Smooth.

Last night at Mixergy's Drinks 2.0 DocStoc founder Jason Nazar offered the first 25 people who linked to DocStoc a free copy of my book. Note this suave attempt! (Also, note I'm not linking. I have enough copies!)
 

Vijay has an interesting business-- and one that is jaw droppingly ambitious. Essentially he wants to make healthcare an ala carte retail system that disintermediates insurance agencies. (I met a ton of startups last night so hopefully I'm doing that justice.)

In some ways, this was a lot like many of the startups I met in LA. They weren't "me too" ideas at all really. They were very creative and even audacious. But almost every one seemed to have a huge practical business obstacle. I don't actually mean that as a knock. Marc Andreessen is fond of saying every great company started out as an insane idea, and that if an idea made perfect sense he'd never fund it. (Again, I'm probably badly paraphrasing him...)

I'm guessing this is partially due to the flashier LA culture, but I think the lack of a institutionalized startup scene means less people are telling you how much you can't do something. There's a fine line between naiveté and insanity, sure, but I'm not going to be the one to try and draw it. Selfishly, I say, thanks for making a night of listening to pitches interesting! Life is too short to hear about the next great social network or Twitter clone...

Comments

[Vijay Goel, M.D.]

Sarah,
Thanks for the mention. It was fun chatting with you last night and it will be fun bringing to life the long tail in health services (via better service/hours/specialization/equipment, etc.). Overinsurance is the real issue, sopping up ~12K/family with very little of that money invested in improving health so that people don't ever get sick--we wait today until after something bad has happened. Imagine the difference we would see if people spent half of that 12K/family on taking care of their health on a daily basis--and if they knew what worked well for these everyday needs.

I would disagree on your statement that fewer people in LA tell you that you can't do something. In LA, not having the established VC networks and serial entrepreneurs, there are fewer examples of success and more people who think that building anything from scratch is impossible.

I think what you see is that where the infrastructure doesn't exist and startups aren't mainstream, those who have chosen to play this game are used to overcoming more obstacles because every step of the way is harder. The vision has to be more transformative and ambitious, otherwise why would we bother to fight as hard as we have to from Day One (and not give up or move north)?...the ROI to risk ratios would give any finance guy fits! As it gets easier, ambition (delusion?) levels will decline as the pioneer population is diluted by those attracted to the trappings of success and who are more interested in having a life than changing the world.

[sean percival]

Hey guys, if you add the link to Docstoc and would like a free copy please email at:

seanp at docstoc.com

Bonus points if you embed a doc!

[Victor Agreda Jr]

Vijay, that sounds like a fantastic idea! You've definitely touched upon something there and I wish you luck.