Zero to One

In 2004 I was at a cardiology practice in Florida implementing an EHR and medical billing system. I spent more than a year inside the clinic and watched the documentation workflow up close. Most medical records were on paper at the time, and clinical records came back from transcription as paper that wasn’t searchable, retrievable, or portable.

To solve this, I built a small web app for audio upload and document delivery, with transcription handled through a couple of vendor contracts. Harbor Cardiology and a handful of nearby practices were the first customers.

I started the company without raising capital. Customers paid us on 30-day terms while we paid our transcription vendors on 60-day terms, and the gap between the two covered our operating costs. We ran on that model for nine years. I sold the company in 2014, to go back for an MBA.

I started Let’s in 2016, right after my MBA. Two threads converged. Business school had made me wary of how social media affected relationships, and I wanted to build something that pushed in the other direction. Separately, coordinating meetups with friends still ran on chat, which is time-consuming and skips a lot of automation that could make life easier: finding a time that works for everyone, making reservations, booking tickets, arranging rides. Let’s was the platform built around that coordination, designed to make real-life meetups easier to plan and worth attending. I could monetize it through in-app services and referrals.

I designed, funded, and started the company on my own. We released the app in 2017. The MVP worked, but the product did not. The use case wasn’t tied to an immediate pain point sharply enough to drive repeat use. I shut Let’s down in July 2019 after it failed to gain traction.

A small group of film enthusiasts in Tampa wanted a venue dedicated to films from and about India. We co-founded the festival, ran it on volunteers, and organized it on weekends and evenings.

I worked on conceptualization, branding, and annual programming, and trained the volunteer team of 20–25 people across each festival weekend. Over five years the festival grew to more than 150 submissions and an audience of over 3,000 a year, and we premiered numerous award winners.