Steve Collens, CEO at Matter on Change, Innovation and Impact in Health Tech and Health Care.

Meet Matter And The Mission

Stephen Collins, I'm the CEO of Matter.

Steven, thank you for joining me. Well, actually, officially now this afternoon, as of a couple of minutes ago.

Well, still morning here, and thank you for having me.

Let's start with what is matter so that we can ground people in your organization. Then I want to get a sense of sort of what you do, how you got there, you who you're incubating. Like there's just a million, this is going to be like a nine-hour podcast. I have so many questions. But but let's start with some of the table stakes. What is matter?

Yeah. Well, I've cleared my calendar for the next three days.

So phenomenal. I appreciate it.

What A CEO Actually Does

Matter. The mission of matter is to accelerate the pace of change of healthcare. And so we do that across uh the entire universe from startups all the way to large uh corporations and organizations. Um, we're structured as a a not-for-profit entity based on which we did based on this thesis that collaboration is the best and and just fundamentally the way uh that healthcare innovation needs to happen. Yep. So we do practically speaking, there are three core things that we do. So one is we partner with uh large life sciences companies, with health systems, uh, with insurance companies, medical associations, and we run startup accelerators for them. Uh, we run six or seven a year now. They tend to be small cohorts, very focused on what our partners are looking for. And the content of those changes every time we do one based on whoever it is that we're working with, whatever large organization, uh what it is that ultimately success looks like for them. The second uh primary thing that we do is we run an incubator for healthcare startups. We primarily work there with early stage companies, a mix of software and medical devices. They are companies from all over the world. Uh, we've incubated 1,100 companies uh since we started in 2015. They've gone on to raise almost five and a half billion dollars to fuel their growth. And they're they're innovating across kind of every aspect of healthcare that you can imagine. And then the third thing is we work with large organizations and help them figure out how to innovate more effectively. It is hard for large organizations to innovate, period, full stop, again, big pharma, and and it's just, you know, the large organizations do a lot of things extremely well. And one of those is not rapid innovation. Yep. So there's that. Um, but then we found as we were trying to advance our mission, we were trying to foster collaborations between entrepreneurs and big companies, and we've we just we found that there was a real opportunity to work with these large organizations and help them figure out how to innovate more effectively themselves, which kind of helps the overall picture of what it is that we're trying to do. So we work with uh teams, sometimes we create teams, we work with individuals uh to just help them operate a little bit more like entrepreneurs, but obviously within the context of the organization that they're a part of. How long has Matter been around? February 2015, we opened our doors.

Okay. And what do you do there? And have you been doing it since the incubator was initiated?

I I feel like this could easily turn into a therapy session.

I that's what we do. If I if I can get you to cry at some point on the podcast, then it's success.

So I founded matter, and my role has uh some things have stayed the same, and a lot of things have uh changed fairly dramatically as we have uh changed fairly dramatically. So, you know, fundamentally we we have a small team, we have about 20 people. Um, we also have a huge network of volunteers and we'll contract stuff out with other people. And so, you know, my primary role in generally speaking is to make sure we've got uh the right people and they're doing the right things and they're resourced in the right ways. I would caveat that we never have as much in the way of resources as we actually need, but we you know figure out how to how to make that happen. And we have a fantastic team. Uh, many of them have been a part of this uh mission for years and years and years. Uh, they come from a lot of different uh types of backgrounds, and I so that's a huge part of what we do. I the culture that we have is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to figure out. I've worked in organizations in the past with good cultures, I've worked in organizations with cultures that didn't work for me, guess what be a polite way of saying it. And so I I care a lot about uh what is the culture and how is it that the ways that people who work for matter interact with each other, interact with our partners, uh interact with our clients and with the startups and with our whole community to help everybody achieve what it is they're trying to achieve. Aside from that, yeah, I spend a lot of time working with uh some of our larger partners, a lot of the, you know, big pharma companies and and health systems and others, you know. As I mentioned, I spent about 10 years in in that world and I really enjoy that part of what we do. And then I spend as much time as I can with the entrepreneurs, kind of helping, helping them. I I guess if I had were to redesign my ideal job, it would probably be just working with them, but uh, but I love uh almost every aspect of what it is that I do on a day-to-day basis.

There's really such um uh unique energy. I'd I've been involved in some startup communities, and there's just such amazing like energy and optimism and enthusiasm that positivity and sometimes naivete that you know comes with you know that startup kind of community. Then you've also got the excitement and responsibility of like sort of nurturing and culture. And also, I imagine with those large partners, they're engaging with you because they have a thirst for access to innovators that you are able to, through your organization, help them quench. Like all of those things must be wow, I wish there were three of me so I could do all of those things, but they all must be somewhat invigorating. Like that feels like a very dynamic environment to be in.

It I mean, yeah, you nailed it. I mean, so when I left uh big pharma and I was working for a venture firm uh for a little while, and then uh actually started different incubator and then started this one. And I I just loved being around uh entrepreneurs. I mean, even before I, you know, when I came out of industry, and that's so that was 16, 15 years ago, 15 years ago, I guess, that I kind of shifted over from the corporate world into the entrepreneurial world. And I love working with entrepreneurs. As you said, they you can't you have to be, you have to have a certain uh level of optimism. They are individuals whose passion really aligns with what they're doing every day. I mean, they they are trying to change the world and run through walls in order to do it, and it's very hard, it's very challenging. Most of them, frankly, don't succeed, but just to do that and to be and and to decide that that's what you're gonna do every day. It's just very interesting type of people. And I love getting to know them. I love their stories about how it is that they came to be doing what they're doing, why they're doing what they're doing, what they're hoping to achieve, what part of the world they're trying to change. And then anything I can do to help them, I'm just grateful for that opportunity. And then it also, as you said, uh on the flip side, the not flip side, on the corporate side of things, you know, we get to work with the PR, I get to work with the people who are inherently trying to go faster. They're trying to change things, they're trying to be more innovative, they're trying to be more creative, they're trying to look for ways that are slightly different or sometimes very different, but in some ways different than the playbooks and the norms and the processes and the systems that whatever organization company they're working for has uh kind of baked into how things operate. And we get to help them do that and and be more innovative and and figure out how to kind of exercise those muscles to get more done. And it's I find it very interesting, very satisfying, and just you know, really um, you can just see people light up when you know things click around innovation and their ability to kind of do things in different ways.

It must be a pretty magical thing to be able to be the accelerant to connections that on sort of both sides of the ledger, I imagine, can be quite transformative. Like you connecting whatever, an insurance firm with a startup or an entrepreneur who's got a solution. I mean, that connection is the thing that could take that entrepreneur from being a dreamer to being an operator. And that connection could be the thing that helps that you know insurance firm or health network create a competitive edge, you know, energize their organization. Like when those things happen, it must just be like really quite magical moments to be able to facilitate. Yeah.

So, you know, the accelerators that we run, most again, they're not all perfect, um, but you know, a lot of them are are they they it's what you described is the real value for these entrepreneurs. And yeah, I'm thinking of one in particular who you is part of an accelerator where for a number of our accelerators, we we run validation studies or um we we've built out a network of health systems, some insurance companies, other organizations that have huge amounts of data. And we will help the uh startups validate their core hypotheses. So they may, you know, have a real understanding of the problem, and and then they they have some ideas like, okay, our uh people are gonna use our solution, they're gonna like it, it's gonna work this way, it's gonna solve this problem for them. You know, angels are gonna be uh singing and birds are chirping, and uh, and then, but they have to validate all those assumptions, and we make it possible for them to do that in a really efficient way. And and that's baked into a number of the accelerators that we run. And I remember I was talking to one entrepreneur afterwards, and you know, he's he pulled me aside and he said, Hey, you know, I've been I'm a serial entrepreneur, I I've done this a bunch of times. I have taken uh companies through Techstars, Y Combinator, uh been part of Google for startups. He named a few other uh accelerators programs that he'd been a part of. And he said, I gotta tell you, I nothing has been as valuable as the program that we just went through with you. The insights that we got uh from all these large organizations are just it's like gold. And you know, we can't thank you enough. And we're so it was one of those moments where it's like, okay, great. You know, I mean I've heard this in different ways before, but it just really crystallized how much value we're able to create and how much faster some of these companies are are able to go once we kind of help them, you know, point them in the right direction and give them the tools that they need in order to go faster. And then I could talk about the other side too. You know, like I remember we were working with a team from a large life sciences company. And, you know, in this case, they actually were based at Matter. Uh we have offices in Chicago, although we work with companies all over the world. But you know, this they happened to, you know, we're based at Matter for a couple months, and and we worked with them. We we we helped them uh just sort of guide them through an innovation process. It's it just a way of working that just isn't what they had learned how to do in their career. You know, so they generated ideas. Uh we helped them kind of you know, brainstorm generate ideas really rapidly, and then you know, within 10 days, two weeks, we had them out testing their ideas with uh with the market, with doctors, with up with others, and they came back and they were like, Oh my gosh, they aided all of our ideas, and uh, and this is incredible because if we were still back inside the company, we would have not learned this for another six months. We would have invested, you know, God knows how much time, yeah, energy, resources, uh, external dollars, developing something and then going to test it. And and we've just saved so much time and we got so much insight through these conversations that now we can go back, we can tweak them. And so we did that. We helped them kind of tweak them and then get to a point where they they had something that they had real conviction around, and then they took it back inside and of the company and developed it. You know, it just yeah, these couple of the moments that have stuck out.

Validation Studies That Save Months

Well, and that that example of of the sort of the organization uh you know being embedded in in matter and then going and sort of doing a kind of market validation that ended up not being very validating. There must also be something to being in an environment where people are testing and to a certain extent, sort of failing or testing and adapting quite consistently and quite rapidly. Like there must be some degree of comfort to come back into the environment at matter that is all about innovation and saying it didn't work and it didn't work early, and okay, how do we pivot? When you talk about organizations that don't have a lot of muscle memory around innovation, they also don't have a lot of muscle memory around taking a swing and a miss at innovation. So not only did you help that company come to some insights more rapidly, but you likely did it in an environment that felt much safer to fail within than it would have if you were, you know, then having to sort of report to the, you know, the CEO or the president of something who is not themselves an innovator.

Why Big Companies Struggle To Innovate

Yeah, I mean, you gotta it, it I mean, you know, the the good entrepreneurs are especially in the early days, they are constantly iterating, they're constantly adapting, they're very close to their future customers, their prospects. Um, you know, I mean, I think about so when I used to do market, you know, need to do market research whatever 20, whatever years ago, you know, in the in the industry, we, you know, we'd go work with the market insights. I was on when I was on a brand team. So we go work with the market insights people, then they would uh, you know, subcontract or contract out to a market research firm, and there'd be subcontractors in different cities, and you know, we'd fly around and sit behind one-way glass and we'd observe some conversations, and then we'd get these incredible reports full of information, which is amazing. Uh, you know, I remember what it costs, but it costs a lot. And then talk to startups and how they're doing things, and they're like, Yeah, you know, I went and I uh just stood at the train station and asked people about their experience with the healthcare system, or you know, things like that. And they're able, it just moves so much faster and they're so much more nimble. Yeah. And they do that at every step of the of the way. So they come up with an idea. Well, they go test it. And then I mean, you know, the good ones, and then they develop it a little further, and then they go, you know, get get information. And it's almost like this continuous feedback loop that allows them to much more quickly identify what it is that they can build and how to build it, and then how to kind of position it that's gonna create uh real value and meaning for uh for their audience. And I just, you know, and and that that isn't a uh muscle that gets exercised really well in big companies for lots of lots of reasons, you know, some of which are kind of stem from from things that I think are very rational and make sense. You know, big companies have have brands and legacy to protect, and they've got expectations of all sorts of stakeholders, and you know, plus they have to have systems in place to, you know, that in order to function as a large company. You can't have a bunch of kind of people running around doing their own their own things. So there's a lot of good reasons, but then there's a lot of cultural stuff and political stuff and hierarchy, and it just squashes uh in a lot of cases the ability of people to move really fast and and operate like this. And people end up uh you know, just spending a lot of time uh doing CYA work rather than uh kind of figuring out, okay, that didn't work. Let's go figure out what will work in as wrap it away as as possible.

How Matter Evolved Beyond Chicago

You very elegantly sort of tied the three areas of focus up in a in a really nice bow, the sort of partner uh incubate and support with innovation. When you were writing on a napkin or writing on a whiteboard or contemplating in your mind starting up matter, were those the three areas that you thought you would be focused on? What did this idea look like as it was becoming a reality uh versus where we are now? Is it trade stayed true to the original mission, or has there been change over time and what drove some of those changes?

In fact, yeah, absolutely not is what this is. I kind of figured Mike that was a you know, yeah. We we uh we started really as a place-based incubator for Chicago area healthcare and life sciences startups. And the problem, you know, co-working space back at that time was was not terribly common. Um, and and there's a huge amount of healthcare, big healthcare assets and resources and people and talent in Chicago. We've got big pharma device diagnostics, hospital supply, insurance, pharmacy, like world leaders in every category. Most of the medical associations are based in Chicago. We've got world-class uh research institutions, academic medical centers, you know, just a huge array of really high-quality healthcare companies and organizations, and you know, not a thriving innovation ecosystem. And so the original premise was uh, you know, in healthcare in particular, uh, more so than than I almost any other industry. You you just you have if you're building, if you're a startup, you're and you're in healthcare, you have to be glued to the industry. Yeah. Uh and so let's uh let's tap into all these resources we've got and really help entrepreneurs locally. They can we got a big space, they'll work here, we'll we'll provide some mentoring, we'll provide connections and and resources, um, and we'll we'll make friends with all these big companies and big organizations, and they'll be there to help uh support the startups. Uh and so that's that's how we started, right? And a few things happened quite quickly. So one was the startups uh who were here pretty quickly you know, we're like, hey, this is fantastic. I love this. You know, we could come to work in an environment that is full of like-minded innovators. And we love that you've got all these relationships in Chicago with these large organizations. But do you know anybody outside of Chicago? Because, you know, we're trying to trying to get, you know, one, we're ultimately trying to sell something into the the healthcare system or you know, of a one part or another, but also just even in terms of building it, we, you know, getting more more perspectives. Like, hmm, all right, that's interesting. And then at the same time, we had all these large companies, uh, you know, pharma, health systems, insurance, other, you know, who are um even some of the medical associations who were part of us uh supporting what we were doing early on, and they and they they were saying, this is fantastic, we love it. We can just come to you. Uh you've got just such all these tentacles into the startups here. Uh but do you know anybody outside of Chicago? Because we're looking for the best healthcare solutions, and it's a big world out there. And then so this is great, but ultimately, you know, while we love supporting uh specifically what's happening in Chicago, we our interest in this is really in identifying the right healthcare solutions. So that's those couple of things that happen. We also uh made a decision early on when we were putting this thing together that while we are structured as a 501c3, uh, we did not want to rely on philanthropy. Uh, we wanted to create real value for all of the parties who were uh giving us money to operate. And so when we were talking with all these Large companies, uh, we realized uh, you know, pretty quickly that we were going to need to really develop some specialized resources and ways of creating value for them that would keep them engaged because we we needed them to show up, you know, not just write a check and put their name on a door or something. We needed them to show up. We needed them to see us as part of an extension of their innovation efforts. Until we started, uh, you know, went through probably a couple of years of testing different ideas, different value propositions until we really landed on things that really created tangible value for them. So all that happened in the first couple of years. Then COVID happened.

Uh-huh.

And that uh really uh, you know, so we were, I think 2020, early 2020, we were probably 25% of the startups we were working with, 20% were not Chicago based. Uh, but we're, you know, we were still very much a Chicago-focused thing. And every day there'd be a hundred people who'd show up and they'd be working and getting to know each other. Uh, then COVID happened and all that went out the window. So uh the place part of it became for a while totally irrelevant. Yeah. Uh, and then, you know, on an ongoing basis, diminished part of the value proposition for everybody involved. Um, at the same time, co-working space, if you look at it in 2026, you know, co-working space is everywhere. So that's not a novelty or kind of a new thing. So the place-based component really shifted uh very much and really kind of diminished in value. And so that changed the way that uh we in particular really needed to help startups make the right connections, how it is that we needed to support them. So anyway, you fast forward to today, and the majority of the companies that we work with are not in Chicago. And, you know, it's about 40% are in Chicago, about 40% the rest of the US, about 20% outside the US. In terms of the big companies, you know, we've worked at some point in time with every single one in, you know, healthcare uh life sciences company in Chicago, but our partners are all over the world. And so, yeah, it's a it's very different uh now, partly because of our own needs and partly just you know big shifts in in the environment around us.

Have there been trend lines that you've been able to identify over the years of cohorts of startups that are focused on a certain channel problem technology platform? And if so, what are you seeing now? Can you reflect back? Have there have there been sort of identifiable waves that have led us to to wherever we are today?

When we started in 2015, digital health was and you know, over the years, two-thirds of the companies that we've worked with and do work with are digital health companies, so maybe even a little more than that. So if you think you go back to 2015, it was a pretty new concept. There, you know, health IT was a a thing, but if you look at uh how much investment, how much how much money were venture capitalists putting into digital health companies in 2015, it was a little blip. It was like a couple billion dollars. And then you look at what they were putting into biotech and just within the healthcare realm as dwarfed by other categories. And it started growing so rapidly. But in the very beginning, you know, there was uh there were a lot of companies, you know, generally solving problems that they had experienced personally, where the the founders had had experienced those things personally. It still happens, but it seemed over like an overwhelming amount at the time. It was this kind of you know novel period where it was a relatively new space. There were a lot of venture capitalists who weren't in healthcare previously, who were kind of started uh tech investors in particular, who started investing in digital health companies, um, health systems, pharma company, like nobody knew what to do with any of this. Um, nobody had any experience in it. And they were all really excited just to meet these companies, you know, get to know them, understand what kind of innovations were happening, how this kind of new area was was focusing or what they were focusing on. Um, and you know, it was a little bit, and then there were kind of like this you call it like the go-go years. So, you know, money was just kind of building and building and building, you know, all the way up through the first year or two of COVID when it just went through the roof because digital health was going to solve everything. Yeah. And we had this huge wave then of telemedicine companies and remote monitoring solutions and and things like that. And now that the the sector, the space is is significantly more mature. I would not call it mature, but uh just under relatively speaking to how it was 10, 11 years ago. And big organizations, you know, have uh become more skeptical, they've become more more cynical about things. They have a lot more experience. They have people who they've tried things, they've they've kind of you know seen how uh how the world works, they're bombarded on a, you know, like whoever has something in their title in a big organization that makes it sound like they're the person you should talk to if you're a startup, you know, they're bombarded by pitches, you know, every day. And so what we're seeing now is our are startups that are are trying to uh answer a bit of a different question, which is how can I generate an ROI for my potential buyer very quickly and very demonstrably? And that's because the buy that's what the buyers are demanding. Where it used to be like, hey, innovation, you know, we'd love to learn more about innovation. Now it's like, hey, uh what what are the the new technologies that can that can deliver an ROI in the next 12 to 18 months? For health systems, that tends to be, you know, these days it's all efficiency, it's back office, it's payment stuff. It's you know, this is not stuff that's revolutionizing healthcare, but it's addressing their pain points that are top of mind right now. Um, for pharma companies, it's a lot of, you know, drug companies generally, they want to get more of the right patients on therapy sooner and keep them there longer. And so it's, you know, how do we the how can we better understand our, you know, patients? Yeah. And how can we segment and target and essentially all the things that we have tried to do and been doing for years? How can we just do all that more efficiently? Yeah. And that's just the AI world that we're living in.

Well, it's it's it's interesting. I mean, you and I met at the conference in uh in New York a couple of weeks ago, and Amy Lenaro is the DP of Pharma, uh, Bausch Health was the closing speaker. Yeah. Um, she mentioned Bausch's investment in AI-powered market intelligence that has allowed them to, you know, identify and kind of deploy the field force against targets that would otherwise uh likely not have been called upon, that has had a very material impact on the business. And, you know, I think even in her own words, it was sort of like, you know, this this is not super sexy, but it's really impactful. Yeah. And I and I do remember because we were also, you know, often asked about it even as a creative partner. You know, I remember when innovation was like sort of a line item where it was, what have I done that checks off the innovation box? Like what is the thing that I can bring that is very, very different than how do we drive business impact to your point, you know, quickly and materially, is a very, very different evaluation criteria than is this thing checking off my innovation task?

Yeah. I yeah. I think that that in some number of years, AI is going to significantly transform everything about our experience with healthcare, with health, healthcare, the healthcare industry. Um, that's a ways away. For now, what it's able to do, and I I thought what what Amy had to say was really interesting, what some of the other folks were were saying was really interesting in that program at that conference. And, you know, it is it is it can enable uh pharma companies and others to kind of augment their capabilities and make them better at the things that you know, conceptually they're they've been trying to do for a long time. And the one of the things that we see a lot of uh is that organizations are really struggling to capture that value, that they're not uh that a lot of the the kind of business leaders uh have a hard time figuring out what are the right use cases to prioritize and how to align the organization around those use cases. And then what are the and once once the use case has been identified, the the it's not identifying the technology or the partner or whatever, that's the the easier part. So it's identifying these use cases, and then there's this whole like change management thing, like reconfiguring workflows, what people do, how they, you know, and people who've been running the same playbooks for years and years and years and been really successful, and now they got to do different things. And all of that is is what we just, you know, from the leaders that we talk to, those are the things that they're really trying to figure out.

When Startups Lose Defensibility

We have really recently in my organization, maybe we are like middle adopters, but we are starting to vibe code and build a bunch of stuff. And it went from not that long ago, something that just wasn't on the radar, to now we've got like a whole bunch of applications, and our our issue is more you talk about use cases, our issue is more like, why are what are exactly are we building these for? And are these industrial strength? Are they production ready? Are we going to use them? Like, are we gonna like how do we not how do we do this, but how do we put some discipline around this? And in doing that, it has put a finer point on, I think, something that lots of people talk about, which is in some ways the lack of friction and velocity with which you can create things that used to be software products that you would subscribe to and pay a lot of money and make big corporate decisions around. And I have a number of times had meetings or demos of people who are showing, oh, this is my new software, AI-powered software platform that I'm looking for you to subscribe to that's gonna solve some sort of problem in the pharma workflow. And I now look at that through a lens of, oh, like I could probably just have like somebody on my team build that in an afternoon. So how is that starting to impact you? And maybe how has it changed the lens through which you evaluate or contemplate some of the startups as they may not have a super defensible position because someone could just go remove their first mover advantage by building something in an afternoon. Like, how has that changed the environment that you work in when it comes to the startups?

It is such an interesting question and such an interesting topic, and people have a lot of different uh views on it. You know, I'd start out uh first of all, just the way that companies are being built now, these startups, is so completely different. Yeah. Friend of mine built a company over a number of years, very successful, sold it. Um, and then, you know, he was still running part of it. He is still running part of it. Uh, you know, I was talking to him uh, and he is building like three different products now that had nothing to do with his company on the side. And he showed me what he was doing. And I mean, this was probably actually this was probably like a year ago. Uh, and he was just, I mean, he's an engineer, but he was he had all these agents coding things for him that were just running all the time. And then, you know, he kind of checks in on them and he checks in them remotely, remotely controls his computer. And so when he's got a minute, he'll just tweak something and then put it in the environment, runs it again. And so he's building things that could turn into multiple companies by himself. Um, you know, as opposed to how he built the company that he had sold, which was the old way, which is you just hiring engineers and then you run out of capacity, and then you need more engineers and whatever, and it's slower, it's expensive. And so that is a kind of quintessential example of how it can change how these companies can be built, and and some of them, depending on what they're doing and who they are, but they could be built much more efficiently. Um, and so it kind of lowers some of that uh some of the risk level from that perspective. So that's one thing. Another thing that I think we're starting to see happen is that you know, the software is less uh less valuable, as you said, it's less defensible, it's less the thing, and industry expertise and knowledge and relationships becomes more and more and more important because uh any any maybe not me, because I can't really do anything unless it's in claude co-work, but you know, it doesn't people who are just a little bit more of an engineer than I am, it doesn't take a lot to be able to build things. So the value then shifts to the people who really know the nuances and the intricacies of uh of the industry. And to your point about, you know, you could just build this ourselves, I think there will be whole categories of things and um where that is true. I think, at least for the foreseeable future, where something isn't core to a particular business, they're not gonna want to take that on. And so if there's somebody where that is core to their what it is that they're doing and they're so good at it, and they bring this expertise and they're constantly gonna be thinking about that thing and tweaking it and adjusting it and making it better, I think that will continue to be uh a durable value proposition for a long time, I think.

Where Pharma Teams Should Start

Yeah, I think that yes, I think that's a very uh it's a very strong counterpoint because in some ways it is um you know, it's it's a bit asinine to be like, oh, I could build that or not for now. Like you yeah, you can sort of build a functioning prototype, but if what you're talking about is something that is going to be deployed in a in a you know in a corporate environment, uh, you know, it needs to be uh uh you know, there needs to be a whole bunch of compliance and you know, your durability. And like there's a there's a there's a there's a very like there's a there's a there's a lot of daylight between uh this thing is um um sort of has been stress tested to the point that whatever AstraZeneca is gonna use it, uh and like something that Neil built, you know, on lovable in an afternoon. Um uh so so yeah, I think that that that's a that's a really good point. So um um yeah, it's like you do this. Stephen. Um so so let me let me then sort of end up with uh again, kind of like a gigantic topic that that uh could be a show unto itself, but but maybe uh if you can distill down a little bit, um you know what what have your experiences been like with and maybe would we'll say uh pharma, because um uh you know, pharma and insurance like they're all a little bit different, but but but let's say pharma, given the audience of of this show, that the I I get this sort of palpable uh feeling of um like anxiety. Uh there's almost like there's a there's it's even like there's kind of two categories, right? Like there's a bit of a I'm just not even kind of thinking about a category, and uh uh like AI and innovation and change and what's going on. And then there's the folks that are that are thinking about it. And I think the thinking about it brings about anxiety because it's there's a lot of like, I don't know where to start. And you know, there's somebody in my organization who's supposed to be responsible for this. So what do I do? And like, you know, a lot of being told, like, you know, you actually can't do this, and why don't you try this? And it's it's a it's a it's a really complex time, I think, for someone who wants to be even kind of their own change agent in it in big pharma right now. So what where do you start or what have you seen as you know successful first steps when you're supporting folks in that kind of category three, large organizations, helping them innovate, uh, category um, you know, of light?

I think that is spot on to what it is that we're seeing and hearing also. Um the and you know, so one thing I would say to anybody is if you're not uh using uh even just basic AI tools a lot, you should just start doing that. And you know, I mean I when I first started, I guess it wasn't that long ago, even that feels but you know, I was like um I used Chat GPT to make up you know bedtime stories for our kids. And you know, it's like just little things that that may be tangential or or not related at all to the business, just start to get a flavor for how these things work. Um, but then beyond that, when you start to bring it into the enterprise, you know, um, so a lot of the conversations we've had, there there's the tech people, the IT people who are willing and able to help, and they've got, you know, but they need to they need to uh sort of be pointed in a certain direction. And then you've got the business leap, this more senior business leaders, most of whom don't really want to spend a whole ton of time figuring out uh you know AI tools. Yep. Um, and then you've got the kind of layers underneath that who are who know they need to be doing more and figuring it out. They don't really have a ton of time, they're not uh sure exactly where to get started. They probably have access to chat GPT or quad or something on an enterprise level. They're probably using it at you know two percent of its capabilities. Um, and then you've got the younger people who probably in their free time are spending a lot of time uh just living in an AI world, but they're not empowered to uh because they it's you know figuring out what are the right use cases and what needs to change and and how to prioritize. Um, so we actually spend a fair amount of time with uh pharma companies and others um on this question. Um there's a guy we work with now who uh who is sort of an AI kind of genius, but he you know, he worked in big companies also. He worked in uh he built startups, he was a data guy. I when I met him years and years and years ago, before that was a cool thing. Um he was at IDO for a number of years. And and so we've kind of worked with him to create this thing for specifically for pharma companies, actually, that you know, we'll go in and and just pretty quickly, you know, just help them understand here's what's possible, here's what's going on, um, here's uh, you know, figure out how to prioritize certain use cases, certain things to get started with. What's the um you know the easy wins, the easy things that are just gonna start exercising those uh those muscles. Uh and it's been it's really successful. Um it's uh it doesn't take that much uh time or that. Um in order to kind of figure out how to get started and what direction to go. It just requires a process that isn't natural to people because it's just not been done before.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that is like it's not this is not learning to play the violin, right? This is there's there's not a this is not a 10,000 hour situation, right? Like this is very much a um it's just uh um it's it's just very different, but in some ways uh terrifically not complicated, right? Like it is for sure, right? You want to get into super, super intense stuff, it's gonna be complicated. Um, but it really is way more of a behavioral shift. So I I I can imagine that that uh um there are lots of moments where just like the light switch goes on when you're helping those organizations and you've got someone who's who's duckets a bunch and can and can just lead them by the hand a little bit into the you know into the room in which they can spend a lot of time, must be must that you can just you can just see what it happens.

I'm gonna steal your this is not learning how to play the violin analogy because it's it's so good. Like yeah, it's not bad. It doesn't it doesn't take 10 to 10,000 hours, it doesn't take uh that much, but it it takes some uh reps and just a different way of thinking, and and as you said, it's behavior, and uh and people don't you know changing behavior is for almost everybody is inherently uncomfortable, and and uh uh and and so if you know if they don't have kind of a uh real confidence um in how to do that, uh then it can be it can produce a lot of anxiety.

And and the folks who are like mid or senior in their career have gotten have likely owe their success to their behavior. So right, so it is it is fully like DNA level, but it didn't because it's like this is the thing that I did that got me here, and if I do that thing a little bit better, it will likely get me to the next place. And so uh to think about how to both do the thing that has made me successful while also doing that thing differently is it's mental gymnastics, it's it is not natural, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, people learn how to run certain plays and playbooks really well and they rise in their careers because they're really good at it, and and exactly to your point. I think you gotta figure out how to do that a little differently. And uh how much time do you do you invest in that? How much risk do you take uh investing in in that, how much personal capital do you invest in in that, or or how much do you kind of keep sticking with uh what works? And we're we're in a bit of you know, we're in a transition phase. So you know you can get still get away with that, and it's still still works, um, but the world is changing fast. Um and people are gonna need to learn how to exercise these different muscles. Um, they don't need to become engineers, uh, but they they do need to kind of learn here's what these different tools can do. Um, and and and to be able to just think about how uh to kind of change behavior, change workflow, change patterns, change the tools that they're using. Um, and that's gonna continue to evolve and accelerate over time.

Well, you just mentioned that the world is changing fast. On the topic of fast, uh our time together has absolutely blown by. This has felt like a blink. Um I I uh especially with everything that you've going you've got going on. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day uh to spend it with me and have this conversation. Um, I've really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. I I've really enjoyed it. Really appreciate the uh opportunity to talk with you about this.