Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Navigating the Founder's Journey with Hans Kullberg
Entrepreneur Hans Kullberg takes us on a deeply personal journey that intertwines professional pivots with profound personal tragedy. As a father of five and serial entrepreneur, Hans reveals how his path through finance, FinTech, and education ultimately led him to tackle critical gaps in pediatric healthcare.
The conversation explores Hans' experience developing products for developmental pediatrics, where he discovered a troubling statistic: while 20% of children have developmental delays, only 3% receive diagnoses before age three. This three-year gap represents not just $1.5 million in additional lifetime care costs, but dramatically different outcomes for the children themselves.
Hans shares the valuable lessons learned through multiple product pivots - from targeting pediatricians to recognizing employers as the true stakeholders bearing both healthcare costs and workplace productivity impacts. His insights on identifying your true "ideal customer profile" offer practical wisdom for any entrepreneur navigating market fit challenges.
The most powerful segment comes when Hans reveals how personal tragedy shaped his current mission. After losing his daughter Aviva to unexplained medical complications despite consulting numerous specialists, Hans made a heartbreaking promise: "Daddy doesn't know what happened, but I'm going to do everything I can to make sure no other parent has to feel this way."
This promise became Avocado Health - a platform delivering trusted, evidence-based parenting information via text message when parents need it most, rather than leaving them to rely on "Dr. Google" at 2 AM. Hans articulates his vision to become "the most trusted parenting platform on the planet" by bridging the gap between accessible but unreliable information and trustworthy but inaccessible medical expertise.
For entrepreneurs facing setbacks or searching for their purpose, Hans offers this powerful reminder: "One characteristic for a very successful founder is being relentlessly resilient... getting back up, but doing it in a much smarter way, making sure you're learning from every single past failure."
Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Gwenda Rae Query, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR, so a lot of times I have subject matter experts on the call, but today I'm super excited to have one of you guys a founder, on the call who is open and willing to talk about some of his journeys not all of them successful in his current process of building his company and also his why Super excited to have Hans Kohlberg here with us today to talk about his journey and life lessons that he's willing to share with us. Welcome, hans.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Guinevere. It's so nice to be here with you today. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being so willing to come on and share some of your not so great successes and hopefully also some of your great successes as well For the audience. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm, first and foremost, I'm a dad of five. I say that because that's my most important job. You know I'm very hands on about that. But I'm also a serial entrepreneur. I've done a lot of things throughout my career, certainly had the traditional career, but about 15 years ago or so I kind of got my hands dirty into the entrepreneurship space and haven't looked back since. So I've done a lot of different things, had some failures, certainly had a couple successes, which is good, but it's really kept me coming back for sure, because it's not an easy life at all.
Speaker 1:It's not, and, being an entrepreneur, it's kind of a drug, isn't it? It's very addicting. You just kind of want to keep solving the world's problems through things that you know you can bring to the market and to your potential customers and clients out there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's like kind of having a vision and being able to execute on it. I think that's such a pure expression of who I am in general, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we met and we actually met because you were working on building a different product for your company, which then you shifted gears, and that's really what I'd love to dive into and get to a little bit of just sharing some aha moments of why you made the shift. Could you tell us a little bit about what that prior company was and what you were working on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll absolutely do that and just to preface that. So I've worked on a number of different industries, different careers, started my career in finance and then did FinTech, have done education, startups, and now I'm in healthcare, um, and that previous company um I was at was working on developmental pediatrics. And so what does that mean? It means the first five years a child's developing um are literally the most important time of a human's life, because that's when everything's a rapid fire in terms of your neuroplasticity and your brain's growing. But 20% of kids have some type of developmental delay, whether that's minor, such as a speech delay, or more major, you know, such as autism, adhd, stress, anxiety. Everything is really set up ground, you know, from the ground up at that point in time. So we're talking about social, emotional, language and movement.
Speaker 2:The big problem we're trying to solve with that company where I was the head of product so I wasn't running this company but just leading the product side was really trying to close the gap between that 20% of kids with some type of delay and 3% of kids that get diagnosed before the age of three. And that's no bueno. That's not good for anyone because, you know, certainly for the child themselves, but but also the family and also, for you know, everyone around that, including employers. And so the way that we're doing that and if you know the medical system this day and age pediatricians they have a lot of information, very little time spending 15 minutes with each child. They're checking eyes, ears, heart, throat. So it's really hard to kind of look at. You know they have a lot of information, very little time spending 15 minutes with each child. They're checking eyes, ears, heart, throat, so it's really hard to kind of look at what's happening developmentally. Parents spend a lot of time with their child but have very little information when it comes to development, so across those four main domains. And so what we're trying to do is really bring all of that guidance and wisdom and knowledge to those parents to help them be the best advocate for their child when they come to the pediatric clinic for that 15 minute visit once a year, which is really, you know, almost crazy to think about, and then being able to kind of ask better questions and have better data, so screening data, milestones, data, et cetera.
Speaker 2:You know the foundation of that and really just the strategic direction of that company was, you know, intended to actually sell this product, which was an award-winning mobile app that had all this data and it also had a platform, kind of a platform for for pediatricians was to sell that data to pediatricians itself themselves and to kind of say this is something that maybe 2 000 of your you know patients would actually love and and enjoy, um, and it'll help you do your job better, right, right, um, when it comes down to that and I literally knocked on about a hundred different pediatric clinic doors literally had in hand with a basket of fruit, apples, like bananas if you ever go to a pediatrician, they love that stuff and asking for 10 minutes of their time and knowing that they have a very busy day, you know, sometimes they'll give it to me, but a lot of times, you know, 100% of them said you know this is a great product, but it's going to be helpful for my parents, for all those parents, for me. I can't really incorporate this into my day to day because I have 10,000 other things to do chart notes to read, everything else and, furthermore, as a pediatrician they weren't saying this, but it was implied they're not necessarily incentivized nor held liable in a big way for a delayed diagnosis, right? The status quo is let's wait and see. Every child develops uniquely, which is true, but wait and see means seeing them at 12 months later. So if a child's not saying a word at two years old versus three years old, that 12 months is a really big, big gap.
Speaker 2:And what does that mean? That child's not able to express himself or herself with her friends in daycare, in preschool, being able to kind of converse and talk, and then that leads to foundation, foundationally, a lot of other social emotional issues later in life. And so all of this to say you know, children with developmental delays actually have a much bigger, higher precedence of mental health issues later in life. And so you know what we're doing here. The first five years of life is really attacking, you know, the largest healthcare crisis, the mental healthcare crisis that we know at its roots. So that's a lot of learnings that we've learned. I can tell you about that, but I'll pause there.
Speaker 1:So you were. You were targeting physicians. After communicating with them and speaking with a ton of them, you realize, oh, that doesn't seem to be the right approach. Then you shifted to the parents and also maybe employers. Is that kind of what you tried to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we really took a step back and said, okay, who actually owns that liability, right, who's actually paying for that delayed diagnosis? And just to set the table, ground stakes are autism, for instance. That's something that could a lot of times be diagnosed at two years old. The average age usually is around five years old. That three-year difference is a $1.5 million cost difference in cost of care throughout the lifetime of that child. And we're talking about, you know, aba therapy, which in the US is about 70,000 on average per year. You know it's a really big expense. But more than that, the outcomes. You know, when we're talking about reaching or maximizing developmental potential, the outcomes aren't as good at five years old versus two years old, just from from nature of of how the brain develops. And so you know that's a big cause. And who bears that? It's usually not mom and dad, it's usually the payers, the payers at the end date.
Speaker 2:And in healthcare there's three big ones. It's Medicaid 38% of kids are on Medicaid, actually carriers, so the blue cross, blue shields, and that unites of the world. And then the third one, and almost the biggest one, is actually employers. Um, yeah, in a very big way self-insured employers, um, which most fortune 500 companies are, have a very huge incentive to actually make sure that, um, you know, that their families are well taken care of and and and getting in front in a proactive manner to lower their costs at the end of the day, but also ensure that their employees are fully productive and fully bringing their full self to the workforce. And so they have this dual reason for, you know, addressing it from the healthcare side as well as from the workplace productivity side, and so that's where the aha moment was like.
Speaker 2:Okay, employers are actually the ones that care the most about that particular problem, and they care the most about parents and children, because, having studied the healthcare system, it's hard to find, you know, who actually cares about children in general. Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that pediatricians are the lowest paid subspecialty and so, unfortunately, you know, they just don't get the credit they deserve. I wish they did. But in terms of reimbursements, which a lot of times you have to be mindful of that there's not much you know that they can reimburse for on that side. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the journey of of recognizing your target, your ICP of physician, to then reevaluating what your true ICP was, that's, that's quite a journey that you went on, and before you left that business, did you find that they found the sweet spot, or were they still kind of figuring it out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, I was. I was there for two and a half years and and throughout that time, you know, we were searching for that private market fit and we had some clinics on board. We were actually having, you know, a big contract with a major healthcare, but it wasn't. It was, it was more of a pilot, so it wasn't a paid contract. That doesn't really get you that far, but from that standpoint, I was very proud of the work that we did and what we had built. The other side to the equation is really the parent side, and so they're the end users. So, as a B2B2C current company, they have to actually, you know, really enjoy it and like it. And when it comes to that side, there's two fundamental problems. One is that only 20% of parents, or 20 to 30% of parents, actually have concern about the child's development and would actually engage and use it.
Speaker 1:That's really low. That's kind of sad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, obviously we'd like to think that every parent would have concern, but a lot of times and we had different personas when we were talking about the nervous Nellies and the inkling Ingrids, the ones that actually think there might be some kind of issue, and, and you know there's there's a lot of other personal types, but you know, those were the ones that were actually using it, and was it on a daily basis? No, we were giving them a lot of different activities. Here's how you can actually help, you know, stimulate your child's development. But when you're a busy parent and I am one of those you just don't have the mind share. You don't have the time, you know, to sit there and going down through the rabbit hole on an app, right and so.
Speaker 2:But when we talked to thousands of parents, what they did say was, hey, I don't have concern about my child's development, but I do have these questions about sleep. I can't get my child to sleep, or I can't control their temper, tantrum, or how do I think about screen time and what does that mean? Or I have a relationship issue with my spouse or my partner. I have all these other things as a parent which are really questions and challenges. How do I get my child to eat vegetables? And it's much more than than development. And so when you think about engagement, I think about this from a product lens. What is the lowest form of barrier that you can actually bring to actually engage that parent and how do you actually bring them value, first and foremost, upfront and that's you know in the segues into what we're doing now is really giving that answer in the moment to that parent in that trusted way.
Speaker 1:So I love the journey you've been on, because I think this is such a truth of most startups. You come in you think you're trying to solve problem why you speak to your potential ICPs maybe they're not the right ICPs and or when you start to find that market fit, you realize, oh, I need to shift a little bit, and so that's kind of what you've done. So tell us a little bit about now like you've shifted and now what are you guys focusing on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that they use ICP and so I deal with customer profile is a really big one, because sometimes, especially with B2B2C, you think, oh well, it's the parents, they're ICP. No, that's not that, that's your persona. Your ICP is who's actually buying the product and in a big way, it was really just taking that. A lot of those learnings are really understanding. Okay, so parents, they want the questions answered. What's the lowest form of communication, that barrier that you can actually bring that to? If you literally ask and survey a thousand parents, the number one, I'm going to ask you Gwyneth, the number one place that parents go for guidance and information, where do they go?
Speaker 1:Probably Google or maybe chat, gpt at this point in time, and if they're really young parents, maybe TikTok.
Speaker 2:Yes, dr, google is the number one source of parent information, followed by Instagram, tiktok, facebook, youtube and others All online sources. They're all easily accessible, but it's a basket case. It's not always validated, it's not always evidence based and a lot of times you don't know should I believe this or not. Believe this, and you know it is what it is and that's where parents kind of go. Ideally they love to go to their trusted pediatrician or provider, therapist, even parent coach, but you're not going to call them at two in the morning when your kid's not sleeping, right? You're going to sit there and go on Google or watch some Instagram video and look at some mom influencers. But there's a big gap, there's a big gulf between trusted and expert, expert-based guidance. Um, who don't have that time? You're not. You're not getting an appointment for another two weeks, right? Um? And accessible uh information.
Speaker 2:And so that's basically what we're bridging the the divide. And we're bridging that by bringing trusted uh, evidence-based information at the right place, the right time via the right format, which is text message which has a 95% read-open rate. You're comparing that to a push notification or a mobile app, or even going to a website, right? You're not going to get the eyeballs or anything in terms of being able to get engagement, and so via text messages is the most accessible form of communication period. So we're just taking that form factor of searching in Google, right that parents already do, and then basically using our knowledge repository, using our understanding of what that information is that they're trying to get we have a whole human kind of curation process as well and then able to get that parent that answer that they need. You know, right in the moment, at two in the morning or two and a half noon, if you're worried about your teenager social media usage, so yeah, yeah, so that's what we're doing here at Avocado Health.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And so, going through that journey, now that you're here, if you were to go back in time and tell your earlier self, hey, this is what you should think about to try to either speed up that process right, startups, we only have so much time and money before we run out and we got to go get more funding or, you know, start something else. Um, what like lesson learns have you learned from this whole transition of just moving forward, of different icps and different products you're bringing to the market?
Speaker 2:yeah, and that whole adage of failing fast and failing forward, and yes, really, you know going at it. I would say the one big thing, and it was really difficult for me in that situation, because I've won the founder hat and many, many times in that company I think I mentioned this I was, I was head of product, so I was backseat, I wasn't driving the bus, I wasn't on the steering wheel, I'm not, I won't get into you know what happened, but what transpired. But a lot of times you know, if you're sitting second fiddle, you're not going to be able to fail fast and fail forward at your own rate, like as you should. And I think that's, you know, a really big lesson for me. I'm not, I'm not the one to be sitting passenger seat a lot of times and I couldn't put my hands in the steering wheel when, when things were falling off the cliff, but in a big way, that was a big lesson for me. There's a lot of other lessons, but I what was really helpful and and what I think is is is, you know, on on the foundation of what we're building right now, is really a lot of those learnings. And so what did I do?
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of networking, a lot of a lot of understanding, a lot of learning about the industry, a lot of you know, talking to you know, parents, obviously, and and then really understanding the dynamics of who's paying those costs. And we're talking about millions of dollars of lost, you know, wasted healthcare costs. 30% of all medical pediatric visits are actually avoidable and preventable If that parent right information at the right time. We're talking about cuts, scrapes, bruises, you know, headaches, fevers, colds, that parents literally take their kid to urgent care, to the ER. You step into the er, that's three thousand dollar check right there, like right off the bat, and that's usually, um, the employer paying for that and so in a lot of cases, um, so yeah, it was just really zooming back out and just saying how can we actually be of value in the in the best way possible and not just be a subset of?
Speaker 2:This is actually going to, you know, while development today is a really big problem. When you talk to employers, they would just basically say, yeah, that this is only going to like affect 3% of my population Now, as we're relevant for 60% of the population that are parents. Whether you're three months old, three years old, 13 or 30 years old, you have a 30-year-old child, right? There's still questions, there's still challenges and there's a lot of things across the way. And so now we're a lot more relevant when we talk to benefit managers, benefit brokers as well, lot more relevant when we talk to benefit managers, benefit brokers as well. You know, we're in a better space of being able to kind of say this is actually a benefit that's going to go a very far way for workplace productivity and health care costs.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and what a journey I mean. I think it also shows such strength to just continue to kind of not necessarily be getting knocked down but kind of being told, no, that's not right. And then like going back and tinkering with it. And then going back out there and no, that's still not right. And tinkering and just kind of figuring out where you guys can actually bring a solution to a problem. You know that does exist out in the world and you're trying and you're passionate about wanting to solve that and I think that's another driver for you as well. Wrapping up, I'm curious. You know a lot of, a lot of us have our whys on why we do things. Why. Why are you in this space? Why are you an entrepreneur? What is your why around your whole story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to answer that. One last thing, just on the last question, one thing that came to mind in terms of frameworks of thinking about that problem, a really easy one to remember when you're selling, especially to a business. It's all about does it help them make money, does it help them save money, does it help them save time or does it help them be more compliant with some kind of rule or regulation? Those are the four reasons, and only four reasons, why a company would actually buy your product, whatever you're giving to them. So having that framework in mind is very helpful when you're actually, you know, going in front of any kind of B2B type of sale. So my why, my why, is a really big thing and, as you know by now, we're all about empowering parents with that support and personalized way, and really answering that starts with answering the question. So I also mentioned that I'm a father of five. That was my very first role and my most important role, I would say.
Speaker 2:My third child, my daughter Aviva. She was born in January 2020. She was fully healthy, full-term pregnancy, but unfortunately she had a hospitalization. She had a condition called bradycardia that we found out on her second week of life and that caused her to be hospitalized for a week. The did um hundreds of different tests, all battery of, you know, every every kind of workup that you can imagine um, but after a week she was fully recovered, um with no kind of medication, just on her own um, and we're we left with more questions than answers trying to figure out what um, um, what happened she? She proceeded over the next three months, um, you know, to to uh be fully healthy and developing um, just as any infant would Um. And then had another episode, uh, around four months old, um, same same thing, different hospital, different um team of doctors. We saw every every kind of cardiologist radiologist, uh under the sun doctors. We saw every every kind of cardiologist radiologist, uh under the sun um, neurologist, right, but um, uh, they couldn't figure out.
Speaker 2:they're scratching their heads um and and really, weren't able to kind of figure anything out, um, so my whole background's in data and ai and trying to make sense of of information. And yet there's all this information out there on her records, her labs, uh and so on, but they weren't able to ever use that or avail that to any kind of machine learning right. She had another two episodes over the next three months and actually then she went four months without anything and so, um, at 10 months old she had we thought she had grown out of it but she had a fifth one and then 10 days later a sixth one, and this is a whole new team of doctors. They couldn't even get her records from her other hospital. They were kind of flying blind and they relied on me and the information that I gave them in my 20 pages of notes to really understand her prior medical history. Frustrating beyond belief, as you can tell, but this whole interoperability problem within healthcare.
Speaker 2:Her last visit was a little bit different. She was vomiting right before that, and so we thought maybe it was just a flu, maybe it was a little bit different. Um, she was vomiting right before that, um, and so we thought maybe it was just a flu, maybe it was something else. Um, uh, she wasn't really that bradycardic Um and um, unfortunately, um, she had a little bit higher levels of potassium in her blood. Um, potassium is something that um can. Can really um stop everything. Um, really stop everything.
Speaker 2:They tried to reverse that and it had the opposite effect and, essentially, her heart stopped, her organs stopped, and we waited for a miracle to occur while she was on life support, and that never happened, and so we lost our daughter Aviva. That never happened, and so we lost our daughter Aviva in November 2020. And beyond the pain, beyond the grief, beyond the frustration, there's a sense of hopelessness of you know, as a father, you know I believe that my job is to keep my kids happy, healthy and safe, and you know that's, I think that's the universal across most parents would say that and there's a feeling of, of, of. I let my daughter down, um, and so when I held her the last time I had, I told her you know, daddy doesn't know what happened, but I'm going to do everything I can to make sure no other parent has to feel that way, which that feeling is is absolutely the worst, the worst feeling in the world, and and that really catapulted, like catalyzed, my journey of what I'm doing today and what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis, because, even though we still don't have answers for her, I have a firm belief that every parent deserves to have answers for questions that they have regarding their child period.
Speaker 2:It could be a diagnosis. It could be how do I get my kids to eat vegetables? It could be anything, but parents need those answers and they need it in this instant gratification world. They need it now and that's kind of the basis of what we're building. Beyond that, you know, it's about building that trust and we're not going to ever be on the same level, you know, as as a pediatrician with a white coat, but if you can answer those questions, you know, time and time again you kind of build up that level of trust to the part that now that parent is actually trusting you a lot more Because with Avocado Health, you're always there, always, always. You know, being that trusted, confidant and really helping those parents be the best advocate for their child. It's a little pun on the name, advocate Avocado, but yeah, that's kind of what we're doing and that's our mission, that we're on and it's a very, very deeply personal mission for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well. Thank you so much for sharing that very personal and deep story of the why for you and what you're trying to accomplish and obviously touches my heart and probably every listener's heart as well, and hopefully, as you continue to grow Avocado Health and get out to parents, you'll be able to help them not experience the same things that you have in that situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's our big goal and that's our vision, and really the big idea is to to become the most trusted parenting platform on the planet and and, uh, I think this is uh you know it starts with answering one question and helping one person.
Speaker 1:So if we can do that, um we'll be off to a really good, good start yeah, and just to recap kind of the experiences you've gone through as a founder, as a co-pilot, what I basically hear you saying is constantly talking to who you believe is your ideal target audience customer whether it's a B2B, B2C, B2B2C and asking the questions and understanding what the real causes are out there to help and how people would use your product or services and start to adjust. It's okay to adjust. What you came out with might not be the right thing. At the end of the day, that's going to actually grow into a huge business. Any other last final words or thoughts you want to share with the audience?
Speaker 2:a huge business. Any other last final words or thoughts you want to share with the audience? Yeah, I would say, if you're an entrepreneur, you know resilience is key and I think you know if you've listened to me today. There's a lot of resilience that I certainly have, both in the business world and on the personal side, but it's really about you know being in a difficult situation and and figuring out a way to get things done.
Speaker 2:And you're going to wear lots of different hats. You're going to be legal, technical, marketing, whatever else it is. You know there's going to be situations that you're going to be uncomfortable. You don't know how to handle. You've never experienced in the past. But if I could you know, say, one characteristics for a very successful founder is being relentlessly resilient. Um, so, so getting not down, getting back up, but doing it in a much smarter way. Um, and and making sure that you're learning from every single past failure that you come across, because that is the way you grow in life, that's the way you grow through failures, through adversity, and just being thoughtful about that and knowing who you are is really going to carry you at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:I totally believe in that. Well, thank you, hans, for lessons learned and some personal touches to that and sharing and opening and being so honest to the audience here. I hope everyone takes away something from it, and if you want to know more about Avocado Health, it'll be linked at the bottom in the description of our podcast today. And thank you everyone for joining us and we hope you have a great day wherever you are in the world. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Gordana Bear.
