Tamar Rudnick is a healthcare executive who has spent 10+ years in leadership roles across early-stage, public company, and PE-backed businesses. She is currently an Operating Partner at Define Ventures, one of the largest early-stage digital health VCs with ~$800M under management and $22B in exited value.
At Define Ventures, Tamar leads strategic growth initiatives. Based in Silicon Valley, Define invests in early-stage companies from Seed stage to Series B, and has backed and built some of the category-leading companies such as Livongo, HIMS, and Evolent. Define differentiates itself by providing unparalleled expertise in go-to-market and commercialization. Tamar leads this work—developing relationships with a coalition of industry-leading Payers, Health Systems, and Life Sciences companies. To date, Define has delivered customer contracts for over 50% of their portfolio companies.
Prior to Define Ventures, Tamar was the SVP of Growth at apree health, where she was responsible for leading Sales, Enablement, Marketing, and Customer teams across Employer and Health Plan segments. apree health is a leader in tech-enabled primary care delivery for commercial organizations, including Fortune 500 Employers and National Health Plans with Elevance as a key strategic partner. apree health was formed as a combination of Castlight Health and Vera Whole Health. At apree, Tamar led the commercial team, delivering 30% revenue growth for the combined business
while integrating two commercial organizations and developing the combined go-to-market strategy.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you along with me for a conversation about healthtech venture capital (VC), and to help me have that conversation, I have Tamar Rudnick with me. Tamar is the head of partnerships at Define Ventures, who is one of the largest funds focused on early-stage healthtech companies.
And she also has deep experience working as an operator in the healthtech space, so I think those two perspectives are really going to bring a rich conversation and help us get into some exciting topics. So without further ado, I'd like to bring her into the conversation. Hey, Tamar, thanks for being on the show today.
Tamar Rudnick:
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, I'd love, for those who don't know you, if you could share a little bit about your story, maybe some highlights from your career so far, where it's taken you over the years?
Tamar Rudnick:
My career has spanned research, it has spanned consulting, and really for the past decade, I've been a digital health operator. I joined Castlight Health, which was an early digital health company, when they were pre-IPO. And I stayed a number of years through an IPO, through M&A, through a take-private. And during that time, I took on as many leadership roles as I could.
I started in strategy and business development, I took on product and analytics leadership roles. And ultimately, I became our head of growth, leading marketing and commercial organizations. As the company morphed, I stayed with the company as it became apree health, where I was for the past two years as our head of growth. And then just about six months ago, I decided that I wanted to try something new.
I got itchy and realized I'd been an operator for many years and wanted to really open the aperture and see what was happening in healthcare more broadly. And I decided to make a pretty big shift and come over to venture.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, and that's what we're here to talk about today. So I think you bring a unique, well, maybe not a completely unique, but a very helpful lens of someone who's operated.
Now is operating at a different level, helping other companies refine what they're trying to do as they go-to-market and as they try to get started. So that's why I was excited to have this conversation.
And obviously, you're at Define Ventures now. I'd love to hear a little bit or have you share just a little bit about what Define Ventures focus is, what you're all about now?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, happy to. And I think we have a thesis at Define, and I very much agree with it, that ex-operators make the best investors and venture capitalists, and that's very much been my experience as well. So Define Ventures is one of the largest, dedicated digital healthcare venture firms today.
We have about $800 million under management across six funds, and we do early-stage investing. So that means everything from incubation to seed, to Series A and B investments, and we really focus, we look across healthcare sectors. So we will look at investments around the health system space, employer, payer, life science and biotech.
We're based in San Francisco and we really differentiate ourselves by bringing together, I think, two really important elements. One is this true Silicon Valley technology chops, and then the second is a focus on go-to-market. And our perspective is that selling in any industry is always hard.
It's one of the hardest parts about building a business. And I think it's even more nuanced in healthcare where you have really tricky dynamics like consolidated, large buyers when you think about the payer space or regulatory headwinds or enormous contract sizes.
And so my role is to really bring my commercial background both to support our portfolio companies as they navigate that go-to-market and also to drive commercialization and partnership with some of the scaled-strategic players in healthcare like payers, health systems, and pharma.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, awesome. Can you share a little bit about where things are in the healthtech VC space right now?
We're in, I think, a place where there are a lot of things going on in the economy and all around us, so what's the current state of play from your perspective?
That's a big question I know, so give me a little bit of a summary, and then we'll dive into some specific areas.
Tamar Rudnick:
It's a great question. And we just published a healthtech investing report a number of months ago that I think gives a really nice lens as to the high-level overview of where things are in healthtech from a venture perspective. So what's interesting, and what I found very interesting in the report, is that healthcare investing is actually relatively new.
We think about it as it becomes really a category when it represents at least 10% of all venture investing. And healthcare actually only crossed that line five years ago, so again, relatively new. Just to put that in perspective, that means in 2024, there was about $17 billion of venture money that went into healthcare, and so that's the size of the healthcare venture market.
And when you think about how has healthcare performed, given that it's a relatively new category over the past five years, we actually see really good performance in the market. So when you compare it to categories like fintech or consumer, which are a little bit more established, over the first five years, healthcare had more billion-dollar exits.
Healthcare's average exit was at least 25% larger than we saw exits in other sectors. And the exits that we saw were actually just as capital efficient, so they had raised very similar amounts of equity to other sectors with higher exit valuations. And so, when I think about healthcare as a category in venture, I think there's a ton of momentum in healthcare investing.
And there are a lot of trends that make healthcare very interesting and dynamic today that I'm happy to speak to.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. And as you think about that momentum and the speed, do you see that continuing even as we're hearing about potential regulatory shifts?
Or shifts that are in the market, is that slowing things down or does the momentum continue from your firm's perspective?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. So I think you highlighted two really relevant elements, so what's happening with regulatory markets and then what's happening in the capital markets. When we think about today, what are the key trends driving the healthcare space more broadly? Those are two really important trends. They're not the only ones.
And so I'd say that the top four things, again at a macro level, that we look at as impacting healthcare today, are number one, capital markets is one of those. I think we see, actually, a tremendous opportunity for investment, both for companies that are already out there where there's really nice opportunity for M&A. And we see some of that in our own portfolio, as well as opportunities as owners and investors to actually expand ownership for companies that are already out there. And so, the capital markets provide a very nice opportunity today.
The second big theme that you mentioned as well is the regulatory environment, and we can dive into that in as much detail as you want. But there are a lot of tailwinds in various parts of the market, like the commercial sector of the market, that I think are very interesting. There are also parts of the markets where we see trickier regulatory dynamics, and we can talk a little bit about what those look like. I will highlight two other trends that I think are relevant beyond regulatory and capital, which are AI and the rise of AI as a category.
And the opportunity for ROI, true impact, and efficiency gains across sectors in healthcare, I think, is really fascinating to watch. And then this would not be a healthcare conversation without the mention of GLP-1s. And so just the speed at which this category has grown and the reach that it's achieved in just a few years is really tremendous, and I think there's more to come there.
Josh Dougherty:
Absolutely. Well, I would like to talk about both GLP-1s and AI as we go. I don't want to spend the whole time talking about regulatory. But I'm interested because I think people hear about the negative side of regulatory a lot and the tricky things.
But you mentioned tailwinds that are helpful in the commercial space. From a regulatory perspective, I'd be interested to hear what those tailwinds are, maybe from a high level so people can understand that a little bit more?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. So I think there are, in commercial, one of the trends that we have seen the Trump administration highlight is really a focus on transparency. And so we have seen prior regulations around transparency, the No Surprises Act is one example recently.
But what we see from the Trump administration is really more directives to enforce disclosure for hospitals, for insurers to share actual prices, not just estimates. And this includes both medical and prescription pricing, and so when we look at the commercial market as an example.
And I've spent a lot of time in the employer market, some of that transparency really benefits the consumer, the patient, the employee. And a lot of employers, as an example, are looking for solutions that can help them bring that transparency to their populations.
And so I think that just creates an opportunity for founders and for early startups to think about how to leverage that regulatory tailwind, and develop solutions along those lines.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, super interesting. More information and more open information always helps for ideation of new solutions. So let's shift and talk a little bit about GLP-1s first, because I know there's a lot of attention around those, and how they're causing big shifts in the market about how people think about healthcare generally.
They've really come into the, even as someone who isn't a provider or anything, they're in the common consciousness as people are thinking about stuff from day to day. So how do you think about GLP-1s as transforming the healthcare space overall?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, it's fascinating. So just looking at the data, it has become a $22 billion market in less than five years.
Josh Dougherty:
That's crazy.
Tamar Rudnick:
It's just insane. And when you look at the trajectory, the predicted trajectory over the next decade, spend on GLP-1s is projected to grow 14% annually. So that would be in 10 years it would be an $80-plus billion market, and we have not seen something like this for a very long time.
Not only is the reach expanding, but there are new indications being approved across diabetes and obesity and CVD, potentially more. Sleep apnea is one that's been highlighted as well, and it doesn't just impact one sector of healthcare. This impacts manufacturers, PBMs, payers, all of these sectors of healthcare are very much impacted by GLP-1s.
But I think what's most interesting and it's where you went, is this is really being driven by consumer demand fundamentally. And so when we think about the GLP market, we think about even preceding the GLPs. If you go back to 2019, we made an investment in Hims. And at the time, that was really reflective of a recognition that there is a D2C, direct-to-consumer, wave happening in healthcare.
And we saw it happening, and Hims was a very smart investment in retrospect by the Define team at the time, but it really was the beginning of this wave. Once we saw this direct-to-consumer movement around healthcare that people wanted to make these decisions and buy. Well, let me not say it that way.
Once this wave of consumer-directed healthcare started, I'd say five years ago, that over time, I think employers and other buyers in healthcare started to realize that, really, weight care and weight management was a priority for consumers and started thinking about how can we support that?
And so then you started seeing companies like Livongo or Omada early-days diabetes management solutions. We invested in a company called Found, which was really around weight care. And this was in 2020, so this was a number of years ago. And then only in 2022, you started to see GLPs entering the market and entering the enterprise and seeing this huge shift, seeing this enormous spend start.
And so I think it's incredible to watch, but it's not totally surprising as you think about this early consumerization of healthcare, and the focus on consumers wanting to focus on their weight care. And this is just the latest, incredible antidote to that concern.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And I think it also reflects a little bit of consumer desire to have more control with their healthcare, right?
Tamar Rudnick:
Absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
Because this is, all of a sudden, something that they care about and something that they can be proactive about, and so it's captured their consciousness in numerous ways.
And I do agree, as we see more applications of how GLPs can be different diseases, I guess, that they can be applicable and helpful towards, you're going to see that more and more because they're high-consciousness things.
And if people, I think, now feel like they have less or less control over things. So if they're able to control elements that I think are really important to our identity and how we see ourselves and those things, it's going to continue to blossom as an area.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. And I think importantly, it's not the only answer, so I don't think the answer's always going to be GLP-1s for everything.
And so I think a really important thesis that we have that some of the companies we've invested in have, is how do you really differentiate between an individual who needs a GLP-1 versus one who can be served with a generic versus somebody who can really be served by coaching and nutrition management?
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Tamar Rudnick:
And so I think it's really over time we're going to see more personalization, not just in the number of drugs on the market.
But really personalization around somebody's own goals in what they're trying to accomplish, and the right mix of ingredients that helps them accomplish that, whether that's GLP-1 or something else.
Josh Dougherty:
Which I think really applies to an area that both of us have worked in in the past in the advanced primary care space of giving people more chances to get in front of a provider to develop a real health plan that works for them, right?
Tamar Rudnick:
I like the primary care plug. Yes, absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. So as we move past that, I know we could probably spend a whole podcast talking about each of these things, so we're giving people some snippets. I would love to talk about AI as that other big trend. And this is something that we deal with a lot as a firm, as well, talking to startups and new companies, and all of them are talking about AI as a transformative thing.
And I truly believe it is transformative, but there's a lot of noise and it's hard to get down to what is the signal or the true value that comes out of it? So from Define's perspective, can you share a little bit about where AI is specifically having the most impact today, real-world impact in healthtech?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. Again, I think AI has had a rapid ascent, as have GLP-1s, but you can start to see, similar to GLP-1s, you can start to see a shift over time that didn't just start with ChatGPT. So again, if you look back even to the early 2000s, the first step in this, I think, evolution was just digitizing data, making data available in healthcare. This was EHR adoption, this was the high-trust and high-tech acts of the early 2000s.
Once you have data available, then you started to see in the past decade or so, some of these data aggregation platforms. Again, this is why we've made investments in this space. I think Unite Us is a really nice example of a platform that's identifying and bringing to light social determinants of health data. But again, that never existed in the past, and so now we saw over the past decade this aggregation and unlocking of data on a larger platform.
I think what we're seeing now with the launch of ChatGPT and GenAI more broadly, is these intelligent layers that are being built over this data aggregation as a foundation. And so as we start to see, and I think just now we're starting to see some of the initial use cases for AI in healthcare. We are only at the beginning. I think this will very, very much grow.
And I think at this time, it's hard to separate the signal from the noise a little bit here in AI. There are a million companies that all call themselves AI. So when we look at the landscape today and say, "How do we think about the impact of AI in healthcare?" Our perspective is AI is not the answer, AI is how you solve a real pain point.
But at the end of the day, all of these companies in AI and healthcare have to be solving a real pain point, and AI is a way to do that. That may sound obvious, but that's, I think, a very strongly held belief for us. This also is reinforced. We actually published a report back in 2024, where we actually asked C-suite leaders, chief AI officers, and chief data officers at payers and at health systems and said, "What do you need from AI? What does innovation look like for you?"
And what we heard from them was the same thing, "AI alone, I'm not interested in. I'm interested in AI solving a pain point." And they're trying to be really thoughtful about how to bring AI into their organization, how to innovate with AI. Where does budget come from to drive AI initiatives? How do they create governance structures around AI? Who are the key stakeholders?
How does compliance and data, and security and their clinical and operational leaders all come together to invest in bringing the organization ahead with AI? We've seen these payers and health systems think about what are the use cases that are top priority for them? There's, "We may not be ready yet to put AI in front of a patient. Maybe we're ready first to start by improving the workflow for our providers."
We've seen scribing really take off as an initial use case, I think because of the impact it has had on the lifestyle of providers on decreasing the administrative burden that they bear. And so that's been a really interesting use case to see take off. We also had a lot of conversations about what does ROI look like for AI? How do you build credibility and establish value?
With scribing, it's kind of a softer ROI. It's provider satisfaction or provider retention. What we heard from payers and health systems is that in this early stage of GenAI, that softer ROI is sufficient. And over time, the expectations for true, hard ROI in dollar savings are going to increase, and we're going to want to see that from the solutions that they bring in.
And then the last comment that I'll make when we talk to our payer and health system leaders about adoption of AI, is they're being very thoughtful about where they build versus where they buy. So where are they looking externally for innovation? Versus where are they saying, "We have a set of existing vendors, a set of existing platforms, we have technology teams internally, our data is our data. We feel really strongly about building on top of that"?
Versus, "This is something we know we aren't sophisticated around building, and we're really looking to the market externally for some of these specific use cases around clinical workflow management or around billing and revenue cycle." And so it's been really fascinating to build that report out, and talk to a lot of leaders in the space about how they actually day-to-day implement some of these innovations in AI.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I loved your mention, just to call back a couple of things that you talked about, I love the mention of it needing to solve a real problem.
Because you're totally right that AI has been in the technology space for a long time.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
In the last decade in all our work as well, we had a lot of clients that we would work with who'd be working on these massive data lakes of unstructured data, and trying to find insights out of that data using AI. But they were solving a real problem of saying, "We have all this healthcare data, how do we actually parse it out?"
And so I think that's a really good word to founders or potential founders to be thinking about like, "What are the things that are actually just sticking points inside of a health system, inside of a payer, inside of any area in healthcare?" And actually solve something that's real, not just-
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, you cannot just put AI next to your name.
Josh Dougherty:
Plug in ChatGPT over the top of it, yes.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yes, exactly.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And then the other thing I'd love for you to dig a little bit more into if you can, is around guardrails.
Because I was just at a conference last week and a lot of the conversation was around, "We're trying to adopt AI, but we need to adopt it responsibly, because especially in healthcare, we're dealing with PHI and all these other things often."
How do you, as an organization, when you're talking to your founders that you're funding that are working on AI solutions, how do you talk about guardrails and maintaining ethics as you're working through that?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, it's a really important question. I think over time as GenAI evolves, we will start to see broader industry standards around this. I think today we're still very early, and so there have been some groups that have emerged in the space that are creating these report cards for how do you evaluate AI ethically and thoughtfully?
How do you make sure that patient data is protected? How do you make sure that you are not just evaluating the output of the model but that you really understand how the model is built and what assumptions it's making? And so, we've seen some organizations, CHAI is an example of one, start to develop these standards.
And we've seen our partners adopt these report cards and look to vendors to really evaluate themselves against a set of standards. But I think it's a really hard spot to be in because it is still the Wild West, and so it is changing every month, every day faster than you can imagine.
And I think early-stage founders really need to be thoughtful about the explainability of their approach and really hold themselves to that ethical high standard around making sure to do no harm. They are working with healthcare organizations that really want to protect, at the end of the day, patient safety, member safety, and personal health information.
And so I think founders will be successful if they can really showcase strength and a high standard around that.
Josh Dougherty:
So that's an element that's going to be helpful. What are some other, maybe as you think about use cases or as founders are saying, "Hey, we want to start raising money in this AI space"?
Are there any other words of wisdom you would have for them to think about?
Tamar Rudnick:
It's a really good question. What I have seen, one of the companies that I work with is looking at a set of use cases applying AI to health systems and supporting clinicians in their workflow. And one of the experiences that we have seen together, is that there is a sequence of use cases where the first are the easiest and most comfortable.
And as you go down that set of use cases, they start to become very interesting to a healthcare organization, but they feel a little bit more risky. And that sequence seems to very much start with more administrative use cases, more operational use cases, and a reduction in cost, focused on reducing cost, reducing burden, reducing administrative or improving administrative efficiency.
And those feel like very easy use cases for somebody to say, "Yes, sign me up today." And then as you go down this, as you continue towards use cases that are maybe more clinically oriented, patient-facing use cases around AI that are enabling clinical decision support, where you're actually making clinical decisions with a model.
That's where, I think, there's really this balance back to the question of ethics around what are we ready for today and what are we not? And so I tend to see a lot of the models start in that more administrative, operational efficiency, low-hanging fruit, and work their way towards more patient-facing, a bit higher risk use cases.
Josh Dougherty:
Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think it resonates with everything I've heard from other people too as I'm listening in this space, like stuff that isn't going to be straight.
Because there's also this trust element that I think we're challenged with in the healthcare space today. So not having the AI straight in front of patients when they're already having trouble trusting healthcare recommendations they're getting-
Tamar Rudnick:
Absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
... is important.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. Well, and the most trusted relationship in healthcare is between the patient and their physician, and you really don't want to disrupt that trust.
And so how do you enable that relationship with AI, rather than disrupt that relationship?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Tamar Rudnick:
Absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
I'd love to shift the conversation to talking about something that you've been working on right now about go-to-market. I know you've been running a fellows program where you've been helping early-stage founders build out an effective go-to-market strategy.
You've done that a lot in previous roles as well, so could you tell me a little bit more about the program? I think it's a unique and exciting thing to see a VC focusing on.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. Well, and maybe just more broadly, as I mentioned earlier, my role here really focuses on enabling commercialization, go-to-market business development for a lot of our early-stage founders. When I first started in this role, I surveyed our founders and I said, "What topics would you find most valuable for me to support you on and for the team at large to support you on?" And that one of the number one topics that our founders said was, "What I would like help with is go-to-market and commercial." And even above-and-beyond fundraising or above-and-beyond people and talent, or marketing, and brand.
And it's interesting that that answer came not only from inexperienced or earlier founders in their careers. It also came from really experienced founders who have built large companies with large-exited values and who might now be taking on a new venture, and they are still interested in go-to-market support. And so I think this is really a high priority for founders. And a place where Define, if I may brag for a moment, I think has really differentiated. We actually look at the data and say, "Are we driving impact?"
Not only is this an area we're investing in, but are we driving impact for our founders? And when I looked back at the data again, when I was starting and trying to evaluate the impact of this role, Define has, for 72% of our companies, we have helped them contract with a customer. And I think that's just really impressive. It's not just intending to help, but it's truly making an impact at scale.
And so as you mentioned, one of the initiatives that we have kicked off, actually a new initiative from this year, is to say, "How do we help really early-stage founders in healthcare understand go-to-market and create a little bit of a bootcamp for them around it?" And so we launched something called our AI Fellows Program. We identified talent.
We got five times the number of expected applications that we could take, a lot of whom were really technical talent with PhDs. Half of the folks have PhDs or MDs, these are all early-stage entrepreneurs. We then ran a six-week program where we had in-person sessions and some virtual sessions, and we brought a set of speakers ranging from Fortune 500 employers to top five national payers to biopharma execs.
80% of the speakers were C-suite, and so these are senior folks. And we just had them spend an hour with these early-stage founders saying, "Hey, here are the dos and don'ts about bringing your early-stage company to me as a top 20 pharma or to me as a national health plan." And I think it was really, really valuable for our founders. We got really good feedback.
And we actually ended up backing one of the companies that came out of this fellows program. But we got such positive feedback, that we decided to continue the program. We're launching another session later in 2025. And I think it's just that, oftentimes, founders don't get that view from the buyer as to what it really needs to look like to go-to-market.
And I think creating that explicit relationship and that explicit conversation between a large buyer and an early-stage entrepreneur to say, "This is what a pilot can and can't look like. This is what to expect for me to sign a $10 million contract. These are the risks I'm going to worry about. This is when I need to assess your credibility. These are the types of references I'm going to look for."
Those are really valuable nuggets for, I think, early-stage founders to hear. And not everybody gets that early in the journey, and so we're trying to create some of that visibility to this group.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I think it's so helpful because the buying motion in this healthcare space is so complicated and can be so long, right?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, yep.
Josh Dougherty:
And because there are risks, there are so many players involved in any major purchase decision like that, so you have to really understand from people's perspectives.
Tamar Rudnick:
Absolutely, totally. These are often, to your point, these are often 12-to-18-month sales cycles or longer, and so you have an early-stage founder who's investing a year into signing a contract with a health system or a payer. And to know that their buyer is going to end up having to get alignment internally from four other stakeholders.
And to understand here are the other stakeholders that that person is going to need to get buy-in from. And to go into a sales cycle knowing you have to create that alignment before you start, it just I think can save a lot of time and wasted effort, and really fast track a lot of the results that early-stage founders will see.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. So as we think about go-to-market, how do you think it overlaps with things like product, brand? Because I know you are focused a lot on product, obviously, and seeing, "Is there an actual product here that is worthwhile?"
And then probably a little bit later down the road, people are focused on brand and how do we tell the story about that product? But how do those three things overlap in your mind?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, I think they're intricately connected. I think when go-to-market and commercialization is done well, you are really, truly listening to the voice of your customer. You are listening to what the market really wants and needs. You are hearing where there's real value, and then you are translating that value into the product that you're building to really meet the needs of the market.
And I think that's the beauty of how commercial and product and brand intersect. I think brand comes in because it's how you tell a story around that product. It's not just, "Here's what I've built for you." But it's, "Here's the problem I heard, and here's why I think this addresses your problem. Here's why you should trust us to deliver that for you."
And so I think those pieces just really work together. And a lot of the work I do with our Define companies, is to help them define that value, build that story, bring it to the market, listen for the feedback. Make sure they're iterating and building a go-to-market function that reflects a lot of that input.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. Great. I think those were the major things we covered. We went around a lot of different things.
But are there any other parting thoughts you have or things that you wanted to share about, or we can move towards closing up as well? Anything that's come to mind through our conversation?
Tamar Rudnick:
I would say that it's a really exciting time. It's a dynamic time to be an early-stage founder in healthcare, but there are really wonderful partners out there to support you. And a lot of what I love about the Define community of founders and companies I work with, is that they come together as a community.
We have founders who are more experienced, sitting down and helping founders who are less experienced to learn from their mistakes and avoid some of the pitfalls. And it's a really wonderful community, both of other founders and of investors who are true partners in what they do. Partnership is one of Define's key principles, and I very much see it lived.
And so I would just encourage early-stage founders to really look for that community. Look for those more experienced founders who can help them look for investors and other partners who are truly there to sit down with them and help them figure it out and not just provide capital and say, "See you in a year."
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I wonder if you can, as a segue, can you share a little bit about if someone has an idea that may be interested in the Fellows program, et cetera.
What is the process for choosing someone to be involved? How does someone get engaged with you?
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah. Well, I will say that please, for anybody listening, I am always available and reachable. And so I hope my contact information can be shared alongside this and obviously on LinkedIn. And then when we do have another fellows program, we will promote it broadly.
We are on LinkedIn. We promoted our last fellows program there, and encourage folks to apply. And whether you apply and are part of the program, or even if you aren't, we are always happy to have conversations and provide initial feedback and thoughts on ideas and on concepts. And so yeah, lots of ways to get in touch.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. We'll add some contact info, et cetera, into the show notes so people can have that.
But as we close out, I'm going to ask you a question I ask everyone else and it's around what your superpower is.
What do you think that superpower is? What do you think you do great?
Tamar Rudnick:
I think if I had to pick one of my many, many superpowers.
Josh Dougherty:
I love it.
Tamar Rudnick:
I think for me, I find myself in my own career being a bit of a translator. I spent a lot of time — we talked about how do product and commercial come together? — I spent a lot of time personally both in product functions and commercial functions. And I think it gives you this unique vantage point of really translating some of the what you hear in the market to building something that truly serves a need where you can scale and operate a business.
And that translation, I think, is really critical for founders. And in my new role, I hope that I can bring some of my perspective as an operator, as an ex-operator, to founders to offer empathy, knowing how hard it can be to grow and scale a business. And to help them see around corners and translate my own operational experience to the path that they're on. So I think that's what I would say, my translational capabilities.
Josh Dougherty:
I love it. Well, thanks so much for being with us today, and for sharing all your thoughts around and knowledge around the space. Really appreciate it.
Tamar Rudnick:
Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand and marketing.
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A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a brand and marketing agency in Seattle, Washington. Our producer is Rob Gregerson of Legato Productions.