Troy Bannister | Particle Health
What Is Particle Health? What Is The Mission And What Problem Are You Solving?
Particle is on two missions: (1) to destroy the fax machine (that's the fun one), and (2) to catalyze dramatic change in healthcare by providing simple, comprehensive and actionable access to the US Health System’s data sources.
The health system is fragmented, complicated and outdated in the way it shares data. Particle is learning from other API companies that developers are familiar with, like Plaid, Stripe and Twilio, to create a familiar, simple way to connect over 200M+ people from most healthcare organizations in the US.
What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company? And How Did You Choose This Space?
I’ve been frustrated with the healthcare system my whole life. From EMT to Med Student, Clinical Researcher and Healthcare VC, I’ve seen almost every stakeholder (mostly patients) struggle accessing and using health data in meaningful ways.
I started Particle to help patients, consumers, the EMTs in ambulances, doctors in hospitals and innovators at health tech companies access information and create new solutions to fix our broken system.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-Liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
This is the best job (if you can call it that) I could have dreamed of. It’s hugely complicated, but intrinsically rewarding at every turn. Each day is different and I’m required to jump into every aspect of the US health system - from understanding payment models to picking up marketing. It’s amazing.
The hardest part is the uncertainty. Are we investing in the right areas? Are we building the right thing? Is this feature more important than the 100 others in the backlog? We’re creating something that has never existed before. We can look to other examples, but the analogies only go so far. Healthcare is complicated, moves slowly and is very sensitive in nature. We need to be completely sure we’re doing this the right way at every step and that can be taxing… but again, very rewarding when we’re on the other side.
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And What You Use The Money You’ve Raised For.
We’ve raised two rounds. The first was the hardest. I worked in VC prior to starting Particle, so I had a bit of an edge knowing how VCs make decisions. Seed Rounds, however, are almost completely based on the founders. It’s kind of like Ford vs. Ferrari… sure, Ferrari had some really fast cars, with years of iteration - but Ford had the right team. They lost in the beginning, but over time, the team learned how to build a better car. VCs invest early on teams.
Who Are Your Cofounders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?
I found Dan (Co-Founder and CTO) while he was working at Google as a Senior Software Engineer. Somehow, I convinced him to leave his high-paying, cushy job and start Particle with me. I, admittedly, have very little technical knowledge and I haven’t worked at large tech companies, so his expertise from the technical side, as well as his understanding of process, framework and ethos has been instrumental in getting early product built as well as a growth & team process built out. On top of that, Dan is the best Co-Founder a person could ask for… I’d be a wreck doing this solo!
How Has COVID-19 Affected Your Business And What Have You Done To Adapt To Any Changes?
We’ve become stronger because of COVID, no doubt. Our product is only more important - in the sense that folks need medical data to triage for risk, pull lab results and the like - but also because we’ve gone remote, we’ve had to adopt more rigorous procedures and frameworks that have made our processes repeatable and scalable. For a growing company, this forced us to use platforms and tools, focus on communication and reinvent our operations. Our team has doubled since COVID hit and while it’s been challenging, we’re feeling really strong about what we’ve built.
How Do You Think Healthcare And Regulations In The Industry Will Change Post-COVID?
Healthcare has been evolving really fast, even before COVID. New regulations like TEFCA and Information Blocking were proposed, written and finalized even before the pandemic was a concern. Now that we’re six months in, the need for regulation that will open up data sharing is even more paramount. We think the business argument has been here for a long time and now the regulatory argument and pandemic catalyst is pushing it even faster. Telemedicine, for example, fast forwarded 5 years in 3 months. Laws got passed and the market adopted it beyond expectations.
As we move into 2021, the folks at Particle are dedicated to building technology that will embody the intent behind data sharing rules, like Anti-Info Blocking, giving patients the ability to seamlessly share their health data with new and innovative applications and tools.
Can You Walk Us Through A Work Day? What Does A Typical Day For You Look Like From When You Wake Up Till You Go To Sleep?
I hate to admit this, but, every morning I wake up thinking about Particle and every night I go to bed thinking about Particle. It can be exhausting, but I’ve decided to make this core to my life. As the CEO, I have 3 main responsibilities: (1) money, in the form of investment or revenue (2) team, in the form of advisors, board and employees and (3) setting the vision, which constantly evolves given regulation, competition and gaps in opportunity. I usually obsess over #3, and work day-to-day on #1 and #2. Of course, executing vision in the form of sales pitches, marketing, product and the like all connects the dots.
What Are The Top Three Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful?
(1) Optimism. There will always be times when you’re wondering if what you’re doing isn’t going to work, but you need to put trust in your vision. It’s a non-negotiable.
(2) Urgency. You must be setting unrealistic expectations for yourself, with the anticipation of not meeting those goals, but trying your hardest. These goals need to be things within your control and they must be ambitious, if not crazy.
(3) Home Runs. It’s incredibly important to think big. This idea of yours will change the way industries work. How does what you're doing incur a seismic shift? Thinking big allows for big bets and big bets move mountains.
Tell Us A Story Of An Experience You Had That Taught You An Invaluable Lesson.
At a healthcare conference back in 2015, I saw Joe Biden give a speech. He told the story of his son Beau, who suffered from brain cancer, attempted to use the US health system for treatment, research and ultimately a cure to his disease. What really struck me was how Joe, the acting Vice President of the United States at the time, was unable to access, share or transfer his son’s information between physicians and researchers. How could the second most powerful person in the country not be able to do this? Was the system really that broken?
In that moment I learned something that sparked a bit of a fire in me: it didn’t matter who you were. The health system in the US was so broken that it unabashedly didn’t work. It didn’t choose who would suffer from its own inadequacies - everyone did. That to me was unbelievable. It was a problem that everyone has - from the VP of the US to the average person. It was a symptom of a poorly thought out infrastructure, lagging regulation and a misalignment of incentive - and it had to change.
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?
I would love to sit down with Bill Gates. I think, of all the incredibly successful people in the world, Bill has figured it out. He is not accumulating unimaginable wealth, he is distributing it. He isn’t investing in fun or arguably juvenile ventures (cough cough Elon’s flamethrowers, cyber trucks, or hypertubes) he is investing in vaccine research, clean water projects, renewable energy. He isn’t building an empire of privacy-invading technologies, he is maintaining an indispensable technology we all depend on every day.
Bill is smart, altruistic, empathetic and really working for the world’s betterment. That, to me, is someone I want to know.
What Are Your Top Three Favorite Books?
So I’m a real Sci-Fi nerd. I love how this genre takes a single discovery - a change in what's possible - and plays out how it would change the world (or universe in some scenarios). These books make these inventions believable by, usually, backing them up with real science. Some of my favorites:
The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
The Magus by John Fowles (not necessarily Sci-Fi)
What Does Success Mean To You?
I am so bought into our mission, that anything short of it and I think we would not meet my criteria for success. If we look at banking, for example, as soon as Plaid showed up on the radar, people had access to incredible new things: Venmo, Mint, Robinhood… it created an opportunity for people that didn’t traditionally have access to investments, managing their finances or getting a loan to finally get those things. It democratized a bias system. This is what Particle aims to achieve in healthcare.
In the same vein, most people in the US don’t have access to affordable, quality healthcare. They’re forced to stay ‘in-network’, or if they don’t have insurance, go to their local doctor. Costs are hidden, inflated and engineered for profit. What if, instead, every American could access incredibly affordable healthcare on an app or a website. A technology that automated, scaled and was built on the foundations of data. The only way to do this, in my mind, is open information sharing and that’s what Particle is here to do.