really wanted to do Doctify. I felt it's so tough to be a doctor in England, and sometimes the press doesn't help — these negative articles. I really wanted to showcase to the world, and to my colleagues, how many grateful patients there are, and what an amazing job they're doing. So what I'm trying to say is, reviews in healthcare are predominantly positive, because the majority of patients are grateful and are very motivated to leave a review just to say thank you. We love getting negative reviews, we wish we had more, but whether it's the friends and family test or Doctify, it just isn't as frequent as in other industries.

I think, as a platform, we'll get better and better at displaying other data that's out there. So one thing I'd love to do is add outcome questions to certain diseases. But it's also about adding data that already exists. You have very good places like the CQC, or the Bone and Joint Registry, that do very sophisticated stuff around actual outcome data. It's on us to display it in a way patients can understand. We don't claim we know everything, but what we want to do is display information transparently so patients can make their own decisions.

Yeah, I think you can only be good at one or two things. And it almost becomes as if you're becoming a provider, at least part of it. That's just not our mission. We really just want to display as much information to patients as possible. Getting involved in payments could be a possibility in the future, but it's very complex. Our mission is really to help with review collection and help patients in their journey — not to own everything around it. But whatever makes it easier for patients: if that's something we find is really important to them, then we may go down that route.

So, I'm the CEO of the company. When you start on the journey, you think that when you get to a certain level, everything will then be fine. Do you know what I mean? It's like, "when I'm a consultant, then everything will be fine and life will be amazing." But the thing is, there's always something. It may look from the outside like, "oh, they've made it to that level" — the level I want to reach — but it's constant work. It's relentless. It's every day, all day. There are things to fix. It never ends.

You just have to realise that the journey is the goal. It's not about the destination, but the journey. And it's not only that — it's also who is on the journey with you. So from the outside, some people who have an idea in their mind, and see a press release or whatever, go, "oh wow, when you're there it's all amazing." But when you're there, you just want to go somewhere else. So it is relentless — but it's also fun relentless, I guess.

Registered eight years, but really around seven. I'd say the first two years were scary, because we didn't know whether it was going to work. But it was also amazing. It was so crazy, so addictive. It's almost like when you're in a new relationship — super exciting, a period you'll never forget. Then there are a lot of ups and downs, but maybe not as incredible as the first two or three years.

And now I have a renewed focus on the patient platform, and I want more doctor-to-doctor connections displayed to patients. So I almost have a newfound passion for Doctify, because it's like I'm focused on a new thing — it's almost like starting something new. I feel very entrepreneurial right now. It's another spring, if that makes sense. So that can happen as well. It constantly evolves.

Okay, let's put it this way. Making a company that is financially successful is pretty much the only way you can gain scale. This is really important. If you don't have that in mind, your company may not get to the scale you want. So it's an important metric, something you constantly look at.

But if you think about it — if you want to make money, doing something like what we do is so risky, and the chance you'll be incredibly rich is so low, that if you want to make a lot of money you should probably work in banking. Or even as a doctor, do private work. It's much more likely to get you financially to that place. So to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit crazy and obsessed about what you want to solve. That carries you through the dark periods, the risks. The reason you hear entrepreneurs speak more about the patient side is because, chances are, they really are obsessed about that, and you find an incredible drive in it. If you're money-driven, first, I don't think you'd do it, because the risks are too high that you won't get there after investing many, many years. And I don't know if you could go through all the dark periods. That obsession is the most important thing. If you do it for the money, I don't think you're in the right place — I'm not sure you make it in the same way.

I'd agree with that if it's about doing something philanthropic. Someone I lived with in Oxford, when I moved to England to work as an F2, is called Will MacAskill. He's written a book about exactly this — it's a bestseller. He says, if you want to do something good in the world, the best thing you can do is actually have a job that makes you a lot of money, and then give to the best cause. So that's what this quote is about: become someone, make some money, and then do something good. I agree with that. But if you think about entrepreneurial stuff, I think you should have a problem you want to solve, be obsessed about it, and build something around it. It's not about being driven by the money — I don't think that carries you as far.

Yeah. I've found it very helpful to do — there's an online test called 16 Personalities. Have you done it? It's the Myers-Briggs stuff, but it only takes 11 minutes, and it gives you an overview of your personality. What's helped me is doing this quite a lot when we're thinking of hiring someone, or when I'm building my leadership team. I ask them, "Are you okay with it?", and I share my own results to be transparent.

Basically, it made me really deeply understand how different people work differently, and how you've got to adapt to how they are — not just think your way, the way you would have solved things, is the only way. It made me understand there's no good or bad personality; they just work differently. And as a leader, you have to learn to adapt to them, and be very respectful of how people work differently.

When I want to achieve something, I push quite a lot. I just continue and continue and continue. So being relentless helps, and just pushing a lot. I also promise myself that I want to take decisions, where possible, quite data-driven. When I'm due to take a decision, I see if there's any data that could help me take it one way or the other. I look at the data and go, "well, looking at this, this is probably the better thing to do," and I fold that into my decision-making. Over the years, that's probably helped.

I'm quite reflective. And I was going to ask you about your drive, because doing a podcast like this shows you have a very special drive, so I'd love to hear about that. But having analysed myself, I think it really comes from the idea that this life is in my hands and that it's a big adventure. It's almost like I'm writing my own movie, and I just wanted an action movie. So it comes from seeing life as a big adventure — that hunger to experience more, to be with people, to achieve something together. A bit of a campaigner. So in my case, having reflected on it very deeply, it doesn't come from insecurity, but more out of the desire to experience and to build something. What is it for you? You said you think it's more insecurity.

They did a study on the most successful people under the age of 30 in the world, including Mark Zuckerberg and so on. I don't want to misquote it, but being the child of immigrants is one of the markers they found in common among the most successful people in the world. It's very interesting. And another one, if I remember correctly, is having been subject to a quite traumatic event in childhood that makes you realise your life isn't forever — they experienced a form of loss in childhood. It doesn't have to be a parent; it can also be a grandparent you were close to. And a few other things. So being what you described is something the most successful people in the world have in common.

I know exactly what you mean. Normally a person works eight to ten hours a day — probably more than ten. That's a huge amount of the day you're awake, so you may as well do something that fascinates you during those hours. You don't want to waste it with a job that's nice but doesn't excite you. That's one thing.

But ideally, when you get a bit older, you move into a position where you can generally relax in the evenings, or whatever periods you have. The fact that you don't have to work until 8, 9 or 10pm at a certain age is something to strive for. In my job, because I have to make a lot of decisions and be very clear in my mind, I really have to look after myself, my mental health, everything. So I try not to work after six o'clock, and I really try to compartmentalise. It definitely wasn't the case in my 20s — I worked so hard — but I'm getting to a place where after 6pm I'm not working so much anymore. And it's important, I think.

I think some people are very, very good at it — they mesmerise people, build networks, do all these business development deals. If you're good at it and it's natural to you, great. I love humans, I find them genuinely exciting, and I love listening to and understanding them. But I'm not that type of person. So if it doesn't come naturally to you, it's probably not going to work that well. If it comes naturally, great for you. But there are also ways of doing business that aren't all based on building relationships — sometimes it's just having a good idea, following through, solving problems.

I do think it helps to have a co-founder who complements you. If something like that is important for your business but it's really not who you are — you don't love being at cocktail parties talking with people, I really don't like that — it's great to work with someone who doesn't mind that.