Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder recap - this is Episode 38. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Mission control:
Learn -> Founder favorite resources
Free money -> Discount codes
And who am I?
I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.
Let’s get it.
This Week’s Episode (Ep 38) 💊
Guest -> Dylan Beynon, Founder & CEO of Mindbloom
Mission -> Mindbloom’s mission is transform lives today to transform the world tomorrow through psychedelic medicine.
Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Website
In this episode we talk with Dylan about…
⚕️ Psychedelic medicine and primary use cases
💊 Ketamine therapy patient experience
💻 The telemedicine breakthrough and its profound impact on patient access
👨⚕️ The benefits of having a personalized medicine doctor
🧘 The importance of mindfulness and awareness
Summary 🔍
What is Mindbloom and how did Dylan get started?
Dylan is a 3-time founder, having previously spent time on Voter’s Friend (a voting app that aggregated local candidate data and enabled you to become an informed voter in 10 minutes) and Mighty (a software platform designed to enable millions of injured people to get a better deal from the justice system).
After growing up in a working class family ravaged by mental illness and seeing the profound effects of psychedelic medicine firsthand, Dylan knew there was an untapped opportunity.
His simple goal was to increase access to psychedelic medicine and enable treatment to those that needed it. In 2019, Mindbloom was born.
Mindbloom’s mission is to transform lives today that go on to transform the world by providing access to clinician-prescribed psychedelic therapy.
Today, Mindbloom is one of the leading providers of ketamine therapy in the country.
Their platform is telemedicine based and wrapped in a consumer brand, which makes the therapy more approachable, affordable and available to a broader patient set.
The Mindbloom patient experience is built on three pillars. Each patient has access to (1) the medicine (ketamine), (2) the therapy with a licensed clinician and (3) the content, specifically designed to assist the psychedelic experience.
Use code "kallaway" to get $50 off your treatment today!
🚀 Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for Mindbloom 🚀
By building a telemedicine platform rather than a set of brick and mortar clinics, Mindbloom unlocks a couple of key benefits to make this business really exciting:
Telemedicine enables access to anyone with an internet connection. There are millions of potential patients with conditions like stress, anxiety and depression that could benefit from ketamine therapy. In the past, patients without physical access to registered clinicians and physical spaces were unable to take advantage. By being laser focused on telemedicine, Mindbloom can help more people and rapidly expand the reach of previously inaccessible treatment.
The business model for telemedicine is much more profitable so Mindbloom can pass savings onto consumers. Rather than investing in brick and mortar facilities and requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars to open each location, Mindbloom opted to build an asset-lite business and develop a network of partner clinicians to administer treatment. As we’ve seen with other consumer telemedicine companies like Hims and Ro, the unit economics on individual patients are much more favorable, so Mindbloom can make treatment more affordable for the patients that need it.
Dylan’s Startup Manifesto 📜
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Here’s what Dylan had to say:
Get the strategy right and continue making sure the strategy is right. There’s nothing worse than leading a bunch of people through the jungle, clearing the way with a machete and realizing you’re about to walk them off a cliff. Brian Balfour has an incredible framework called Product-Market-Channels-Model Fit. You need the right product, the right market, the right distribution channels and the right business model for your business to work.
Feed strengths and opportunities and starve problems and weaknesses. A lot of people and companies try to do too many things or focus on minutiae vs setting those aside, finding a few things that are your competitive advantages and going all-in on those.
The gap is massive between great and good talent. Try to find and work with exceptional talent. You may need to pay up for the talent. Sometimes great talent is great in one area, but if you move them somewhere else, they’re not so great. You want to look around the table and make sure everyone gives you energy.
When finding talent, don’t just look for the person you think you need, get super specific about exactly what you want people to accomplish. Get 10x more specific and granular about what those things are that you’re hiring for.
Relentless focus is incredibly important. Ask people at your company what the #1 thing is that they could be working on that would move the needle for the business long-term and add zeros to the business.
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Dylan, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:
The importance of awareness 👍🏽
Dylan is one of the brightest people I’ve ever talked to.
Although he impressed with deep knowledge and executional playbooks across his business and life, what inspired me most was his emphasis on awareness.
During the middle of the conversation, we spent a few minutes discussing his wellness practice. Dylan shared that the most important thing in his life right now is mindfulness and cultivating awareness.
For Dylan, he has spent years putting reps in on meditation. He raves about Sam Harris’s Waking Up app and the book Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha as tools that he’s used to help him reach an ascended state.
Focusing on awareness and being present in each moment is something that I have spent a disproportionate amount of time on over the last 60 days.
Although a much smaller sample size than Dylan’s, I’m already starting to notice the dramatic effects on my mood and overall happiness.
I find it fascinating that for many of the high performing and driven founder/CEOs that I talk to, the majority of them are focused on personal wellness and happiness over business success.
It’s hard to know if this is primarily because they have a bit of financial breathing room from the wins under their belt or if they’ve come to the realization that reaching the mountain top without strong mental health and happiness isn’t as satisfying as they’d thought.
Either way, this is a signal. Focusing on your mental health, mindfulness and awareness is something that should be prioritized immediately.
What are you doing today to increase your awareness?
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support our journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:
If you enjoyed this post, share it with one friend that you think is on the same wavelength.
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Listen to the full podcast episode with Dylan on Apple or Spotify. If you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode, pick a couple of topics you’re interested in and skim through (topic time codes in the show notes).
Watch the full episode on YouTube.
If you’re feeling super giving:
Find our show on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/2VCosu6) and (1) subscribe, (2) give a 5-star rating and (3) leave a couple sentence positive review. This doesn’t seem like it would move the needle but it really is a massive help!
Till next time ✌️
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies we’ve featured on the show!
— 📖 36. Toucan | Taylor Nieman
— 🙋♀️ 33. Farrynheight | Farryn Weiner
— 🛌 30. Eight Sleep | Matteo Franceschetti
— 🌵 25. The Sill | Eliza Blank
— 🥦 22. Levels | Josh Clemente
— 🧑🦰 17. Kombo Ventures | Kevin Gould
— 💍 11. The Clear Cut | Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon
— 🥘 7. Kettle & Fire | Justin Mares
— 🥾 2. Thursday Boots | Connor Wilson
See any mistakes? Let me know (kallaway@thefounderpod.com)