Habits and Hustle - Episode 120: Doug Hirsch – Co-Founder of GoodRx, Former VP of Product at Facebook

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Doug Hirsch is the Co-Founder of GoodRx, Former VP of Product at Facebook. Somehow finding himself ahead of the curve at every opportunity, starting Yahoo chat, creating tagging people in photos online, and now revolutionizing the pharmaceutical market and how we find and price our medications, Doug has been a disruptor from day 1. Explaining how he develops these seemingly clairvoyant ideas through his time at Yahoo, Facebook, and now GoodRx he sheds light on the insecurities that drive him and how he started a company without any knowledge in the field. Everyone should know about GoodRx and this episode is a great place to start. Youtube Link to This Episode GoodRx’s Website  GoodRx’s Instagram  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits in Hustle, fresh it. Hi Dad, how are you? I am good, how are you? Good, thanks for coming on the podcast. I'm excited to be here. I'm very excited to have you. I've told you that now probably like 4,000 times prior to this podcast, but okay, so today on Habits and Hustle,

we have Doug Hirsch and for you guys who don't know, who Doug is, he is the co-founder of a company called GoodRx and if you don't know what it is and are not using it yet, this is your lucky day because we're gonna save you so much money and this is not an ad, I am very serious. Doug has disrupted the entire healthcare system, and we're going to learn all about it.

Sounds good. Thanks for coming. Let's do it. All right, so like I said, so first of all, why don't you tell people what good, for those of you who don't know what good Rx is, what it is, and we can kind of just go from there. Good Rx helps people understand the cost of healthcare, ultimately, because in this country,

because of the ridiculous system that we have in place, everything is a mystery, right? I mean, imagine walking into any store or buying any service where you don't know what something costs. And yet the biggest industry we have in this country, the $4 trillion healthcare market has no price tax, right? And so you're left in a situation where too many Americans just simply don't go to the doctor

or don't go to the pharmacy because they're like, if I go, I'll be bankrupted. I think the average American has something like $400 in their bank account. Any event like that would literally just end their financial security. Our whole mission has always just been to try to bring Education and information to Americans so that they can make decisions and take control of their healthcare budget Just like you do in any other category And so that's what we do. We know we've helped many Americans about 20 million Americans a month use our product But really we're just trying to to be an advocate for patients and to build some Trust in an industry that really doesn't happen. All right. I want to just even take it down to the most basic level.

Literally, you guys can download the GoToRx ads. You can, like Google, and you can put in the search any drug if you go to a Walgreens and you have to get whatever medication. And they say the drug is $65. You just literally say the name, in the search engine, and then all these other places that have that drug for cheaper pop up. I kid you not, and it's that simple.

And people sometimes think there has to be a catch, and there's literally no catch. That's easy. And that just happened, and that's how I kind of figured it out. I was years ago, I was going somewhere, looking for, I had a medication, and it was $195. I was like,

what the hell? And this is worth insurance. And then I went on that search engine and it would put it in and then the drug across the street at the Ralph's across from that wall greens, it was $27.99. That's a massive gap in in price. And this is not something you get the pay for to get this advantage. It is literally that simple. And that's why I'm telling you, this app, this company is such a disruptor and it will save you so much money. And that's why I'm like, I just love you. So let me ask you, why are the prices, of all so different from like from one place to another from one pharmacy to a grocery store like the same exact

Yeah, so healthcare is unlike actually you have to really suspend common sense, right? I think most people when they want to think about any business you think okay Well, I buy this bottle for a dollar and I sell it for two and I make a dollar profit right? It's pretty straightforward, but healthcare doesn't work that way in this country because in healthcare there's a third party involved. So we talked about insurance, right? So you know, there's you there's the seller of whatever product or service and then you've got this insurance company sitting in the middle Messing up everything and it's not that insurance companies are bad They're working on behalf of both you and maybe the company are employed by or the plan

But the problem is is it just creates irrationalities. So for example, let's use drug as an example. So common generic drugs effectively cost nothing to make. There's dozens of manufacturers around the globe. If you take say Crestor like I take, which is a common stat in that millions of Americans take for high cholesterol, the card cost of goods of that product is a dollar or two.

Let's just say the pharmacy acquires it for three. But then the pharmacy has to deal with the insurance companies. They're called PBMs in the drug industry, but just call them insurance companies for sake of argument, who then say, hey, I represent millions of Americans and I want a deal. You got to give me 80% off the cost. And the pharmacy goes, oh, 80% off, that's a lot. But I'll tell you what I'll do is and I'll take this two-dollar drug. I'll make it 200. And then when it give you 80% off, I can still make a profit, right? And then in the old days, nobody cared. This was all just boring industry stuff that you didn't care about. But then what happened is insurance got worse and worse in this country. So like when I entered the workforce,

you know, again, if I just had a card and you know, my parents said, get a job with good insurance, life was good. But then what happened is you got these big deductibles and all these fancy words that honestly most people don't understand. There's prior authorizations and stepped therapy and short form of all point of these things is basically saying, hey, we're just going to pay for less insurance company and you the patient are going to pay for more. And so what ends up happening is that that's silly $200 price you were never supposed to see. You're seeing it. And so when you and I show up at the pharmacy, all of a sudden something that you cost to cost $200. But if you go across the street, like you said, it could be 22.

And so what we do is we just bring all these different data points together and we show you where there's really great opportunities to save. Because there are really amazing ways to save and we can walk through some of those today. But you know, literally, you know, you shouldn't pay $200 for something and yet too many people do when you could literally pay like five or 10 or some cases even free. But you got to know where to look. And so think of us as like, Expedia of healthcare, right?

Just like, imagine the old days when you, you know, when you look up a plane flight, you just call United Airlines and whatever the price was, you'd be okay, but you don't do that anymore, right? Well, we wanna bring that to healthcare, where you don't just go, okay, you actually do your homework and very easily find that out of the safe.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's, so, it's amazing. So how did you guys figure out this whole, I mean, not to give away like the secret sauce? Oh no. Well, this is exactly how we did it. There's how, so it's amazing. So how did you guys figure out this whole, I mean, not to give away the secrets? Oh no. Oh, this is exactly how we did it. There's how we do it, everybody. It's very easy. You just do this and this.

No, but tell us the origin, how this started, and what the process was. Do you even think of that? Yeah, so it all started back in 2010. I had worked at Facebook. I was the head of probably Facebook and then after Facebook. That's it. We're a real loser.

After Facebook, I was kind of trying to do something entrepreneurial. I was ready to work for myself and not really work for someone else. And I had teamed up with two great guys. One guy was, I actually built photo tagging at Facebook. So if you're a tagged at photo and Instagrammer and like that, that was something that me and my, one of my co-founders built. And then, um, how was you? It was me and two other guys, yeah. So we invented this concept of tagging a photo, which you know, it seemed kind of obvious at the time, but yeah, that's a thing. So, it's a thing. And so we teamed up because he had moved down here. And then a third friend who I met through my mom, I think at a break the fast for, you know,

young people or something like that, is that the one where you fast? That's the one where you fast. Yes, that's it. And anyway, three of us were hanging out, and we all thought we would have an incubator and we would like each of us would start a business on our Fridays, we'd have lunch

and we should chat about our businesses. And then I had this experience of going to a pharmacy just like you in Santa Monica. And then I had this experience of going to a pharmacy just like you in Santa Monica and I walked in with a prescription hand and they said it'd be 500 bucks and I was like that's a lot. My doctor did not warn me this would be 500 bucks because I'm not sure I want to take it for five hundred bucks. And because I'm also naturally thrifty, I took it back and I went to the pharmacy next door where I didn't perceive any difference in quality. It was just different pharmacy and they said 250. Then I took it to a third pharmacy where this really nice woman was like, it's 400 bucks

and I was like, oh, that's a lot. And she chased me to the parking lot and she was like, I know I said 400, but I really want you to get her medication. I want you to be healthy. And so she's like, let's work out a deal. And I was like, am I buying a used car? Am I buying a prescription? Like it was just bizarre.

And so I brought it back to Trevor and Scott and I was just like, what's going on here? Can we get our hands on this information? Then I'm from New York. My father lives in Manhattan and I found out just by googling that in New York state, you can walk into any pharmacy and you can say, I demand a priceless and they are supposed to give you one. I dare you to do that because if you go into any pharmacy in New York and you say that, they will go, what are you talking about? Right.

So, my father went in and demanded a price list and the guy looked at him strangely and my dad quoted the statute and the guy went in the back and scribbled something down. And none of it was right, by the way, but it was bits and pieces of information, right? Right. And then we found out that 14 states actually had a law where they had to publish data. They were all wrong. They dropped the decimal point. So, instead of being $36.99, it'd be $3,699.

So there are all this, like starts and stops, but V1 of Guter X was really just scraping data off the internet and trying to put it together without a business model and just be like, hey, next time you're thinking of a subscription, here's some information that might help. And that was where it all started from. So this was literally your brain,

a youth thought of this, and then brought in the people that kind of helped you make this happen. I mean, yeah, these were by co-founders, amazing partners, and I definitely could not have done this alone. Like, we all, we ran the businesses all three of us as sort of co-ceos for a long time, and it's the best, because we all have very diverse skillsets. And so, I think this experience I had plus my co-founders knowledge of business and just, we called everything about farmers. So we just kept calling random people we met

on LinkedIn or something and we're like, hey, you look like you're in farmer sales. Can you tell me how your price has figured out? And sometimes they'd hang up a more often than not, they'd be like, yeah, let's talk about this. And it was really, I was amazed at how welcoming this foreboding industry was. And we found a lot of experts and the doors open, and a year and a door open there, and I actually know we had a business. Well, so how long did it actually take you

to get that algorithm or the whole business figured out? I would imagine a while, because you're creating it from scratch, right? I mean, I won't say that the first version of Guter X was perfect. I think some of our prices might not have been right. But we launched it at an event called a Health 2.0 in San Francisco in the fall of 2011. And at that point, you could just do a search for some drugs and get some information at some pharmacies. And then I met a bunch of people at that conference who knew a friend and their cousin's dog knew someone.

And then we found out about other ways that we could work with insurance companies to actually get really, really low prices and we could work with some pharmacies to get low prices. And it was just, bits and pieces start and stop a lot of hustle, a lot of it. A lot of just like, what if we try this? Oh, that didn't work.

What if we try this? That didn't didn't work. What if we try this? That didn't work. Cause healthcare's so complex. It's so complicated. I mean, even the smartest of the smart people, it's hard to even like bring it down to the layman's, you know, to a, to a language that people can understand because there's so many moving parts all the time.

Yeah. And you guys didn't have a, none of you have a background in healthcare, right? No. You or your partners. Nothing. So this was just you having this, like going, having this experience and being like, hey, you know what, why don't we try to do this

and like, actively start from scratch? But this night we're all good ideas. I mean, at least for me, that's where all got to this come from. You know, you're sitting around your kitchen and you're going, gosh, why does this bottle top work like this? What if it worked like that? Or this microphone seems like it could be better. You know, whatever the, like for me, at least I feel like it's an entrepreneur.

Right. That's my life, which is I'm always looking around and going, that just seems silly. Why are we doing it that way? We can do it this way. Or just listening to your friends and family going, this is a pain point for me. Like, like, I'm struggling to solve this thing. And you know, you may not be able to solve it, but maybe you can, right? Yeah. And so that's, I don't know, that's my obsession. Well, you did it. I mean, did you have to raise a lot of money for this? Like, what was the kind of, so you got this idea,

you tell your partners, I mean, then what happens, right? Because to figure out that type of algorithm would take some kind of capital, I would imagine, right? I mean, you came from Facebook. I mean, I'm sure you're not exactly poor before that, but. We hired an engineer on our own, just the three of us, a really great guy who I just saw today, actually. And we kind of threw this V1 of it up then.

And even, I mean, this was 11 years ago, but even today, it's really easy to get something basic up, right? I feel like so many people I meet, they're like, gosh, if only I had a million dollars. You don't necessarily need a million dollars. There's lots of tools out there that can make something relatively efficient to get out. And so we got together and we found this engineer and then we didn't really raise a ton of money.

We raised about a million and a half bucks in a convertible note. But it was really more just once we had started to got some momentum. We were like, all right, we've put enough of our money into this. Let's see, but mostly also because they would open up doors for us because maybe our investor knew someone and maybe they had a different perspective, but we actually ran the company, we always, well, I'd say until relatively recent

they run the company pretty thrifty, much like my original experience. Like we never wanted to get ahead of ourselves. I don't exactly quote me on this, but I want to say we were profitable from like 2012 onwards, right? I mean, we early on, like we're not're like we're not gonna be like that typical Silicon Valley company that you know It's buying blimps and rocket ships, right, right, you know Going all in and spending hundreds of millions of dollars hoping that they'll get some traction

We we kind of traction first and then we would slowly but surely increase our marketing and stuff That's incredible. So what was the first thing we did marketing why is to get the word out? Because you guys were profitable. I mean, it's an amazing idea. So it was at word amount, what was the kind of, where did you do? I think that the secret sauce for us has always been our relationship with healthcare professionals, with doctors, with pharmacists,

with the front of office of a doctor. You know, because one of the amazing things, I should mention also that it wasn't just the three of us. Like I have a very close friend who's a primary care doctor at USC here, and she's my companion, a one of the amazing things, I should mention also that it wasn't just the three of us. Like, I have a very close friend who's a primary care doctor at USC here, and she's my companion, a lot of this stuff. Because every day, every time I see her, I think she thinks I'm crazy, because I'm kind of like, tell me what happened today.

Tell me what happened to you. Like, what's going on with you? And because it's so broken, and it seems like there's a thousand ways to improve. And, and early on, I realized, wait a second, you know, when we first demoed our product at Health 2.0, it was all these physicians who came up to me, they're like, oh my God, I've been looking for this forever.

Because it kind of sucks when you're a doctor and you write a prescription because you see the patient needs something and then they don't take it, right? And costs is one of the big reasons why patients are just like, forget it. I'm not gonna do that thing. And doctors are really good people.

You didn't go to law school, a medical school for, you know, X in the year isn't get that much in a debt so that you could just make a quick buck. They actually want to help people. And so we found that their desire to help people merge with the content and information we could give them. And so doctors have been our greatest advocates since the beginning. And I think, you know, getting that trust, of course, you know, when your doctor tells you to do something generally, if you used to mean you can afford it, people do it. So I think that was one of our early, I'm not going to say we were geniuses and figured it out. It's just we saw that opportunity.

We saw that the doctors were really resonating with these tools. And we continued to build products and research and information that would help doctors to keep their patients healthy. I mean, I wonder how, I mean, I'm sure you have these stats like how many people have been sitting or lives have been saved because to your point that's even me and you and other people who have some expendable income and you see a crazy price on that you're like, I screw it, I don't need it. It's not, I don't feel any symptoms. And so probably a lot of things just go unnoticed until it's too late because they just don't want to get that medication. I mean, my obsession from early on has been, we do a terrible, terrible job in this country

on preventative care, right? Like, we're pretty good. Like, if you fall over on the street and ambulance will pick you up and it'll take you to the ER and you'll end up in the operating room and then you'll get dialysis or whatever the thing is, like, we do that and we spend a fortune on it. Just so everyone understands in your audience,

the US health care system is really not good. Obviously we spend, I think it's three or four acts, what other OECD countries spend, and our outcomes are way worse. I think we're number 11 out of like the 17 countries in the OECD. We're number 11. That is so crazy. I mean, just to be clear, spending four times more to achieve number 11, you wouldn't make it very far in most other. Life expectancy, actually, I believe, just to be clear, spending four times more to achieve number 11, you wouldn't make it very far in most of the other. And life expectancy, actually, I believe, is even decreasing, not just because of COVID, but because the outcomes are awful for people. And we're just spending money on the wrong things.

I was just listening to a different podcast other than this amazing one. I know I cheated on you. I was talking about how one... I'll edit that out, actually. Let's get rid of that. One percent of the America's GDP, our gross domestic product, goes toward dialysis, right? Wow.

That's a huge amount of money. That's like on the order of many other things that you would assume our government spends money. And this is just to be clear, end stage renal disease when your kidneys have failed. Because whatever that thing was supposed to happen before and did not happen, you don't just wake up with end stage renal disease.

Usually you have a lifetime of bad behavior and you don't go to the doctor and you don't take those medications. And it's like, imagine, and just to be clear, the meds that might keep you from becoming diabetic are anywhere between two and maybe 500 bucks, right? If you have insurance, we just actually launched a program of good or X where it can be free. So it's like, we have opportunities to solve this problem. You can solve the problem for two dollars or you can solve it for like three have opportunities to solve this problem. You can solve the problem for two

dollars or you can solve it for like three million dollars a patient later on. The problem is our system unlike the Canada for example is that we're not designed that way. We're designed around a profit-based system. We're not designed to look at, you know, if I'm your employer right now, I don't know if I care so much about what happens to you when you're 60, right? I really just want to control my costs and make sure that you don't quit. That's pretty much the extent of my goals. Yeah, exactly. And then why even with insurance? I mean, people have these really, you know, fancy, expensive plans, and it's still not even helping. Yeah, because what happens is people assume that they're paying a lot for something, and then it must be good. But then what, people just don't understand these terms.

I read something recently, only 7% of Americans know what a deductible even is, know what that word is, or max out a pocket. I don't expect your audience to know these words, or you shouldn't have to know what these words are, but the system we have is such that that's the world you live in. And so, everyone goes out there and they get insurance,

but they don't look at the fine print. And the fine print says that you have a 5,000 art deductible, or that only six drugs are on the formulary and the one you need is not there, which means you get that $200 price we talked about before. Or you have an emergency room copair. Here's the new one. The new term in the industry as a few years ago is co-insurance. Sounds like a nice word, but it's not such a good word. A copay means you pay $10 and that's it. Co-insurance means if it's a $20,000 visit and you have a 50% co-interest, you're paying $10,000, right?

And so Coinsurance is a fancy word for, we're sticking it to you. And so, you know, and it's not that I blame any player in the system, it's the nature of the system, right? You know, all these companies we're talking about have shareholders and, you know, and are just trying to control costs on behalf of someone else.

Right, right. But anyway, it's a mess. It isn't mess. So you start off just with doing the draw, this prescription drugs. And then you obviously, like you were saying, this program, which I'll get to, has expanded. I know you guys bought Hey Doctor a few years ago

to tell a me, when was that? Like a couple of years ago, right? 2019, yeah. 2019. So between that and telemedicine, was there anything else that you guys were developing or that was the second trial? A few things.

I mean, so we traditionally play in the generic drug side, which everyone falls asleep when they say those words, but that is not what it is. That is 90% of the four billion prescriptions written in this country every year. Oh, wow. Nobody cares. It's funny when we were starting to get our ex,

I'd find these like farmer reps and I'd be like, help us with this, they'd be like generic drugs. Nobody cares. And then I'd go to your research and be like, that's 90% of the business. Yeah. Because also the real drugs are like, that's like 20 times for 200 times more expensive. Oh yeah, and we even, we can talk about brand separate because actually brand the generic drugs work totally differently in terms of pricing. But so, but we have started to attack the brand drugs because if you go to good to excellent like let's imagine some of the folks in your Audience are like oh good or X sounds cool until they go and they type in a brand drug. Yeah today for many drugs

Just you'll see a coupon for 822 dollars We'd be like well, that's not much of a savings and we know that and so we've done as we started reaching out to the Manufacturers and said look no one's gonna buy this for 822 dollars You see the writing on the wall in Washington. You need to do something, we've got 20 million people a month. And so we're actually making a lot of progress working with manufacturers to really bring down those costs. We just launched a program, this past quarter with a Kinnever pronounce it, Santa Fe, which is one of the biggest joint companies in the planet, where we're making insolence, which

is what leads to, I also want zero dollars for people in insurance and $99 for people who do not have insurance, which is a lot better than the 500-ish that they were paying before. And again, I mean, I care only because that means more people get insulin and don't end up going through that whole pan that leads to the dialysis and all that. So we're working on a lot of that stuff. And then of course we have the telemedicine side, which we can talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about that. So was that because when COVID, of course, I feel like a lot of these telemedicine companies kind of all kind of started,

I don't know if they just started or they were working on it, but a lot of them popped up out of nowhere. And you guys were doing it prior, a little bit prior to that. As did you see the trend moving, ticking that way, the pendulum going in that way before? Or...

It's kind of the same thing as what we talked about before, where from my perspective, I was seeing pain points, right? Where like a lot of folks were coming to get our acts and they would, you know, that sounds cool. And they'd type in the first place that they're drug, they'd see some prices. And then they'd go, oh, wait, I don't have a prescription. And of course, in America, in many other countries, you need to have a piece of paper or an e prescription. Otherwise, you can't get it, right? Another weird, oddity about healthcare, right? It's, you can't just go, right? Another weird holiday about healthcare, right?

You can't just go out and buy this. You have to have a doctor's permission to buy this. Well, that you can buy, but I know what you mean. You can buy the water. Exactly. So we saw that all these people were coming to get directs without a prescription. We thought, well, can we do this in an efficient way?

Now, there are other plays in telemedicine, but usually they're like, oh, you work for big company X and we want to make sure that you don't show up in the doctor's office because that costs a lot of money. So here's a telemedicine tool that you can use, which many people don't use. I bet everyone listening has a telemedicine plan attached to their insurance plan, but unfortunately, insurance isn't very good at talking to their members and getting them to use those services. And the services... I know they had one.

Exactly. But they usually do. I know they had one. Exactly. But they usually do. It's just nobody really uses them. How come? Why not? They don't advertise it because they don't want to be... So many issues. I mean, the combination of first of all, like, most people don't read or listen or log into their insurance website. I think the insurance companies are pretty bad at generally communicating with folks. I think it's kind of just, and I think people also like going into the office and seeing the person in the white coat with the stethoscope and don't quite have it made that loop, that

lead until COVID. We can talk about COVID and how that's changed things. Yeah. And so, Barasta was really just simple math. It was basically, hey, look, all these people are coming without a prescription. That seems to be a pain point for people. A lot of people don't have a regular doctor relationship either. Living here in fancy LA, well, I have my primary care doctor,

but that's not the case for many people, especially younger people. By the way, can I switch? I want to stop you right there. It's 100% true. I don't even have, this is a conversation I have with a lot of my friends. I don't have a primary care doctor.

And then I start to, in the last few weeks, I've been asking around, I haven't had a proper checkup. I'm not talking to like an OB-GYN or specialist. I'm talking a real dog. Like, if you just interrupt. My leg is tripped while you're talking. Yeah, absolutely. This is a gut.

And Tatum, you're channeling Channing Tatum, or whatever. His name is Magic Mike. That's a whole side joke. Yes, Magic Mike. I am not Channing Tatum, just everyone knows in your audience. I know we were joking earlier because he posted a tweet at something about him the other day. And I was like, why are you tweeting about Channing Tatum? to be just everyone knows and you're on it. I know we were joking earlier because he posted a tweet at something about him the other day.

And I was like, why are you tweeting about Channing Tatum? He's like, people say that he looks like his older brother. Or is he talking about brother? He's talking about brother. That's hilarious. Which, by the way, you don't. What's that? That's hilarious.

Do I say thank you? I don't know. I don't know what to say to that. You could say thank you. Are you hot? You look at your knee like that. I'm a little warm, but I don't know. I don't know what to say to that. You could say thank you. Are you hot? You look at your knee like that. I'm a little warm, but I'll keep going. We could like, is there like a napkin of some kind

or like a paper towel, the guy's dying of heat? It's being nervous next to Jenna. That's what it is, exactly. It's a, you can't contain yourself right now. Exactly, it's the natural Jewish genes in the name coming through, I think is what it is. It's my extra layer of... So... Oh my God, I can't pick a towel.

Thank you, thank you. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space! Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on. Like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor, called With Love. years. USAAA, get a quote today. Today, vitamin water zero sugar nourish every you vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass. Oh Anyway, where were we? Okay, where were we? Um, trading at Tatum chatting Tatum. I never can get that guy's name right?

We're talking about telemedicine. Telemedicine. Oh yeah, how nobody has a real doctor. I mean, so it's not just outside of even LA. I think it's just the system to your point. And by the way, when I lived in Canada, I had a doctor and it was kind of much easier. And now with all you think the US based on your rich country, like to your saying, why is that? Why don't we even have doctors? I love talking to people from other countries because it's hard to explain, I think, the fear that or the additional point that you have to think about when you're in America, which doesn't exist in most other modern countries, right?

I would imagine growing up in Canada, you know, you didn't or your parents, I guess, didn't say like, oh gosh, you know, if Jen slips and falls, that could bankrupt us, right? Or if it's God forbid, you know, Jen is ill, you know, like the cost factor was not an issue. Getting access to care, sure, is this doctor better? Yes, no. But there was never like this fear that it was going to dramatically impact my finances. It's a uniquely American and obviously some other countries, but I'd say in this kind of OECD world, that's a uniquely

American thing, right, where it's like, I could literally wipe myself out if I fall, right? And that's the part that just really drives me nuts. You know, it's funny. Another thing happened to me when we started the company, which was prior to the ACA, Obamacare. My son had had febral seizures when he was two months old. There's not like that. And I don't know, some of your listeners might remember this, but prior to the ACA, and it may come back

by the way if the ACA ever goes away, if you try to get insurance, you would have this incredibly invasive experience with a doctor or a nurse who would say to you, hey, Jen, I noticed you have some moles there. When did those moles occur? That looks like that could cost us some money. They would then be like, yeah, we're going to reject you. My own son, who had fibral seizures, which I think 20% of babies have or some huge number.

Imagine getting a note from the insurance company saying, yeah, we're going to cover you and your wife and your daughter, but your son, no way. He's too, he's too expensive for us. Wow. And as a dad just being like, seriously, like, like, that's the system we have where like, because you know, these esoteric decisions by some random person, and that just kind of killed me. And I was determined to try to fix that. And you know, the ACI's done for the moment. Preexisting conditions are not a thing. But who knows?

Depends on the administration and the mood of the day as to whether that will come back or not. That's unbelievable. But even when you call for a doctor, though, they're all full here, too. You can't even get an interseed doctor. The average weight in America for a primary composition, I believe, is 29 days.

But even if you don't have one, I call 10 doctors to be like, hey, I'm looking for a doctor, they're not taking new patients. It's like such a whole thing from the beginning to end is so difficult. So then now you have telemedicine, and then the question is, can you go, how do you cover, or not cover, but how does a telemedicine doctor cover or know if they're not doing a physical checkup with you? How can you just like sit on a zoom call with somebody and check for these things that are like kind of like nuanced and a little bit more difficult and detailed?

So I don't think, you know, we shouldn't assume that telemedicine lives in its own work, right? Meaning like, I think most of the uses I think of telemedicine during the pandemic at least were, hey, hey, primary care doctor, your office is closed, but it's still like to talk to you. And actually, I just saw a study yesterday that most telemedicine was actually on the phone. We think about video and zoom, but it was still your doctor calling you and saying, hey, Jen, say, what's going on?

And blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And I think that's fine. Certainly for maintenance of a condition or a common safe drug, I mean, the one I always like to point to is birth control. Like birth control is ridiculous in this country, right? I mean, there are really no side effects of birth control. I mean, no, if they need to be on it. And, and, you know, and yet you have to get a prescription from a doctor and then you have to show up at a pharmacy. And it's just, it's so much pain. Yeah. And it,

it should be much more, uh, just convenient, right? Yeah. Easy. And so, and so we launched, among other things, you know, I, I, I, the cost is like 10 bucks. I think with goter x gold where you'll basically fill out a form We'll be like, okay, you are a female that deserves that birth control And then we'll send it to you if you have insurance for like zero, right? Because that's what the ACA does cover and if you don't have insurance, we'll find an affordable option for you but it should be like that It shouldn't be like I have to wait 29 days and my doctor's busy and they're not taking new patients And I move somewhere else like it should just work. It should just work. And it's not as seamless as that nothing

It seems like nothing is What's good our ex-golden? So good ex at some point I'm guessing you ask how do you make money? Because everyone does I know I know how you make money. I read about it But I will ask you to be just so I look at like, just for a better conversation for a full. Sure. Yeah, so I'll maybe I'll just answer that. We make money a few different ways.

When you come to get our ex and you find it. You can do the interview if you want. You can ask your question. I'm going to ask myself, Doug, how are you today? I'm doing great. Yeah, exactly. You can go take a walk. I'll be great.

Thank you. Thank you. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, so when you come to get our ex, if you use one of our coupons, which you find in our app or on the screen. That'd be great. I'll be trying to thank you. Thank you. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, so when you come to GuterX, if you use one of our coupons, which you find in our app or on the website, we make a referral fee, right? It's pretty usual, like other industries.

The insurance company collects the referral fee, they give it peace to us. GuterX Gold is a subscription product where you pay, I think it's $5.99 a month for an individual, and you get even lower prices. So we work with certain pharmacies, so we give us way great prices. And I mean, like, like, how much lower, give me an example? I mean, like, I think we have hundreds of drugs that are between like three and six dollars.

I mean, way lower than your insurance copay for most of these drugs, right? And it's funny, because the New York Times reporter called me, I don't know, this is a few years ago, and she was like, I don't believe any of this stuff you're saying. So we went through her copay, her New York Times copay, and we found that good or exit lower prices 40% of the time And just to be clear that assumed that she had had her deductible what she hadn't and that you know And that since then by the way, this was three years ago prices have come down more So I would just ballpark that half the time we're finding lower prices than your insurance, right? So we have good or it's gold. We have the telemedicine service

Would you you know pay but it's a very fair price service? How much a 20 bucks you said for? To have doctors, but it actually starts at 10 with good or ex-gold and it goes up to like 40 or 50 depending on what service you're looking for. Well, okay, and doctors, are they? Doctors and MPs, either MDS or nurse practitioners, people who are eminently qualified to provide the service. In some way, video, and sometimes you just fill out a form, again, if it's something like birth-intual.

I'm not kidding you. I'm going to start using that, because why would it, why would it somebody use this? Yeah, I mean, it, I don't expect telemedicine to eat the world, right? I think people should still go to their doctors and you're seeing that now the COVID's receiving

people are going back to their doctor. But I think for ongoing stuff, right? Again, like take me, for example, I'm taking Crestor for the rest of my life, I just am. And unless I need a lab or a test, which you can also do, by the way, remotely. You know, my doctor should see me from time to time, but I want medical professionals to

work to the top of their credential. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Like, the doctors I talk to, it's not, they're not sad that we exist. They're thrilled because like, doctors don't want to spend their days writing birth control prescriptions, right? OBGYNs are way more talented than that. Yeah.

Right? So let's let them do that, and we'll find other folks who are still qualified to provide assistance and make it more affordable. Because part is a whole trickle-down effect, because I can't find a doctor, because the doctors are all busy doing these little appointments with the people they've had for so long. And so it kind of like, it just, everything, the whole system is so stuffed. You can't get in. I mean, if you had that type of ability to do that, so is it a busy, is it, are people using it? People are using our service. Keep in mind, and again, I want to keep this high level,

because we can numb ourselves with healthcare stuff. But a lot of the telemedicine was the result of this emergency use act that the Congress and I'm gonna say Congress, but some agency in the US said, okay, we will compensate your doctors for doing telemedicine. It's prior to that, they weren't. In most cases, right? And so we have this sort of temporary window, which COVID basically caused, where insurance

will cover, if you talk to a doctor by telemedicine, that may go away. We're gonna find out if they're gonna extend it or not. So you might see a situation where doctors go, yeah, Jen, this time I want you to come in the office because they're not gonna be paid for that telemedicine but they should get paid by the way for it. And so, don't forget, there's policy floating around in here that might impact, you know, basically how much you pay and what doctors might want to do.

Right, so then you guys are getting paid through the referral, through how about like advertising? Sorry, we also had to do. Right. So then you guys are getting paid through the referral, through how about like advertising? Sorry, we also have ads. So when brand manufacturers and other folks who want to get in front of someone who has whatever diabetes, yeah, they will put ads in front of it. It's just like any other site where they may want to advertise their drug or something like that, yeah. More from our guests, but first a few words from our sponsor.

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A versus B. But that's actually, again, healthcare is complicated. Suffice to say that I don't see it that way at all. Amazon, what is Amazon good at? They're good at putting things in boxes and sending them to your house. They're amazing at that. I love using them because probably a box

in front of my house right now. The reality though is that mail order pharmacy is really, really, really hard. They've actually been trying to do it for 21 years, I think, because they were the majority investor in drugstore.com, which was someone woke up 21 years ago and thought, wow, we should just send drugs by mail. And they started drugstore.com, Amazon was the majority investor, and it doesn't work.

It died. It tanked, yeah. Then in 2018, they bought a company called PillPack. We're very friendly with, and you can actually use a good RxDiscount at PillPack. And PillPack said, we're going to do mail, or better. And they've tried. I would argue, do you have any friends using Pillpack? It hasn't exploded the way. And the reality is, Pillpack is a Mailorder pharmacy that they're kind of unique wrinkle is that they put all your,

if you take multiple drugs, they put them like a little patch that's a shame or something. So it's like, oh, it's Wednesday morning and all my drugs will be. Instead of just each bottle separately. Right? Oh, like, what are those?, and all my drugs will be, instead of just each bottle separately, right? Oh. Oh, like what are those? There's so many people doing that though. Yeah, and so, but the punchline is, about 5% of the Phil's, prescription Phil's in this country are male order.

And even when COVID hit you thought, oh my God, this is males, they and the sun, right? Yeah. It went up like slightly, and now it's actually decreasing again, because people like going to the pharmacy believe it or not. They like talking to the pharmacist and say, hey, what's this thing on my arm?

And you know, feeling a little dizzy from this drug. They pick up their shampoo and their toothpaste while they're there. There's also a lot of insurance things like, for example, Amazon can only sell you a 30 day fill and a lot of people wanted to at 90 days of a prescription. So there's a lot of like, again, and the weird inter-kCs and complexity of pharmacy,

it's not like, you can't wake up tomorrow and start Jen's online pharmacy if you wanna be able to take insurance. You have to make this fateful decision of am I gonna play the game or am I just gonna end run it and try and just do a straight cash prices, right? And unfortunately, it's hard.

I mean, if Amazon was just doing cash, I think you'd have, you know, they wouldn't be able to service you on some of those fancy or drugs and things that you want to do. So it's really complicated. They also partner with ExpressScript. What's ExpressScript? Hey, what is that?

Where'd you guys partnering or arch your partner to? So who are they? So I remember before I said those nasty letters, PBM. Yeah. A PBM stands for a prescription benefit management, right? Prescription benefits manager. And so what happens in insurance, and again, I, because I think people will be long asleep, it'll be a sleep podcast, like you're still holding, when it comes to insurance.

They can make this night again. Exactly. You have a blue cross or a d'Antom or something like that, right? But because drugs are so kind of uniquely complicated, they farm it out to a PBM, of course, you benefit manager. And so what is far too benefit of a manager? And so what is farm as you've been a manager. And what ends up happening is, Express is the biggest one.

They're actually going to buy Signan now, the insurance company. Oh, okay. And so imagine again, so Anthem says, oh my, or the Signan, in this case, says, oh my god, I don't know what to do with this. And they handed over to this PBM,

the PBM then negotiates with the pharmacy, right? So ExpressScript, which is the largest PBM, I think on the planet, didn't really, they watched good or X and they're like, what's going on with you guys? Like, what are you guys doing? They didn't, at the time, have this mechanism for cash paying patients to save money.

Oh, okay. And so we actually, we worked together with them. We launched Insider X with them and we brought their discount pricing onto good or X, I don't know, three or four years ago, right? Right. And so now they have this, these coupons, you see on good or ex, they have their version of that. But again, they're on good or ex where they're a very major partner of ours. And then Amazon said, wait a second, we want to be able to show a price next

to a drug. When you go on Amazon and you look something, you want to show a price. And they can't do it themselves and still take insurance. And I probably reach the end of your audience once to go, but somebody said it. They very excited off. Let me just say this. Again, if you started jeans and pharmacy and you want to take insurance, you can't control your own pricing. One of the reasons why pharmacies must be so frustrating to be a pharmacist. Imagine if, again, you sell any products, but you can't dictate your own pricing, because if you do, you might violate those contracts. You might even violate government contracts, which actually can be criminal charges. Oh my god. So again, imagine, you know, poor dog walks into Gen's pharmacy and says, Gen, give me a break on this drug. You can't just be like, Doug, you seem like a nice guy. I'm

going to give it to you. Why? Didn't that woman do that for you when she when you were at this? She did. And what she actually did was a violation of her contracts with express scripts and companies like that as well as Again Medicare and Medicaid have very strict rules around the stuff and so it's frustrating. I get it I mean I can you it just seems as a pharmacy because yeah What ended up happening is if you if she saw me that drug for last let's say she sold me for a hundred bucks Right that becomes the new benchmark for the contracts member. I said they get eight percent off Well, I think it eight percent off off 100 instead of 500, right?

And so anyway, the short version is basically, it's really, really complicated. It doesn't have these normal push and pull supplying the van forces that you'd expect and consumers need help. God, it's so complex. Who do you have to, like to kind of just go to decipher through this information?

A lot of smart people. Not me, a lot of smart people. No, say the who, do you have like someone who can actually understand this stuff? Who is this person? Well, it's funny. I mean, so I was up in, I have a place in Tahoe, and one day one of our investors was up there,

and he's like, hey, I'm sitting next to this guy who's talking about this pharmacy benefits management stuff. It sounds kind of like what you guys do. And he's like, you should go call this guy. So you got the guys number. And so we literally walked through the woods do. And he's like, you should go call this guy. So you got the guys number and so we literally walk through the woods together and this is like 2012. And I was like, you are so smart of this. There's like three people on the planet that know this.

Can I hire you? And he's been with us now for 10 years basically. See? Because there's six people on the planet that understand this stuff and he's one of them. Oh, but it was his background that he even knows that I do this. He had worked at one of these, you know, drug discount card card companies,

and just knew something about it. And again, it's so esoteric and strange and yet it impacts every single person's life and so on. Everybody, I mean, that's what's amazing. Big Hakeridge Bargons, are on sale now at the Ranches at Buck Ridge. Get 25 to 100 plus acres of beautiful recreation land

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Excellent land financing is available. Call 877-333-7393 or visit ranchesitbuckridgeTX.com. $60,000 price is for a thousand square foot two bedroom two-path barn dochelle to be built on purchase-lod at Buck Ridge, an equal-housing opportunity. So then okay, so I asked you about all this stuff. Let's kind of just like kind of shift a little bit to more like leadership style, more about your y'all. Yeah, the other one's fully asleep. Yeah, that would wake them up a little bit. You know leadership stuff. For more about your Yahoo. The other one's poliously. Yeah, yeah.

That would wake them up a little bit. You know what I mean? I think the people tuned off already. Or I mean, for the three people who maybe are still listening. My ex-wife. Hi people. Like hello, anyone? You, willer.

Let's go into the other stuff. So because your track record is like amazing. And you were at Yahoo, you were at Facebook. I mean, you pick really well. or that's first of all unbelievable. How did you, like, how did, let's talk about your background? How did you end up at Yahoo? What did you do? What were some of the leadership or some of the things that you kind of took from these

jobs and then translated into being more of an entrepreneur? Because Facebook and Yahoo, you were still working for somebody else or with other people, wasn't your own thing. But you were there very early, which is on its own very. So what your audience doesn't know yet is that you and I are basically brother and sister now and we have very similar experiences.

Yeah. And when I graduated college, I had no idea what I wanted to do in my life and I thought I like music. I didn't even my life, and I thought, I like music. I didn't even like playing music. I just like listening to music. And so I went to go work in the music business, and I started at Sony.

I worked at every label in town. I think much like you. We probably parted at the same clubs. I know. I don't even understand how I never met you until recently. It's so weird. And I was in the music business.

I was not, it was, I found it very frustrating to take something I was passionate about and then make it a career. Like I stopped listening to music because I liked it and I was listening to it because I was like, is this a single? Well, this, you know, make A or A or A radio and stuff. And I was just like, this is not, like,

I don't want to destroy my love for music. Right. And so, because this was a long time ago, I was working at Virgin one day, and we got a fax, it was called multimedia wire. Remember this, yes, there are things called faxes. Yeah. That said, there was a company that was looking for a,

was they call it at the time, an internet producer or something like that. And I was like, oh don't know, sure. Like, and so I flew up there. I was on my way to business school anyway because Where'd you go tell you at the tops, right? I went to tops undergrad and then I Was just kind of lost in all honesty. I had my quarter-life crisis at age 25, which we can talk all about and I was like I don't know what to do. So I applied to business school because I thought I don don't know, maybe I thought it would give me a ticket to do something. And I got into business school of North. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll just go, I'll apply

for this job at YAH who I'll work there for two months and I'll go to business school and have two years to figure it out. And so I get up to YAH would interview. And first of all, there was no such thing as experience in 1990, early late 95, early 96. So they were like, you have a pulse, you're hired. And I was like, well, that was really good. And then literally, like you're hired. And now see this pool of candidacy figure, you have to hire the next person. And they were all MBAs. And I was like, wait a second, hold on, you mean, I'm going to, I've got this job and I'm going to leave this job, you know, to go get an MBA, so I can be online to get the job of this person working for me. And I was like, that doesn't sound good.

And so I got into Furl for a year and I ended up never going to business school. And it was great about, yeah, at the time was, I don't remember the number of it. Let's just say like 30 or something like that. People were there. Of course. Well, that's what I said on Google.

Something like that. I don't remember their hard numbers, but. Around 30. It was so small and amazing that it was like like I woke up one morning and it's like we should do chat. This was back when people did text-based chat. So I built, yeah I have chat. Like it was like we should do city guides. So I built the YAHWA LA, YAHWA San Francisco, and YAHWA Austin where I've still never been to this day. Wait, you're saying these things like so like matter a fact? Like oh yeah,

I built like Geocity. Like these are like major things that in like, in pop culture and like in our society that you basically built, like as if like, oh yeah, and then I, you know, walked around and got myself a baloney sandwich. I mean, it's very, how do you, it was so fun. I mean, you know, but what is it about you?

Like, what's that quality? Is it that you just like, you see things like way before, it becomes something like, what's that? Like, I guess a superpower. Like, what is it? What is it? I don't know if it's that, but I think that it all comes from a deeply, deeply rooted insecurity.

You say that all the time in every interview. It's true. It's true. Every interview I like watched, you always say that. I'm very cognizant of what people, like I wanna impact people's lives around me. Like when I think of my yacht experience over a decade, the biggest most valuable moment to me was when I was on

vacation with my family and Florence Italy. And I remember and we were walking along the Arno there and I saw that some internet cafe back when they had those, had a yacht who male neon sign. And I was like, wow, they're trying to get people to come to that store because of my product, right? And I was like, in Italy. And I was like, that's awesome, right?

Like that was like one of those moments where I was like, that impacts me. And so like, you know, stuff like when I'm just insecure, like I want, I want to have a job that I'm excited that people care about that I think is making a real difference. My definition of difference has changed. I think back when I was younger, I was more excited about the social media aspect,

like working at Facebook, I was like, this was awesome, right? Right, right. But now I think I care more about the impact of people's health care and the long-term livelihood and happiness. That's different, kind of a different time in your life. Now you're old, but at the time, you know?

I've heard that. But I mean, like, I mean, in the earlier version of this was music, actually, because like, I used to be a very bad DJ. And like, I remember just this experience of like getting people on the dance floor. Like, I just, I wanted to put a stamp on someone. I wanted, I wanted people to go like, that is making me do something, right? That is improving my life. And so that's kind of really just been that, that decision force.

But like, I've had this never ending debate with my wife and friends about like, you know, do you just is a job just a path to make money or do whatever so that you can then enjoy the rest of your life. And I can't I can't do that. Like for me, if I don't enjoy it, I do all day, I mean, I I'm lucky that these have worked out for me, but I would otherwise just continue doing things that I enjoy doing that don't make a dime because I don't have the patience for other. Wow, so then maybe the insecurity has, what pushes you to keep on like going and going and going. So then geocities eat all the stuff with the Yahoo stuff and then what happens? When I turned 30, my wife had earlier negotiated with me, she's a lawyer, I should point out, My wife had earlier negotiated with me, she's a lawyer, I should point out. And she wins every negotiation.

But that we were going to travel around the world for six months. This is our, you know, we're about to have kids and all that kind of stuff. And so this was fortunately for us, it was 2001 before September 11th. And so we sold everything we owned. I had a backpack and we traveled around the world for six months. It was amazing and wonderful. And I just to be clear was kicking and screaming not wanting to do it. And she was like, you're gonna do this.

And I was like, but I want to keep working. A lot. And quit your job for this. Well, it's funny. I said, yeah, I'm going for six months. So do what you want to do. And they were like, oh, you're gonna, a month from now, you'll be back. Because they knew me and they were like, you're just gonna go nuts.

But I stuck with it and we had, we did volunteer work and all this really great stuff. And then I remember I was in Nepal and my boss from Yangon called me and she said, what's the story? And I was like, well, I'm moving L.A. because I was in San Francisco at the time. And so it's been great working with you. And she's like, oh, what's funny you say that we just bought

a company called Launch. And Launch, if you remember, was at the time CD-ROMs about music bringing me back full circle. David Goldberg. David Goldberg exactly. And she's like, you kind of know some of your music. You used to work in music, so why don't you come help us with launch? And I was like, I don't know that Dave Goldberg guy sounds pretty smart.

I don't know if he needs my help, but what else are you doing in entertainment? And she's like, I don't know, why don't you do that? And I was like, okay, so all of a sudden, I'm in charge of y'all in entertainment. I run y'all movies or in the out TV. At the time, I know this sounds antiquated, but believe it or not, all of the spend of movies was in newspapers, right? Big, you know, opening weekend,

you buy a takeover of it. And I was like, you know, the internet exists, people, studios. And so I spent basically four years, I built an office in LA, and basically went into every studio and said, you need to be on the internet because that's how people decide like and had all these bizzaro experiences where Hollywood met tech and kind of blew my brain at how they needed to be educated on.

And you should do that one out also. Yeah. But you make it sound like it's like very force gumpy like you just like stumbled upon this thing. But it was more than that right? Because then when you got to these things, you created an entire, you disrupted again, another market. I think life is like a box of chocolates.

No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. I don't know. I honestly, the facts are the facts I was moving to LA. And they had an opportunity to move to LA. I'm probably moving to LA. My wife's family, and my family, my wife's family, were down here, and my wife had given me my five years

and it's here for Cisco. Anyway, anyway, and so then I was here, and I ran Yahoo Entertainment, and but Yahoo was kind of not the same after 2000. I don't know if you remember, they hired Terry Sama, I wanted a kind of Terry member. They got very focused on basically money

over product innovation. And I just was not thrilled there. And so, you know, around 2004 or 5, I become friendly with the Myspace guys. I feel like Christopher Wolf and Josh Burman. And at one point talked about me joining. And I was like, that's kind of interesting because it's kind of what I, because it, Yahoo, I built all the community stuff like geosities and mail and chat and personal stuff like that. And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting because it's kind of what I, because it, Yahoo, I built all the community stuff like geocities and mail and chat and personal stuff like that.

And I was like, that sounds kind of cool. And then literally while we're talking about it, they get bought by a news cork, if you remember. And I was like, oh, and then at the meantime, I'd also a recruiter from Facebook had called Yahoo and was trying to hire this guy I knew. And the guy was like, I don't get those Facebook stuff. This is stupid. He's like, I'm moving to Asia because Asia is the future. And I was like, okay.

But maybe I could talk to the recruiter. And so I called the recruiter. And I was like, I knew you're a gazelle guy, but I kind of know something about community stuff too. And so I actually, Mark came to LA. He was 19. So he couldn't rent a car. So I think, I think I picked him up at the airport. It was like the weirdest thing. I don't remember. But I just remember he couldn't move it. This is pre-huber, so he couldn't get a ramp. He was in early 19. He was in early 19. Some 18, 19.

And so we talked and I told him about my experience at Yahoo. And next thing I know I'm the head of product at Facebook. Okay, forrest. And we're moving back up to Palo Alto. And yeah, it was an interesting time. Wow, so then you he hired you and you worked right along with them, right? How was that working with him? It was weird.

I mean, it was at the time, again, I don't hold me to numbers, but I want to say it was like 15, 20 people or Facebook at the time and we were over a Chinese restaurant on University Avenue and if you've seen the movie Sean, I've heard it all nine yards. Was that accurate from your experiences? Most of it took place before me because it was like right when they came. My feeling on it, because I've never seen a movie before

about a time that I experienced, was that I feel like movies take like one characteristic about someone and they make it that. Oh, Jen's the woman with the water bottle. And that's all you are. And it's the reality is people are more complex. They have their good things, and they have their bad things. And so I just, I felt like it kind of,

it kind of a stereotype to everyone. Yeah. And that's just not how people really are. But I think overall story was more or less right on. Anyway, so at first it was great. It was me and a bunch of 19 year olds, honestly. And I was 35 at the time. And so I thought I was awesome

because I would stay up till two in the morning. They'd stay up to like four or five. Then I'd get in the office at like nine or 10 and nobody would show up to like three. And what we're trying to build some, I mean at the time, just to be clear, Facebook was daddy to you. You were not using it unless you signed in

with your alumni account or something. Right. I'll see if people weren't even using it yet. Yeah. Yeah. I'd come home to my family and friends would be like, Facebook's awesome. And they'd be like, what are you talking about?

That's so crazy. And we were terrified of these companies that are long gone that we thought were going to destroy us. Like which ones were, which ones? Oh man, do you remember company called Zookwa? XUQQ. No, I don't. We thought they were going to destroy us.

We were confident they were going to destroy us at the time. We really named another couple, another few. Oh man, I mean, a friendster, of course, and of course, my space was still around. You know, all these companies that were, you know, fighting it out for the social top dog. Anyway, and so it was great. I built Facebook photos as we talked about.

Built a few other Facebook products, but it was hard because the reality with Facebook is Marx that had a product. He's amazing and smart, and he's the head of product, and it's all of his buddies from Harvard, right? And so I walked in and I'm this new guy, and I'm trying to hold compared to these other old things. And I mean, I loved it, and I will never say a bad thing about Marx. I thought it was, you know, clearly he's a smart guy, but it was very hard to work together because I think about Mark, I thought it was clearly he's a smart guy. But it was very hard to work together because I think at the time the idea was that he was going to become CEO and I was going to be the product guy, but he really wanted to be the product guy, which I get because I kind of do that at my own company.

But it was really hard to get things done there. And there's all sorts of other random stories, but the punchline is... You mean one random story? Oh, it was just so weird, because we didn't really have even an assistant. So I'd pick up the phone and be like, I got a Rupert Murdoch or someone would be on the phone, because just trying to,

because it was a hot company, right? And there was just no one there. There was no one that was doing corporate development. There was no one that was doing. So it was like, I remember, I'd often end up, because I was the old guy, I'd be the guy going, oh, guess what, we're meeting the CEO of CBS today. And Mark would be like, but why?

And I'd be like, I don't know. Because I answered the phone. And it was just everything was a mess. I can imagine the flow. I can remember it lay. I just, you know, and it was just, what was amazing is, I mean, they quality, the product and the quality of the people that were there were the level of innovation

was just super exciting, but it was just, it was hard to crack the, you know, they say the old boys club, the young boys club, I guess, which was, you know, literally Mark and Dustin and Adam D'Angelo and even by CoFender Scott, these were all literally like, the first few. Freshman and sophomores in college that were, you know, we'd make a decision and I go to bed and at 4 in the morning they'd change their mind. And it's not that they're

bad guys. It's just, you know, it marks an amazing head of product. Putting two heads of product in the room together is probably not a good idea. Yeah, you know, apparently not. Give me one more story. It's just very fascinating. Oh boy. People are awake again, I think. Yeah. I mean, it was, People are awake again, I think. Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, Pesh, it was a, there's a story that I think is true. I asked if a really bad memory, so this is possible.

I don't wanna swear to this, but I do remember there was a time when we thought we were gonna get like a, I won't even name the, but one of the biggest bands on the planet. We had someone that come up with this idea that we were gonna have this band to announce a new feature Perform above the Chinese restaurant we were at on University Avenue Palo Alto The problem was that first of all it was an active Chinese restaurant where like like there was like

low-main smoke was spearing out, right? And I'm like and you can imagine this band like you know I don't know it wasn't arrow Smith, but pretend it was arrow Smith You know was it was it likeerosmith, but pretend it was Aerosmith, you know. Was it like Coldplay? It was like even bigger. They had you two. No comment. The Matthews band and you two.

It was like that level of a band. Was it bigger than you two? It was like that level of a band. Well, you tell me after? Maybe I'll tell you. Okay, okay. The only reason I want to tell you is, I mean, I remember it is this,

which is like someone that kind of was idea, but again, you've got this Chinese restaurant and you have like six foot high walls around the space where they'd be performing. So it's like, now imagine, and it's university avenue, right? So it's like, imagine if like you're walking the street and you hear whatever, Aerospace coming from somewhere and you smell low-main and you're like,

this is the launch party for a new Facebook product. But that was the kind of stuff that you did when you were 19. Yeah, did it happen into the bank? They never did that. Thank God, they did that kind of stuff. They never showed up. Okay. But anyway, so after enough kind of blowouts of Mark and stuff, I was like, this is, I

think I should work for myself. And so I left Facebook, I moved back to LA, and I started my first company, basically, which is a company called Daily Strength, which was basically Facebook for healthcare, which was just trying to bring people together around. Can't you sell that one too? I did, I raised some money for that, and then I sold that to Discovery, Oprah,

it's coming on Share Care that this... Oh, just Share Care. You're hilarious, are you trying to be... No, I'm just being like, it's very, it's very, it's not a deal. It's not a deal. It's just, I don't want to take more credit for things that like, I feel like the world works in strange ways.

Like, I always, I'm often asked like, you know, teach other entrepreneurs, but I have no idea. I feel like everything I do, I feel like is the last decision I'm going to make and it's a terrible decision and I'm full of self-doubt. So the idea that I feel like everything I do, I feel like is the last decision I'm gonna make, and it's a terrible decision, and I'm full of self-doubt. So the idea that I'm supposed to project confidence, this whole idea, I always think, most fascinating politicians,

it's terrible to be a flip-fop politician, right? That's the worst thing ever if you change your mind. Yeah. Really? I change your mind all the time. I think, right, right, right. And I hope people would, as you learn more of me, maybe,

maybe, I'll do it, right? So anyway, but it right. No, I think it's, so basically you create this other company, right? Right. So anyway, I put it right. No, I think it's so basically you create this other company, sold to sharecare. By the way, sharecare is another really huge company. So you just went public. You went public. And you went public when a year ago too. We went public last September.

Last September. And your stock was at 20 billion at one point and then it dropped to, where is it now? 11, 12 billion. Around 12, yeah. Yeah, oh, I think. at one point and then it dropped to where is it now 11 12 billion around 12 yeah yeah oh nothing and so basically then that then that was your experience with Facebook and then you started your own company do you have a partner with that company or no not really I brought on some guys from Yahoo I had to work with but that was my own thing which was really really

stressful doing it myself yeah yeah I probably have some thoughts on that. Yes. But I need someone to project my insecurities onto. I need someone that I can talk to and think through things. I mean, one of the things I'm like is I'm always asking, like honestly before we're done I'm going to ask all the folks here, like tell me how you do what you do. How do you accomplish that? Why are you using that camera? It's called curiosity. Yeah, exactly.

And that's what you need though. I think with anything, that's what I think you're super power, maybe just that. Like you're just super curious and you're interested. And I think those are the two qualities that people need, really, to be successful, right? Because that, well, that's how you learn and figure out what's what, what niche is not taken, what's happening, what's not happening, how you can make it better. I'm not even sure, you know, it's what it's not taken, what's not happening, how you can make it better. I'm not even sure, you know, it's interesting. I don't wanna say that equals success necessarily,

but what I've discovered is, you know, I assume everyone's an entrepreneur, like because I just, like, it's like breathing to me. It's like, it's just, it's just, sorry, not an entrepreneur, it's but the curiosity part. Yeah, and I knew that. And yet I will constantly run into people where they're like, I don't like care.

I don't like care that this spot will come up doesn't work the way I wanted to. And I know plenty of people, I think, are great operators. And I never thought of that before, but more recently I realized, okay, I might be the zero to 50 guy and then there's some, or woman, and then there's someone else that's the 50 to 100 person.

Who takes a business from here to there or takes any idea from here to there. Like, executes and operates. Yeah. Like, I'm best when it's like a small handful of people that are just pounding away, you know, and getting something done. But, you know, like, I mean, my company has 600 people, right? It's, it's, it's, it requires a whole different

skill set that I'm learning still. No, I think that's, that's also having self-awareness, knowing what you're good at, and what you're bad at, and then playing up to your strengths, and then finding other people who can complement those strengths to make something successful. So would you say that you must be self-aware then, and you're obviously very insecure. We know that. You've said that a few times, but besides that, you must have some self-awareness.

Hey, I don don't know. I, this is therapy for me because I have to think about the things I'm seeing. I'm thinking about it. I guess I just do, I'm impatient and I'm, I guess immature and I just, I do what I want to do, right? And when I love doing something, I keep doing it. And if I don't love doing it, I try to find someone else

to do it, not because it's bad work. It's just the work that I am not good at. I'm not good at which is why. I mean, this co-CO thing I have is the greatest thing ever, and I don't recommend it for anyone, because I don't know how you'd find the magic that we have, but it's, imagine having your best friend sitting next to you and being like, I really love this, and that person goes, I hate that, but I really love this, and you're like, I hate that. And we just, we are like, oil and water in terms of like interest. And it's the greatest thing ever, right?

Because it allows us to, you know, we're like two sides of the same hole. That's good. It's amazing. So then who manages the, are you a manager, though, do you know how to manage people? Ironically, at the moment, nobody works for me, which is the best thing ever.

Really? And that's purposeful, because my business partner is a much better manager. He's much more concise with people, he's much more clear I think in negotiations. Everybody I meet at the company no matter who it is, no matter what level, I'm like come on in here and look at this, what do you think of this? With this work and what your parents use this and so no I don't think I think it's best that way. I have I have team. So for example, like in January, actually late last year, I realized that COVID vaccines were gonna be a mess

the rollout of that. So I took a team of people and I built the biggest COVID vaccine appointment scheduler. And how did you figure that? How did you know that that was gonna happen? You know, it's funny. My son is 16. My son turned to me when it was his birthday back in October

and said, Dad, I want a new PS5. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I went on the internet, I searched for PS5, and I found out that it turns out that the demand for PS5 was far greater than supply. And in my head, in my head, I light bulb would off, and I was like, Oh, this is exactly what's going to happen with vaccines in a few months.

And there's all these crazy Russian bots, and there's all these technologies people use to basically sneak into Walmart and grab the last PS5. And so I basically took those exact same technologies and tech or crew people, and I said, we're going to build a way to index all the appointments in inventory across the United States for COVID vaccines. And then we're just going to present it to people in a really easy way. And of course, now we're on the tail side of it, so we're actually shutting it down, because there's now supply has caught up with demand. But you know, there were,

you may remember, there were like three months there where like people just couldn't find it. This wasn't a profit-making thing. It was just like, here's a healthcare pain point that someone needs to solve, and we're going to solve. We had what 2.5 million people gave us their cell phones. We text them when we found appointments, or if there's like an update to eligibility. It was awesome. It was really fun. It was fun to build because I felt like I was making a different

so I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. Now, but this is my two cents. When you download the Kruger app, you have easy access to savings every day. Shop weekly sales and get personalized coupons to get the most value out of every trip every time, whether you shop in-store or online. Download the Kroger app now to save big.

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Because you said that earlier, we're like, oh, ask me about that. Besides, of course, solving a problem and a pain point for people to get it. Did you see an uptick? What else did you see? Well, we saw a rise in telemedicine because like literally doctors offices were closed.

It was literally pharmacies were closed. We saw a stockpiling of prescriptions where when people knew this was going to happen, people got like extra prescriptions. And then things were tough for people for what most of 2020, where they just, they weren't going out. They were staying home. They were letting all, there was a study done by a third party company

that in this country, there's 1.1 billion undiagnosed conditions from COVID, meaning that thing that you wanted to have looked at, that you never dealt with, right? And so now we're seeing the world sort of starting to work through that, but the problem is in healthcare, Dr. Can only see so many people.

So a lot of those undiagnosed conditions are gonna remain that way, right? And so on the positive side, negative for us, but positive for the world, there was no cold and flu season, which actually drives some usage for good or X. It was kind of interesting that we had a non-existent flu season.

Again, I'm happy about that because it's good for people, but a lot of people, they're first on trade into good or X's are getting tamiflers or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, so what's next for good or ex-them? Do you have anything any big plans happening? Or long list.

Long list. I mean, anyone to share with us? Well, I'm a public company now, so. I'm not sure. No, that's from getting. I feel like we have done a okay job at impacting prescriptions and giving more information to people about how much drugs should cost.

That is 10% of the $4 trillion that's spent in this country. So the other 90% is just sitting there with no visibility, no information, and to like a great example, someone I know has a hernia. They've had it for five years, but they don't really have insurance and they can't be bothered and they don't have to do, and they know that they won't be able to afford it. So they live with a hernia. They've had it for five years, but they don't really have insurance and they can't be bothered and they don't have to do. And they know that they won't be able to afford it. Right. So they live with a hernia. I just saw. And I see this person, they're constantly like this. And it's like, oh my god, right? And so, and that's just one of a thousand examples, a million examples. And so I want to take the same magic that that good or spring, which I think is again, education and information and knowledge

and empowerment people and extended to the rest of healthcare because it's just such a massive market. And it can, I mean, I actually, at this point, I'm not doing this for money as much as, like, I think we can actually dramatically impact the country, right? Because I, I'm not going to wait around for

the system to fix itself because it's just, there's way too many entrenched forces in government. So I'm just going gonna end run the whole thing. I know, right? I'm just gonna be like, okay, fine. What if you just pay cash? What if you just pay cash to see a doctor and you pay cash? Doctors willing to accept X, you give them X.

If you wanna get a drug, pharmacist willing to accept Y, you give them Y. And so I'm gonna do everything I can to just make a more common sense version of care. That's incredible. So can you give us an example of what you're going to be doing? I mean, I'm really interested in, I mean, an area I'm really interested, for example, we don't have a product here necessarily, but I do think that mental health is broken.

Specifically, like, you know, if you live in fancy West Side LA, you'll pay 800 bucks to see a shrink. Coverage is awful. So it's basically cash pay. But the rest is disgusting, by the way, nowhere else in the world though, that would be the case. You know, it's just totally taking advantage of the coverage is awful. And so people just don't get it. And especially with COVID where the study, I mean, every survey you see is like, you know, 20 or 40% of this country is dealing with some sort of mental health issue. And so I am very, very curious about that space because I think there are so many other ways that people can get help at an affordable cost, both for both of the medication

side and potentially in the therapy side. And there's some great companies are getting stuff here too. There's a few of them. There's a few floating around. A lot of them are working within your commercial insurance plan, which is one option. But I also just, I think there's so I want to connect all the pieces of mental health better. So it's a very I'm really really interested right now. Wow this is so exciting. Well I mean I've taken up probably well I hope it's you for like five minutes to be sure. I know exactly. Well maybe six seven minutes for the people who are still listening. But no this is

actually even when you come back and I got the the invite. I mean, I said to everybody I do tell you that I really mean it with you. I really have other questions I have like, but I can ask, well, let me ask you a couple, what is your, this is what happens in household. Tell me the day in the day in the life of you. Oh, boy. Yeah. What are your habits and what is your, well, we know your hustle. But what is your habits? Well, I'm 50 years old, believe it or not. And so I've realized that if I'm going to be on this planet

for much longer, I need to really focus on health and exercise and stuff. So I'm crazy about, I've walked to work as much as I can. I pedal time like crazy. I play soccer, I'm out in bike with your husband. Yeah, it was a, yep. And I, I mean, I'm out in bike with your husband. Yeah, it was it, yep. I'm very focused on just making sure that I maintain physical health. I'm more recently gotten into online courses just because you can actually get really,

really great, incredible courses from anywhere. I just took a University of Pennsylvania course on comparative health systems because I realized that when I talk about place like Canada I may as well actually know what I'm talking about and so they're just imagining what it's like in Canada Um, we're the camp there. I did go to camp. So I have that 16-year-old version Um, what else am I doing? Um, you know, I'm gonna do it up in the morning. I'm gonna ask you if you rock it fire I have kids, so you know, I said they're older 7-7-30 something like that. They are that's true But that's them. What's your favorite food? Oh, Vietnamese, for sure. Yeah, okay.

What do you eat every morning? Is there something? Well, I try to intermittent fast. So, supposedly nothing, but I'm not going to say that it was happens. So you do try to intermittent fast, though. I have tried for a while, yeah. And would you say you're 50% successful? At the moment, I'm 50% successful, yeah. And would you say you're 50% successful? At the moment, I'm 50% successful, yeah. Okay, so what's your window? Is it 12? Which is 12?

I like to stop eating by eight, which makes me really old, because I'm the guy going for the 530 dinner at R Exactly. Both. Yeah. But yeah, so I try not to eat between 8 PM and noon, but I'm not super religious about it. Okay, so you're into it and fast, what time do you get to work?

Well, now. I walked to work and stuff. I mean, generally 9.30 ish, something like that. But I start work, I mean, again, for me, I'm working all the time because I'm constantly asking questions and constantly. Like I love going to the pharmacy for any member of my family

because every time I go, I learn something. You know, if there's any like health-related task I can do for anyone, I wanna do it because I'll start calling you then. You can't be my go-for. I mean, I'm signed up for like 15 different services right now for 26 different things. Just so I'm constantly like, it's,

to me work doesn't start at night, 30 and stop it for me. It's just a perpetual observation. I think that's what's any entrepreneur right when you're working for yourself or now obviously at a Grand or scale you have to have that mindset Yeah And where do people find more information about I guess your company they could find I mean I think you're you're private I mean, I'm not even a friend of yours on Instagram I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean obviously we have. So I mean, I mean, obviously we have our website and we're the number one medical app.

We've been that way for eight or 10 years. But so yeah, for good or actually, just check out good or ask or anything. But for me, I don't know, leave my friend. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know, you're a private. I can't friend you. I'll link them.

I, you know, I, I, actually, I'm surprisingly active on LinkedIn. Like, this is great. I had a surprisingly active on LinkedIn. This is great. I had a woman save me up on LinkedIn today saying, she's an older retired medical worker and she wants to donate her entire estate to solve the diabetes crisis. And she asked me for advice.

And I was like, oh my God, I have the perfect thing. Wonderful when I work with is a diabetic. She's also a product manager at Guter X. I said, you need to talk. And I hope they figure something out. That's amazing. Well, that's everyone, hit up, Doug, on LinkedIn with any issue, question, quandary.

That's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You were a delight. And next time we are doing this on the treadmills, now that I know that you'd love to walk as much as you do. Just watch me sweat on that. I was gonna say you're still record. We're not even like moving and you're sweating.

It's the New York Times. There we go. It's cute, thank you. All right, thank you. Bye. This episode is brought to you by the YAP Media Podcast Network. I'm Holla Taha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire, YAP Media, and host of YAP Young and Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen, learn, and profit.

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