

Big Picture Medicine
Mustafa Sultan, MD
The health entrepreneurship podcast — focusing on big picture stuff.
Interviews with health/biotech entrepreneurs and leaders having impact at scale. Health stuff a techbro/sis would find interesting. Think health meets the Tim Ferriss Show.
Get in touch: pod@musty.io
Interviews with health/biotech entrepreneurs and leaders having impact at scale. Health stuff a techbro/sis would find interesting. Think health meets the Tim Ferriss Show.
Get in touch: pod@musty.io
Episodes
Mentioned books

4 snips
Jul 10, 2023 • 43min
🔥 Spotify Founder's Longevity Startup: Bear v Bull Case (Neko Health)
Daniel Ek (Spotify Founder) has raised $65M for his new longevity startup: Neko Health.
0:00 What is Neko Health
2:18 They're doing nothing new
5:33 The bull case; why it's going to be huge
7:47 How are they possibly going to make money!?
18:30 Why aren't they doing full body MRI?
20:26 The bear case; why this will fail
25:13 Smells a bit hypey
29:15 The risks of longevity startups and early testing
35:41 The lowdown
37:47 Unexpected way of making $$$
40:00 Outro and feedback
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Jul 3, 2023 • 34min
🔥 Apple's Plan to Dominate Healthcare (And Why It Will Fail)
0:00 Leaked secret Apple health report
5:06 What Apple are up to in healthcare
9:21 Decentralised clinical trials
11:35 Apple healthcare leaked documents controversy
15:38 Apple is going to become a health insurer
23:07 Imran's advice to Tim Cook
26:11 Being a healthcare provider is unprofitable
28:12 Apple will make a longevity/subscription health play
30:27 Outro and feedback
Links mentioned
Apple Struggles in Push to Make Healthcare Its Greatest Legacy (Wall Street Journal): https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-struggles-in-push-to-make-healthcare-greatest-legacy-11623832200
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicineApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Jun 26, 2023 • 40min
#120 Billion $ Healthtech 'Soonicorn' Huma: Lessons from Jony Ive and Big Pharma — Dan Vahdat (CEO)
Huma is about to reach a 1 billion dollar valuation, and is thriving while other digital health companies are dying. But what’s their secret sauce?
Dan Vahdat is the Johns Hopkins dropout — who meticulously studied the successful business practices of big pharma, and using these, has created the 'soonicorn' digital health company that’s about to take over the world of remote patient monitoring and decentralised clinical trials.
0:00 Intro
1:11 Focusing on one big thing is bullsh*t
6:33 Lessons from Jony Ive
10:02 Healthtech infrastructure play
16:04 'Ownership is everything' discussion
20:18 If you maximise impact, commercial will come
24:00 Bad design hurts me
28:56 You don't need to try and inspire anyone
30:35 Are you full of sh*t?
32:27 How does your life change when you 'make it'?
36:50 Is studying successful people a waste of time?
39:28 Outro
Podcast Links
YouTube: / @bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPm...
People
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/
Dan Vahdat https://www.huma.com/

Jun 19, 2023 • 32min
🔥 Beauty and the Bucks: Inside GetHarley's $52M Triumph in Skincare
0:00 Intro
1:04 The genius business model of GetHarley
5:26 How important is marketing? 50% of revenue
14:57 Why aren't they doing cooler more innovative stuff?
22:38 What verticals would we expand GetHarley's biz model to
24:37 Vitamin vs painkiller
27:49 Why have investors put so much money into GetHarley?
31:00 Feedback and outro
Links mentioned
GetHarley, a skincare telehealth and consultation platform, raises $52M (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/06/get...
Podcast Links
YouTube: / @bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPm...
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Jun 13, 2023 • 34min
🔥 News: Pills for Profit — The Dark Side of D2C Health Startups
0:00 Intro
0:20 DEA comes after DTC health startups
3:18 How DTC health startups hacked customer retention
10:30 Will this kill the economics of D2C health startups?
12:57 How would we solve the problem
15:30 New LLM Paper in Nature
28:18 Audience feedback and outro
Links Mentioned
Cerebral Pushed ADHD Prescriptions And Failed To Report Data Breaches, Ex-Executive Alleges In Lawsuit (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2022/04/28/cerebral-pushed-adhd-prescriptions-failed-to-report-data-breaches-ex-executive-alleges-in-lawsuit/DEA's proposed telehealth rules pull back COVID-era remote prescribing flexibilities: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/telehealth/deas-proposed-telehealth-rules-tighten-covid-era-remote-prescribing-regulations
DEA extends telehealth prescribing flexibilities for 6 months: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/telehealth-providers-cheer-dea-moves-temporarily-extend-virtual-prescribing
Health system-scale language models are all-purpose prediction engines (Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06160-y
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

Jun 5, 2023 • 53min
#119 The Unusual Path to Make a Billion $ Men's Health Startup — Numan CEO (Sokratis Papafloratos)
Sokratis Papafloratos, the founder and CEO of Numan, a booming men's digital health startup, shares his vibrant journey in the health tech arena. He discusses the key to their $70M funding and what separates successful entrepreneurs from the rest. Papafloratos also emphasizes innovative marketing strategies, including the balance of kindness and assertiveness in leadership. With insights from his past experiences, he candidly reflects on entrepreneurship's ego and narrative power, while critiquing the missteps of others like Adam Neumann.

May 17, 2023 • 30min
🔥 News: The Rise and Demise of Babylon Health
0:00 Intro
0:18 Ali Parsa's Immigrant Story
1:57 Picking a Problem That Was Too Big
4:15 The Supply Induced Demand Problem
5:55 The Unit Economics Problem
7:37 The Misaligned Incentives Problem
10:11 The Friction Problem
12:06 The First Mover Disadvantage
13:30 Raising Too Much Money
14:55 The SPAC Problem
17:40 The Pig With Lipstick Problem
22:07 Should Founders be Liberal with the Truth?
26:06 What Will the Next Health Unicorn Be?
Articles Mentioned
Babylon shareholders wiped out in restructuring deal: https://www.ft.com/content/ce42bcb7-d9ee-4667-910a-b6c7a419449b
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicineApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat / https://numenor.health
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

May 12, 2023 • 32min
🔥 News: VC Dirty Money and Trillion $ Alzheimer's Opportunity
0:00 Intro
0:38 VC Dirty Money (LP Sources)
8:30 Power Dynamics Founder vs VC
12:56 Trillion $ Alzheimer's Opportunity
14:26 Eli Lily's New Alzheimer's Blockbuster (?) Donanemab
19:01 More Issues with Donanemab Phase III Results
21:48 Will Anyone Pay for Donanemab?
24:13 Donanemab Side Effects
27:15 Startup Opportunities in Alzheimer's
31:34 Outro
Articles Mentioned
Founders need to take a stand against VC's 'dirty money’: https://sifted.eu/articles/founders-vc-dirty-money
Eli Lily Donanemab Phase III Press Release: https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lillys-donanemab-significantly-slowed-cognitive-and-functional
Cost Effectiveness of Donanemab: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35344024/
Podcast Links
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bigpicturemedicine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/big-picture-medicine/id1500446262
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5707RPmWOJkVZyUHNRSUfS?si=96c7fff6bccb456a
People
Dr Imran Mahmud: https://www.imranmahmud.com/
Dr Adam Bataineh: https://twitter.com/DrAdamBat?s=20
Dr Mustafa Sultan: https://www.musty.io/

May 4, 2023 • 34min
🔥 News: ChatGPT vs Doctors: Who Will Win?
Papers Mentioned—
ChatGPT better + more empathetic than human doctors (JAMA Int Med Paper): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2804309
Detecting eye disease using AI (Nature Biomedical Engineering): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-022-00867-5
Predicting dementia using LLMs (PLOS Digital Health): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36812634/
AI recognises race from black and white X rays (Lancet Digital Health): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(22)00063-2/fulltext
VC dirty money article: https://sifted.eu/articles/founders-vc-dirty-money
0:00 Intro
0:30 ChatGPT vs Doctors (JAMA Paper)
15:57 AI Better at Diagnosis than Doctors
30:57 Dirty VC Money
32:02 Audience Feedback
Joined by:
Dr Adam Bataineh: Longevity doctor and Co-founder Span Health (acquired by EightSleep).
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.

Apr 26, 2023 • 27min
🔥 News: It’s Time to Build in Healthcare (a16z) and Why are VCs Miserable?
0:00 Intro
0:32 Why are VCs so unhappy?
2:18 What’s hard about being a VC?
3:56 Hustle culture, FOMO, always-on culture in VC
9:54 Is it ever easy to become rich?
12:22 It’s time to build in healthcare
15:31 Why is healthcare so hard for big tech?
17:31 Reasons why healthcare is easier than you think
21:04 Imposter syndrome for tech people entering healthcare
24:03 Would you build another healthcare startup?
25:12 Outro
Joined by:
Dr Imran Mahmud: Investor, Oxford-trained doctor, ex-Mckinsey and Co-founder of NYE Health.
Dr Mustafa Sultan: Creator of Big Picture Medicine and Doctor.


