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It is the duty of leaders to lead, of the creative to create, of the daring to do. The free world expects leadership of us. Its fate and our fate depends upon our leadership. We are industrious, inventive, restless with the fires that burn within us. Well, I say that nothing is easy and the best things are the hardest. And all our troubles, all our immense difficulties now and in the future, can I say, be solved if we have the will, the courage. The future is to those who take it.
It's a real honor to be on stage here with three of my favorite people in the world. We've got two Jedi Masters here, and I guess that makes this Luke Skywalker here. I don't know, but just quick introductions here and then we'll get started on I think a really interesting discussion about how industries as complicated as health and healthcare get transformed. Jerry Levin, Chairman of Startup Health, extraordinary person who's been involved with disrupting many different industries, and maybe we'll dig into that. He's also the founder and CEO of the Levin Parkinson's Transformational Health Institute. And Esther Dyson, one of the most active angel investors in the space, board member of 23andMe, Meetup, WPP, and many other companies, and really one of the first investors and advisers to Startup Health. So thank you so much for everything that you've done for us, both of you. And in fact, Esther introduced us to Jerry a few years ago. So Steve, I'd like to turn it over to you for a conversation about how industries like healthcare become transformed.
Excellent, thank you. Unity, I want to welcome everyone here to really the beginning of our afternoon session that's going to include some incredible conversations. And we spent a lot of time thinking about the two people that we wanted to kick off what we believe is the most important conversation we as an industry need to be having, specifically the transformation of healthcare. And what I thought would be helpful to do is set a little bit of a framework. While Unity mentioned that Esther introduced us to Jerry, I want to give a little bit more color on that story because Esther first invested in really the predecessor to Startup Health many years ago. And when you find great advisors and investors, sometimes they ask you really tough questions that change the course of everything. Esther asked us a simple question, which is, 'Tell me what I can do to help you.' And when Esther Dyson asks you something like that, you think really hard. Unity and I had just finished a book that we had read called 'Blueprint to a Billion.' It talked about the building of billion-dollar businesses, and one of the characteristics of building a billion-dollar business is that every single billion-dollar business that's been built, revenue-wise not value-wise, there was a board member who himself or herself had built billion-dollar businesses. And so we said to Esther, because we know she travels in that world of people who've built billion-dollar companies, 'If you ever find someone who's built billion-dollar businesses who's passionate about healthcare and entrepreneurship, we want to meet them.' When I tell you three years almost to the day we asked, she asked that question, we got a phone call and told us that she was introducing us to Jerry Levin, who not only fit the mold of someone who's built multi-billion-dollar businesses but someone whose life had become dedicated to the transformation of healthcare, and not only that, was passionate about entrepreneurship. A perfect, perfect home run connection that without a doubt resulted in the formation of Startup Health today. So Esther, I want to start with you first because you obviously saw before anybody else did that connecting Startup Health with Jerry Levin would be transformational. Can you tell us the moment you realized that that would be an ideal match?
It wasn't quite that blindingly clear, but Jerry showed up after many years and said he was coming to New York and was interested in health. I knew him from his past when he was a guy in a suit and very, very busy. And then he showed up totally transformed, married to a wonderful woman who I think transformed his life, made him sleep eight hours a night instead of four. And I thought, this is the perfect guy. That says it all.
The reason why it's so critical, you know, one of the things that I told you about Esther's question about what can I do to help, Jerry on the very first lunch that Unity, myself, Esther, and Jerry had was a question Jerry asked, which was, 'If you could wave a magic wand and look out a decade from now, what needs to happen to transform this industry?' And that would change the course of everything. Jerry, that question, among some of your other questions, I think are the reason why many entrepreneurs today are working on such important things. Can you share a little bit about why you ask those questions and perhaps why you even feel so passionate as to be spending your time now focusing on the transformation of healthcare?
Well, you know, I come from a background in the media industry and witnessed, helped, was the subject of massive change. And it seemed to me that I was always in the storytelling business and thought through media we could have a substantial impact on people's lives around the world. Increasingly, for a lot of reasons, one of which Esther has cited, it's the stories about people's lives that most interest me. And I think it sounds trite, but it's actually the foundation or the infrastructure for everything. Let me just take two quick seconds. The disruption in the media business was pretty much about giving the consumer what we used to call the 3 C's: choice, convenience, and control. You know, as networks or publishers or whatever we did, we gave it to you, you got it on our terms. And all of a sudden, with a little thing called HBO, which is another long story, the idea that I can take control of what I want because I'm totally unique, I know what I want. And here we are living today in not just cord cutting and binge watching, but you have the power with your instruments to see anything you want at any time, any size, any way. We used to talk about Henry James had a book called 'The Spoils of Poynton' where your personality was defined by your furniture and your house. Well, now you're defined by the influx of data, video that you have, and it's all in your control. Eventually, we won't have networks. Okay, so now let's switch to healthcare. The same thing is happening. It's not just the euphemism that people are taking control of their health, but what could be more fundamental than the lifestyle that you lead and the way you conduct yourself and the pursuit of happiness? It's all about your personal story. And we have a structure in the healthcare industry, and used to have, and it's changing. We used to define the media business: there was production, people made things; there was distribution, you had to get it out; and then there was exhibition, you know, like a movie theater or a television network. All that's changed now. It's just been completely disrupted, and there's a clear channel directly to the consumer. The same thing needs to be happening in healthcare because even the definition of what is healthcare is not about simply the kind of research that takes place and evidence-based this or that or what the NIH says or what Obamacare is. It all seems confusing. It's very simple. It's all about how I live my life and how can I improve it. What could be more important than that? And so to apply digital technology and entrepreneurship and eventually change the structure of the so-called healthcare industry is what I'm about, you're all about, and it's happening. It's happening in a big way. The definition of what is healthcare could be everything from what I eat, nutrition is medicine, medicine, nutrition, to just walking or whatever I do or what I think or how stressful I am. We're all exquisitely unique, and that's what healthcare has to address.
Taking a play off of that, Jerry, I'd like to ask Esther, who now spends a majority of her time working inside of the health industry, not healthcare industry, the health industry. And as Jerry described that and some of the parallels with the media industry and maybe even other industries, why today do you think there is so much interest and focus and money and I would say laser-sharp direction towards really now everybody getting behind the transformation of healthcare? And as really the most active angel investor in healthcare, why now and why you?
Yeah, so there's a couple of things going on. The reason people are paying so much attention is what I call global sickening. It's probably worse than global warming because even if we have a great environment, if human bodies are not sustainable, we're screwed. It's something that Angus Deaton sort of noticed in his post-Nobel prize paper. I'm going to start with my little anecdote. Some time ago I wrote about this little website called RealAge. It still exists. Hearst bought it and then they sold it to Care.com. You go on there, you fill in a questionnaire not about your A1C and actual medical things, but do you have a dog, how often do you argue with your spouse, do you have a spouse, how much do you drink, and it gives you your real age. Its business purpose is to sell supplements. And to write the story, I interviewed the founder whose name was Charlie Silver. He had sold his previous company to Jiffy Lube. He was in the car maintenance business and then he was in the body maintenance business. And it was partly through writing that story I realized, you know, the ROI on maintenance or prevention or health is much higher than the maintenance on care, which is after the fact when the damage is already at least being partly done. And I began to get more and more interested in health. So the things that have happened in my world and partly in the healthcare world that are most interesting are, first of all, there's more data. So you can see what did happen versus what was predicted to happen. You can't really understand the value of prevention until you understand clearly what would have happened if you hadn't intervened. And so big data, prediction, all this kind of stuff. The other is Obamacare, not because of who pays for what, you know, whether it's the government or long run it's going to be all of us, they pay for outcomes. And this, you know, this hasn't gotten through the heads of most people in the industry. It's gotten sort of to what they talk about but not to their behavior. But ultimately, this notion of paying for outcomes or paying for the difference between the invisible outcome and the bad things that would have happened, that is really going to transform this industry. And I hope it's going to happen faster than 17 years, which is the traditional.
