Abdul Rastagar (00:05)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of the science of sales and marketing. So excited to have Sameer Ather CEO of XpertDox Sameer, welcome to the show.

 

Sameer Ather (00:15)

Thank you for having me here. Thank you, Abdul. Thank you, Caitlin.

 

Abdul Rastagar (00:18)

Excited to have you. So you have a really kind of interesting story, right? You're a physician turned CEO. I want to hear that story of your medical education and how you transition and why, right? Did you see some sort of errors, issues and so forth? So let's take us back to Sameer a few years ago before you were XpertDox founder. How did you get here?

 

Sameer Ather (00:39)

I believe I was never an intentional founder or CEO. It was never an intent. Entrepreneurship was not a goal in itself. The goal when I moved from India to US was how to have a bigger impact in healthcare and not just as a physician, but a bigger impact. I had pretty good mentors who I really respect at Baylor College of Medicine and other places.

 

Very early on, I applied for a research track during my residency when I did my PhD. And at the time, while I was exploring different topics where I would like to focus, one of my mentors, Dr. Doug Mann at Baylor, mentioned that one day AI will impact healthcare in a very big way. And this conversation is not four years back, five years back, but this was, I believe, 2006. So 2006, he was a visionary. He said,

 

When a patient would come in, AI would guide the resident doctor what to do, what not to do. It will determine how clinical care happens. And that was very impactful for me at the time. So when I started my research in 2008, I focused very heavily on application of AI. And the area I was focusing in is called personalized medicine. A personalized medicine is that when we test drugs, we test drugs on 5,000 patients, 10,000 patients.

 

And if a drug works in 60 % of those patients, it's called a success. But then what happens in the rest of the 40 % of the patients? The drug could have had no impact or the drug could have had an adverse event for those, but we discount those 40 % of the patients. We say this drug is great for all of those patient population. Personalized medicine is how to identify only the select patients or which drug or which clinical care

 

is right for you, for who you are, for your genotype, for your phenotype, for your metabolic profile, and not just based on three or four things, your age, gender, and other things. That was my sort of foray into something beyond clinical care, and I continued to pursue it till 2015 when it struck me that patients with rare diseases were having a difficult time.

 

finding physicians who are specialized in their disease because again rare diseases are very rare. That led me and I figured out that it would be very difficult within academic boundaries to pursue something like this and do it fast enough. And that was sort of my foray that I would have to do something on my own and outside academic world. So again, an accidental

 

entrepreneur.

 

Abdul Rastagar (03:30)

Got it. And so it's actually kind of interesting what you said about in 2006, your mentors said that AI will take over. And this is before electronic medical records were even widely used at all, right? This is well before.

 

Sameer Ather (03:42)

I

 

absolutely right. EHRs had become popular by then, except that not everything was electronic. I still remember my internship in New York, where I was still doing all of my paper charts for my clinical encounters, my inpatient encounters. We would get labs and I would actually go to the x-ray and actually get the x-rays and actually see the x-rays the traditional way you see in TV series, right, these days.

 

Caitlin La Honta (04:05)

Thank you.

 

Yeah.

 

Sameer Ather (04:09)

It was before that everything went on to EHR. You're right.

 

Abdul Rastagar (04:14)

Very, very forward thinking individual. Now, so your vision with expert docs is to kind of reduce errors and improve the way and efficiency of the healthcare delivery. how did your experience as a practicing physician, how did that inform this vision?

 

Sameer Ather (04:26)

I think being a physician has allowed me to understand the problems which are difficult to understand otherwise if you're outside, if you're not inside the whole world of healthcare. And the second aspect is when it comes to finding a solution for that problem, it provides me an insight. And I think it doesn't hurt to have trained in AI and

 

other aspects of research and clinical care that I can sort of fall back upon those experiences when trying to find a solution for the problem.

 

Abdul Rastagar (05:03)

And Caitlin, feel free to chime in if you have any questions or comments to it as well. What I'm curious about for you, Sameer, is if you're, as you started thinking about building expert docs, How did you, at what point do you feel like you started to see a product market fit? Do you feel you have that already or do you feel like you're still working on that? Or do you just intentionally know based on my past experience, this is gonna be a product that's gonna be adopted?

 

Sameer Ather (05:28)

I think I can tell this to anybody, any audience that listens to this podcast is product market fit is probably one thing that you should strive for, that you should look for and if you find it, don't let go and have a laser focus to pursue that. But product market fit is extremely difficult. I think people all over try to find a product market fit. I don't know if there is a way to predict it.

 

you might be in... I think when we start as a founder, we are so optimistic, we're so idealistic, that we are blindsided and we don't have a good vision whether it's going to be... whether this is a product that the market really needs. And I believe that finding a product market fit, we have been lucky. We have had a few pivots to find a product market fit and at this time, we do have a product market fit. We're expanding fast.

 

But for any future entrepreneur, would say, don't think that your first product will have a product market fit. Keep experimenting. Don't put too much effort. Don't put too much money in. Get the first minimum viable product out. Test the markets. And you may have to evolve. It could be a little bit of an evolution or it could be a complete pivot. But keep trying till you find the right fit. Only then, start scaling.

 

Caitlin La Honta (06:43)

Just kind of going deeper on that. mean, knowing you had a couple of pivots that you mentioned, you went through this process of building, getting to an MVP, experimenting. What did the process look like? Two pieces. One, how did you experiment with those early products to get the feedback you were looking for in order to determine then follow-up question? At what point do you decide, okay, we're not seeing what we need to see here. We need to pivot and try something new.

 

Sameer Ather (07:10)

It's growing a business is a cash-turner-to situation. If you're not fully in your business, nobody else is going to believe in your business and nobody's going to put their money and effort into your idea. And if you put all your chips into one basket, it's very difficult to pivot if it does not succeed. So initially, we did not raise money. We took only money from friends and family. We built out the product.

 

got great feedback for patients with rare diseases. We actually enrolled patients for clinical trials through that piece. But within a year, we realized that reaching out to consumers directly is an extremely expensive way to grow a business. And with the limitations we had, and everybody will have their own limitations, we were not on the coast. We were at a place where there's no

 

big venture funds or PE firms who are willing to back you that we did not put in that much money. And as soon as we found that it was difficult to grow as a B2C company, our business reaching out to consumers directly and got an interest from a business partner, we did make the pivot. And I think one should be ready to not hold on to your original idea.

 

Caitlin La Honta (08:22)

And.

 

Sameer Ather (08:32)

if success is what you're looking for. And that's what we did. We were willing to let go of an idea and a product if we were not able to scale fast enough.

 

Caitlin La Honta (08:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Abdul Rastagar (08:45)

How

 

difficult was that for you personally?

 

Sameer Ather (08:47)

Very much so. For me, when we started helping patients with rare diseases, it was, I would say, close to my heart, patient access. And we would potentially bring that product back at some point if we have the bandwidth. So it is difficult to let go. There's also a little bit of a satisfaction

 

when you're reaching out to consumers directly, you have patient stories, you get testimonials, you know that you have helped someone in their journey of clinical care. When you're working with businesses, which I mean at the time it was universities and large health systems, you know you are impacting a lot of their patients, but you don't have those stories directly. So it is difficult, but...

 

As long as our values were being met, we were still in healthcare, we were still improving clinical care, we were making healthcare more efficient, we were happy to make that pivot as long as that meant that the company could keep growing. And again, it goes back to what was the original goal is to have a bigger impact than just being a clinician. So success of the company is a direct correlation of the impact.

 

Caitlin La Honta (09:41)

the

 

Sameer Ather (10:03)

I or my co-founders would have in healthcare.

 

Abdul Rastagar (10:05)

Got it.

 

Got it.

 

Caitlin La Honta (10:07)

And now that the pivot that most recently is now what Expert Docs is today, which is automated medical coding, going through that process, what was different about the early experimentation and market feedback that you all got that determined, OK, we have something here that we really think we can grow and build?

 

Sameer Ather (10:26)

I would say as a founder, a product market fit, if it happens, you see it right away. Our first version that we implemented at our friend, colleague, and investors, Urgent Cares, was extremely basic. It is as basic as it gets, absolutely basic.

 

The return on investment for them was so profound. If I was to give an example, they were behind almost four weeks or five weeks in submitting their claims to the insurance companies. And if you don't submit those claims to insurance companies, you don't get paid. If you don't get paid, how do you pay your doctors, your nurses, your staff to continue being in business? When we went live with them, we brought that delay down from four to five weeks to one or two days.

 

Abdul Rastagar (11:14)

That's amazing.

 

Caitlin La Honta (11:14)

Wow.

 

Sameer Ather (11:14)

Now, it may not have been a very sophisticated product, but for them to get their claims out in a timely fashion was big enough that they were willing to put in a good word with other people. And people who heard that were willing to give us a chance to maybe improve upon the previous version and implement again. But we were showing a very solid ROI or return on investment for our partners.

 

even with a very basic product. And once we had the fit, we knew that we had to just have a laser focus on that and keep getting clients feedback. Every time we get a feedback, we look at it as an opportunity to improve it for everybody else. So I think in terms of sophistication, we have grown 100x since the first one. But we saw a product market fit even with that basic version.

 

Abdul Rastagar (12:05)

That's fantastic. Now, given your medical background as a physician, you find that that gives you more credibility with clients?

 

Sameer Ather (12:13)

I would think so and I hope so. I think being a physician does lend some credibility. Being cross-trained in basic science research and AI also lends credibility. But I would say at the end, in this world, it's all about what is the ROI for the partners out there.

 

We have great client success stories. We don't have a sales team. ⁓ Almost all of our growth is by word of mouth, which means if you focus on your clients, your partners, you hear them, and you keep implementing the feedback that you get, I think you would grow yourself. I don't think people look at me as a physician and say,

 

Caitlin La Honta (12:45)

Bye.

 

Sameer Ather (13:04)

Well, I want to work with this company, but I think it does probably lend some credibility.

 

Caitlin La Honta (13:10)

I think that just speaks to the power of having those early customer stories and really compelling metrics. And one of the things that Abdul and I see, and you probably see it as well, is there's so many companies who are launching AI or claiming AI, but they don't really have anything to show in terms of ROI. Or maybe they have these of vague metrics of X-efficiency or something like that.

 

Anything to add in terms of in this landscape where there's so many different AI solutions popping up, how you all have been able to sort of differentiate and stand out to kind of cut through that noise, both from just the product perspective, I think you've spoken to some of that, but also like the message and some of that piece.

 

Sameer Ather (13:51)

So I believe I won't be able to give a message to anyone and everyone building an AI-enabled company because there are so many nuances to that question. There may be technical founders out there who have very deep understanding of the processes of AI and who are building fundamental products that are just improving those neural networks model or whatever model they are using.

 

out there. If you're doing something like that, you need a founder or you need an investor who believes in your vision and your past history and is willing to put in vast sums of money for many years without seeing a return. Because if it really takes off, it will change the whole landscape. We haven't done that. But I believe when we are seeing AI

 

creeping into all aspects of healthcare or any part, any business, is that part of application of AI. These models are out there. The computing power is out there. The computer languages, even kids are learning them. Then now it becomes a tool. And it is very important not to have the buzzwords in your company.

 

but to see whether you can use this tool to actually solve a problem or are you using just this tool to raise some money. So if you are solving a problem, whether it's through AI, whether it is anything else, as long as you're solving a problem, I believe you will succeed. And if you're not solving a problem, whether it's with AI or without, I think those are the companies that may falter at some point.

 

Caitlin La Honta (15:15)

You

 

Sameer Ather (15:35)

So they're completely different types of businesses. And again, I don't think one message fits all, right? I think everybody will have their own journey.

 

Abdul Rastagar (15:45)

What's your least favorite AI buzzword?

 

Sameer Ather (15:47)

I think it's AI itself.

 

Abdul Rastagar (15:49)

Yeah, it's fair enough.

 

Sameer Ather (15:51)

It's AI itself. How do we define AI is very variable in how everyone perceives that acronym, artificial intelligence. Most people who are not in the field really believe when they hear the word AI is a machine thinking like a human. And that's what they think. But AI...

 

the way it is implemented is bunch of very sophisticated processes, decision trees, neural networks, which are layers and processing billions of data points, and making these small incremental judgments and sort of decisions, and then everything accumulates to come up with a final decision. It's a process improvement. Now, one day we may have intelligence,

 

But AI at this time is just a tool that we should all not be afraid of, but should be willing to learn more about and ready to implement wherever we can to make our current processes more efficient, save money, make them more accurate. I think that's how we should perceive AI at this time.

 

Caitlin La Honta (16:59)

Knowing what you just said, which is there's a lot of different perceptions of what AI means and how it works and what it does, how have you all been managing that with your customers and prospects in terms of how do you explain it to them, what misconceptions do they have, and how do you kind of ensure that they clearly understand what you all do and the value you deliver, though it is AI and they might be bringing with them a lot of misconceptions when they have a

 

Sameer Ather (17:22)

Right, absolutely. No, no,

 

I completely agree. So one big difference that we have seen since 2022 is when we would go and talk to practices, physicians, CEOs of health systems and practices, the first reaction used to be skeptical, skepticism. They would ask, what if AI makes huge amounts of mistakes? Will it be as accurate as humans?

 

How can we trust a machine to make a decision? In 2025 now, it's not a question that they ask anymore. They reach out to us and say, we know that the machine is going to be more accurate. What sort of solutions do you have? And will they help our practice or not? So there's been a paradigm shift in the perception of business owners. Everybody is racing to get ahead.

 

They want to future proof their practice. They want to have efficiency gaze. They want to save money. They want to optimize their revenue. They want to have a branding that and maybe for their investors or stakeholders to say, well, we are doing everything in our capacity to make sure we have used every tool available in the current world to optimize operations. But again, coming back to your specific question,

 

How do they perceive and how do we, what's our message to them? Our message to them is always, I'm quite sure your RCM costs are high, quite sure you have a delay in submitting your claims, quite sure you are getting denied by insurance companies, you're not getting paid, and quite sure you are missing some revenue on the table. We have shown again and again, multiple times that

 

It's cheaper. It's faster. It's much more accurate reducing denials to literally negligible and it finds missed revenue opportunities which humans might miss otherwise. And we continue to sort of lead them that look at hard numbers because anybody and everybody can throw buzzwords but you have to look for is what

 

are the real numbers that you can expect if you implement this.

 

Abdul Rastagar (19:34)

Yeah. mean, essentially you're talking about what I call evidence-based marketing, right? In healthcare, we're talking about evidence-based medicine all the time. You're doing kind of the equivalent from the kind of sales perspective, the go-to-market perspectives. You're showing the actual ROI of what you've achieved at other places, right? And to the point you mentioned you don't even have a sales team at this point time, right? So I guess which pretty impressive, right? So that's to me, that says a lot about people willing to look at those numbers and accept that there's a basis of reality here.

 

Caitlin La Honta (19:54)

That's, yeah.

 

Abdul Rastagar (20:04)

Whereas if you hear a lot of the claims that are made by a lot of companies in the AI space, mean, everybody's making all kinds of wild claims, right?

 

Sameer Ather (20:11)

Yes, I think in the end what matters too, they can get through sort of a pilot phase, they can get through some initial implementation. But again, as I say, in the end, it's all about success of everybody's own company. And if your partner organization does not see the benefit, you won't have that stickiness, you won't last that long. And we have shown that once we go live at a place

 

We are there for many years. It's just because of the value we generate for. But again, that goes back to why and what we do. The goal of Expert Docs was always to continue to evolve, continue to do new things, hyper-focus on our clients, get their feedback. We believe the only way... You asked me a question very early on, Abdul, is does being a physician

 

help me understand the problem better. But I would say is, healthcare is so vast that clinicians for what we are doing right now is autonomous medical coding actually have minimal idea.

 

So we have to get the feedback from our clients. Those are the people who are giving us, okay, here's our problem. Here's still an unmet problem. And we cannot ever trivialize that feedback. So we take that feedback very seriously. We focus on that. We build solutions around it. And that's how we just continue to improve.

 

Caitlin La Honta (21:16)

and

 

And I think the notion of just going problem first is just underappreciated as a strategy because, mean, we talk about this in marketing, it fundamentally comes down to, we call it a lot of times like a pain point and then what's the benefit or value that addresses and solves that pain point. Obviously the pain points need to be such that.

 

someone is willing to buy a solution or they need to buy a solution to solve it. There's plenty of pain points that we all have in our business lives where we're not willing to put up money to solve them, but they're minor annoyances. But even that fundamental, like understanding the problem deeply, asking what's an unmet need and building to solve that is an approach that not a lot of companies take. They sort of build in a silo of we think this technology is really cool, which there's value in that exploration as well, as you had mentioned, but.

 

Sameer Ather (22:16)

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (22:20)

It's easier said than done, of course, but that approach of really understanding the urgent pain points that your audience has in building to address that is so powerful.

 

Sameer Ather (22:29)

Absolutely. And actually, you also touch upon a point that is for, again, founders and entrepreneurs. Is your product a want or a need to the people who would be using it? Interestingly, for many practices in health care systems initially, clinical research and trial was a want and not a need.

 

Medical coding is a need because if you don't get paid by the insurance company the operations of the health system and practices just shuts down so It is very important. I again as I mentioned when I started I was I'm an accidental entrepreneur accident accidental founder Did not really think through all these aspects again there are books written about this, but if your product is a want

 

you're going to have a very hard time scaling and adoption. If your product is a need and you solve even a small bit of a problem, you'll have many people who would want to even use your alpha or beta product in their systems.

 

Abdul Rastagar (23:34)

I mean, that comes back to the product market fit concept, right? Once you have it, people will go for it.

 

Sameer Ather (23:40)

Absolutely.

 

Caitlin La Honta (23:42)

Just as you've mentioned this multiple times, I think it's really interesting. I mean, you all don't have a sales team. So what does that process look like? Are you doing all the sales or why haven't you needed to invest there?

 

Sameer Ather (23:52)

We have decided Ketlin to grow responsibly. I'm not a 20 year old who's going to play around with an idea. If it fails, then move on to the next one. My attention span is, I don't know which generation I fall in, is pretty long. Want to grow responsibly. Don't want to burn through too much cash. ⁓ And as long as we are seeing a 2x growth every year, which we are.

 

Caitlin La Honta (24:06)

you

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Sameer Ather (24:15)

I remain satisfied by not actually burning through a lot of cash. It's not that we would not want to have a sales team. I think every founder, entrepreneur, CEO or leader has to decide how to use the funds that they have wisely. And we have devoted almost all of those funds on the technical side.

 

Caitlin La Honta (24:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Sameer Ather (24:39)

solving again our partners needs. So every time we get a feedback, there's always a new product. At this time, I would not say product, but a feature. We are probably building at least three new things at any given time. So that's where we have allocated most of the resources. And we believe that if we keep doing good work, that new partners, new clients would come on their own.

 

Abdul Rastagar (25:07)

Got it. Yeah. So in terms of building the product itself, where did you know to start? I know you made a comment a while back that in the first version, if it could even meet one one hundredth of what's current capabilities, it's doing better than what the manual coding process is, right? Which is shocking to be in this era and still say that that that's how far behind the system. How did you know where to start and how did you kind of build that? I know you said input from the market, but take us through that a little bit deeper.

 

Sameer Ather (25:18)

Right.

 

Right.

 

So Abdul, I think then it falls back on, do you have really good partners, co-founders and team? Even if you identify a problem and you have an idea of what the solution could look like, I think you need a whole team to be able to accomplish something like that. You can't do it all alone. And if you can, then that's awesome.

 

But even with all my cross-training as a physician and working in the field of AI, I think, again, I rely very heavily on a team. Brainstorm all the ideas, try to figure out what a potential solution may look like. Always explore the simplest way to solve a problem. My only feedback continuously is, what's the simplest way to solve a problem?

 

It's very easy to solve a problem in a more complicated way. The simpler you keep, the less it breaks, the cheaper it is, the faster the implementation. And then, of course, you can keep layering that simple solution with more and more complex layers thereafter. You don't have to build the most complex thing to start with.

 

Caitlin La Honta (26:45)

I was going to ask one more question, just as you've mentioned this a couple of times as well, that you primarily see kind of growth marketing through word of mouth, that that's a really common and popular channel. And just any more to add to that in terms of, I mean, it speaks to you obviously how powerful and useful your customers have found the product, but.

 

What do you kind of see as the most useful, in addition to word of mouth there, if you want to expand on that further, kind of useful tactics from a marketing perspective to get the word out about your product?

 

Sameer Ather (27:16)

So I don't remember the book I was reading. I wish I'd remember the title. But it said, don't focus on sales, focus on marketing. And again, I can't remember the name of the book. But if I find something, I'll email you later.

 

Caitlin La Honta (27:32)

Yeah.

 

Abdul Rastagar (27:32)

Yeah, tell me that

 

because I want to send it to some salespeople I know.

 

Sameer Ather (27:35)

I read a lot of books. I'll have to look back. there is a book that I was reading. Again, I don't want to give a wrong name out there. But we are not shy about marketing. We do want to put our name out there. We do want to the value that we have generated for our partners out there.

 

What we don't do is make cold calls. What we don't do is try to reach out to people who are not yet ready for a solution. What marketing does is you remain in the subconscious mind. And when your client, your partner, your target audience is ready to adopt a solution, they remember you.

 

Caitlin La Honta (28:03)

Mm-hmm.

 

Sameer Ather (28:20)

I think that way, when we get a lead, the chances of conversion are absolutely great. So word of mouth are, we use, I think we get a lot from the press releases we do with our partners. I call them word of mouth too, because getting a press release out from some of these organizations is no easy task. And if they're willing to put their logo out there, which I would say it's a word of mouth marketing.

 

And those exercises, I think, have helped us gain recognition in this segment.

 

Abdul Rastagar (28:52)

That's fascinating. I'm going to throw two data points at you right now. Okay. So the first one is there was some studies done in the last year or two in the world of marketing, which are making the rounds. The first one is that only 5 % of your clients are ready to buy at any one point in time. Right. So if you're trying to sell to the likely, you're going to reach the 95%. Right. So yeah, because they're not in the buying cycle, they don't have the budget, whatever, maybe 10 different reasons, right?

 

Sameer Ather (29:07)

Yes. I believe you. Yes. Even if they have a problem, right? Is that an assumption? Yes.

 

You're right. Yes.

 

Abdul Rastagar (29:19)

So you have to be able to find the 5 % and the way you find the 5 % is by doing marketing, just exactly what you're saying. The second piece that is an independent study, but it goes in my mind very well is that in the business business world, 86 % of clients choose the vendor they knew before the buying process started. So they'll go in into a competitive bid for whatever technology. They'll have four, five, six vendors.

 

Sameer Ather (29:24)

Yes.

 

Abdul Rastagar (29:45)

come in and invite them in, they'll 86 % of the time they choose the one that they knew before. And if they didn't know, they're.

 

Sameer Ather (29:51)

If I was to layer a little bit more because I again not saying it was part of the study of the life I've seen if they find if You make them believe or if they believe that it was their decision to choose something That has a much stronger positive emotion into it then somebody telling them that this is the company to go with So if you go online and if you could just type our company's name and go to any of these

 

Caitlin La Honta (30:06)

Mm-hmm.

 

Sameer Ather (30:20)

software buying websites, whether it's G2, Slashdot, SourceForge, or any of these numerous websites out there, we are probably the only and all our clients, the reviews are out there. So, and again, it's word of mouth, it's all our partners. I'm talking about large clients willing to put their name and their title and their company's name and put a review out there.

 

And I think that's the approach we have taken.

 

Abdul Rastagar (30:48)

And that leads to the whole concept of, the brand is so important. You have to develop that brand awareness, that brand credibility upfront before you go into the sales cycle. So I love the approach you're taking. I fully believe in it. So I'll follow up with you on that book because I really want to know which book it was.

 

Sameer Ather (31:03)

I'll try to figure it out. Yes.

 

Caitlin La Honta (31:05)

I also love the term you used subconscious because that's a lot of how brand operates. It's not obvious things. It's that, I've heard of this company many times and I see people I trust talking about them or willing to stand by, you know, and you're not thinking about those actively, but those touch points add up over time so that when you are ready to buy, there's a positive feeling that you have towards the company. And it can be hard. you know, a lot of leaders don't, it's hard to know the importance of that when you're not seeing the direct ROI as in,

 

Sameer Ather (31:26)

Right.

 

Caitlin La Honta (31:34)

it's converting tomorrow.

 

Sameer Ather (31:35)

No,

 

I would I totally agree with you and I believe I completely believe marketing and branding Take precedence over sales I think sales are important but they come after you have done your due diligence in the world of branding and marketing

 

Caitlin La Honta (31:46)

Yeah, it's a unique position. Yeah.

 

Abdul Rastagar (31:56)

Yeah. I guess the third data point to that is that 70 % of the purchase decision has already been made by the time they contact you, right? So they'll have done all their due diligence ahead of time. They'll have talked to other users of the product. They'll have looked at your G2 ratings. They'll have did the research on...

 

Sameer Ather (32:11)

Yes,

 

I think so. Abdul, again, I don't really have numbers for ourselves. But given that we get a lot of inbound inquiries from large health systems, I'm quite sure they are seeing us somewhere out there. our conversion rates are good, which means that they have, supporting what you just said is they have already made up their mind. They just want reassurance.

 

Abdul Rastagar (32:16)

Mm-hmm.

 

Caitlin La Honta (32:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

Abdul Rastagar (32:32)

Yeah.

 

And that's exactly, and those are actually your metrics to look for, right? Whether you're actually doing well in your marketing efforts is when you're getting that inbound, that spontaneous inbound to you, it's spontaneous to them. It's not, they know exactly where they're coming from. Right. So it was fantastic insights. I guess one of the questions here is as it kind of lets you kind of thank you and want to make sure we're respectful of your time here. If you're looking at, if you were to talk to other entrepreneurs like yourself,

 

Caitlin La Honta (32:50)

Yeah, this is great.

 

Abdul Rastagar (33:00)

who are starting to build these tools or maybe just a little bit behind you, what's the advice that you would give them? What should they look out for? What should they do?

 

Sameer Ather (33:08)

learned a lot with somebody who has made a few pivots I have at least two or three things that I think I wish I knew beforehand one is there is no easy way to success you can read about these things but you only know it once you do it there is no easy path to success it requires it's a long road a lot of hard work a lot of sacrifices

 

And I wish somebody had told me before because I did not know. Second thing is, as I mentioned, your first idea, don't hold on to it. It may succeed, invariably does not. Again, lot of past entrepreneurs have said, entrepreneurs have said in the past, the same thing is it needs a couple of pivots on an average before you can find what is required out there.

 

not what you want to build for them. I would say those two things. And the last thing is what we already discussed is don't put all your eggs in one basket on day one. Try out. If it's really what the world needs, you will have a quick adoption. And if the world doesn't need it, you can keep putting as much money as you want. You can raise all the money that you want and the world will still not need it with the most sophisticated product out there.

 

I think those are the couple of things that I've learned over time.

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Episode FAQ

 

Q: What are the biggest challenges in achieving product-market fit for AI healthcare startups?
A: Product-market fit in healthcare AI often requires multiple pivots. Initial ideas may not solve urgent or monetizable problems. Startups must test minimum viable products (MVPs), collect real user feedback, and validate that their solution addresses a need—not a want—in the market. Iteration and customer-led refinement are critical to success.

 

Q: How can AI be applied effectively in healthcare operations?
A: AI in healthcare operations is best used for process automation, such as medical coding, claims processing, patient triage, and data abstraction. When deployed correctly, AI tools can increase efficiency, reduce errors, speed up reimbursement, and uncover missed revenue opportunities.

 

Q: What’s the difference between solving a 'need' versus a 'want' in healthcare product development?
A: Solutions that address operational or financial needs—like revenue cycle inefficiencies or denial management—are more likely to gain adoption. Products addressing 'wants', like non-essential features or niche improvements, struggle to scale unless they evolve into must-haves.

 

Q: How do healthcare leaders evaluate AI tools during procurement?
A: Healthcare buyers increasingly prioritize measurable ROI, accuracy, and risk reduction over buzzwords. Demonstrating reductions in denials, improvements in claim turnaround time, and direct revenue impact is more compelling than technical specs or AI terminology alone.

 

Q: How should startups test early versions of their healthcare AI products?
A: Founders should launch MVPs with trusted partners, focusing on simple implementations that deliver immediate value. Early deployments should be used to measure ROI, gather qualitative feedback, and refine the product iteratively before scaling.

 

Q: What are the best marketing strategies for AI healthcare startups with no sales team?
A: High-impact strategies include inbound marketing, customer referrals, client-authored case studies, press releases with partner logos, and third-party review platforms like G2 or SourceForge. Cold outreach is less effective than brand visibility that builds trust over time.

 

Q: How has perception of AI in healthcare changed since 2022?
A: In 2022, healthcare leaders were skeptical—concerned about accuracy and risk. By 2025, perception has shifted: AI is now viewed as more accurate than humans in certain tasks, and healthcare organizations are actively seeking AI solutions to improve efficiency and future-proof operations.

 

Q: What are signs that a healthcare AI solution has strong product-market fit?
A: Signs include fast adoption after MVP launch, inbound demand from similar organizations, ROI within weeks of deployment, minimal churn, and customers advocating for the product to peers. The solution solves a real pain point with measurable impact.

 

Q: What is evidence-based marketing in the context of healthcare AI?
A: Evidence-based marketing uses real customer outcomes—such as faster reimbursements, lower denial rates, or cost savings—to validate product claims. It mirrors the concept of evidence-based medicine by relying on data and results, not just features or hype.

 

Q: Why do most B2B healthcare buyers choose vendors they already know?
A: Studies show 86% of B2B buyers select vendors they were familiar with before entering the buying process. This underscores the importance of brand awareness, reputation, and early-stage marketing even before active sales cycles begin.

 

Q: How can startups reduce risk when testing new healthcare AI solutions?
A: Avoid overcommitting resources to early versions. Instead, run lean experiments, gather feedback quickly, and be prepared to pivot based on real-world demand. Responsible capital allocation and customer feedback loops reduce both technical and market risk.