Babylon Founder Ali Parsa’s Next Act: AI Health Mega-Assistant

Today on the podcast we have Ali Parsa - founder of two unicorn health businesses - Babylon Health and Circle Health.

Ali was born in Iran, but left when he was 16, in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution.  Amazingly, he taught himself UK high school, and went on to study civil and environmental engineering at University College London.

He sold a media company he started during university, and then joined the investment banking world. 20 years ago, he set up Circle Health - the first private company to run a UK NHS hospital, which became Europe's largest partnership of clinicians with around £200 million of annual revenue and about 3,000 employees. Circle Health was taken public in 2012, when Ali stepped down as CEO.

Then, in 2014 - Ali formed Babylon Health, a health service provider that enabled users to have virtual consultations with doctors via text and video on its app. At its height, Babylon was a unicorn - and Ali led Babylon’s listing on the NYSE. But share prices dropped at flotation to below $1, with Ali calling the decision to go public through a SPAC an "unbelievable, unmitigated disaster".

And now he’s bringing a lifetime of lessons from right at the top of American and British healthcare to his next company: Quadrivia - an all-in-one AI health assistant.

In this episode we talk about how AI can transform healthcare, what Ali learnt from Babylon Health, and what the perfect age is to build a startup.

Building a purpose driven company? Read more about Giant Ventures at www.Giant.vc.

Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.

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