The Startup Deployment Schedule
March 29, 2024
Today, we’re talking about how to launch a new version twice a week. As your startup grows, maintaining a frequent release schedule becomes challenging.
In this month’s Founder Spotlight, we highlight Fifi Kara, Co-Founder and CEO of Aster, clinic enablement software for women’s health providers to improve patient outcomes.
Interestingly, there were no grand plans to start Aster; it happened purely by chance, but I’m incredibly glad I did start this company; it’s truly a privilege to build it. For context, Aster is clinic enablement software for women’s health providers — we help them keep their practices independent and competitive whilst also improving clinical outcomes for their patients.
The story begins four years ago when my sister, Dr. Lailah Kara-Newton, a practicing OB/GYN at the time, had a near-death experience during her first pregnancy. This experience profoundly affected our family, and after a years-long investigation into the clinical care she received, she won a settlement in 2023.
Around the same time, I was supporting Meta’s Health & Fitness team based in the Bay Area, gaining expertise in remote health monitoring. During this period, we both realized that our two worlds had collided. Lailah wanted to improve women’s health at scale, rather than supporting patients individually, where she would continually encounter the same challenges she faced as a patient just a few years earlier.
We recognized a significant gap in the market where women’s health providers were underserved in delivering high-quality care. After conversing with dozens of practitioners, we concluded that this underserved market was worth building for, and our intervention could be transformative for their practice, care delivery, and, ultimately, the end-patient experience — which remains our original mission.
Our idea evolved over time as we engaged with our customers and partners. Initially, when we decided to enter this space, our focus was on care delivery and improving the patient experience by revamping maternal health practices. However, we quickly realized that (1) this would be capital intensive, combined with poor unit economics, and, more importantly, (2) primarily benefit individuals and families who already had adequate healthcare options. We understood that the most significant pain points were experienced in rural areas across the U.S., where Medicare adoption was higher, yet health outcomes were poorer. To address this population, we recognized that supporting the existing infrastructure of care providers, including Birth Centers, Midwives, Nurse Practitioners, and OB/GYNs, might allow us to achieve rapid scalability.
Aster was founded by three people: myself (Fifi Kara), Dr. Lailah Kara-Newton (Chief Medical Officer), and Andrew Tran (Chief Product Officer). Lailah and I are sisters, so I suppose we first crossed paths at the hospital when I was born a few decades ago. I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew at Meta, where he worked on my team within Reality Labs’ Health & Fitness group. Both Andrew and I worked at Meta during the pandemic period and beyond. We often found ourselves as the only two members of our broader team who were present in the office daily, working late into the evening, and opting in for the in-person collaboration atmosphere. This practice is something we’ve continued with at Aster, and it’s a culture we’ve fostered within our founding team.
In addition, we were all motivated by our shared desire to improve healthcare equity and access throughout the United States.
The women’s health world is often described by those who operate within it as small. It’s relationship-based and reputation-driven. Knowing how important our initial customers would be to the development of our product, we knew we would need to find them in a much more personal way than cold outreach. In order to do this, we developed a Clinical Advisory Board, made up of people in the industry who knew of us personally and believed in our work. We were then able to seek introductions and referrals from trusted individuals in the space. This led to our initial dozen customers who then continued to introduce us to more clinics and providers. We’re now in a position where practices have begun hearing about Aster independently.
This is a practice we still employ today, finding evangelists and leaders in the space who believe in our work.
I’ll flip this question around. Early on, I received advice around optimizing for VC’s interests, which typically in Healthcare can look like solving for conditions that affect a larger subset of the population, for example; diabetes and heart disease — rather than women’s health, where there may be a sense of disconnect from those writing cheques. However, one of the biggest things I’ve learned as a second-time founder is that building a startup is one of the most difficult things you will ever do. I think it was once described as “chewing broken glass” — in order to have the fortitude to remain committed and wade through the challenges that come your way, there has to be, in my opinion, a deeper connection to the problem, your customers and your mission that goes beyond simply running a company.
I also strongly believe that the best investors, some of whom have been founders themselves, completely understand this and value this additional layer of connection to the company. My advice would be don’t build someone else’s company. Build the company you want to build that has meaning to you. It’ll be the thread that keeps you and your team committed during the hardest times.
I’d say what has been a learning experience for myself and the team is understanding the nuances of building in healthcare whilst combining this with growing quickly.
The instinct for many founders is to build enough that can help you gain signal, traction and deep understanding of your customer’s pain points and to continue to keep building on top of that to reach product/market fit. Approaching our business in exactly the same way without accounting for the medium of building in healthcare with patients and providers as the end users with real-world experiences would be a mistake. Early on, we spent a great deal of time balancing what is an acceptable MVP for our business to generate traction, learn from and iterate on whilst also understanding what is table-stakes for any clinical practice to operate in a comprehensive way.
This is something every healthcare company contends with, and it will not end. I believe starting is probably one of the hardest experiences, and things fall into place after you’ve achieved a baseline of functionality. It’s exciting to think Aster is reaching the end of this initial phase.
Learn more about Aster www.astercare.com.
Thanks again to Fifi for sharing her story!
