How Forward found product-market fit: Adrian Aoun on automating healthcare with AI

How Forward found product-market fit: Adrian Aoun on automating healthcare with AI

Author: Unusual Ventures August 28, 2023 Duration: 34:29

Forward is an AI-based healthcare unicorn that combines private doctors with technology to enable data-driven, insurance-free primary care. Forward is now present in 14 cities in the US. In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Adrian Aoun, the founder and CEO of Forward about building a transparent and incentive-driven healthcare system.

Join us as we discuss:

01:47: Forward’s origin story and why Adrian saw the need to reimagine healthcare

04:44: Build an incentive-driven healthcare system

10:05: Approach to building an “MVP”/early clinics 

13:51: How Forward thinks about its product roadmap and innovating in healthcare

17:11: How Adrian and his team iterated on early user feedback 

20:39: Forward’s approach to productizing healthcare 

24:29: The future of AI in healthcare

27:55 How Adrian approached building the early team at Forward

30:51: Advice for founders who are building products with AI

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and 

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Adrian Aoun is the founder and CEO of Forward. Prior to starting Forward, he founded Wavii, a natural language processing startup acquired by Google. He also worked on special projects for Larry Page at Google. 

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.

Further reading from the Startup Field Guide:

Starting a company

Iterating to MVP for consumer products


Behind every so-called overnight success in software, there's a long, often messy journey of finding exactly what customers need and how to deliver it. That's the central theme explored in Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast. This series is built for those in the trenches of early-stage software companies, from founders just starting out to leaders tasked with building something from nothing. Each episode moves beyond theory, offering grounded conversations with people who have actually navigated these challenges. You'll hear them unpack the real work of identifying a true market need, the nuances of early hiring decisions, and the practical steps of crafting a go-to-market strategy. Fundraising, often a opaque process, gets broken down into more understandable components. The focus remains consistently on the actionable and the specific, providing a kind of audio manual for the foundational phase of a business. Tune in for a candid look at the less-glamorous, critical work that separates an idea from a viable company, all brought to you by Unusual Ventures. This podcast serves as a resource for turning those initial concepts into a sustainable operation, one hard-won lesson at a time.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 53

Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast
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