314. Meet the YC-Backed Founder Partnering with 300 Pharmacy Partners w/ Jiawei Li | Tuli

0:00Amardeep Parmar:Welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us who you are and what you're building? So I'm Jiawei. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Thule Health. So we're transforming community pharmacies into local diagnostic centres so people can access healthcare in their community. Can you tell us where you are at the moment? So we've been running for how long now? Over five years. And now we have over 300 pharmacies as partners and providing diagnostic tests. And was it when you started out as well? So you did YC quite early on in that journey, right? Yeah, so I did YC back in summer 2021. Actually, that was in the middle of the COVID period.

0:39So we were one of the remote batches.

0:42Amardeep Parmar:And how was that experience? It was really interesting. And I'll say one of the best things that's actually happened in our journey. Because I think what actually happened, we run the business. We started it without actually entering into any accelerator programs. And I never thought about actually entering into one. And we were just like providing diagnostic tests for actually at the time for the Chinese community. And I actually run like mobile phlebotomy in 20 different cities up and down the country, because at the time everyone was in a lockdown and they couldn't really go anywhere to get the test they need to do.

1:19So I should do the home visits around there. and we were already turning I think at the time 40k a month and um and we were actually getting into cash flow issues and in fact it's like we have like a huge supplier bill that I need to pay um and I said okay we need to resolve this cash flow issue and I just looked down it's like okay okay let's apply to what I see so we're a late applicant uh and we try to video you know that um interview in less than a minute in a minute and it just all happened and and that was one of the best thing that happened.

1:53Amardeep Parmar:And you said the idea originally came from, was it just trying to serve people that are underserved or where did the idea of 2D Health come from? I think the idea actually came quite organically. So I actually studied medicine at UCL. So I always wanted to do something in the healthcare space. And my co-founder, CTO, also my husband, he's from pure math background and also now software engineer. And he always just want to build something. But he never had another good co-founder. And I just said to him, oh, why don't we build something? And we started it as like just for fun. So initially we started as like almost like a medical translation platform to help people who have language challenges, like Chinese who have language challenges living in the UK to access health care services.

2:38And it just evolved because I'm studying medicine and I know Chinese and people just naturally come to me asking for different things. And it just grew from there. And that's it. and you're just like layer, building layer and layer on top.

2:52Amardeep Parmar:And obviously studying medicine, right, you've probably had that as your career in your head. How was it then to start flipping into this new space and going to tech? Was it exciting or was it, how did you feel at that point? To be honest, it was a weird experience because I wanted to be a clinician scientist and at the time I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, also wanted to do medical research. That's what I ever did. So I spent all my summer doing research in the laboratory and also at the time I also did a PhD. That's also spending time in the lab and never thought I'll be doing a business. At what point did you start to realise actually this business is my full attention and maybe I can't also do the research?

3:30Again, it's like it just will happen organically and I was looking back. I think at the time we started doing this project right on the side as I was writing out my PhD thesis and that was quite a stressful period. So running the business was kind of like a hobby and it was quite fun. And when you actually get into the cash flow issue, it's like, I need to resolve the cash flow issue. And then I start talking to investors and then like other entrepreneurs and other founders. And they're like, actually, this is really interesting. And it's really fast. I had this realization you can't do well in a business and also perform well in medicine at the same time because both needs 100 % of your attention and time.

4:08And I just literally just asked myself, like, what do I want to do? And it was just like super clear at the time. I still remember the day, Jialu and myself just walking and I was like, no, I want to run this business. I want to run this startup. And I basically just kind of left medicine.

4:27Amardeep Parmar:And the idea you went to YC versus where to your office is today, how different is that? How much have you changed and pivoted over that time? I would say a lot. At the same time, not a lot. A lot in the sense that when we first started at YC, there was actually a huge need for convenient and accessible COVID testing. So we did actually empower a lot of the pharmacies to be able to offer COVID testing in a compliant manner. So one of the things is that COVID tests need to be UCAS accredited, but pharmacies may not necessarily understand how to do it. So we actually had this compliance framework, so they're able to offer that to their patients.

5:04Of course, COVID is gone now and we pivoted into the blood testing space and routine blood and also the wellness checks. But at the same time, we're still working with community pharmacies and keep providing them with the tools and also the compliance guidance so they're able to offer that test to their patients.

5:25Amardeep Parmar:And you said you're working with hundreds of pharmacies now. How is it to be able to grow that network out and to obviously get people to trust your new business? I think at the time I was quite young and naive. So when you're quite young, you're quite brave as well. It's not that long ago. Well, I felt younger. Like, we become really fearless. And what you actually do is like, you just say, okay, I want to achieve this. How do I achieve this? And one of the things is, okay, who can I partner out with to get to pharmacies? Do I need to visit them? Do I need to call them? Do I need to knock on their door?

5:57and you just do everything you could to actually build that relationship and just grow from there I mean the early days of Thule we were doing a lot of door-to-door selling and door-to-door introducing our service and I still remember when I first started I literally just had a backpack and I was walking into pharmacies and training them how to do swab sampling how to do phlebotomy how to do um different like clinical infection and control and all of that and it is now you look at it we now have a team that's and we'll have a clinical function so they're able to produce that provide that training to the pharmacies without my direct involvement and how

6:39Amardeep Parmar:is that transition as well from you have to go door to door yourself to once it gets a certain scale that tactic doesn't work anymore you can't keep doing it forever how is that transition phase from okay you've gone to a certain stage but now you're going to need to hire or going to need to get more people involved as well i still visit pharmacies and visit some of the partners we do because i think ground truth is really important even now even though now we have people going to pharmacies and also we have a dedicated people calling them i know we have an onboarding process as well running through due diligence and they can look after all this process that by themselves but every now and then i will still you know give a call to the pharmacy owner just see how they are getting feedback and just the other day I drove to Coventry and visited one of our pharmacy partners there so okay so you're now able to scale it out and once you come and get out of COVID as well I imagine I'm right in thinking during the COVID time people are a lot more willing to try new things because there's the emergency going on right how has that business changed over time is that do you still like is it still easy to reach people do you find like if the system now slows innovate.

7:45Amardeep Parmar:How do you find the integral system? That's another thing about pharmacies. They're great. They're always very innovative and very progressive. And pharmacy owners, because they are small to medium business owners, and they build a business ground up themselves, they're really willing to try new things. So I don't think their mentality has changed since COVID. Any new things or new service we want to push out, they're always willing to experiment with us. And I love it when I spoke to one of the pharmacy owners I remember and he just said he said oh we should always give it a try you just never know and I think that's a great mentality and they still like the startup mentality with the pharmacy owners you said you had cash flow troubles in the early days right yeah and then obviously the funding from YC would have helped with that a bit and the funding you got after that too and how did you then try to make this business more sustainable to make sure that you didn't know there's cash flow issues hopefully right now I think for business as long as you survive, you're probably always going to have cash flow issues at some point.

8:48So it's active management. So it's almost like gardening, right? You have to keep on doing it and keeping making sure that your clients pay you on time and the suppliers, whether you can negotiate longer payment terms and always like plan ahead. The challenge we have is like, because we essentially operate like a marketplace model. So we have one side, which I call the supplier side, say the pharmacies, they tend to be smaller, more fragmented, independent pharmacy owners, right? And on the demand side, we actually work with larger contracts. And these larger enterprise contracts tend to have longer payment terms.

9:28And so they would ask us, for example, 30 days plus payment terms, whereas the more fragmented side would like to be paid now immediately and that's actually a challenge we always have to balance and one of the things we have been doing is try to negotiate shorter payment terms with clients or try to match like the payment dates say for example if we pay pharmacy on a certain day of the month we then ask the clients like can you just pay couple days before we pay the pharmacies you just need to balance it out really and it's an ongoing challenge but we just have to manage it in a marketplace

10:02Amardeep Parmar:model is it a commission you take or how do you make money yourselves so it is a commission or what we call a revenue share model because in on this aspect like the blood testing right which we do it is a cqc regulated service we're cqc registered ourselves that that's care quality commission right it regulates all the standards of the health care service so if on through i used to be i'm the one who built one of the crms for cqc that was my first job yeah so i'm a cqc consultant So like the inspections. Yeah. I can't remember anymore. It was a while ago, but I had to build that out. So you know what I'm talking about.

10:38So essentially, what's really important is that we actually provide good clinical due diligence to check and also provide good SLPs and guidance for the pharmacies so it's easy for them to follow. And that's where our value add. And also, obviously, we get these bigger contracts. We're driving demands into the pharmacies, into these more independent clinics. And that's how we do it.

11:02Amardeep Parmar:And also say more recently, you were on the Morgan Stanley program as well. Yeah. With like a different style to YC, right? Yeah, that's quite different style. What did you learn from that? What was the most beneficial things you did? I think the style of the Morgan Stanley program, it's a much more mature company. Whereas YC is very early stage startup, quite scrappy. And then the mentality is like build it, ship it. It's really fast. And then with Morgan Stanley, it's like, okay, how can we build it sustainably? How can we scale? How can we repeat? Which is actually really appropriate for our stage because we're actually beyond that scrappy stage.

11:41We're trying to scale and build a repeatable process. And that was great. I love the experience. The Morgan Stanley was really collaborative. It felt more localised because it's British, UK based.

11:53Amardeep Parmar:So with the customers now, right, is it UK focused? Are you looking globally? What's the kind of plans there geographically? Currently, we're very much UK based and we expanded our pharmacy networks and what we call hub network all over the country now. So we've got new hubs in Scotland. Now we're also looking at Northern Ireland. I think there's still a lot of market opportunities in the UK. So we really want to do more in the UK first, but I am very open to what opportunities are possible in Europe. What do you think have been the big unlocks in the past couple of years? You said that you've pivoted just up to YC.

12:29Amardeep Parmar:Has there been anything new that you've launched in the last couple of years that's really made a difference? We'll just keep experimenting, to be honest. We did actually try a lot of different models. so at the beginning we did try b2c i mean or d2c selling it directly to the consumers and then refer to the pharmacy to get the blood draw we also tried b2b2c so that's we provide the infrastructure for the pharmacies to sell on to their customers to their patients we also tried a lot of like point of sales marketing materials like instagrams i tried a lot of it and i think what actually really unlocked our growth is the b2b partnership in the recent month or recent years actually what i found is like there's been increasing number of d2c healthcare companies and they are virtual healthcare or virtual gps and but they are don't have any physical testing component and testing is really important i mean without the results it's really difficult to um to find like to progress with a treatment plan.

13:32And we're essentially enabling a lot of these virtual remote telehealth companies to be able to test their patients remotely. And that's a huge value add.

13:44Amardeep Parmar:Hello, hello. I hope you've enjoyed the show so far. I'm Amarit Parma, co-founder of BayHQ and the host of this show. For those of you who don't know, BayHQ is the community for high growth Asian heritage founders and investors in the UK over 7 ,500 people have attended our events 200 people have been for our impact programs and obviously there's been over 250 episodes of this podcast if you want to join us and take part in the programs and come to the events go to bahiehq.com forward slash join we also just released our first ever book called startups for outsiders which you can get on amazon now and the link is in the bio hope to see you soon at event hope you enjoy the rest of the episode what are you seeing in the market as well now so obviously the AI coming into play that there's all these different things that people are talking about with health tech and how it can change what are you seeing as like some of the major trends on your side like you're seeing pharmacies doing more they're more excited by the prospect of working for you has it affected your business at all i think the whole AI has probably spurt up the growth right so i've been seeing a lot of more d2c healthcare companies what they're doing is they offer the blood testing like different biomarkers for their patients and then feed it through their ai engine to give it more personalized report um quite a few of our clients and partners do that and i definitely think it's on the back of the ai trend um and whereas for the pharmacies they they always followed what's the latest right like i said they're very progressive they're very innovative anything new they look at it how can i improve my operational efficiency especially with pharmacies because they're small to medium in size and they might not have all the resource of kind of large chains or enterprise level pharmacies so they need to think of different ways to cut the cost and increase their efficiency and these tools really help them you said as well you're past that scrappy stage now yeah how big is your team at the moment well it's still quite small there are eight of us yeah and obviously compared to when it was just you and your co-founder or you and your husband and now you are today in like the larger scale how do you think your role has changed like what do you miss from the early days versus what do you enjoy more now i think the early days well i was actually thinking about it the other day um all the team members are like friends you know we're really casual and uh there are times we work really early and randomly text people on whatsapp or just grab a drink at 11 p.m.

16:20and talk about work. And also I still remember the early days, like when we had the office, it was all pink and fluffy. Honestly, we had a little pink pom-poms. And it was those like pink fluffy days and everyone was really happy and chirpy. But that's not sustainable, you know. Like when you build a business, you have to actually formalize certain processes and you have to be strict on certain aspects. and I think over the years we have evolved and we have professionalised a little bit. I think what I miss is that I do miss that friendly and friendship aspect of the early days but at the same time, you know, I do feel like now we grew a lot.

17:03Amardeep Parmar:And where you are today, what do you enjoy most now? Growth, to actually see what we're growing. That's what I actually really enjoy because, you know, this is the thing, right? Like I said, in the early days, right, when we're really young and you've got bright eyes and sparkles, and I feel like, ah, this is great, and we're going to change the world immediately, you know? We're so disruptive, but I think five years on, and the mentality has shifted a lot, has become long-term, sustainable, like month-on-month growth, week-on-week growth. we're not looking for this huge hockey stick but we're looking for it's we're just growing and obviously you've taken like different types of capital right so what capital mix do you think is kind of best for your style of business as well and obviously you took revenge capital and you've taken angel i'm guessing as well how has that benefited you and where's it where's been the most strategic value i still think early days angels are the best because they really support you as a person and they align with you and they're not going to chase and come back to you like why haven't you grown this week okay what when is your latest update um and that's really good i think the best thing any investors could give to an early stage founder is i trust you here's a pot of fund you get on with it i give you space update me when you're over you need and if you need help, let me know.

18:32That's it. Just time and space. That's the best thing early stage investors can give.

18:38Amardeep Parmar:And as you're looking to continue to grow and scale now, what are some of the plans for the next few years coming up? What are you excited about? Again, my mentality shifted a lot. I think now I'm really looking for, okay, what's more sustainable growth, especially I think the recent years, there hasn't been too much funding in the startup community for non-AI related businesses. And what I have in plan is to just really grow. And I do have the confidence to grow our business to be multi-millions without external funding. And then when we do actually get more funding and more financing, it's really to propel the growth and to expand beyond the UK.

19:20Amardeep Parmar:When you're doing this well, especially in the early days too, being like a husband and wife co-family pairing, and we'll talk about this earlier off camera as well, is how you being the CEO and like how did you decide on those roles and like how do you kind of make sure that you're both effective as a founding team but then it doesn't there's no personal troubles either I guess I think it was again it was really casual it was literally like one day I pat on his shoulder I said oh do you want to do this together and he's like oh yeah why not let's do it um and he's always very technical right he's been doing software engineering he's been coding since he was eight and it was just natural that he was doing the cto um and then i just fit into whatever role that's there and um yeah and that's it and we said that as well because like we've actually had quite a few people in the podcast who are like a married couple co-founder and founding team and there's quite a few of them seeming to do quite well but i imagine as well some of the investors in the ideas might have been like oh like they have a worry about that and i guess like if there are any investors listening maybe you do have that concern and then assessing other companies why do you think you work so well being having both relationships together i think to be honest that being co-founders it's almost like a marriage and um it just i happen to be also being a marriage with my co-founder and it's a double-edged sword i would say and it works so well when you want to build things really quickly because you you just get each other it's whatever you want to build the other side just gets the idea the early days is absolutely precious because i still remember the days when we're trying to launch a website like literally a button actually i said i really need that button it'll make a huge difference i would like sit next to him and he'll just code and i'll just have food in my hand i'll be like i want this here i want that here and then and he's just hungry so here's the food and we get it done We get it done 1am, 2am, it's done.

21:18But it also does have challenges later on because working like that can actually burn each other out. And that's where when things don't go so well and there could be conflicts as well.

21:30Amardeep Parmar:When have there been harder times during this journey as well? When are some of the times you have had to kind of support each other and lean each other a bit more? I think the hardest time for us is probably, I still remember, 2023. Yeah, because we weren't growing. because during COVID period, we're doing so well. We have so many pharmacies and we raise our fund. We were kind of riding the high, right? The kind of our mini high. And then afterwards, economy wasn't really doing well and it's not growing as fast as we want. We experimented different things. They weren't really working. And it's very easy to start blaming each other.

22:07And I'll be like, why are you not building this? And he'll be like, oh, you're doing this. like why are you having so many projects they're not focused there's only one of me there there's very limited resource i think at the time there were a lot of arguments um there were discussions like maybe this isn't for us um and there were some shouting matches with i'm sure there are like other co-founders non-married co-founders also have that and there were like difficult times right like I said there were definitely um tears and sweat and maybe blood but um but but it just works out at the end of the day you just communicate and you just can't keep on talking to each other and it's like you know what no matter what we just carry on and make it work in that 2023 period

22:57Amardeep Parmar:when things weren't really working how did you then get back on track again time it just just needs time like because sometimes when there are conflicts there also sometime um like old resentment it could be you know what i said about force not forcing him but pushing him to do the release at midnight that kind of things it all builds up and it builds up the stress and um and it just needs understanding as well i think i did remember during that period we also did have a product consultant helping us try to kind of make things a bit smoother to lubricate the engine a little bit i still remember there was one day he was just literally listening to jiao lu and myself talking about like that you did this that you did that like why did you actually push this release why are you not actually understanding the customer's requirements just just this and then after that somehow it just everything got better so what it is it's just each side just wants to be heard yeah obviously now as well within your addition to the family as well and like managing that so I guess obviously your co-founder clearly understands your parental duties as well but how is that I guess in the relationship too and being co-founders of children being great well it's been difficult I'll tell you like I've been really tired and it is difficult to manage the business run the business and have a baby at the same time and I would say the easiest was probably the first month because the baby was just sleeping a lot so I was able to work I still remember the day I actually went into labor and I was supposed to have a meeting with a potential large enterprise client and I don't want to miss the meeting and an hour after I had labor I told Jaloo's like can you please go to that meeting can you join the meeting and then you come back to the hospital and then I was actually already on my slack answering messages I don't think I really took a break that's it it becomes part of you I guess in that planning phase right because so like context right now is that my co-founder's wife is due any day now right so we're trying to give him proper pat leave so he can take two weeks off we'll see if it works out or not if I have to bug him but then in that planning phase were you thinking that okay were you planning to work straight away were you trying were you thinking i can i will take some time off dedicated i was actually gonna take some time off i was planning to take three months off but it doesn't really work like that um whatever you plan it goes out a window um so i'll say don't plan just go with the flow and also because you also feel that kind of responsibility to the company as well and yes you got a human baby but the company is also your baby so you have to make sure that you don't miss either so you have to juggle the two but it'll all work out somehow it all works out and like with the long-term dream right for Tuli as well what is that long-term dream now well we're just gonna keep on expanding we still have gaps in our network so currently we have of course over 300 pharmacies and we're also looking at some of the independent clinics as well to add to our network we need to fill in the gaps first and then after that expand to Europe add more services so I want it to be that if anyone needs a local community-based healthcare services they just book it through us.

26:22Amardeep Parmar:Has there been anything on this journey which has like really surprised you from going obviously you are like studying medicine you're a scientist and then now becoming a founder from that journey it was anything where you just didn't know at all like and it completely to be a surprise? I think everything is a surprise. Every day is a surprise. There are days like we're like, oh, we only have a 14-month runway. And then four months after, it's like, oh, we only have a 14-month runway. Another four months, it's the same. And also there are several times, I have to say, I honestly thought I was going to fold the company.

26:58And there were times I even thought about, okay, maybe it's time to call it an end or sell it or something. but it carries on and it just surprises you and and there are times I have to accept it's like you know what you have to just control the things you can control and leave the rest to fade.

27:17Amardeep Parmar:Do you think like your scientist background has helped you at all like so many skills you've taken across? Oh yeah of course but I mean firstly I did my PhD in the lab-based environment so I do understand diagnostic tests all the biomarkers all the data so that's really helpful could I set up my own lab if I want to that's really super helpful and I think it's about the standard as well because when you actually achieve certain level like in academia you have a certain standard you can't be quite particular and that's a really useful skill when you run a business because like okay this needs to be very precise and another I think good skill is about experimenting and because in PhD research it's all about okay this is my hypothesis and I test different variables to see which one works and then double down on that and that's very applicable in running a business you said like it feels like now as well you feel like just having met you now or obviously met you before a few times but you seem to be remarkably like relaxed as well and you think that's just come over time or do you think you've always had this ability to be quite relaxed oh i'm always stressed is that the secret it's like it's like um incredible hulk like how do you stop from being angry okay the secret is i'm always angry yeah well to be honest like i think on the surface although my friends say as well i look relaxed i look really gentle but i tell you i'm always always stressed i'm always on the go and so intense deep down yeah and like how do you try to manage that or do you not try to manage it i did try to manage it and i failed yeah and then the thing i learned is i just don't manage it just let it just let it be that's it and before we started recording as well we're saying how um like what advice do you have like precedence seed founders and the way what you kind of were saying is like almost any advice you get is kind of about just going on that journey right like is there anything that you'd want to add to that or like anything for those people who are listening to pre-seed or seed or quite early on in their journey well i think it's like just don't think too much and just do it and if you want to want to do something get it done don't wait for the right condition you know that's the mistake i actually made i always thought okay this needs to be perfect before doing this i need to have that before I launch this product I need to make sure this supply is there I think you just scrap that literally the goal is like you know I'm just gonna do it okay I'm gonna make sales I want to make sales just pick up the phone I get a random number just say okay I'm gonna call this farm just for because doing any action will help you to get that positive feedback and momentum going yeah I think it's a case so many people it's like they're kind of scared of failing but then not on the only way you learn is by getting stuff wrong and then okay next time I do it better right and I guess as well one of the things you said about the high standards is that part of a relationship where if you've got high standards sometimes it's up to them maybe do a sales call and not be good at it because you're used to always being so good at things yeah I mean that's actually one of the challenges I faced because I am quite a perfectionist and that can prevent you from starting um but i learned it over time and just don't expect it to be good and just don't expect anything lower your expectation and do it and eventually you will get it um and action is the most important and just keep on getting the feedback and also i think i had that as well i had worries like oh maybe i'm not good enough i don't know enough it's a typical thing as a early stage founder and in the end you realize actually nothing really matters I don't matter other people don't matter just don't even care and just do it just get on with it there's something called like cosmic insignificance theory right of where we're all just like tiny specks and like a massive universe and you can see it's like oh it's really depressing that we're such a small part of it but what you could also say is really freeing it's like we're only such a small part of the universe anything we do isn't going to be that important so we can stop putting so much pressure on ourselves yeah exactly I mean that's actually the privilege of actually being a founder and running your own business you are actually in control you are autonomous just don't do whatever you think is right and it'll probably end up being right even if it's wrong it doesn't matter so i really enjoyed this we're going to go into a quick fire questions now so the first one is who are free asians in britain you think can do amazing work and you want to shout them out oh of course i'll shout out my husband co-founder cpo jialu tu who says you're a brilliant father that's for sure and the second person I'll shout out for is Lyle Fon so he's one of our investors he's been brilliant you know the one I said about trusting the fact you trusting the founder giving you the support and capital give you space and time that's definitely him and the third one I did say I'm gonna cheat on that a little bit is that I will shout out for all the Asian pharmacy owners they're brilliant they all have great stories some of them were refugees before and came to UK and built a business and expanded from five pounds in their pocket to multiple branches.

32:25So that's why I shout out for.

32:26Amardeep Parmar:And then is there any way that if people want to hear more about your story and hear more about what you're doing, where should they go to? Well, go to you. Well, I'm not really active on social media. I should really get better at it because I just really focus on my work. and in fact you know I didn't really want to talk a few times um yeah happy to kind of chat by email um what about for your company where should people go for that I'll just go to our website we do have someone looking after the link just not me but someone someone will actually answer it so we'll put that in the comments as well then is it and is there any way that all insisting right now could maybe help you out go to your pharmacy first well if you have a health care uh issue use your local farms you more.

33:11Yeah, that's it. Like support your local community.