Marcus Osborne 0:28
Hi, everyone. I’m Marcus Osborne with Walmart Health and Wellness. It’s my pleasure to be here today. I’m also part of the advisory group and get the honor of interviewing a number of great founders and innovators in the space and so it’s my honor today to be able to interview Brandon Weber with Nava. So Brandon, I appreciate you agreeing to do this. If you haven’t heard already, I’m a novice or even worse when it comes to sort of doing interviews. So this has been a fun journey for some of the rest of the crew but I appreciate you taking the time to do this today.

Brandon Weber 1:04
Happy to be here, Marcus.

Marcus Osborne 1:05
You founded Nava. What is it that actually Nava does/ What is Nava about?

Brandon Weber 1:11
So Nava is a technology enabled benefits brokerage company. Why that’s interesting is, in trying to understand what is driving the spiraling costs in health care, what we stumbled on and kind of realized is that the benefits broker is acting as the intermediary, the middleman, kind of the gatekeeper between millions of employers and the employees that they have, and their healthcare needs, and the entire supply side of the healthcare marketplace, from cool digital health vendors to really interesting unbundled insurance arrangements, and all sorts of neat stuff. And as we explore that benefits brokerage industry and try to understand, well how’s the status quo going because it feels like there’s a real bottleneck here, we saw an industry that hadn’t evolved in decades, and frankly, hadn’t moved forward and evolved with the needs of employers or employees, and I think the massive increase in complexity in health care and benefits,. There’s an explosion of benefits vendors, and options and complexity in the overall healthcare marketplace. And so what Nava is doing is we’re bringing together technology that enables our benefits brokers, consultants, and our clients, HR leaders, to more easily understand what options they have in the marketplace on the vendor side. And we’re deploying kind of what we think of as the Fortune 500 playbook for benefits to small or medium sized employers, giving them access to the tools, the technology, and the strategies that America’s largest employers have used for years to spend 25% less on health care, and provide their employees with vastly better experiences. Those two elements combined are kind of what we’re bringing together in our benefits brokerage offering. And we’re focused first on the employers that we feel are most underserved by the traditional benefits brokerage industry, which are employers that kind of sit between the 50 employees to about 1000 employees range, where they’re big enough to have some real needs, and there’s real complexity there in their populations, but they don’t get access to kind of any of this innovation and support. And so we’ve been at it for just over two and a half years. And we’ve got a tiger by the tail. It urns out there’s like a real pain point and a real need there for these employers. And there’s also a real need and pain point from the vendor side looking at Nava going, you can be my partner to get this innovation into these employers in ways that I haven’t been able to do kind of in the previous regime.

Marcus Osborne 3:32
Usually what I have found is this, that if you really want to understand why somebody is doing something, if you want understand what it takes to kind of convince them to do something, you have to first start with their underlying motivations. What sort of motivates them in life? What is your motivation? Or what motivates you to do everything? I mean, not just even with a business you’re in, I’m interested in just kind of what’s your motivation?

Brandon Weber 3:59
Broadly speaking, I want to make a difference. I really, genuinely just get-I get excited about solving problems that people that I know and people kind of in my community have. I think what ended up moving me kind of out of the, like, job path and into the founder path was that I have a tendency to get obsessed with problems that I see. And that obsession really just sticks in my head, I just kind of can’t get away from it. And in my last business, VTS, it was an obsession with just kind of how crappy and unsophisticated the tools being used in the commercial real estate marketplace were. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get out of my head that that marketplace was going to modernize and that someone had to go do that work. And it might as well be me. I was just kind of experienced in that, you know, in that industry. And so for me, I think that’s how I feel with healthcare. I’m obsessed with this problem in healthcare that we’re tackling and kind of just can’t get it out of my head and I get super excited about the thought when I was thinking about my next chapter, after founding my first company, I get really excited about just the idea of doing good and doing well. I think we’re sitting here in a time where we are surrounded by just absolutely massive societal problems, like just massive challenges facing us in education, climate change, healthcare, and also this opportunity to go build companies from scratch and massive amounts of resources to go in support of doing that. I feel like, if you’re entrepreneurial at all, if you have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, this is one of the most amazing times to be an entrepreneur because there are these huge problems that we genuinely just need as many smart people as we can, leaning all in on trying to solve them. And we have an amazing set of resources, both technical and capital resources, to do all those things, the kind of do good and do well coupled with this unique time in the marketplace. I think that motivates me like every single day to just go, let’s go make a difference, let’s go like really lean into, you know, to these big problems that are facing us. And we just have to get solved.

Marcus Osborne 6:07
I actually love that idea of obsession, right, and you gotta love the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is the only one that can take something that maybe is a positive and turn it into something that should be treated, right? So there are drugs for people who have tendencies towards obsession, but is running your own company something that you view as therapeutic?

Brandon Weber 6:30
I have this experience with a lot of founders that I know. For someone who gets truly obsessed about a problem, and that there is a better way, and until that better way is like broadly deployed and out there in the marketplace, they can’t really sleep very well at night. I think it’s absolutely true. For me, the act of going and trying to be that solution is the therapy, it’s therapeutic. You’re like, I’m doing some work, I’m taking a step toward solving this problem that I’ve gotten really obsessed about. And I think what I found is the most efficient way for me to scratch that itch, for me to go and tackle that problem, was to build my own company, was to, you know, start a startup. It was oriented completely around that, maybe the most direct path to saying, I am tackling this problem that I can’t get out of my head, that I lose sleep around, you know, at night. I think that’s something that you see with a lot of founders. This is the lever that feels like the most effective to pull in terms of building companies oriented around a problem they can’t get out of their head.

Brandon Weber 6:32
When I see people who are creating something new or going after a new opportunity, it doesn’t necessarily even mean founding a company per se, but it could be founding a company, it’s often sort of built around this concept of the thesis, that we all operate with this thesis or set of theses that are kind of the originating force that drive change or transformation. What is the thesis or set of theses that you started with that have driven you to found the company, continue to operate the company? What is that sort of thesis or set of theses that are kind of moving you?

Brandon Weber 8:00
What we observed while we were doing our walkabout through healthcare, just basically trying to answer the simple question, why is healthcare the only marketplace that can deliver 10% to 15% cost increases, and a worsening product and user experience? It defies the logic of most kind of major marketplaces. And I think what we observed was that, contrary to maybe our going in assumptions, there was an absolute, combinatorial explosion of innovation happening in healthcare and the supply side of healthcare. And talking to digital health entrepreneurs under kind of every slice of care delivery, doing amazing things, like really cool cutting edge stuff that we as healthcare consumers have never kind of gotten access to. And it was kind of any direction you’d go. You’d see this kind of same dynamic of, oh my gosh, there’s an explosion of innovation here. But that innovation is not making its way into the hands of the buyer. So kind of the thesis that emerged out of this observation that like, wow, oh, my gosh, there’s so much cool stuff happening here, the future might already be here, it’s just not evenly distributed, led to kind of, I think, our core thesis, that the bottleneck to dramatically improving the healthcare marketplace and making it more consumer and buyer centric…there’s not a lack of innovation on the supply side, not that we’re missing great point solutions, we’re missing, you know, a better alternative to the traditional insurance model. It’s a gummed up distribution layer. It’s a gummed up marketplace layer that is the bottleneck. And that really drove us, and we observed that with, when we talked to the innovators and we asked them, how do you get your product into the hands of you know, buyers in America? And they were deeply frustrated with how difficult it was to go to market to bring their product into the hands of the average employer with the average employee around the country. And so we were like, wow, that’s really interesting. We need to understand the distribution channel that is governing the kind of connection between all these suppliers that are doing really cool things, and all the buyers that seem to not be getting any access to them or being able to deploy them in their population. And it turns out, well, who governs the largest marketplace in health care, which is the employer sponsored marketplace, about 150 million Americans? It’s this industry that not many VCs really talk about, which is the benefits brokerage industry. And they function as the gatekeeper, and essentially, the de facto marketplace layer sitting between all of those cool vendors that are doing really neat stuff that have raised a bunch of money and, you know, the employers who are trying to provide sponsored health care and benefits for their employees. That was kind of one of the big things. We were like, wow, adding another point solution to the mix on the supply side is not going to solve this problem. We have to ungum the bottleneck that sitting between them and the tens of millions of people who are working for small, medium-sized employers. The other one, which is what led me to meet you actually, was that, when we actually looked at the employer sponsored healthcare marketplace, we saw this, like, story of two totally different paradigms happening, kind of at once. It was a tale of two outcomes. One was, most small or medium-sized employers getting absolutely crushed by spiraling healthcare costs, and just degrading products for their employees, deductibles going up 50% more than salaries, premiums going up 150% more than salaries in the same period of time. And so those SMBs and mid-market employers wee just getting absolutely crushed by the healthcare system. And then we went and started to talk to America’s largest employers, like Walmart, and Amazon, and Google, and Comcast. And they were playing an entirely different game. And they were bringing in house the capabilities, tools, technologies, the innovation that we kind of discovered that wasn’t making its way into small, medium-sized employers, and getting entirely different results too. 25%, 30% less in healthcare spend, better employee outcomes, better employee user experience. So the kind of second thesis was like, gosh, we have to go figure out what America’s Fortune 500 largest employers are doing and turn that into a playbook. Bring that playbook, those tools, those technologies, the access points that they have down to the mid market at scale, how might we do that. And so those are the two things are really kind of govern everything that we’re doing, which is like, we need to create a better go to market channel for all this amazing innovation that’s not making its way into the hands of the buyer, and on the reverse side, help the buyer do better discovery and learn about those different things. And then, two, we’re replicating much of the kind of magic that the Fortune 500 have been doing inside of their organizations and productizing that bringing that down to small and medium sized employers around the country.

Marcus Osborne 12:44
It’s interesting the process that you went through to develop Nava and those theses. It’s way more iterative. Hey, we’re exploring, we’re going to learn, and we think X, but actually X isn’t the opportunity, Y is the opportunity. And there’s a little bit of paradox that people will tell you, they’ll talk a lot about stick-to-itiveness, you know, sticking to it and just fight through. But I also increasingly hear stories over and over where I think founders and innovators and entrepreneurs are actually having to be way more pragmatic. And how do you think about entrepreneurship, given that sort of, sometimes the lens or the the ways in which is portrayed?

Brandon Weber 13:23
As an entrepreneur who founded a company and is now founding another company in two totally different industries, one was commercial real estate and now in healthcare, one of the things that I’ve learned is there are certain things that you need to have deep conviction over and really unwavering conviction over. And for me, that’s the kind of core problem, like the fundamental problem. You need to understand it, you need to see it in three dimensions, you need to have like poked on that and just really, truly believe that that is a fundamental problem that I have conviction and I am not uncertain about that problem existing. And if we could dramatically improve the status quo of that problem or solve that problem, it will create a massive amount of value for our market and our customers. That is where I think you need to have a lot of conviction. The how, the solution or set of solutions that you build to go and address that core problem, that’s where I think you need to have strong beliefs loosely held. And I’ve both experienced it, like, personally, as a founder, when I haven’t listened to the data, I haven’t listened to the user, and I’ve just doubled down on my conviction around this is the exact solution without listening to that data and getting punched in the face as a result of doing that, and the market correcting me. So I think that’s maybe like kind of my first crack at that which is like deep conviction on the problem that you want to solve and who you want to solve it for. And really, I think kind of a corollary to that is like, deep conviction on just your why, like, why do you exist? Why is this organization getting built? It’s been so fun to build Nava because we have such conviction around our why, like, we are one of those audacious, mission oriented companies that wakes up every single day and says, we’re here to fix healthcare. And we’re doing it by building a better marketplace to connect all those amazing innovators to all the, you know, the buyers that need access to that. And we’re going to do it with technology and data and transparency. That is an incredibly motivating thing for us. And I think that’s probably the other thing that, kind of, we’re unwavering about. And our products and our solutions could change dramatically. But every single day, we’re going to wake up, and we’re going to say, we’re here to fix healthcare. And we’re going to try to do it through distribution.

Marcus Osborne 15:28
I’m going to put a pin in that. I think that’s actually brilliant. I mean, I think if I were to steal from you, if there was somebody who’s talking about founding, I love that sort of idea of, have deep conviction around the problem, but be open and pragmatic around the solution, and be open to change. That, in my mind is the very essence of being a great entrepreneur and being a great innovator. You know, you founded a company very successful that was focused on commercial real estate. I actually think there’s a lot of people who are innovative, who are entrepreneurial in nature, who are solving problems in other industries, that often healthcare is very insular, right, where it says, if you’re not from the healthcare industry, you shouldn’t come into this space. And so it’s not a very inviting industry, in my mind. But I also am a believer that there’s a huge benefit to bringing in that experience from outside, given that the healthcare industry is insular, that it’s not always fun, it’s got some deep kind of barriers and issues that you got to deal with. What caused you to say, yep, I’m gonna make this leap?

Brandon Weber 16:29
One of the biggest things I’m passionate about is trying to convince founders to get into the healthcare, the climate change, the education business, to try to just lean in, use their skills, their superpowers, their resources, toward fixing some of the just really big, hairy problems that we’ve got as a society. And I think for me, the start was, I had the opportunity to sit back after stepping away from day to day duties at VTS. And we’d been super fortunate to be at the right place at the right time, build a company that ended up being kind of the market leader in its space. And I think the first thing that I just wrote down. When I thought about what do I want to do next with with my life I knew had a ton of gas in the tank, and I want to lean in on the big meaty problem was I just want to do good. I want to work on something that matters to my family, my friends, my grandkids. And you know, I’m sitting in 2019, where it just feels like there’s no shortage of dumpster fire types of problems. And for me, healthcare, I come from a blue collar family, where I’m probably, you know, one degree of separation away from lots and lots of people that have had a massive healthcare event that has changed their life, like, significantly, mostly for the worse financially or health wise. As I went down the rabbit hole of just reading about the healthcare marketplace and just why are we in this state that I described earlier, I just became obsessed with this point of view that we are on a runaway train right now. And we have less than a decade to go turn this around. And if we don’t, we will face, like, significant financial stress and duress at the family level and at the national, kind of federal level. For me, healthcare, it’s both a huge marketplace problem. And my background is kind of in these brokered marketplaces. I get really interested in the intersection of brokered industries and technology. But the human element of it, I remember, one thing that really moved me was, as I was doing research, I went deep into these Reddit, subreddit message boards. And so you can go into Reddit and you can go into “personal debt”, and you can go to “medical debt”, and you can just read stories of like normal Americans who are just trying to navigate the system and trying to get their families out of, you know, medical bankruptcy and whatnot. And I mean, I’d finished those, and I’d be like crying. It just became so human to me too. And so, you know, those are the two kind of things that just motivated me to say, I’m all in on this problem. This is a problem that we must make significant progress on in the next decade. It’s ruining families. You know, one in five Americans has medical debt in collections. I mean, it’s just, it’s insane. That really became my motivation. I’m just like, I don’t yet know what the solution is. Nava had not been created. We didn’t have the name yet. But I’m all in on just throwing my resources, my skillset, my expertise, at trying to be helpful, trying to be useful in making the healthcare marketplaces more fair, and more, you know, more friendly to the folks who were in it.

Marcus Osborne 19:30
I think, honestly, that’s probably a beautiful way to end it. First, Brandon, let me thank you for agreeing to take the time to do the interview. But I want to echo I think what you just said, and I think if there was a message that I could give to individuals is that, I hope there are others that are out there that have said, well, maybe they don’t even work in the healthcare industry, but know that there are examples of people like you, of bright, talented people who are committed and passionate and want to bring that passion to addressing the fundamental challenges of the system. And that I think your point was a great one, which is this isn’t sort of an esoteric conversation. You pull anybody off the street, you know, your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your neighbors, you know, just a random person, and you’re gonna hear these stories, and I hope people will benefit from your story and understand that there are opportunities for everybody to come into this industry and drive impact. So thank you for everything you’re doing. Thanks again for taking the time to chat today and good luck in what you’re doing.

Brandon Weber 20:32
Thank you, sir. Yeah, so fun to be with you.