4 Lessons for our Failed Health Tech Startup, from my Lawn Dinosaur

Many of you might already know Dug - he’s the six-foot tall steel lawn dinosaur in our front yard, a reddit celebrity and local Redwood City community landmark. Some of you might also know that GeneSolve, the health tech startup where I was CMO for the past year-and-a-bit, recently ran out of money and was forced to liquidate its assets. During that time, I worked with some fantastic people and learned volumes about running a new venture, raising capital, and working with co-founders. In addition, I got an education in an entirely new industry: biology, chemistry, health technology, bio-hacking, and the dynamics of the wider medical industry. On reflection, I’ve since learned that there are a few things Dug does that might explain why, despite being a dinosaur, he’s still around and GeneSolve isn’t.

1. GeneSolve was a good idea. Dug is a good idea that (ahem) scales.

By most accounts, GeneSolve was a great idea - highly customized health optimization based on extensive blood and DNA analysis. The science was strong, the results were great, a typical doctor can’t provide care at this level of precision, and many, many people wanted it. However, once our prototype was polished, the business shifted to a SaaS model for delivery through a network of doctors. It was then we discovered that we hadn’t sufficiently invested in all the documentation and systems the businesses needed to deliver at scale. We essentially still had the vertical supply curve of our initial prototype – no matter the price, the number of patients we could treat was constrained. It’s somewhat similar to why we don’t all have jet packs: a prototype is not the same as inventory.

Dug, on the other hand, has no problem scaling: he can be added to new distribution outlets like instagram, can be liked by people around the world on Facebook, and can be easily and instantly featured on news sites like Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Even his t-shirts, via teespring, easily scale to meet demand (and raise money for local schools, yay!)

2. Fundraising takes effort. Sustaining a brand also takes effort. They’re related.

When GeneSolve raised it’s first round of capital, the attitude was “well, that’s done, let’s get down to business” - and that’s good, because doing the work is obviously essential. But when it became apparent that more financing was going to be needed to get us into the black, the resulting scramble took too many people’s eyes off the day-to-day operations, and it turned out that it required more time than we had left on the clock. This was probably slightly due to the hubris inherent in any ‘good idea’, but as mentioned above, a good idea isn’t enough.

In contrast, Dug just keeps trying to do right for his fans and the ‘fundraising’ (if you measure it in physical fan mail or social shares) happens pretty naturally and consistently. People want to be a part of it, and they show their support however and whenever they can. He doesn’t take time off from being a dinosaur to try to boost his popularity: it’s pretty clear that would be counter-productive.

3. Changing strategy is okay. Changing core ethical values probably isn’t.

GeneSolve was hugely concentrated on a relatively small number of customers - it was an expensive and complex service, and every single customer mattered. It was also referral and renewal driven, so those customers mattered all the time, long after they’d made their first purchase. When decisions were made that benefited the customers, there was obvious lift - like when we finally navigated and accepted insurance for parts of the service. However, there were decision points where the interests of the business appeared to be at odds with what patients would want. In retrospect, every time the patients lost, so did we. We started out focused on fixing a giant hole in the medical industry; as soon as we started using excuses for our service such as “it’s okay, it’s like that at every doctor/hospital”, we were slowly becoming the problem we’d set out to solve.

Dug has remained faithful to his initial mission, albeit a simpler one: make people happy. He’s a dinosaur that dresses up sometimes. It’s really not that complicated, but it is unique, and he’s experimented with new ideas over the years. He’s celebrated neighborhood birthdays, welcomed home soldiers, supported the local police, and recently he sold t-shirts to benefit local schools, raising nearly $700. Everything followed the values that he started out with: make people happy. Is it really surprising that he’s gotten so much fan mail?

4. Change the World for Someone.

It’s fair to say that Dug may be far more trivial than a fledgling health tech startup, but I’ll leave you with this quote from his most recent Hallmark card, left at the door like so many others:

“Thank you for creating childhood memories that our family will remember long into the future. Your caring and creativity show in the ways you share your dinosaur!”

Changing the world only means changing it for somebody, and for the better. GeneSolve wanted to change the world, but it seems Dug’s better at that too.