V ⚔️
@VSwordH
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Founder and CEO @SWORDHealth ($3B val). Pioneering how we treat patients with AI and freeing 2 billion people from pain in the process. PhD (Bits & Atoms)
Oporto, Portugal
Joined May 2011
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Pinned Tweet
1/ This is one of those moments that force you to look back and enjoy the view.
We’ve started Sword 8 years ago in our University basement. We’ve struggled for 5 years and faced near death events every month.
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Two stories on
@vkhosla
and why he is a Silicon Valley legend:
In 2019, before entering the market, I was trying to raise our Series A in Europe, thinking it would be easier since that's where we started. After nine months and countless meetings, we were rejected by all the VCs
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Btw, one more thing this week…
As you probably have heard by now, we’ve raised $130 million in a mix of primary and secondary funding, increasing our valuation to $3 billion.
A short story on how this round came to happen:
By the end of 2023, we were receiving strong interest
Sword Health raises $130 million and its valuation soars to $3 billion
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After numerous partners from tier 2 VCs told us no in our Series A, we were able to raise from a top 5 VC because I’ve emailed an associate and he drove the deal.
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December will be Sword’s first profitable month, while growing revenue 2.7x year-over-year and ending the year with circa $200 million in ARR.
The natural outcome of when a great mission meets an equally great team.
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We forget how pain reduces our existence, making even the simplest things in life impossible. These 10 testimonials from our Sword members remind us of what a life free of pain should be:
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In three months, we went from a maniacal focus on profitability by VCs to LLM wrappers being valued at $1 billion. You’ve got to love this game.
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How to raise your Seed/Series A when no one knows you:
(A lesson on how to go from 0 to $2B)
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Looking for Founders (past or present) to lead a new area at Sword. Criteria:
•Launched a company or a new product inside a company (does not necessarily need to have been successful)
•Hungry to do it again, now with the lessons learned along the way.
•Is a learning
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5/ After spending two hours writing a short description of Sword with incredible detail, this was our cold email to Khosla:
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In the last 20 years, we’ve seen technology and innovation drive costs down and increase access across many different industries, from electronics to automotive.
In healthcare, though, we've seen the same penetration of technology but with the opposite effect. Healthcare is now
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I am both proud and genuinely astonished to share that
@swordhealth
has been recognised by Inc. Magazine as the 26th fastest-growing company in America.
Among more than 5,000 high-growth companies, Sword stood out by showcasing a 10,960% revenue growth over the past three
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The number one problem in Portugal is not a lack of money or a lack of talent (quite the contrary).
It’s a lack of inspiration.
If you’re growing up in Portugal now and watching the news or reading a newspaper, there’s nothing there to inspire you to achieve a life greater than
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@chrissyfarr
@mwetschler
Honestly, a country with that level of Healthcare cannot be called a 1st world country.
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Yesterday, during a call with one of those tier 3 investors—the kind you only talk to because someone you respect asked for a favor—we were discussing our goal of providing liquidity to our team members in the short term. Suddenly, they abruptly stopped me and asked, “Why do they
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Another quarter in the books with 100% revenue growth YoY, beating forecasts by 10%, delivering 580,000 AI sessions, and saving our clients millions in wasteful healthcare costs.
Our Member Net Promoter Score for Q1 was 72, with client satisfaction reaching 9.5 out of 10,
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Tuesday, we're going to announce the biggest innovation in our history. This is something that has been long in the making. Something we only thought would come into existence five years from now. Really bullish about the future of healthcare!
Sword + AI + Healthcare = 🚀🌑
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SWORD started with a need. That need turned into an idea and that idea is now a $2B company.
Deeply thankful to our patients, clients and team - It’s a pleasure to be working alongside them as we fulfil our mission to free 2 billion from physical pain
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Sword's success to date can be attributed to a hundred different reasons and a fair amount of luck. However, if I had to choose one piece of advice directly applicable to other founders starting now, it would be: Don't strive to be the first to market. Aim to be the best.
Two
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I'm writing this as I fly from Porto to SF, and reminisce about the remarkable year 2023 was for Sword. Some of the things we’ve achieved:
- Grew our revenue 2.7x YoY
- Delighted our clients with a customer satisfaction score of 9.5/10
- Ended the year with a member NPS of 74
-
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Yup, pretty much in line with our experience at Sword. We started in Europe. We would be dead by now if we had stayed there.
This is true. One company 20VC did the seed for.
I introduced to 3 investors for their Series A. 1 in SF and 2 in London. (Intros made Thursday).
US had call Friday, flew out Friday night & had Saturday and Sunday AM with team.
TS on Monday.
Two from EU, had calls
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Our journey with
@swordhealth
began in a small town in Portugal, and it was punctuated by many years of struggle just to get off the ground. We even endured three near-death experiences where we completely ran out of money and were unsure of our next move.
Fast forward to today,
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It’s always great to return to Harvard and present Sword’s HBS case study to Professor Regina Herzlinger's class. We discussed why technology in healthcare has historically failed to decrease costs (quite the contrary, actually!) and how Sword’s AI Care model is fulfilling the
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How to write a monthly update email.
(Lessons on how we got Sword from 0 to $2B)
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Do you know what’s cooler than a multi-billion dollar startup? Having the opportunity to pick up your kids from school every day.
The big things in life are often the ones we take for granted.
(An evergreen reminder for myself, especially today).
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In this game, few experiences are as gratifying as delivering a 50x return to your early investors, advisors, and employees, who believed in you when very few others would.
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11/ Many thanks to
@vkhosla
,
@zebulgar
,
@justindross
,
@lachygroom
,
@pjslycke
,
@Jorge_A_Marques
,
@norgard
,
@juliadewahl
,
@maccaw
et al. You believed in us when no one else would. And for that, we'll be forever grateful.
Remember: It only takes one person to truly believe in you.
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A CEO has many different jobs, but the number one? For me, it's to simply be the gatekeeper of high standards across the company. That's why at Sword, we have weekly reviews across product, talent, commercial, and marketing. That’s a quite simple and effective way to drive high
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The journey from impossible to plausible to inevitable:
Yesterday, we enrolled as many patients in a single day than we did throughout the entirety of 2020.
2023 was remarkably cool, even exceeding our expectations.
2024 promises to be even more extraordinary
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Really proud of our team for this recognition from Fast Company of Sword and our AI Care model as the leading world-changing idea in healthcare.
The more we scale AI Care, the clearer it is that it’s inevitable for all future care to be delivered this way.
The future is now.
Each year,
@FastCompany
World Changing Ideas Awards celebrate projects that make our world a more equitable and accessible place—and we are thrilled to share that Sword has been named the winner of the Health Services category!
This award reaffirms our very reason for pioneering
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10/ What we learned that day was that, despite what everyone said about cold emails and the need to be in Silicon Valley to succeed,
The truth is that talent doesn’t know boundaries, and doesn't need a network. It just needs a moment to shine. It just needs a shot.
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Paradoxically, having kids has made me significantly more productive and therefore more successful. When time is finite, every minute counts, which makes you focus on building a machine that scales you instead of grinding for hours. Constraint inspires innovation.
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Feedback we’ve just received from a potential client after they used one of our solutions:
“This is the program I needed but didn’t realize I needed.”
This is why innovation is so challenging. You can’t just ask what the market wants. You need to envision the future and risk
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Random thought:
I believe that 50% of my success can be attributed to the fact that I need to feel very tired to feel alive.
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Thrilled to announce that we’ve just published our last clinical study in Nature Digital Medicine that unequivocally establishes Sword's flagship digital treatment program as the new gold standard of care for the 50 million Americans who endure physical pain daily.
We’re thrilled to share our new study, published in the prestigious
@npjDigitalMed
, establishes Sword’s Digital Physical Therapy program as the new gold standard of care for the 50 million Americans who endure physical pain daily.
Learn more here:
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The three stages of competitor validation are:
First, they ignore you.
Then, they copy you.
Lastly, they smear you.
(This one is their last resort, quickly followed by capitulation)
Meanwhile, you focus on your users, shut out the noise, and win.
It’s that simple.
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The job of a CEO can essentially be condensed on continuously answering these three questions:
1.What can we do better?
2.What should we do next?
3.Where is the next 10x hire?
And regardless of whether you're a seed-stage CEO or a growth-stage one, the job stays exactly the
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Brands are not built on advertising or smart marketing gimmicks. They are built on the ability to keep a promise to a client that is so certain they don’t need to double-check; they just believe in the brand.
Vanguard achieved this because in every single new offering to the
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This is Forbes telling the world that SWORD's Digital Therapist recovers patients faster and better than conventional physical therapy. They're right.
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This one was really fun to do. We discussed how we see the future of the healthcare world and the many idiosyncratic ways Sword does things differently. I believe it’s especially interesting if you’re just starting now. Lots of inside baseball insights. Check out our conversation
Yesterday,
@swordhealth
announced new funding at $3B and introduced Phoenix, their new AI care specialist.
@nikillinit
and I sat down with CEO
@VSwordH
to discuss both and key decisions that have shaped Sword:
Spotify:
Apple:
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@vkhosla
believed in us when few would. He didn’t care about where we came from or who we knew. He was only focused on what we had built.
In a world where everyone chases the next bubble and has a sheepish behavior, that’s truly special
In 2020 ...
@swordhealth
had $2M in ARR; 2023 is likely close to $200M ARR. Proud to be supporting this rocket ship that is freeing the world from pain through AI therapy. My conversation with
@VSwordH
:
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Our biggest Health plan just had an emergency meeting with us because they want to go full remote with all of their patients.
Irresponsible to be doing in person physical therapy in a clinic, when it is safer and more effective to do it at home.
This changes everything.
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Cool to be recognized as one of the 16 most promising companies in Healthcare. From impossible, to plausible, to one of the fastest growing companies in the world — while always putting members ahead of growth.
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Excited to announce our $25M Series B! Thank you to
@transformcptl
for leading this round and becoming part of our mission to bring high-quality, effective
#msk
care to 2 Billion people worldwide.
#digitalhealth
We are thrilled to announce the closing of our Series B round of funding with
@transformcptl
to further our mission of providing high-quality, effective
#msk
care to 2B people worldwide:
#seriesb
#digitalhealth
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8/ We woke up that morning knowing this was it. Either we blew them away, or we were dead. There was no plan B.
Maybe that's why we felt 10/10 energized despite the lack of sleep. Our minds were in fight mode, and we had one thing in mind: "be so good that you can't be ignored.”
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Vinod is the GOAT investor who could just rest on his laurels and enjoy the view, but instead, he’s pioneering a better future in an uncompromising, contrarian, and decisive way. Stronger than ever, he’s one of a kind, and we’re lucky to have him on our side.
Twenty years ago today, I started Khosla Ventures. What a ride it has been!
Betting on people
@jack
@sama
@patrickc
; building new categories
@ImpossibleFoods
@QuantumScapeCo
@RocketLab
; making the impossible possible.
Can’t wait for the next 20 with near-free AI
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Excited to welcome Beth to Sword's team. Her experience as General Counsel in hyper-growth companies makes her perfect for our mission to free 2B people from pain in the complex healthcare industry.
Closer today than yesterday, but still only 5% done.
We’re excited to welcome Beth Stevens to Sword Health as our Chief Legal Officer.
Beth joins with a proven track record of success serving as general counsel for several hyper-growth companies. We look forward to the expertise she will bring our team.
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Final note:
We've spent the last 8 years building Sword from a company that no one would bet $1 into one of the fastest-growing companies in healthcare.
With so many startups going through tough times right now, it feels right to start sharing some learnings from our journey.
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6/ Surprisingly, we got an instant reply, and after some thorough due diligence, we were asked to present to the full partnership in 4 weeks.
Since we didn't have money, we booked the cheapest (and longest) flight to San Francisco.
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The best sleep pill
BREAKING NEWS: Introducing Pod 4 Ultra. A complete redesign of the fan-favorite
@eightsleep
Pod, now available in over 28 countries worldwide.
✅2x the cooling power
✅40% quieter
✅Controlled without a phone
✅10x more comfortable
✅And now with snoring detection and mitigation
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Grateful for this recognition, which is really an acknowledgment of the Sword team and the remarkable year we had in 2023.
Still only 5% done tho.
P.S.: I still have one more year to enjoy these under-40 recognitions 🙂
Thrilled to share that our CEO,
@VSwordH
has been named to the Becker’s Hospital Review’s list of emerging healthcare company leaders under 40!
Congrats to the entire Sword team! What a great way to head into the end of the year.
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Nunca vai deixar de ser surpreendente ver um dos Partners de um dos maiores fundos VC do mundo, a denotar o Porto como a fonte de um dos seus maiores returns.
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A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?
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4/ I knew that Khosla was science-first and independent thinkers. They didn't follow the herd.
If someone would see our potential in a cold email, it would be Khosla.
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The reason people join Sword is because they don't want to wait five years for someone to take a chance on them
If you're looking for a company that is growing faster than ever, with no layoffs and no drama, then this is it
Check out our open positions:.
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Cool Sword feature on Business Insider where we discuss our Human+AI approach and why we believe it represents the future of the healthcare world.
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You know you have a great product team when they define the product roadmap for both you and your direct competitor.
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It’s time to evolve the digital health field into AI Health and fulfill the promise of technology to change healthcare by improving clinical outcomes, patient experience, *and* driving a material cost reduction.
Digital health notoriously failed at that.
It’s time for AI Health
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@realneggi
@zebulgar
We’ve doubled our Gross Margin and 4x our revenue since Powell started increasing rates. What’s the opposite of that tweet? That’s what we are.
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1/ This was
@Swordhealth
in 2019. We had started in a small town in Portugal, outside of all the major startup ecosystems. To say that we were invisible would be an understatement.
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One of Sword’s key tenets:
Hard decisions in the past lead to easier decisions in the present
(We’re hiring)
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Impressive to see how OpenAI (a $29B company) generated $564B of Market cap value to Nvidia since the launch of Chatgpt.
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If you continuously manage your company as if you were running out of money in two months, will you never run out of money.
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The real stuff, not the idealistic recommendations that we get from those who have never been in the arena.
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When I think about Sword as a generational company, Dell stands out as the prime example. Founder-led for 40 years, never taking the foot off the pedal. That’s stuff only for legends.
Getting a lot of great feedback on
@mlevram
’s insightful
@FortuneMagazine
profile. 40 years of innovation and much more to come🚀
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I like Lulu’s work, but I absolutely love her vibe
Great founders don’t worry about making people mad
At the height of the censorship battles, I wrote something in favor of free speech and Anduril CEO
@SchimpfBrian
texted me that he liked it
I told him I was getting hell; people were really upset
His reaction:
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AI-powered surgery prevention is a major step forward in our mission to solve pain and materially reduce costs/waste throughout the healthcare system. In this economic climate of cost efficiency it is the ultimate win-win.
As our CMO, says “The best surgery is no surgery at all”
We're excited to announce Sword Predict, the first solution that stops unnecessary surgery & costs in their tracks.
Predict uses AI to detect at-risk members & change their projected course of treatment, saving employers up to $5M in medical cost a year.
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Deeply honored to welcome Beverly Anderson as our new Board member. Bev’s extraordinary breadth of experience, bold and strategic leadership philosophy, and genuine desire to achieve a demonstrable impact on society make her the perfect fit for Sword’s present and future. As we
We're proud to welcome Beverly Anderson to the Sword Health Board of Directors.
Beverly brings to Sword a career’s worth of leadership experience from the world’s leading financial institutions as well as public board expertise from Expedia.
Learn more:
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9/ And we did just that. We were so impressive that We got a full endorsement from the partnership and the long-awaited Series A term sheet was signed the next day.
The rest is not history, but is definitely historical. More to come on this.
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As we saw with the Shopify layoffs in Germany, the protective laws on individual employment in Europe only drives mass layoffs since it’s easier to fire everyone than it is to fire a single person.
A clear example of second order effects and unintended consequences.
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Another step in our journey. Proud and honored to have the continued support from Khosla Ventures and to welcome Founders Fund to the SWORD family.
Now, back to work.
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3/ Thanks to Harvard Business School for the interest in Sword.
And if you’re a founder and you’re going through the valley of death, hang on and push forward. It gets better.
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2/ Now, in 2023, Sword’s success is so remarkable that Harvard Business School published a case study on us and how, against all odds, we’ve gone from being left for dead to one of the fastest growing companies in the US.
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Proud to announce that SWORD is now the only digital MSK solution in the market certified by HITRUST, SOC2 and the FDA. Proud of the team for this milestone and the commitment to security, safety and privacy we make every day.
We’re thrilled to share SWORD Health is now the only digital MSK care provider with
@HITRUST
certification, SOC2 compliance, and an FDA listed medical device!
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7/ After 20 hours of traveling and 1 canceled flight, we got to our hotel at 4am. The presentation to the partnership was at 11am (fun).
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Honored to be named as one of the 30 leaders under 40 transforming healthcare in America.
Still only 5% done tho.
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The best (and only) way to build a great product is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
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The biggest problem with the digital health field is that the majority of companies were created to fit an existing regulatory framework (synchronous care). By definition, value creation can only come from innovation, which implies something new. That, by definition, won’t fit an
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2/ After spending 9 months trying to raise our Series A in Europe and getting nowhere, we were out of options.
We assumed that if we couldn't raise in Europe, then we definitely wouldn't be able to do so in Silicon Valley.
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@notgregkalai
I mostly try to understand the reasoning behind something. For example, did they think about second-order effects, what did they optimize for, and what compromises did they make to get there? In a nutshell, is this a half-assed job or the byproduct of a good thought process?
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Einstein famously said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." This is particularly true in healthcare, where despite the talent and scale behind these initiatives, they are intrinsically not set up for success. In the traditional
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Today, I learned that the words ‘pain’ and ‘penalty’ originate from the same Latin root. Anyone who has experienced pain can immediately understand the logic behind this connection
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Design often flies under the radar in many companies, largely because the tangible benefits of a seamless user interface or a compelling brand identity aren't always immediately recognized. Yet, investing in design is among the most lucrative decisions a company can make, turning
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We’re looking for PhDs in Physics to do some cool, complex, stuff in uncharted territory. If you want to solve a big human problem and double what you’re making right now, DM me
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Proud to share a new digital therapy program avail at
@SWORDhealth
: pulmonary rehabilitation. Fighting back on the lasting effects of
#COVID19
and getting employees back to work sooner. What it’s about:
At SWORD, we’re working to combat the long-term impact of
#COVID19
on our physical health. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a new therapy in our digital treatment suite: at-home pulmonary rehabilitation. Learn more:
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