Nick Desai discusses the process of raising $165 million for his company, Heal. He shares his experience as a serial tech entrepreneur and his success.
Nick Desai discusses the process of raising $165 million for his company, Heal. He shares his experience as a serial tech entrepreneur and his success in securing significant venture capital for his startups.
ultimately the reality is that all of these people are united by something which is when they're sick they need health care and we're the easiest way to get healthy we achieve our vision people won't know what a doctor's office is in five years or ten years right nobody thinks of a bookstore to go buy a book anymore nobody thinks of a store frankly they just think of amazon [Music] alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show so today we have a very very exciting guest we have a guest that has done this multiple multiple times and in today's show really he's going to walk us through the experience through his journey through the apps to the downs through the successes to the failures you name it so i guess without further ado let's welcome our guest today nick desai welcome to the show great to be here uh very exciting to be on this and to speak with you and all of your
listeners so nick what a combination born in mumbai but raised in orange county in irvine so tell us about this this shift this transition well look i was i don't even remember the transition i was a baby when my parents moved to orange county and you know it took me i grew up in what is basically considered total privilege right i lived in a very safe suburb irvine is one of the safest cities in america went to a great school had two parents uh we were immigrants and and there were some challenges and and i was i when i was 1979 uh during the iran hostage crisis uh some of the ignorant kids in in fourth grade and i was a little kid at the time and thought i was you know an iranian and used to you know beat me up and spit on me and things like that but you know what it toughened me up and it put a chip on my shoulder and it drives me to work harder to this day but other than that it was
an idyllic childhood and i i'm thankful to my parents for for affording that to me and i'm sure that you definitely got a lot of inspiration from your parents because having that drive to pack the bags to come here to go after a better life for them for you guys too i mean i'm sure that you really got inspired and that influenced you too as an entrepreneur no yeah you know it's it's funny because my father had his own business my grandfather had his own business and i was probably in junior higher high school before i understood that there was an alternative other than having your own business right that people have these jobs right i mean you see doctors and police on tv but you don't really think about it the context of your own life so and i saw how hard my dad worked and there was no difference between a saturday and a tuesday and holidays and weekends and whatever and that's just
that's the way i was raised that's the way my wife was raised her father had his own medical practice very successfully and that's then we that's what led us to be married and to start heal together and for you obviously engineering was a big one so so why engineer i mean how did you get this desire for you know addressing problems well look you know i was fascinated in high school in grade school but in high school especially by how things work right i don't like not knowing the answers to questions and engineering is a study that does two things right the first is and back then if you think about when i went to college it was 1987 was my first year in college computers were still a very new thing and microchips and all this stuff that people used as transistors and i was like i want to know how this works right i really want to know how this works and you know what my my dad my father
has a mechanical engineer himself and he said engineering is a way of thinking it teaches you how to think and solve problems and so i became very very interested and found the study of engineering and electrical engineering in particular because you learn so much mathematics and you learn so much physics and you learn so much chemistry and material science and then obviously how to apply all that that it becomes second nature to think about how to solve problems right and today the world has advanced in the last you know since i started college i don't know uh 34 years the world has advanced to a place where talking about you know pro the perseverance rover on mars and uh you know nano technology and all of this stuff and and but all of it remains within the grasp of if i want to read about it i can understand it right whether it's healthcare whether it's physics whether it's whatever
so it was a very important foundation and it's interesting to see the whole world now talk about stem and the importance of stem education and engineering and technology and science and engineering technology and science right there's a great meme going around based on what happened in texas the tragedy in texas that you know we could land a rover on a dime on a mars 200 million a mile 40 million miles away but we can't uh get heat in texas and it's because mars the the probe to mars is run by scientists right so i take a great deal of pride in in being a scientist and being part of that community and in your case once you got your graduate degree you went at it as um as an entrepreneur i mean i'm sure that you know it was probably um something that that that that really felt good to like really put everything into practice to put your mindset your way of of perhaps addressing problems
and and really put something out there to the world and the first thing you know idea the first company was sicky so so tell us about how this idea came to mind how you brought it to life and and how was it like to to be a first-time entrepreneur yeah look so you know it's an interesting question i it's actually a really funny story because people don't believe this when i tell them but after graduate school at ucla i had a job at rockwell science center and i had a master's in engineering i was a single guy so it was a great job right i had a car i had a condo i had all the money i wanted and and again cost of living was lower and i was being paid well and i was getting more and more comfortable and i was telling my mom well you know maybe i'll start a company in a year maybe i'll start a company in two years and she actually it was a different time but she actually picked up the phone
called my boss and and and so no i so i'm sorry i told my boss look my parents are pressuring me i'm gonna quit my job because my mom kept saying don't get comfortable if you get comfortable with your standard of living you won't have the risk tolerance to go start a company and so i told my boss i was going to quit and he called my parents and he said this guy's making a mistake this is such a great job in 20 years he could be me you know at a company like rockwell and my mom said that's exactly what we don't want to have happen right and she told him that and they made me quit and then a couple of friends and i were talking about different ideas for a company and i it was funny i was a single guy at the time and i was i was trying to find this girl's phone number that i wanted to date and her phone number changed i had no way of getting it and one day in the middle of the night this
idea popped into my head let's do a self-updating address book on the internet right so instead of having my phone number you have access to a data field that is my phone number right and and it just took off right and and i just ran with it and you know when i started my first company nowadays there's so much information that was right so the internet was around and but it was a lot less used and there was a lot less information on it and it was still you know my first term sheet that i ever got from a venture capitalist was facts to me in a fax machine right wow so you don't even think about fax machines now right right um i didn't know anything i think people asked oh are you raising a series a series b angel venture i didn't know anything right i didn't know what a cap table was i didn't know anything i was an engineer with an idea i knew some programming i was like all right let's
go for it and and i think if there's a lesson in that you know people think oh you should work at a vc you should be an entrepreneur in residence you should go get an mba you should go do this you know what you should do you should just start yeah right you should just start and and you will it will force you to learn and now with the incredible incredible wealth of information that is available completely free on the internet podcasts like this one right you can learn answers to questions without ever you know having i'm not saying education is important but i'm saying that the most important thing to do if you have if you want to start a company is to actually start the company of course i mean when we're talking about lessons here with ziki you learned quite a bit when it comes to board dynamics and especially when it comes to favorable terms from a potential acquisition so yeah so
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