ACV 42: Test Your Hypotheses With Low Code Experiments (Dorothea Koh, Founder/CEO of Bot MD, Part 1)

08/05/21 • 45 min

BIO
Dorothea is the founder and CEO of a healthcare technology company, Bot MD. Bot MD is a mobile-based AI chatbot that provides an interface for doctors to quickly access information related to hospital policies, formularies, check who’s on call etc. Along with her founder YC, Dorothea started Bot MD back in 2018 and joined Y Combinator’s summer 2018 batch. Prior to starting Bot MD, Dorothea rocketed up through the ranks at Medtronic and then Baxter, eventually holding the portfolios of country head for Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei and Myanmar. However, she chose to give that up and chose the unconventional path, resigning from her job to start Bot MD.
3 THINGS I LEARNED

Choosing a co-founder is one of the most important steps. In Dorothea’s words, it’s like being married and raising a baby together with your partner. Only you and your co-founder fully understand “how sucky it is when times are down”. It’s during these times that your co-founder might be vital in providing you with encouragement.
Start by building low-code prototypes. These are prototypes that involve little to no code. The goal is to prove certain hypotheses before you get too caught up with building the prototype.
A startup journey might take 10 years of your life, with lots of stress and sleepless nights. So you need to ask yourself whether your idea is worth the pain of going through that process. Do people want it enough? What is your right to win, and why should you be building it? What’s the size of the market?

TOPICS WE COVERED

What Bot MD does
Why Dorothea left her first job at EDB
The initial experiment Dorothea ran that made her realise that Bot MD was a good idea
Why building a startup is a painful journey but a very instructive one
The importance of having a co-founder
What a cofounder relationship is like
What Dorothea does as CEO
Factors to consider when starting a startup
Dorothea’s epiphany that turned the company around and helped them find product market fit
Bot MD’s breakthrough product in NUH

Choosing a co-founder is one of the most important steps. In Dorothea’s words, it’s like being married and raising a baby together with your partner. Only you and your co-founder fully understand “how sucky it is when times are down”. It’s during these times that your co-founder might be vital in providing you with encouragement.
Start by building low-code prototypes. These are prototypes that involve little to no code. The goal is to prove certain hypotheses before you get too caught up with building the prototype.
A startup journey might take 10 years of your life, with lots of stress and sleepless nights. So you need to ask yourself whether your idea is worth the pain of going through that process. Do people want it enough? What is your right to win, and why should you be building it? What’s the size of the market?

TOPICS WE COVERED

What Bot MD does
Why Dorothea left her first job at EDB
The initial experiment Dorothea ran that made her realise that Bot MD was a good idea
Why building a startup is a painful journey but a very instructive one
The importance of having a co-founder
What a cofounder relationship is like
What Dorothea does as CEO
Factors to consider when starting a startup
Dorothea’s epiphany that turned the company around and helped them find product market fit
Bot MD’s breakthrough product in NUH

Previous Episode

ACV 41: When Perseverance Meets Opportunity And Wise Mentorship (Dr Daniel Ting, Ophthalmologist / Medical AI Expert)

Dr Daniel Ting is the Consultant, Vitreo-retinal surgeon in the Singapore National Eye Center (SNEC), Head of AI and Digital Innovation in the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), and an Associate Professor in Ophthalmology with Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore. He is also the visiting Full Professor in Ophthalmology in Zhongshan Ophthalmic Eye Center, Sun Yat-Sen University, China; 2017-2018 US-ASEAN J. W. Fulbright Scholar to Johns Hopkins University, the EXCO of the American Academy Ophthalmology (AAO) AI Task Force and Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Studies (STARD-AI) Task Force. At present, he is the Associate Editor of Nature Digital Medicine, Section Editor (AI and big data) in British Journal of Ophthalmology (BJO) and the Editor of Ophthalmology, Ophthalmology Retina, Ophthalmology Science and Asia-pacific Journal of Ophthalmology.

To date, he has published >180 peer-reviewed papers/book chapters/conference abstracts, including >40 AI and digital technology articles in JAMA, NEJM, Nature Medicine, Nature Digital Medicine, Lancet Digital Health and others. Daniel holds several patents in deep learning systems for medical imaging analysis, and is also the co-founder of an AI spin-off company, EyRIS Pte Ltd. EyRIS has commercialised the Singapore Eye Lesion Analyser and to date has partnered with >20 optometry practices.
3 THINGS I LEARNED

Perseverance is a fundamental ingredient for success. Dr Ting’s initial work was rejected numerous times, but he never gave up. He kept persisting until it was finally accepted into a big journal (Journal of the American Medical Association) - which was the break he needed to launch his career.
Mentors are important, both in terms of giving you advice to guide your career and opening door and providing opportunities for you to build new skills and competencies.
If you want to learn new skills, you have to be ready to read a lot. Today this data is freely available on the internet. Apart from reading and listening to talks, you can also consider following the leading lights in the field on twitter for instance to get a feel for where the cutting edge developments are.

Next Episode

ACV 43: Lessons Learned From Juggernaut Companies And Small Startups (Dorothea Koh, Founder/CEO of Bot MD, Part 2)

BIO
Dorothea Koh is the founder and CEO of a healthcare technology company, Bot MD. Bot MD is a mobile-based AI chatbot that provides an interface for doctors to quickly access information related to hospital policies, formularies, check who’s on call etc. Along with her founder YC, Dorothea started Bot MD back in 2018 and joined Y Combinator’s summer 2018 batch. Prior to starting Bot MD, Dorothea rocketed up through the ranks at Medtronic and then Baxter, eventually holding the portfolios of country head for Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei and Myanmar. However, she chose to give that up and chose the unconventional path, resigning from her job to start Bot MD.3 THINGS I LEARNED

It hurts to “wander around in the desert” looking for product market fit, but it’s an unavoidable part of the journey and it teaches you a lot of lessons. Trust your instincts as an entrepreneur. Keep iterating until you have something that customers snatch out of your hands, maybe even before it’s perfect.
Think twice before raising funds. Dorothea thinks of it like credit card debt - you can draw down as much as you want on it, but there’s a hefty interest bill to come later. Do as much as you can to stretch your funds. If your idea isn’t working, think about shutting the firm down rather than raising more money to keep a zombie company going.
It’s important for leaders to be on the ground, so that you know exactly what your customers want. Dorothea used to make her sales reps take her to the deepest parts of China with them to meet her customers.

TOPICS WE COVERED

What life was like at Y Combinator, and how it differs from the Stanford Biodesign course
What it was like pitching to her seed investors - and what seed investors are looking for
What it feels like to “wander in the desert” looking for product market fit
How you know you have product market fit
How you should think about raising funds for your startup - it’s not a free lunch
What Dorothea learned from working for established medical technology companies
How Dorothea went to see the users of her company’s products in far flung villages - and the lessons this taught her
Skills you should focus on learning when you are working for other larger organisations
What’s next for Bot MD