Big News: Just Joined Jacaranda Health

This is my first post in a long time and it’s a good one. As of April I’ve joined forces with the brilliant ideas and people of Jacaranda Health (more like they allowed me to join for some reason. Maybe they’re not so brilliant after all).

We’re aiming to revolutionize the way maternal healthcare is done across the world, starting with one preggers mother in Nairobi at a time.

For those of you who know me even a little bit, I LOVE start-ups. And this is a good one. It’s a great idea, the potential scale and impact is massive and the people behind it are rock stars.

Problem: In many developing countries, and even in Kenya, the maternal death rates are much higher (like 77 times higher) than they need to be.  There are lots of reasons for this including inadequate medical organizations, high costs, difficulty getting medical supplies or equipment, regulatory issues and women who aren’t always informed of all the things they ought to be doing during pregnancy (namely, seeing a medical organization), etc. etc. etc.

Our idea: Very high quality healthcare, focused solely on maternal health, using lots of innovations (technology, marketing, clinical, innovations from around the globe) to make it very efficient and low cost. Like really low cost. In Kenya for example, very nice private clinics can cost $1,000 or more for a delivery. Government hospitals are supposed to be free, but are scary and aren’t actually free ($40ish). There’s a big range of private clinics in between, and the quality ranges widely, often to the really terrible side. Among all that, we’re aiming to do a normal delivery for around $60 at world-class levels of care.

We’re launching very modern clinics that will deliver babies and we’ll be running mobile clinics that take antenatal care (ANC) to our moms where they need it. Each day we’ll go to a school, a church, a factory, etc. and set up shop so Moms can get really professional ANC without traveling. And when more women start coming to early ANC visit, the likelihood of a safe delivery goes way up. And the likelihood that they deliver with us goes up too. (ie, marketing strategy)

Scale: If we can figure this thing out right, we’ll be offering much better care than is currently available at much lower prices. We’re going to grow like gang busters. And if we can make money (or be real close to sustainable), we’ll grow scale even faster. In just 18 months after touching ground in Kenya, ToughStuff is now cranking in across Africa and seeing massive growth (that I can’t really talk about, but it’s big) and Jacaranda could do the same.

And if we grow like crazy we’re going to steal all the damn moms from all the other guys and they’re going to have to start copying us – at least the really good things we’re doing. We’ll attract all kinds of followers and copy cats across Africa and the developing world.

And even bigger impact will come when smart people (the guys know a few already) start doing studies and writing medical journals on us. Apparently that’s how you really impact how things are done on a global scale in the medical world.

People: 

• Nick Pearson, a good friend of mine, invented and founded this thing over a year ago. He’s an ex-Acumen and completely awesome guy. 
• And his wife’s an OBGYN (right?) at UCSF, so she’s big time too, though I haven’t met her yet. 
• Aliya Walji’s running the show in Kenya. She’s ex Grameen Technology (in Ghana with another medical organization) and completely awesome. 
• Tammy Guo is ex-Boston Consulting Group and Stanford and completely average. 
• Jane Adera is a really talented and professional researcher/public health person and awesome and a good Kiswahili teacher. 
• Maryanne Darwinkel and Julius Maina are both very senior and experienced in the Kenya medical field. 
• And several other seriously-qualified people that I haven’t met in person yet are all joining forces to make this thing go crazy. 
• Finally, we’ve put together some real-deal advisors, including two very good friends, Biju Mohandas and Andrew Youn.

One thing I’m really excited about is offering really friendly services. Like, crazy friendly. I don’t know what pregnancy’s like, but I really feel like that’s the time a mom could really use some TLC. And I think we can make the world a better place just by spreading some big smiles when Moms need ‘em. Also, we’ll being offering really comprehensive family planning choices and education for mothers after delivery, which I’m big believer in.

As for ToughStuff, we’ve parted on a great note. All the guys there have been nothing less than fantastic to me. Lots of friends and mentors. And I gave lots and lots of notice, so I think they’re not too annoyed with me. I’m getting better at learning when a company is too big for me to be valuable and ToughStuff is way past that point. We’ve sold well-over 100,000 solar panels, touched more than half a million lives across almost a dozen African countries, won multiple international awards and we’re doing it all as a social business. I can’t say much, but we have some really big news coming up soon, too. It’s really been a dream ride and I’m really confident in their continued growth (which will surely accelerate now that I’m gone.)

As for Rolex – we’re entertaining (begging for) offers now from interested parties (party) who may want to buy (accept) the company. Thanks for asking.

How you can help: Join our mailing list, friend us on facebook and start having more babies! I need customers!

I seem to be making a bit of a career out of this start-up thing (Jacaranda is number 8) and its reallllly nice to be back to the early days. I have to say: this is such a good venture, it almost feels like cheating. Huge global need, great idea backed by amazing people. Hopefully I can find a way to help out. Welp, back to work…