Simon Hayhurst, Chief Product Officer at Virta Health
Concept to Care
Launching Health Tech Startups
This chapter explores the intricacies of launching a health tech startup within the U.S. healthcare system, emphasizing the need to create value for patients and align interests of insurers and business sustainability. It highlights the critical steps of securing investments, understanding market fit, and prioritizing patient experiences to enhance the startup's appeal to employers.
Simon Hayhurst is the Chief Product Officer at Virta Health, a company on a mission to reverse Type 2 diabetes and improve metabolic health for millions. With a deep background in product strategy and a passion for tackling one of healthcare’s most pressing challenges, Simon has played a key role in scaling Virta’s innovative care model. At the intersection of technology, behavior change, and clinical excellence, Virta is reshaping what’s possible in chronic disease management.
In our conversation, Simon shares his insights on:
- The Virta Mission and Founding Story: How a personal health journey inspired a company to tackle metabolic disease at scale.
- The Evolution of Virta’s Go-to-Market Strategy: Lessons from clinical validation, early patient success, and building payer relationships.
- Leveraging Technology for Personalized Care: How Virta combines human coaching and AI to deliver scalable, high-quality care.
- Frameworks for Product Success: Simon’s “three-legged stool” approach to balancing patient value, payer ROI, and operational efficiency.
- Doing Unscalable Things First: Why starting small is key to learning, building empathy, and refining workflows.
- Planning with Now-Next-Later: A simple, flexible framework for focused product strategy in dynamic environments.
- The Power of Retrospectives: How continuous improvement drives sustainable growth and team empowerment.
- AI and the Future of Member Experience: The role of AI in scaling personalized, proactive, and efficient healthcare delivery.
In this episode of Concept to Care, Simon provides a fascinating look into how Virta Health is leading the charge against Type 2 diabetes and redefining health tech success. His insights into product strategy, scaling care, and leveraging AI offer actionable lessons for health tech leaders, operators, and entrepreneurs.
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Where to find Simon Hayhurst
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhayhurst/
- email: simon.hayhurst@virthealth.com
- Virta Health: https://www.virtahealth.com/
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Where to find Angela and Omar:
- Angela Suthrave
- Omar Mousa
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Referenced:
- Virta Health: https://www.virtahealth.com/
- Virta Health Announces Record and Accelerating Growth at a Scale of More Than $100M in Annualized Revenue, Driven by Sustainable Weight Loss and GLP-1 Solutions: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250110748668/en/Virta-Health-Announces-Record-and-Accelerating-Growth-at-a-Scale-of-More-Than-100M-in-Annualized-Revenue-Driven-by-Sustainable-Weight-Loss-and-GLP-1-Solutions
- CNBC Coverage, High cost of weight loss drugs drives employers to require nutrition counseling, in boost for startups: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/10/high-cost-weight-loss-drugs-boost-nutrition-counseling.html
- Virta Health CEO, Sami Inkinen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samiinkinen
- Virta Health’s clinical protocol: https://www.virtahealth.com/how-it-works
- Virta Health Research Center: https://www.virtahealth.com/research
- Reversing Type 2 Diabetes: An Evidence-Based Guide: https://www.virtahealth.com/reversediabetes
- Peterson Health Technology Institute: https://phti.org/
- Digital Diabetes Management Solutions: https://phti.org/assessment/digital-diabetes-management-tools/
- Now, Next, Later Framework: https://www.launchnotes.com/blog/the-now-next-and-later-roadmap-a-comprehensive-guide-for-planning-ahead
- Simon mentioned that after 1 month of being at Virta Health, he has most people at the company internalizing this quote, “we can do anything, but we can’t do everything”. Here is an article the capture why this sentiment matters: https://jpattonassociates.com/tension/
- Learn more about the absolute MVP: https://leanstartup.co/resources/articles/what-is-an-mvp/
- Paul Graham’s famous post, “do things that don’t scale”: https://paulgraham.com/ds.html
- Eric Ries, The Lean Start-up: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898
- The art of retrospectives: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/art-retrospective-erica-zendell/
- How to go from Engineer to Product Manager: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/how-i-moved-from-engineering-into-product-management/
- How to go from Data Scientist to Product Manager: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mindset-shifts-move-from-data-scientist-become-product-apoorva-jadhav/
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