Martin Aboitiz, Repeat Founder & Angel in "Healthcare & Paella" - Ep.24

09/27/17 • 54 min

Epilogue to the Interview:

Martin Aboitiz asked me to add this to the notes:

"...I do have a regret though, that I did not mention four names during the interview:

Juan Manuel Garcia Carral, my CTO in Intermedia who suggested Healthcare as an industry worthy of application and data integration, Dr. Richard Low of PraxisEMR, who first gave me a picture of the lack of data integration in Healthcare Juan Manuel's suggestion, and my two other founders in Healthjump, Mark Ribeiro (our original CFO) and Shanti Aboitiz who was our Patient Advocate, both have moved on, but were pivotal in getting Healthjump started. Sal's Notes:

In 2013, (I said 2003 in the podcast by mistake) my brother in law Martin Aboitiz sat in my dining room and sketched out this business he planned to start. I thought “majnun” which is Arabic for crazy! How would this guy who had built software companies in Argentina found a startup to help Americans have better access to their healthcare data? But I underestimated his resourcefulness and titanic tenacity. Four years later, Healthjump is at cashflow break even and has 7.5 million patients in its data warehouse. I’m glad because I have some real money riding on Martin’s company.

Listen to this lighthearted but informative interview. It was inspired, in part, by an excellent meal shared by the interlocutors the night before which included an outstanding paella (see photo) and some delightful wines. We talked healthcare, pivots, angel investing homeruns and flops and many other matters.

Topics covered include:

Martin Aboitiz Bio
Martin Aboitiz Gets Started in His Career
Lessons from Working in a World Bank-funded Project in the Philippines
Lessons from Doing Business in Argentina
How Did Martin Discover He Wanted to Be an Entrepreneur?
Martin Aboitiz’s Advice about Dealing with Failure – Really Good Stuff!
Martin Aboitiz’ First Startup – Intermedia
Martin Aboitiz Sets Up an Informal Incubator for Argentine Startups
Martin Aboitiz Founds Healthjump in 2013 to Make Medical Records More Accessible to the Patient
Problem: Healthcare Data is Sitting in Silos and People Don’t Have Access
Healthjump’s Pivot
Saber & Amadeus as Analogues
“Now in healthcare it's different because what we're seeing right now is the equivalent of the Hyatt across the street buying the bed and breakfast. That did not happen in travel but it's happening in healthcare.”
Lack of Healthcare Record Interoperability Is Pushing Consolidation to an Absurd Extreme
Healthjump is Helping Make Electronic Health Records (EHR) Software More Interoperable
Seven and a Half Million Patient Records Now Reside in Healthjump’s Data Warehouse
As More Practices Use Healthjump to Understand Their Data the Number of Patients Who Can Use Healthjump to Access their Records Grows – Network Effect
Healthjump is at Cashflow Breakeven
Martin Aboitiz Starts Angel Investing – Three Homeruns in a Row – Thought Angel Investing Was Easy
Martin’s Favorite Pivot Story - Twitter
Argentina as a Place to Build a Startup – OLX & Mercado Libre

Epilogue to the Interview:

Martin Aboitiz asked me to add this to the notes:

"...I do have a regret though, that I did not mention four names during the interview:

Topics covered include:

Martin Aboitiz Bio
Martin Aboitiz Gets Started in His Career
Lessons from Working in a World Bank-funded Project in the Philippines
Lessons from Doing Business in Argentina
How Did Martin Discover He Wanted to Be an Entrepreneur?
Martin Aboitiz’s Advice about Dealing with Failure – Really Good Stuff!
Martin Aboitiz’ First Startup – Intermedia
Martin Aboitiz Sets Up an Informal Incubator for Argentine Startups
Martin Aboitiz Founds Healthjump in 2013 to Make Medical Records More Accessible to the Patient
Problem: Healthcare Data is Sitting in Silos and People Don’t Have Access
Healthjump’s Pivot
Saber & Amadeus as Analogues
“Now in healthcare it's different because what we're seeing right now is the equivalent of the Hyatt across the street buying the bed and breakfast. That did not happen in travel but it's happening in healthcare.”
Lack of Healthcare Record Interoperability Is Pushing Consolidation to an Absurd Extreme
Healthjump is Helping Make Electronic Health Records (EHR) Software More Interoperable
Seven and a Half Million Patient Records Now Reside in Healthjump’s Data Warehouse
As More Practices Use Healthjump to Understand Their Data the Number of Patients Who Can Use Healthjump to Access their Records Grows – Network Effect
Healthjump is at Cashflow Breakeven
Martin Aboitiz Starts Angel Investing – Three Homeruns in a Row – Thought Angel Investing Was Easy
Martin’s Favorite Pivot Story - Twitter
Argentina as a Place to Build a Startup – OLX & Mercado Libre

Previous Episode

Super Angel Michael Mark & Marketing Wiz Kathryn Roy in "Ask an Angel Investor" Ep. 23

Super angel Michael Mark and marketing wiz Kathryn Roy take questions on the topic of angel investing. This was recorded before a live audience at gorgeous Babson College, a university dedicated to teaching entrepreneurship. Sal, as usual, finds it hard to keep his opinions to himself!

Topics covered include:

Recorded on the Beautiful Campus of Babson College, Thanks to Margaret Jones & Nina Block
Michael Mark Mini Bio
Kathryn Roy Mini Bio
Michael Mark on What Angel Investing Is Not – Not the Best Way to Make a Lot of Money
Kathryn’s Thoughts on Making Money in Angel Investing
Question from Mark T.: What’s the Minimum Number of Startup Investments to Get a Good ROI?
Audience Question: What Are the Three or Four Things You Look for In a Startup?
Startup Founder Davey Bakhshi Asks a Question - Fundraising Pointers
Davey Bakhshi: Do you Invest in Founders from Other Countries?
Have a Real Sales Funnel for your Fundraising – Willy Loman Beats Einstein
Monthly Communication with Your Investors and Constituents
Lisa’s Question: What Would You Do Differently Today as a Founder Given the Changes?
Go to an Incubator
What Has Not Changed in Fundraising
Question from Listener Martin Aboitiz: What Startups Do You Regret Not Investing In?
“Another Train Leaving Every 15 Minutes.” – Michael Mark
Question from Kit, a Freshman at Babson: Can You Build Business without Raising Money?
Audience Question from Alan, an MBA Student at Babson: Notes vs. Priced Rounds?
Audience Question from Marcos, an MBA Student at Babson: How Long Does It Take to Build Trust?

Next Episode

Sal Daher is Interviewed by Martin Aboitiz, Engineer, Founder & Angel in "Every Startup Is a Folly"

Quotes from the podcast:

“Every startup investment is folly, but not every folly should be a startup investment...”

"How can I eliminate the real follies?"

“Banks are dominated by all these rules, and they're extremely risk averse. It's sort of like belt and suspenders, and yet, periodically, their pants fall down.”

“Someone who's selling is steeling herself for failure in every phone call...”

Sal Daher got a person who knows him really well, his brother in law Martin Aboitiz, to interview him in this 25th episode of the Angel Invest Boston podcast. The result is a wide-ranging and light-hearted conversation that tells a lot about how Sal sees the world of startups.

BTW, during the podcast Sal refers to the physicist Stephen Hawking as Christopher Hawking. This lapse was occasioned by Sal having spent time with Christopher Lydon (Christopher Lydon's Website) just days prior to recording. Sal's sure neither gentleman takes umbrage from the confusion.

The list of topics includes:

Sal Daher Bio
Switch from Engineering to International Finance
How Sal Started Investing
How Being a Banker and an Engineer Helped Develop Sal’s Investing Philosophy
”When I look at markets, I understand that markets are not knowable, and so I don't look to guess where markets are going. I don't look to think that I know more than anybody else, or that I know more than the market.”
“Banks are dominated by all these rules, and they're extremely risk averse. It's sort of like belt and suspenders, and yet, periodically, their pants fall down.”
“I've developed kind of an approach of skepticism, you know Popperian skepticism of how much I can know.”
Sal Has Andrew Carnegie as a Model – Keep a Lot of Cash to be Able to Buy Bargains
“I can tell you right now, anything we're buying, we're buying it very expensively.”
Sal Thanks Listener GranTia for Leaving a Review
How Sal Decides on Which Startup to Invest
“Every startup investment is folly, but not every folly should be a startup investment...”
"How can I eliminate the real follies?"
“What I have to do is I have to play a defensive game, I have to avoid investing in losers.”
“Martin, I discovered a really amazing thing, being really smart and really knowledgeable has zero correlation with the ability to sell, zero, okay?”
“Someone who's selling is steeling herself for failure in every phone call...”
Regrets?
Anti-portfolio
Sal’s Favorite Pivots – Pixability & SQZ Biotech – Personal Pivots
“I'm a big fan of pivots, because a pivot is an expression of belief in the ability of human beings to fall down and get up again.”
Networking in Boston vs. the Bay Area
“There's no other place like it [Boston], and there's an unbelievable variety of things that go on. It is a little bit insular, it is hard to network here, but I can tell you that the angel investing environment, there's no angel investing environment that's as collaborative as the one here.”
“Now, venture capitalists aren't interested in follies, they're interested in sure bets.”
“How many companies can an angel investor successfully track and manage in his portfolio?”
People from Whom Sal Learns the Most