Your Next Move - Yama Group Is Reinventing Healthcare Communications

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

In this episode of Your Next Move: Audio Edition, Inc. senior editor Tim Crino sits down with Yann Deredec, cofounder and chief growth officer of Yama Group, a San Diego–based pharmaceutical and biotech marketing agency making its second consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000. Yan explains how a lack of creativity in healthcare communications inspired him to leave the corporate world and launch Yama Group during the 2009 financial crisis. He also shares how the company has remained profitable without outside investment, why developing strong leaders has been one of its greatest challenges, and how a “blue ocean” strategy helps the agency pursue distinctive opportunities rather than compete in crowded markets. The conversation explores Yama Group’s immersive patient-simulation platforms, which help doctors navigate complex treatment decisions and engage with lifelike virtual patients. Yan also discusses the need for responsible AI guardrails in healthcare, the risks surrounding sensitive patient data, and how reduced research funding could affect medical innovation.

In this season's audio edition, we're bringing you conversations direct from the Your Next Move pop-up studio at the Inc. 5,000 conference this past October in Phoenix, Arizona. You'll hear Inc. writers and editors interviewing the founders of some of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the country. Now, in this episode, Inc. Senior editor Tim Kreeno talks to Jan Duretic. He's the co-founder and chief growth officer of Yama Group, a San Diego-based farmer. and biotech marketing agency that's making its second consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5,000. The conversation begins with Jan explaining how Yama Group identified

a lack of creativity in healthcare communications, and how that insight led to the development of immersive tools that help doctors engage more deeply with patients, treatments, and emerging science in a fast-evolving medical landscape. My name's Tim Crino. I'm a senior editor at Inc. Magazine where I edit our innovation section.

And I'm joined today by... Jan Derrick from Yama Group. And Jan, where is Yama Group located? Yeah, we're based in San Diego. Okay, very beautiful. I hear the tacos there pretty good. The tacos are absolutely incredible in San Diego, yes. Best in the country, I would say.

I've heard that. What's your go-to order? It would have to be Adobata's tacos. So the ones that are just shaved off the spigot there, as good as it gets, and then sometimes they even do octopus ones, so even better, yeah. I keep seeing octopus for sale and whole foods, and I'm like, am I ready to cook octopus? It seems, must be easy, right?

Well, it's already cooked in general in the store, so all you've got to do is throw it on the grill for a couple minutes and you're set. Perfect. All right, so I know what I'm doing. I get back to New York. So, Jan, what kind of work do you do with Yama Group? Yeah, so I am the co-founder and chief growth officer at Yama Group. So we are a pharma and biotech marketing agency. and then we work worldwide.

And how long have you been in business? We've been in business since 2009. Oh, wow. So we've been around the block a few times, and then luckily this is our second Inc 5,000 in a row, so we must be doing something right. Yeah, it must be. What helped the growth take off over the last couple years?

Yeah, I think at the beginning, Yama Group was a business launched between two friends, and then my co-founder, Martin, who I've known since working, in the pharma world back in the day. And we started a business just as we identified that there was a tremendous lack in creativity when it comes to healthcare communications and the relationship between pharma brands and talking to doctors.

So that's where we started Yama Group. What's like an example, would you say, of the lack of creativity that you observed? I used to work at Abbott Labs. Back in the day, my role in marketing was to deal with all the big agencies in New York, for example. And we realized that there was a discrepancy between the product that we received and how much we paid as a pharma agency. So the value just wasn't really there.

And we thought that there was a tremendous opportunity to create better engagement with doctors. And that was the beginning of it, really. What's your secret sauce? What does Yamah do differently? Yeah, so I think that we identify areas that are prime for disruption. Like, for example, one of the main things that we have here going in on at Yamah Group, is a patient simulation platform. It's called SIM1, and it really changes how pharma companies engage with doctors.

See, back in the day, there's direct-to-consumer advertising, there's everything that you see on TV, there's reps that talk to doctors, and everything is centered around telling a patient story, right? But they do it in a way that is very flat. They do it by going through a patient profile. So what we've done is created a way to virtually treat patients through a patient experience simulator. So now doctors have the opportunity to treat their patient virtually and to really get that aha moment of saying, oh, next time I have a patient that comes into my office, I already know what I'm going to do with this patient because I've just done it virtually before. What kind of metrics go into that simulation? Is it biomarkers, illnesses, medications are already taking?

So we work mainly in oncology and immunology. And on the oncology side, since you mentioned biomarkers, it's the ability to be comfortable with asking for biomarkers into identifying the right patient and the right drug and getting them the best possible chance of success. Obviously, like you're not trying to market one specific drug or the other. You're sort of creating a democratic platform to figure out which one is best. How do you sort of solve for, I guess you might call it bias?

right? Like if a doctor is maybe, like I've always prescribed Tylenol for pain, and then, you know, maybe another drug is like actually, you know, emergency should do that, you should use that instead. Have you sort of seen any kind of like hesitancy in doctors adopting them to platform or any kind of bias there? That's a great question. At the end of the day, this is an immersive learning platform. So everything is evidence-based. We are not putting a spin on absolutely anything but the data that is available and commonly available on all on studies. So we can include various products.

And at the end of the day, it's about the doctor feeling comfortable going through the treatment algorithm and to be able for them to make a decision on how to treat the patient the best way. At the end of the day, that's exactly what we're trying to do here at Yama Group is for doctors to have a better relationship with their patients and to be fully aware of all the products that are becoming available because there's just so much. research. So many new alternatives on the market and also with AI, there's a lot more connections of different relationships between different drugs and patients. And doctors are so busy all day long. And I'm a scientist originally, so I grew up as a lab rat, really, at the Scripps Research Institute

there in San Diego. And I became a marketer because I found a better opportunity to be able to have that relationship between the amazing molecules that science, is uncovering and then eventually that pharma is marketing. And doctors that are extremely smart, extremely busy, and there's just a communication gap there. And I think that that's where Sim1 plays in. What was your field of study your expertise when you were? Oh, yeah, I studied microbiology with a minor in genetics.

Okay. What are some of the molecules or treatments that you're most excited about in that field? I go back to oncology always because the outcomes in oncology are just not very good. And if I can be so transparent, there's the data out there shows that, hey, this new product gives you an extra six weeks of life. And, you know, sometimes the juice isn't worth a squeeze. We're looking for outcomes that are dramatically higher, right? So, of course, within that data, companies will say, hey, that allows you to go to your next birthday, your daughter's wedding, et cetera, and paint that big picture. But at the end of the day, what does that number actually mean?

And so I think that with the advent of AI and a lot of different things that are coming into the loop, I think that the stars eventually will align and also make healthcare more affordable for patients. And that's very important. Yeah, especially right now. Yeah. How many doctors do you have right now kind of using the Sim1 platform? Yeah. So we're not fully aware of that in general because we work directly with the pharma companies,

and then they are able to disseminate the programs with themselves. Oh, cool. But I'll say we do about 100 to 500 programs a year. Okay, so like 100 to 500 pharma companies, or is a program defined as like? Programs, it's just sessions with doctors. Okay, cool. What are some other similar products you might build? Like, what's on your product roadmap going forward?

Yeah, so we have another offering called Metapatient, where we build hyper-realistic patients that instead of having the interaction with Sim1 that is quite linear, right? And going through that simulation, now you actually get to talk to the patient directly. Okay. Much like we saw this morning with digital twins, for example, be able to create lifelike patients that have been educated on a model that is compliant. That's very important. In compliance ensues trust, right?

So that's very important. And for HCPs eventually to be able to have a conversation with a virtual patient and understand what they're going through. It's all about immersive learning. It's all about bridging the gap. between the busyness of every day using technology in order to educate. I want to go back to when you transition from being a full-time lab rat to a marketer. How did you make that jump?

Honestly, it was, I worked five floors on the ground at a high security laboratory, and I saw all my friends having a great summer, surfing, enjoying the best summer ever. And then one of my friends from school that had graduated from the same program said, you should check out the pharma companies. He worked as a sales rep and had a very good quality of life all while staying close to patients and helping patients. So I decided to give that a shot and that was a great decision for me because it was the start of a fantastic career both in the U.S. and abroad and afforded me the ability

to learn a lot and to discover the opportunity. opportunity that is Yama group. Did you have to do any sort of training or retraining, or did you just get a job to a pharma company and learn on the job? No, fortunately, the pharma companies are excellent at teaching you what you need to know in order to be your best. I think that I had an edge coming from a scientific background

where I had scientific credibility from the very beginning. And then how did you then make the jump to starting off and doing your own thing as an entrepreneur? Yeah, so that's interesting because That was in 2009, which was the whole economic crisis. And as I was climbing my career, I figured that I was doing less and less creativity and more and more finance and managing of leaders

in the organization. And that wasn't exactly what I had in mind for the rest of my life. On the flip side, when I decided that I wanted to start a creative agency, the advice from my corporate friends was like, this is the worst, absolute worst time to start a business.

There are no loans. There's no cash availability. It's not going to be an easy ride for you. But then when you really start thinking about it, and I think that many entrepreneurs would probably agree, is that the alternative is actually not staying in corporate. If I stayed in corporate, that would be the worst decision of my life. So I'm going to give it a go because I think that I have the energy,

I have the passion, and I have the education to succeed. And so let's go. After the break, Tim and Jan discuss how Yama Group decides which projects just aren't the right fit. What were the hardest or the most surprising challenges that kind of cropped up when you made the leap into entrepreneurship? At first, I would say that we've had a pretty good road because we're profitable from day one. We never took foreign investment or outside investment. So those lessons we never really got because we never borrowed money and we kept growing and growing and growing. I think that building leadership teams is challenging.

Of course, as we grow, we want to develop great leaders and have great leaders performing the organization. And we haven't formally been trained on developing great leaders. So we've had the opportunity to work with great coaches, and we continue to work with coaches in order to build that aspect. One big, great formative part of my life was that I studied in Paris, I didn't say ad, which is the big business school there. the school there. And it's also where the two professors of Blue Ocean. So then I had read the book, then I was in their class being taught by the authors of the book. Oh, wow. And I think that we constantly focused Blue Ocean, Blue Ocean, Blue Ocean for what we do. And I would almost say that we're still quite in a Blue Ocean at Yama Group because we don't really have competitors

that do what we do, except sometimes we start encroaching on that red ocean. And then it's a quick reminded to us to, okay, let's reel it in maybe because we had it pretty good on this side of things. But we're always trying new things. Could you quickly just define like blue ocean, red ocean for our listeners? Yeah, of course. I think in simple terms is defining a niche in the market that you can own. And you can own it because of a series of metrics where you think that you're vastly superior to the offerings that are out there. And one of them is actually driven by All of our competitors are publicly traded companies, and they have to answer to shareholders. We do what we do. We do whenever we want to do it. And we've been very happy with the results so far.

What kind of things, I guess, do you not want to do? Like what sort of projects or clients have you, types of clients have you turned down? Yeah. So one of the big things that we're trying to innovate is to not team up with companies that want to keep growing the way that they have in the past, right? We're from believers that what's gotten us here is not what's going to get us there. And there's a lot of companies that are run by leadership that still operates the way that has made them successful in the last 20 years. And the future is not at all setting up to be compatible with that. And so we're looking to forward-thinking companies,

and we want to team up with them, and we want to create true partnerships. In fact, to answer the question you had a little bit earlier, I think that those partnerships that we're seeking for are not the agency-client relationship that is traditionally in the marketplace. We're looking for long-term partnerships where we actually have a shared vision. We also have shared risk, and we're able to hold hands and do, our best work and celebrate at the end of the day.

Right. What does innovation mean to you? You know, like I think it's a word that gets thrown around a lot and sometimes it could become a blur term. How would you define it? What does it what does it look like in your day to day? I think I'd probably define it with with a question, which is why not? We always ask ourselves, why not? Why can't we do that? And a lot of times it comes to mindset. So there's a lot of mindset in a very highly regulated environment, right, such as pharma and medical technology to slow things down and not rock the boat. Things have always worked this way. Within Yama group, we're trying to innovate all the time. With our clients, we try to propose ideas that are completely different to what they've done in

the past. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But when it works, we have a great partnership, and it tends to yield great results. Yeah. What are some of the most innovative companies that you think are in the field right now in biotech? Well, until today, I just saw some really amazing ones today. And I didn't even know they existed, right? That's been phenomenal to watch. I think that on the pharmacy, there's big holding companies. I think AppVee is tremendous in how they're investing in their people and also in their science and what they're doing. That's tremendous. And then of course, there's smaller players that no one really has heard about yet, but then they start being acquired

by bigger companies. Those are catalysts of innovation. And in fact, I feel like it's a lot quicker, right, for big companies to get a leg up by being able to acquire players that have incredible innovation, weaved into the DNA, and being able to reap those rewards. So it's what the future is looking like for sure. Yeah. I heard Lucy Guo this morning on the main stage talk about, basically about how never before in history has it been possible to scale to a billion-dollar company with just a small team so quickly. A lot of that is because of AI. What are some of the guardrails that you think need to be established or that you see being established

specifically in biotech when it comes to the use of AI? Yeah, I personally feel like guardrails are urgently necessary. There is not enough legislation, and if you take a look at the legislators, I'm not even quite sure that they understand what AI does and with the potential of AI. And this is the great disruptor, right?

This is the great disruptor of our generation. And I tend to be a firm supporter that the United States tends to do the right thing. But there's also other places around the world that don't have the guardrails. And they're going full on. And so, of course, now we're with Agentec AI and everyone's building agents who do a lot of work. Then the next frontier, of course, is one big unknown. And so I feel like personal information should always be the number one of trust, for example. and how that information is being handled.

And then, of course, when it comes to doing research on data that inherently will be human data, that those guard rails need to be in place in order to protect that innovation and also the data that's being published. Yeah, I've seen a lot, especially in recent weeks, with the release of more advanced AI tools. I won't name names right here, but I've seen a renewed call for, you know,

a Federalized American Privacy Act. Would that help or inhibit the biotech and health care innovation? Because, you know, you guys already have a lot. In health care, there's already are a lot of guardrails in place around personal information with HIPAA and whatnot. So beyond what we already have, like, what do more guardrails look like? Well, AI is clearly a race, right?

And everyone is gunning for that virtual, finish line and to be number one in AI and to be able to be the country that has the prowess to be able to use AI to their advantage. The companies that don't put regulations are going to get there faster. But what is winning at the end of the day? Is winning being able to go as fast as you can and destroy the car on the way to the finish line or actually being conscious of being a good human being about developing technology that is actually going to benefit humanity as a whole, not just shareholders. Right.

So I think that there's an ethical dilemma there where everyone needs to sit under a big tree and to be able to ask those questions before we get too far. What do you think is effective in having those ethical conversations? Is it a symposium? It's been quite confusing seeing who's at the table of innovation lately and the mixing with politics. I think that academia has a very clear direction and recommendations on how to go about things. And, of course, the industry maybe has directions that conflict a little bit with that. And it's all about finding a middle ground there and to make sure that we're growing in a sustainable way,

but also in a way that we want humanity to still feel human. Okay. So sort of speaking how the administration and how the United States usually does the right thing, We've seen a lot of headlines about the funding that's been taken away that would normally go to support advances in healthcare and biotech and innovation. What are the alternatives over the next however long it takes to sort of maybe get that funding back on track? How can we continue to innovate and develop life-saving technologies and treatments during this sort of like funding freeze? Right.

Yeah, I think the United States really was on the leaders board worldwide with NIA. and the grants that are awarded to universities for their research. And a lot of the innovation that happens in the world is generated by the United States. And so that gave the United States a position of leadership. I think the pendulum has swung completely the other way now. But I'm still an optimist, right? And I think that maybe it's a great reset where everyone's going to have to really show that their work matters. what the outcomes are going to be, and to be able to do more with less.

And as entrepreneurs, we know that we're always bootstrapping, and we're always doing more with less. But then that leads to innovation. And maybe there was less innovation when there was so much funding available. And so the optimist in me says, it's all going to work out. The United States doesn't like to come in second. And so hopefully, cancer research in all kinds of funding for all diseases that don't have to be prevalent diseases either, where diseases is a particular focus of Yama group as well, to really be able to change things around. The way that they are now, not great. Yeah.

Not great for patients. Not great at all for patients. So that's where we stand. Okay, cool. Well, Jan, thank you for joining me. I really enjoyed this conversation. Likewise. And I hope that you're enjoying your conference and that you have some.

great takeaways and that you can kind of like take the energy here back to San Diego and keep doing what you're doing. Absolutely. I think me growing up, Inc. has always been a publication that I venerated. And for us to be present at the conference is huge for us. And so thank you for the opportunity. Love checking with you. I really enjoyed us. Thank you. That's all for this episode of Your Next Move. Our producer is Blake Odom, editorial editing and sound design by Nick Torres. additional editing from Sam Gabbauer and Tad Wadams,

and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And Your Next Move is a production of Inc and Capital One business.