This week, the SphereCast team speaks with Ansgar Lange, Chief Operating Officer at Nostos Genomics. Globally, nearly 300 million people live with a rare genetic disease, and, for many, discovering and diagnosing these illnesses can take years. Nostos Genomics is changing the game by leveraging new technologies to dramatically reduce this timeframe. Prior to his work at Nostos Genomics, Ansgar worked in various senior-level roles at other healthcare-related companies.
Ansgar is a master of scalability. His resume tells the story of one who can prep a small company for fast expansion. This skill is a difficult one to master, but its level of difficulty is elevated even higher, considering Ansgar’s industry-of-choice — healthcare. How does one go about building a rapid growth, innovative company in a highly regulated industry? On the podcast, Ansgar discusses the challenges of a COO in a healthcare startup and how to properly innovate within the bounds of your chosen industry.
Noteworthy Quotes:
"It's really interesting for me to use cutting edge technologies to help others and innovate the healthcare sector."
"Trust with startups in the digital healthcare sector is always a challenge."
"I've seen this many times. People have great ideas, but if you don't play it back to your customers, you'll never get back to a proper product that's adopted quickly."
"A COO typically has to really juggle lots of different activities and make sure they're all aligned nicely in the end… And saying ‘no’ is one of the most difficult decisions a COO has to make.”
"COVID brought the remote-first hybrid model. The opportunity that is offering is to work across the globe with different people in different time locations. It was a negative impact in the short run, but in the long run, it's an advantage."
"It's an illusion to stay on top of all business and technology innovations. There are so many out there that you have to focus quite a bit."
"In retrospect, I could have spent less time focusing on academics. In general, people value commercial achievement over academic achievement."
"I wish I would have started building my network earlier... Having a network of many different people is extremely valuable, especially when building a company."
Bullet List of Resources –
Ansgar Lange
Nostos Genomics