You are the CEO of a startup in the health space. What will you build?

Q: You are the CEO of a startup in the health space. What will you build?

First, let’s put a structure in place for this so that we can arrive at a solution using a particular framework.

Structure:
1. Clarifying questions, 2. Business Goals and Objectives, 3. Users and prioritization, 4. Pain points and prioritization, 5. Solutions and evaluation, 6. Metrics (NS and Supplementary), 7. Recap and Summary

1.       Clarifying Questions:

a.       What specifically in the ‘Health’ space are we talking about here? Insurance or devices or Pharmacy or Fitness or something else? – You choose

                                                               i.      In that case, let’s go with something on the fitness space

b.       A few assumptions here:

                                                               i.      We are building this just for the US market to begin with.

                                                             ii.      We are doing this for wearables, mobiles and web.

                                                            iii.      We have no constraints as we think of something to build.

Are these ok? – sure, go ahead

Why did I choose the Fitness space? – the reason for this is that this is a very fast-growing sector and while it is filled with (saturated) with multiple players like Garmin, Apple Fitness, Google Fitness, Fitbit, whoop etc., there is also scope for a new player to disrupt the market with innovation and ideas.

2.       Business Goals and Objectives: Given that this is a startup, and we are looking to build something, I would make ACQUISITION my business goal to ensure that I am able to build a healthy mass of customers before thinking of other business goals.

3.       Users:

a.       End consumers:

                                                               i.      Fitness enthusiasts

                                                             ii.      Tech savvy older people who need a view of their health to be fit

                                                            iii.      Younger folk who are either working or are in school/college

b.       Insurance providers

c.       Advertisers: Fitness centers, health food companies

d.       Pharmacies

e.       Social media companies

Let’s focus on the fitness enthusiasts here as the key demographic as they are the ones that are likely to be the most common users of the product.

4.       Pain Points:

a.       Lack of understanding of metrics that are presented as part of the fitness tracker - Lack of knowledge on which metrics tie with each other and what they represent.

b.       Too many different metrics that can cause overwhelming sensation of what the metrics represent.

c.       Lack of knowledge on proper exercises and training that they need to do to improve these metrics – fear of doing things in a wrong way or pushing too hard that can have long lasting impact.

d.       Lack of/varied knowledge of what foods to consume to compliment the efforts being made in training

e.       Provide medical emergency services that can have a look at history of what is happening with your body

f.        Very few of the trackers allow you to manually add tracking if device is not worn that impacts tracking

Prioritization: a,b,c,d,f,e

5.       Solutions:

a.       Ability to add details for the user such as insurance, their doctor etc. (build profile)

b.       Provide clean dashboard that only shows relevant, easy to understand metrics that are tailored to specific users

                                                               i.      Metrics should be shown/changed based on the user and the exercise they are doing on a given day

c.       Detailed summary that provides insights into what these metrics mean and how this impacts the users

d.       Use AI to provide recommendations on foods to eat that can complement the user’s exercises

e.       Provide ability to remind users to wear the device at the start of the day so that things can be tracked easily

f.        Provide ability for users to manually add minutes of exercise etc. in the event of not wearing the device

g.       Ability for the user to send a report directly to their GP for record keeping purposes

h.       Ability to understand when users are impacted with health issues or accidents and automatically call emergency services

6.       Metrics:

a.       North Star Metric: Number of wearables sold/used by customers (Customer Acquisition Rate)

                                                               i.      CPA

                                                             ii.      CLTV

b.       Supplementary Metrics:

                                                               i.      Number of customers building their profile (Activation Rate)

                                                             ii.      DAU/WAU/MAU

                                                            iii.      Number of recommendations provided to customers on all health-related aspects

                                                            iv.      Potential: Advertiser revenue