My guest for Ep136 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Founder & CEO of HealthMatch, Manuri Gunawardena.

Manuri launched HealthMatch in 2017 after witnessing first hand the challenges of patients looking to gain access to clinical trials.

In her final years of medical school, she worked in neuro-oncology research particularly focussed on Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumours, an incurable and aggressive form of brain cancer.

Through her experience she saw first hand how difficult it was for researchers to find appropriate patients and how reliant patients were on their doctors to have the knowledge for cures.

That’s where HealthMatch was born from – a passion to empower patients to not only understand their treatment options, but to gain access too.

Since launching in 2017 the business has gone through incredible growth, particularly this year where they have grown from a team of 5 to 20 and from 8,000 users at the end of May to over 80,000 users by the end of the year.

As Manuri also announced on this podcast, HealthMatch raised $18M in Series B funding led by Square Peg Capital, taking their total funding to date to $25M.

We covered a range of topics in this interview including:

• Importance of building credibility through domain expertise, particularly for non-tech founders
• The importance of having a clear north star mission
• Why and how Manuri looks for “horsepower” during the hiring process
• How to get buy-in from enterprises and investors through effective storytelling
• & much more!

Full interview below!

Show notes:

• HealthMatch
• HealthMatch Pitch at Startup Battlefield Australia (2017)
• TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Australia (2017)
• Zero to one: Notes on startups, or how to build the future – Peter Thiel (book)
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a business when there are no easy answers – Ben Horowitz (book)
• Julia Wells
• Marisa Warren
• Melanie Perkins
• Anton Borzov
• Andreesen Horowitz
• Alister Coleman
• Tempus Partners
• Paul Bassat
• Paul Bassat Podcast (Startup Playbook Ep024)
• Square Peg Capital 
• Simon Griffiths Podcast (Startup Playbook Ep120)
• Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams – Matthew Walker (book)
• Kaushik Sen
• Kaushik Sen Podcast (Startup Playbook Ep020) 
• Tony Holt
• Lucy Turnbull
• Roche Australia
• HealthMatch careers page

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to Paul Bassat and Alister Coleman for their help with research for this interview!

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams

Other channels:

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