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