Aaron Martin 0:16
Hi, this is Aaron Martin, I’ve got the privilege of being able to interview Nathan Bays. Hi, Nathan. Great to see you.

Nathan Bays 0:23
Aaron, great to see you as well.

Aaron Martin 0:24
So tell me how, kind of, the origin story, like how did you kind of get involved in healthcare? What was your kind of first inkling into it? And how did you get started?

Nathan Bays 0:34
Wow, great question. And I’ll definitely have to give you the Cliff Notes version, I had no intentions of going into healthcare. My mom was a nurse growing up and, during my childhood, transitioned to cardiac rehab, but I had no intention of being in healthcare. But I graduated, I had spent time in politics and policy, went to law school, graduated in 2007 with the intent to do, you know, really corporate transactional m&a type of work. Most of that work dried up very quickly after I graduated law school in the spring of 2007, started working in the fall of 2007. And I found myself doing healthcare work. So I was doing a lot of physician transactions, some hospital and larger facility deals, a lot of physician ambulatory work, and really started diving in deeper, you know, on the healthcare space. I was fortunate to have a good network in healthcare. During that period of time, I was introduced to Gary Bisbee, who’s the founder of Think Medium and of this show, and got to know Gary. I’ve always been interested in kind of the entrepreneurial side, come from a business family. My grandfather and dad were entrepreneurs, started a business, and always thought that, you know, while I enjoyed practicing law, being in something that was more, you know, on the business side was interesting. And so, you know, as Gary, he had started the wealth management academy with a partner in the late 90s. He was returning to more of an active role within the Health Management Academy. He had been CEO of a couple of companies between the late 90s and 2010. And with some of the initiatives that he was looking to grow the business, you know, we had conversations, and he, for better or worse, definitely better, but there were days where it was, you know, we were pulling our hair out, or what’s left of it. It was a good run. He recruited me, and, you know, I spent time with him. And really that time at the academy, kind of six years from January 2011 to early 2017, was really when I learned healthcare. I had a baseline knowledge from working on, you know, transactions, you know, as an attorney, but that was really where I learned healthcare, and really the full continuum of kind of the healthcare services, space, everything except life sciences. I led the policy and strategic advisory work at the Academy, I worked closely with Gary on a lot of the major initiatives and his partner. I was General Counsel of the organization, so I wore multiple hats during my time there. And also, that’s when I became you know, more interested at the individual level, and early stage companies and started investing, you know, as an individual in kind of early stage healthcare IT and service delivery companies during that time as well. So it was really that window from kind of late 20s to early 30s, at the Academy, where I really became immersed in healthcare and decided it’s where I wanted to spend, you know, my time throughout the rest of my career.

Aaron Martin 3:05
That must have been incredible to sit into because, you know, I’ve been to many HMA, you know, sessions and the convening and just, you know, having these experts and kind of peers, you know, from across the different industry, it must have been just really, really cool just to be able to kind of sit in and just absorb all the thought leadership that was going on in that context.

Nathan Bays 3:27
Fascinating. It was fascinating to do it. And it was also, you know, I did a lot of speaking as well. So boards, leadership teams, a lot of the external facing work of the Academy at the forum meetings. So it was really a unique learning experience to be in the room, as you said, with all these executives. But then, the opportunity to go out and actually spend time in dialogue with them around things that may have been occurring from a policy perspective, strategic, you know, market landscape. All of that was just, you know, and during that window, I mean, healthcare is always interesting. And I think it becomes, in some ways, more interesting with each month and each year. But that was a particularly unique period of time post, you know, the Affordable Care Act passage, where there was just so much going on from policy and care delivery, and, you know, there was a lot of optimism about changing care models, I think, in some ways, more than there is today. But there was just a lot of energy around doing things different, being different, digital transformation, which, you know, you’re very familiar with. I mean, there was just so much energy. A lot of that was really new at that period of time and it was just a fun time to be there and a great learning time.

Aaron Martin 4:29
So much of the innovation is sparked from these kind of policy changes, either directly, indirectly, intentionally, or unintentionally. But that must have been fascinating to kind of watch, like, how something happening in Washington could kind of beget, if you will, a ton of these different innovations.

Nathan Bays 4:45
Totally. It kind of beget these innovations on the delivery systems side with large health systems, like Providence, where you’re at. But also, entire companies were formed and created to basically provide either the capabilities that existing healthcare ecosystem players would need, or to do it on their own to really kind of shift the system forward away from fee for service into value, managing risk. I mean, a whole generation of new companies were really spawned during that time period, which was just fascinating. And many of them are very successful and scaled companies today. So it’s been really interesting to watch that growth.

Aaron Martin 5:18
What’s the thing that you hope to get out of these interviews that are upcoming with these founders? What would you like to just make sure that we kind of pull out of those conversations and get out into the world, if you will?

Nathan Bays 5:33
I think, Aaron, and you’ve done a lot of investing, and you’ve spent a lot of time doing de novo companies, and working, you know, with early stage companies. You know, one of the things that I think is, you know, most fascinating about founding a company, or the founding story is really just thinking about, you know, I see problems every day, right? I can’t walk from one floor of my house to another without saying, you know, this should work better, or this should be fixed. But kind of that moment to say, you know, we should actually start a business, organize a group of people, which, in many ways, starting a business, you’re just saying, I’m gonna step out and organize a group of people and get some money. And this group of people is going to work really, really hard to fix this problem. And I love hearing about, you know, what kind of takes an individual from saying, Hey, this is not working well, this is not working right, it could be better, to saying, I’m going to devote some portion of my professional career to fixing it, and just the thought process that goes through that. And I think you just hear fascinating stories from founders, from entrepreneurs, about what actually drove them from observing a problem to saying, I’m going to take, you know, all of our professional careers are limited 35 years, 40 years for I mean, however long they may be from a duration standpoint. But to say, you know, kind of part of my life, I’m going to devote to fixing this problem. And I think you just hear fascinating stories with so many anecdotes that you can learn from and apply to other situations. And so I’m really interested in hearing kind of that aspect of the founding journey from founders in these interviews.

Aaron Martin 7:01
Just to kind of riff on what you just said, when we incubate new companies, there’s several different kinds of what we call stage gates that it goes through. And the first one is, do you actually get signal to noise on kind of solving the problem that you’re talking about? Another is, can you get another customer interested beyond Providence? Third one is, can you recruit a really, really high end management team that’s very experienced? And then the fourth is, can you get an external VC to kind of come in and fund it. And I think the actual biggest signal to noise is that third step, because if somebody is willing to kind of devote five to seven years of their lives, on that challenge, or that opportunity, that to me is the biggest signal to noise. And I always tell the team, like, especially these days, it’s a little bit easier to get financing than it used to be. But getting really, really top end talent is the truest indication that there’s a there there.

Nathan Bays 7:54
Yeah, agree.

Aaron Martin 7:55
Well, thanks, Nathan. I’m looking forward to it and looking forward to your interviewing folks and really, really exciting stuff.

Nathan Bays 8:01
Yeah, likewise. I am as well and it’ll be fun to hear the interviews and to hear your interviews and hear your story as well.