How to Create Opportunity in Health Tech as a Physician Entrepreneur with Dr. Alex Mohseni

What if the skills that made you a great physician are the exact skills that can launch your next career?

In this episode of Startup Physicians, Dr. Alison Curfman sits down with emergency physician turned founder and startup executive, Dr. Alex Mohseni, to unpack how doctors can break into health tech, innovation, and leadership — without waiting for permission and without going back for another degree. 

Alex shares how he went from exporting EMR data in his emergency department to becoming a Chief Innovation Officer, startup medical director, and founder of ClinX Academy. His journey proves a powerful point: you can just start.

Inside this conversation, we cover:

• Why physicians freeze when the career path isn’t linear
• How to create startup opportunities instead of applying online
• The abundance mindset that unlocks doors
• How to evaluate health tech companies strategically
• Why community physicians are massively undervalued in innovation
• How understanding Medicare Advantage, ACOs, and risk models makes you indispensable
• The difference between vanity advisors and real clinical value
• Why you don’t need an MBA to become a healthcare executive
• How to wake up excited about your work again

This episode is for physicians who:

• Feel stuck in traditional clinical roles
• Want to explore startups, health tech, or venture
• Are curious about CMO or medical director roles
• Want to create impact beyond the bedside
• Are ready to think bigger about their career

The healthcare system is changing rapidly. AI, digital health, and value-based care are reshaping everything. Physicians who understand both clinical care and business strategy will define the future.

If you’ve been waiting for permission — this is it.

References:

Search for Startups: exa.ai

Clinx Academy: ClinxacademyNon-Clinical Physician Jobs & Physician Side Gigs | ClinX. Use code ALISON for 10% off.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Dr. Alex Mohseni

01:30 – From Emergency Medicine to Innovation

03:40 – Solving Problems Without Formal Training

07:00 – Escaping the Linear Physician Career Path

10:00 – Abundance Mindset in Business

13:30 – How Startup Opportunities Actually Happen

17:00 – Using Regulation to Predict Market Trends

19:30 – Why Startups Are So Energizing

21:00 – How to Break Into Health Tech

24:00 – Why Community Physicians Are So Valuable

28:00 – Creating Your Own Opportunity

30:30 – What Is ClinX Academy?

33:00 – If You’re Waking Up With Dread

35:00 – Final Encouragement for Physicians

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:01.077)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Startup Physicians podcast. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman and I am joined today by a friend and colleague, Dr. Alex Moseni, a emergency physician who has a very interesting career path and a lot of different things he's done along the way, a founder and a fellow entrepreneur. So Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. I know you're traveling, so I appreciate your time.

Alex Mohseni (00:27.914)
Amazing. Awesome. I'm so excited to be here. And this is one my favorite topics is just, you know, how can physicians advance their careers?

Alison Curfman (00:37.727)
That's awesome. And every time I get started talking to my guests before we start recording, just for those of you who are listening, I share with them that the goal of this podcast is to really inspire you. want everyone listening who might be commuting on your way to a traditional clinical job and trying to think outside the box about, you know, what else could I do with my career? I want you to hear the stories of people who are just like you, who are

physicians, practicing medicine, raising kids, doing all the things who have taken a different path. Because I think a lot of the reasons why people don't take a different path is because they don't know it exists or they just don't know how to find it. So with that, I would love for you to start, Alex, with just a little bit about your clinical background and how you got started on the path that you're on today.

Alex Mohseni (01:31.128)
Thanks, Alisson. So emergency medicine by trade. I trained at Jefferson and joined a local ED group in the DC area. Back then it was called the EMA and I had no idea what I was doing. I was like, whatever group I joined, I'm probably just get screwed over. So, you know, so I joined the first group that gave me a job and we were just in the, this is like 06, 07. We were just in that era. We were transitioning from paper charts to EMR and I figured out

how to export the metadata out of Meditech, as many of you may be familiar with that hospital EHR system. And I started creating performance reports on our physicians because back then we were paid on a pure hourly basis. And I found it really frustrating that some of us were doing, know, seeing twice as many patients as others, others were just ordering a bunch of MRIs on their patients and blocking their, you know, their pod or whatever, all sorts of games that physicians play.

Anyways, that was kind of my initial thing and I started feeding these performance reports to my bosses and it really kind of sparked a transition for our entire practice to switch to an R view based model, which improved our productivity, improved our profitability. And I kind of worked my way up to eventually becoming the chief innovation officer of our group. And I did a lot of work.

on I would say back end office improvements. So lot of like claims denial processing and things like that. And I had actually said to go to your message, Allison, that you can just do stuff. had zero formal training in any of that sort of stuff. I had never read a book. I'd never read an article about this. But I brought the one thing I brought was just a problem solving, you know, mentality. And

I'd love to share an anecdote of just an example of what that was. I had just watched, you know those shows, those repo shows where somebody hasn't paid their car bill and they go and repossess the car, right? So I was just fascinated by that and I had been watching those shows and right around that same time my boss came to me and he said, Alex, go in the back office and just figure something out.

Alison Curfman (03:23.808)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (03:46.06)
Like that was the directive. Okay. So in our back office, at this time we, we were relatively large. were doing about a million patient encounters a year across 25 different ERs and programs. And so we had about a hundred back office staff and, in the, so just like the scene from office space, I went to the farthest corner, the dark corner, and there was a gentleman sitting there and he had envelopes stacked from the floor to the ceiling with the little yellow stickers that says it's a wrong address.

And I introduced myself, said, so what, are you and what do do here? And I remember he's like, well, my job is to take all of these invoices that we've sent patients for the patient responsibility and where we've gotten the bad address. And I'm, my job is to like call the patient and get the, them for their correct address so that we can bill them. And I just started laughing. I said, are you serious? And I looked at this, there were thousands of envelopes. just.

I said, is this a year's worth of bad addresses? He's like, no, this is just what we got this week. right? And it blew my mind. The amount of money that was sitting there uncollected was unfathomable. And so I said, I asked him to kind of do one of these encounters. And of course the patients all just hang up. Like they're not gonna give you the correct address, right?

Alison Curfman (04:57.801)
Yeah, right. It's like, hey, can you give me your address so you can owe me things? Like, let me find you.

Alex Mohseni (05:03.182)
It was nuts. And so I had just watched the repo show and I thought there must be some software that these folks are using to get the correct address for people. So I was like, stop what you're doing. I went to my desk and I found there's this credit software where basically as long as you're allowed to, which we were as a medical practice, you can put in any information you have about somebody, like what you think their name and address and all that is, and it will show you the matching profiles. it, so we were able to move to

like this was $50 a month. I'm not exaggerating. That's all the software costs. And we were then able to use the software to get the correct addresses for all these patients and completely change our, our billing practice. And again, like I didn't know anything special. wasn't trained. And we actually, and we had like chief financial officers, had people, billing managers, all this sort of stuff. But just like, so my message is like, you can just do stuff and just

especially in this day and age where you can figure anything out with AI, right? You can just start solving problems.

Alison Curfman (06:05.771)
So you'd have like, you are a tech expert or you are a strategist or a marketing strategist, whatever. Yeah, it's great for brainstorming solutions.

Alex Mohseni (06:09.902)
Right.

Alex Mohseni (06:16.812)
Yeah. So I did all sorts of projects like that and eventually.

Alison Curfman (06:21.299)
and you were still like employed and more of a traditional like employed W-2 doctor at that point.

Alex Mohseni (06:28.63)
I was employed W2 physician, but as I picked up more of these projects, my clinical hours were going lower and lower. And that kind of has its own dynamic, which especially in the emergency medicine, I feel like in some specialties, as you work less, I think it's okay. In emergency medicine, I think it's actually, it becomes really difficult because you start to lose the kind of edge on your skill set. And I could sense that. And

And so, and the more I did non-clinical stuff, the more I, like I really enjoyed it. It was so much fun for me. It was just like problem solving. It's like a puzzle, right? So then I built out a telemedicine division for us. I got us contracts with the local Medicaid MCO. And then we sold to private equity.

Alison Curfman (07:10.283)
like might sound people are like, yeah, you make that sound so easy, but like, I don't know how to get contracts with Medicaid MCO. Well, the point is we know how to figure things out. You didn't know that either. I didn't know that. I never knew how to make, you know, pay your contracts, but you ask people, you create a problem statement, you figure out what it is you're trying to figure out. So just really clear like what is the

Alex Mohseni (07:23.671)
Yes.

Alex Mohseni (07:27.969)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (07:39.819)
problem I'm trying to solve. You say like, could help? What are the pieces of the problem? Who could help me with that piece internally? You talk to them. They say, well, this is who you need to talk to externally. And if you're capable of setting up a meeting and having a conversation, it's like having your own little discovery process. So I think people hear something like that, like, I went ahead and set up contracts with the MCOs. They're like, this guy's already on a different playing field than me. I could never do that. Right.

Alex Mohseni (07:43.117)
Yes.

Alex Mohseni (07:49.708)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (08:06.774)
I had never done it before. I had never done it, right?

Alison Curfman (08:09.439)
But you know what you have done before? You've had someone come in with a weird problem to the ER and you've been like, huh, who should I call? I'm gonna call a consult. I'm gonna ask someone who knows more about this than I do. So like that's just my point about some of these translatable skills. Like you are trained for decades of your life in problem solving and like seeking a solution.

We know how to do this inherently. And I think people don't understand that that's actually a skill set that a lot of people don't have.

Alex Mohseni (08:40.046)
Yeah. think what's really tricky for folks is I think medicine selects for people who like a very linear path in their career. And so we're like, so we're selected for that and we optimize ourselves for that. This is the, have to take this MCAT test and then I will be successful, right? Like our brains are wide for that for like a decade while we go through this, if not more. And then all of a sudden you're thrust into this environment where there's no more linear path.

Alison Curfman (08:58.795)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (09:07.51)
and you have to just kind of figure it out. And for a lot of people that free, they freeze, they don't know what to do. And one of the things I've been hearing a lot of folks say on Twitter lately, which I really love is some version of like when you're not sure what to do, just start doing something because activity generates data. And then from that data, like you can now have something to build. So you start doing X, it doesn't work. Okay, well that didn't work. Well, let me try doing Y, right? Just start doing something.

And I think when you think about, what should that something be? The way I always approach it is what can I do that provides value for somebody else? If you take that approach, you will generate a good reputation. will, and you will create new relationships. You will, and those relationships will be of value. People will see value in you. And I, for me, like that single, that single approach has, has really worked well for me.

Alison Curfman (10:07.337)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's, it's such a life lesson that it's shocking how many adults don't learn this. Cause I do this with my kids. I'm constantly trying to teach them how to turn the angle around and look externally. And instead of being so focused on like, what do I need? What do I want to get? What do I need out of this situation? And more like, how can I contribute?

Alex Mohseni (10:26.712)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (10:35.519)
What's the value I can bring? How can I support someone else? And I think that the problem is that a lot of us have like a scarcity mindset that like, if I do that, it'll be giving away my secret sauce or it'll be like, it won't come back to me or I'm gonna be taking advantage of, because I'll be doing something for someone and they're not gonna be doing something for me. Honestly, like we will get into.

Alex Mohseni (10:46.286)
Hmm.

Alison Curfman (11:03.799)
later in this podcast, what you're building right now, but there's a lot of people that would look at what you're building and what I'm building and they'd be like, don't associate with him. He's going to be your competition. Like, I don't think that way. We're building like similar things, but I think that if someone would benefit from what you have to offer, I'd love for them to know about it because I just feel like the people that want what I have to offer will be drawn to my energy and they'll, they'll join what I'm doing and the people that want to do what you're doing. That's great. I don't.

consider myself to have any competition actually. But when you're thinking about like, how can I provide value for someone else? How can I create something new that didn't exist before that can be really beautiful and helpful in this world? It makes it so much less about you. And I really, truly believe in like the law of attraction that it'll bring more things to you if you're willing to be others focused.

Alex Mohseni (11:59.937)
100%. Yeah, and it's, it's simple math. Like, I basically go with the mindset that for every 10 times that I go out of my way to do something for somebody else without thinking, what am I going to get for it in the short term, you know, like, just put that aside and leaving myself vulnerable where they could take advantage me if they wanted to, right? I basically accept the fact that maybe one out of 10 times I am taking advantage up and may happen.

Alison Curfman (12:21.483)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Mohseni (12:27.566)
but the other nine out of 10, I get something that's out of the world, like amazing, yeah.

Alison Curfman (12:32.651)
Amazing, yes, some level of connection or some other value or yeah, absolutely.

Alex Mohseni (12:39.404)
And that's okay. think that ratio is unbelievable. So I want to share a story of like, in real life, how did I do this? So when I was building the telemedicine program for ER group, I had to choose a technology platform. And there was a tech space telemedicine platform called SirusMD back then. So back then they were just a technology platform and they needed a physician group like ours to actually staff the platform. And they had contracts with certain.

payers. So I, my group was maybe the first or the second group to partner with them. And I invested a massive amount of time, like helping make our partnership successful. And I had no equity in service MD or anything. And I gave a lot of feedback, help them improve the product, all sorts of stuff. So then once we sold the emergency medicine practice, and I left after that,

Within a couple of weeks, the folks at Sirius MD called me and said, hey, what are you doing? Stop vacationing. Why don't you come join us as a physician leader and help us build our own medical practice? And that is what I did. So if you provide value, people will notice and people will want to work with you.

Alison Curfman (13:56.501)
And that's what I teach people in my course too, is just like constant outreach and providing value, walk around at conferences, talk to all the vendors, tell them all the ideas you have about their product and how they could make it better and how they could grow their footprint and just be a blessing to the people around you and it will draw so many people to you for paid opportunities. And I don't care at all if I'm giving people free advice. Like I do it.

Alex Mohseni (14:04.93)
Yes. Yes.

Alison Curfman (14:24.171)
constantly all the time and I'm constantly asking like, how can I support you? How can I connect to you? But I think that that abundance mindset of like not being scared of getting taken advantage of actually projects this amazing confidence that actually prevents people to take advantage of you. And you get good at assessing like where your boundaries are and then you just you recognize like how you're going to operate. And I think that

Alex Mohseni (14:33.901)
Yes.

Alison Curfman (14:53.961)
We've barely scratched the surface of your career journey, but I think that this is such an important concept about the mindset and the very outward focus that you have to have to be successful in this space and that you don't have to have a lot of experience doing this. You have to have the right attitude and you all have a background as a doctor. So you've got that covered, get the right attitude and recognize that there's so much to learn. There's so many people to meet and the opportunities are endless.

Alex Mohseni (15:11.726)
That's right.

Alex Mohseni (15:22.902)
and be curious, right? Like I knew as a physician that I didn't like in my early days, I didn't know anything about business. I didn't know what is a pro forma, how to create one, how to read one. So be curious, be humble, go out there. Like it's never been easier to learn. Like there's no excuse, you know?

Alison Curfman (15:40.799)
Yeah, absolutely. So you moved into this like startup space as a physician and then what happened?

Alex Mohseni (15:52.43)
So I worked with SirusMD for a while. That was one of the best experiences of my life. Working with a startup in the kind of, I would say, early mid-stage where the team is like fewer than 50 people and is an unbelievably fun experience if it's the right team. this was an, like, I love these people. to this day, we still, you know, many of us still text each other and I consider many of them to be almost like, you know, almost like family. So.

So I worked for SiriusMD and then I, so I think there's another actually interesting lesson with the next thing that I did, which is I worked for a remote patient monitoring company. And the story there is, so I was like a medical director or CMO type person for them. So I think one of the things that physicians should think about is,

how to use regulation and policy as a way to figure out where is the puck heading? Where should I invest my time? So in November of 2019, Medicare announced the new RPM codes and they finalized them in October or November of that year. And if you actually spent a little bit of time reading about the RPM codes as they were structured at that time and thinking about the financial implications, you would understand.

This was one of the first times, if not the first time, that CMS had created a program where primary care physicians could essentially outsource the work of a CPT code, which was outsource the work of RPM, but bill for it themselves in a way that would not replace their current income. It would add to their current income. So from a just pure financial modeling perspective, it was the first time that PCPs could make an extra 100K a year, assuming medical necessity and all of that is met.

But that had never happened before. So for me, the alarm bells went off that, wow, this is going to be a huge opportunity. There's going to be a lot of companies chasing this space. I want to find the best company for me to work with. So how does one do that? So you don't go on Indeed or LinkedIn. That's just not like the.

Alison Curfman (18:01.117)
No, and most of them aren't, they don't have a job or an advisory role posted. You go make connections, you find what you're interested in, you connect with people that are doing that, you offer them value, you develop a relationship.

Alex Mohseni (18:05.131)
Exactly.

Alex Mohseni (18:13.166)
That's exactly right. So what I did was I started calling every RPM company I could find and just trying to understand, how do you do RPM? And a lot of them were like, the patient checks the blood pressure and then we fax the result to the doctor. I was like, okay, no, no, no, no, no. I need to find somebody who's really doing this well. So eventually I landed on the Athena Health Marketplace. And you know, there's a lot of vendors on Athena.

And I found one RPM company listed there that said that they're fully integrated into Athena. was like, interesting. So here's an RPM company that's actually invested in tech and be integrated and all that. So I called them up. They were called the AcuHealth and our 30 minute meeting turned into three hours. And it was just me grilling them nonstop because the more I asked, the more I learned, wow, these guys are like really tech savvy. And I had not met anybody like that. And they were, they were hungry. They were hungry. They were smart.

and they were not clinicians themselves and they didn't have a clinician on their team, like a physician leader. And at the end of that meeting, Steve, the CEO turned to me and he's like, Alex, we've never had anybody ask us so many questions. We need a medical director, it seems. Do you want to be our medical director? And that was it. And I said, yes, like on the spot. Yeah.

Alison Curfman (19:24.373)
Yep, Startups have no level of hierarchy or bureaucracy or like a committee needs to meet. It's like, hey, this is aligned. Let's like take this opportunity in front of us. And it's just like so refreshing when you're coming out of like traditional practice to be able to connect on a creative level. like, I just don't think that I've ever heard anyone in traditional practice talk the way that founders talk.

Alex Mohseni (19:32.79)
No, exactly.

Alex Mohseni (19:40.567)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (19:52.376)
Right? Yes.

Alison Curfman (19:52.647)
There's an urgency and an excitement. These are people that probably quit their job and didn't take a paycheck for a while because they care so much about what they're doing. And they have a very limited runway. They know exactly how many months they have before the business goes under. That's the phase of startups. It's like, we have this much runway to figure something out. Let's do it now. When should we do it? We should do it now. And there's no bureaucracy. And it can be

Alex Mohseni (20:15.255)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (20:21.011)
such a fun phase to be an advisor or a medical director. And again, does, like being in the trenches with these people, it does form these relationships that they are like family. And you will carry those relationships forward for a very long time, especially if it's the right team. And it sounds like you went through a bunch of conversations like, OK, cool. They're building something that's not quite aligned with me, that's not quite aligned. And I hope they do well. And then like, bam, green light, this is the one.

Alex Mohseni (20:32.43)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (20:49.698)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (20:50.825)
It's almost like dating, not that I've dated in the past two decades, but it is like, you gotta talk to a lot of people to find the ones that are right for you, but if you only have one conversation, you're not gonna find it.

Alex Mohseni (20:52.865)
Yeah

Alex Mohseni (21:04.642)
Yeah. And you and take the approach of creating the opportunity. Don't like this. Don't wait for it. So like I had a friend or an acquaintance who was like an OBGYN who was trying to figure out how to get in the startup space. And she was not having any luck on like in the indeeds and the LinkedIn's of the world. And I said, well, let's do a completely different approach. Let's go find every startup.

Alison Curfman (21:11.583)
Don't wait for it, because it's not gonna come to you. Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (21:31.692)
that's in the maternal fetal medicine space out there. And there's some tools you can use out there. So one of them is called exa.ai, where you can do a semantic search for companies. That's a tool that I suggest everybody go explore. And so we did that. And we found like 20 different startups that are in the ob-gyn, maternal space. And

Then I said, okay, now for each of these, go find them on LinkedIn, find all the people, go connect with them and just start having conversations. And one thing led to another and eventually she got a role like that. So like, you can take that sort of approach.

Alison Curfman (22:07.829)
This is exactly part of what we do in my Launchpad course. So a lot of people really need to start by identifying what it is, who they are, what they want to contribute to, what are the problems they see that their patients have that they want to work on, because you want to be contributing to things that inspire you. Like, I don't want to work on

tech platforms for some sort of arbitrage for supplies or supply management. That just doesn't inspire me. Even though those opportunities might exist for a doctor, I know what things that I see kids suffer from that I want to fix. And so if you start with this core, what are you focused on? What are you experienced in? And how do you want to make the system better?

I actually work with people to get a really detailed values statement that we can use as how you introduce yourself and how you create your services and how you really describe what sort of value you can have. And then I have an entire AI process I use that people have access to in this launchpad that what they end up with is a very personalized custom playbook to their own goals, their background, what they're focused on.

and an outreach tracker of like, we've actually identified like 40 or 50 companies that you could add value to. And here's like the exact wording to use. Here's exactly who to reach out to on LinkedIn. Go, go do it. And it's like, if you just go through that and you have those 50 conversations, I can practically guarantee that at least one of them is going to be like, you know, a great fit. sounds like we have very similar processes that we recommend.

Alex Mohseni (23:34.626)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (23:38.978)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (23:48.109)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (23:53.42)
Yeah, and imagine like, imagine you reach out to all these folks just to connect. You're not even pitching them on anything, right? You just connect and most of them are gonna say yes. Then start writing some content on LinkedIn and because you recently connected with them, they're gonna see it and that content should be focused on this topic and show your expertise, show that you have a perspective, show that you're thinking about this on a higher level. And oftentimes that will lead to them reaching out to you.

Alison Curfman (23:59.945)
Yep, yep.

Alison Curfman (24:09.397)
Yup.

Alison Curfman (24:20.617)
It will, and honestly, I tell people that what makes you stand out is that you reached out. It's not that you published in Science and Nature and you're the chief of blah, blah, blah at Harvard or anything. That's great if you are, but you could just be a doctor who has opinions on things and you're engaging and engaged and you reach out to them and say, I'm Alison Curfman I'm a pediatric ER doctor.

Alex Mohseni (24:27.694)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (24:32.429)
Yeah.

Alex Mohseni (24:38.339)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (24:47.731)
I am so interested in what you're doing with blah, blah, blah company. I see patients that struggle with this all the time and I think what you're doing is amazing. I'd love to be connected with you and hear more about what you're building. Like as a founder who has had people reach out to me that way, I set up time with those people. I'm like, wow, like, wow, this person's like interested in what we're doing and they may have like some really great expertise.

But I think that what physicians need sometimes is like hand holding along that process because they're like, I don't know if I should reach out or what if they ask me a question back that I don't know the answer to? I think that you just have to, as soon as you start doing this, like you get comfortable with it and you realize these are just people, like they're not scary. Like even venture capital, like they're not scary. Yeah, they love connections.

Alex Mohseni (25:21.752)
haha

Alex Mohseni (25:30.636)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. want to, especially venture capital. Yeah. So like, I want to add on the VC side. I'm an LP and an advisor in a fund. and, so I see a lot of pitch decks come through and I look at the advisors for these and it's healthcare only, right? I look at the advisor, the list of advisors for these companies. And if all I see is vanity advisors where it's like Harvard, Stanford, whatever.

I for me, that's actually a red flag because the academics live in La La Land, the real medicine, I would say is being practiced in the community. Yeah. You're still welcome to continue listening. But my point is the community docs are the the the aggregate end of community doctors is way higher. And that's where these startups live or survive or die is can they actually go and sell to the community? Right. And if you are in the community, you have

Alison Curfman (26:08.245)
Don't be offended if you're listening to this and you're an academic. You're very, very valuable, but...

Alex Mohseni (26:30.154)
experience and insights that can be so valuable about how to actually sell into this set of buyers, how to implement it, how to do the change management. That's where these things die. Yes. Yes.

Alison Curfman (26:40.629)
Right?

Alison Curfman (26:45.035)
Because they know, what does my day look like? What does my staff not like? Who are the key people that at an office, at a private practice office, would need to have buy-in for this solution to be adopted? Yeah, I mean, had one dermatologist that I worked with who was really passionate about early diagnosis of skin cancer and early diagnostics and how can we improve the prognosis of people's oncology journey by catching things earlier.

Alex Mohseni (26:53.88)
Yes.

Exactly.

Alison Curfman (27:14.507)
and she had a private practice and we built out this entire roadmap for her of like 40 or 50 companies that she could reach out to that and her unique value proposition, which a lot of it had to do with like giving the perspective of a private practice dermatologist who is going to be the clientele that either makes or breaks the startup. They either are going to succeed or they are not depending on how well they understand how to connect with those people.

Alex Mohseni (27:30.722)
Mm-hmm.

Alex Mohseni (27:36.654)
That's exactly it.

Alison Curfman (27:43.787)
The other thing is if I reach out to any doctor's office, any hospital system, like the chances of me being able to get a meeting with anyone is like extremely high. Like I could just network with doctors I know and be like, hey, like who should I talk to? For a startup founder, if they just cold outreach, like a lot of times they cannot get a meeting with these people. And so some of your value comes from like working your connections to just foster conversations. And hopefully,

Alex Mohseni (27:54.883)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (28:11.499)
As we're describing this, it's sounding a lot less intimidating to people that they could truly add value to companies that are solving the problems that they legitimately care about solving that you would love to be a part of solving. And as we're wrapping up, I would love to leave time for you to tell a little bit about what you're building with ClinX Academy now.

Alex Mohseni (28:30.85)
Yeah, so I am the founder of ClinX Academy. So that's spelled C L I N X Academy. So it's the name implies like a clinician who can do X, which is anything, right? My idea is that you can do anything, especially in this day and age with AI, there's really no limits. And our particular focus is the training that physicians need in order to become like chief medical officers and like higher level medical directors, where it's not just like

managing clinicians is actually helping run the business, right? And in order to do that, I think you have to have a deep understanding of the regulatory, operational, financial world of healthcare. And this is what we're not trained on, right? Like how does Medicare Advantage work? How do delegated medical groups work? What are all the various flavors of ACOs? And why does that matter when you're trying to sell into them? You know,

Prior to this, I was at Optum for a couple years and my team helped manage a lot of the, there's something called the Optum Innovation Fund. so startups would be pitching us all the time, trying to get some funds for us. And so when you're listening to these pitches as like an executive of a large either health plan or risk bearing medical group, if you can tell instantly,

that which startups understand your business model and which ones don't. And if they don't understand your business model, it's impossible for them to succeed in selling you. And it was so common that they had no idea how Medicare Advantage works, how delegated medical groups work, how risk adjustment works. They simply don't understand. So anyway, so we are filling that gap. If you want to be at that sort of high level, I think the only way you can...

get those roles and succeed in those roles is you really have to understand that content. And then you need also a network of folks who can help provide introductions. I think it's very rare to be able to get into one of those roles simply based on like applying through an online job. you typically need to know somebody and have a warm interest. So we try to provide that sort of community as well.

Alison Curfman (30:41.003)
That's amazing. Well, I think that that is such a great opportunity. Don't go get an MBA guys. Like seriously, let's do it faster. Like all this stuff is happening now. Now, by the time you finish an MBA or find an MBA and save up the money and figure it out and da da da da da da. Like don't do that linear thing. Go do one of these programs now. Do the Launchpad program or do the ClinX Academy. If you're really looking at more of like, I want to lead a medical group. I want to get involved

Alex Mohseni (30:51.522)
That's right.

Alison Curfman (31:08.191)
with a startup at a high level leadership position. You don't need an MBA. If you have an MBA, great, but do you really understand the ins and outs? I have an MBA and I didn't know anything about risk contracting. I learned it at the firm. So if you really want like a get started quickly guide and like leave a program ready to go find a role, I highly recommend the ClinX Academy. We do have a discount code available, so we'll put that in the show notes.

Alex Mohseni (31:18.55)
Yeah, that's right.

Alex Mohseni (31:32.558)
Thank you.

Alison Curfman (31:36.947)
Use the code ALLISON with one L for a discount code. And we'll also put the website in the show notes. For anyone who's listening that wants to connect directly with Alex, he is super open to connections. Obviously both of us are. We love supporting physicians and their journey. That's why we're doing this. Like I don't think either of us needs to be doing this. I think we're both like involved in, I have like 25 jobs right now, but like my passion is

helping physicians see this because I think that we have a very, very important role to play. think technology is moving faster than we've ever experienced. There are gonna be some really, really important needs for physicians to bring their clinical expertise to the quality and safety of what is hitting the market. So now is the time. It is an urgency. Join the communities, join the...

courses, whatever you need to do, and recognize that literally the skills you have right now are in high demand. And if you are driving to work and you got to work, stop and question, do you want to be at work anymore? Do you want to be creating something? So we'll put Alex's LinkedIn in the show notes as well. I think that's a great way to connect. And do you have any ending thoughts, Alex?

Alex Mohseni (32:56.864)
Yeah, I do want to say one last thing and that is a big kudos and appreciation to you, Allison, and what you're doing with startup physicians. I want everybody to just think of one thing, which is

If you are waking up every morning with dread, it doesn't have to be that way. I've been there. I'm sure many of you are in that sort of situation. And prior to this, I was joking with Alison that even though I don't work clinically anymore, I still have nightmares about being, you know, working clinically. And it doesn't have to be that way. And working with a startup like Alison like helps folks learn how to do.

is one of the most fun and rewarding things you could do. It's some of the most fun I've ever had. And I think there's nothing better in life than being able to wake up with excitement for what you're about to do. And you deserve it. You've worked so hard. So you've done all this work. Now do this a little bit of extra so you can actually enjoy your life. Like what's more important than that? I don't even know. So thank you. Thank you, Allison.

Alison Curfman (33:58.635)
We only have so many hours in the day and years in our lives. mean, it's just like, it is so important. There is nothing more important than our time. And I feel like you and I are like feeding off each other. We're like cheerleaders. like, you can do anything. And anyone who's like feeling uplifted listening to this, this is legit. Like we are like legit founder energy. This is what it's like to work with people in the startup world because we're all

Alex Mohseni (34:14.7)
You could...

Alex Mohseni (34:27.277)
Yeah.

Alison Curfman (34:28.66)
We're all visionary. We're all incredible optimists and, and, and really feel empowered. And it's not like it's all sunshine and rainbows, but I do certainly feel like I get a lot more sunshine and rainbow energy from, from the startup space that I do from the traditional space. So even if you just want a little bit of sunshine and rainbows to do on the side, definitely reach out to Alex or I, and, we'd love to support you on your journey. Thank you everyone for listening in and I will look forward to seeing you next time.

Thanks Alex.

Alex Mohseni (34:59.758)
Thank you.