Dr Sam Donegan: From Saving Lives to Startups, Cofounder Breakups, Burnout, and Building Again

Dr Sam Donegan is a medical doctor turned AI founder and the creator of SupportSorted, one of Australia’s fastest-growing digital health startups.

In this candid episode, Sam opens up about his leap from medicine to healthtech, co-founder breakups, VC pressure, burnout and rebuilding. He shares what he got wrong at his first startup, Fora (validate before you build, GTM > perfect UI), what most NDIS and health-tech founders overlook (workforce design, churn, compliance), and why ego and perfectionism quietly sink teams.

We also talk openly about his Bipolar II diagnosis, how getting help changed his operating system as a founder, and the practical mental-health playbook guiding his second act at SupportSorted -https://www.supportsorted.com/.

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Transcript

Transcript: Dr Sam Donegan 

Loveth:
Let’s talk about the climb — not just the peak.
I’m Loveth, and this is Fayl Tales.

My guest today is Dr Sam Donegan — a medical doctor turned AI engineer and founder of Support Sorted, one of Australia’s fastest-growing digital-health platforms.
Sam started out in medicine but took an unconventional path, building AI-driven tools that help Australians with disabilities connect with better care.
He now co-leads MLAI Australia, a volunteer community of more than 10 000 AI professionals reshaping the national AI ecosystem.

It’s really lovely having you here, Sam.

Sam:
Feels good to be here.

Leaving Medicine

Loveth:
Where did it all begin?

Sam:
I worked as a doctor for about two years — and something just felt off.
I respected the work deeply, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t where I was meant to stay.

Being a doctor is an incredible job, but it’s creative in a very different way to being a founder. In medicine, you’re part of a big system — sometimes a cog in a machine you can’t influence.
 I wanted to build things, to fix broken systems. Healthcare, and especially disability care, was full of problems waiting to be solved.

So I took six months off, which was scary because medicine had been my whole identity.
 During that time, I started making small websites for people — badly at first — and taught myself to code. I’d find tasks on Airtasker, give myself deadlines, and just learn by doing. After working in emergency departments, building someone’s bad website didn’t feel high-stakes!

Eventually I became obsessed with startups. My first venture was Fora, co-founded with a friend, and I went through two co-founder breakups before finding my footing.

Jumping into Startups

Loveth:
That’s quite a shift — from medicine’s precision and caution to startup risk and experimentation. How did that feel?

Sam:
Startups are like pirate ships — you just set sail and figure it out as you go.
In health-tech you can’t “move fast and break things,” but I loved the freedom.
At first, it felt wrong that there was no oversight. I could just launch something — no approvals, no one checking data privacy. It made me realise the world is mostly people figuring things out as they go.

Having mentors early helped. One from Monash, Kish, pushed us to talk to people, validate ideas, and take risks.

The Idea Behind Fora

Loveth:
What was Fora, and what problem were you solving?

Sam:
My co-founder Cindy was a support worker studying physiotherapy.
She saw firsthand that people with disabilities often couldn’t get enough allied-health support. In hospitals, you’d have physios and uni students assisting them — but that model didn’t exist in the community.

So we created Fora to connect allied-health students with families needing therapy assistance. Students earned money and experience; therapists could see more clients; and participants stretched their NDIS funding further.

It was a win-win-win — in theory.

The Early Days

Loveth:
What were the early wins and mistakes?

Sam:
I spent six months building a beautiful app — then our mentor told me to throw it out and validate first. He was right. When we launched, nobody used it.
We’d built a perfect product but had no go-to-market plan — no one even knew it existed.

Eventually, we found our first customer: a parent of a child with autism who needed speech-therapy help. We manually matched that family with a student and a therapist. It worked so well it spread by word of mouth — the main growth engine in disability services.
 Once we found the right niche, demand exploded. Then came the growing pains.

Scaling Too Fast

Loveth:
What went wrong?

Sam:
Where do I start!

Our first challenge was the co-founder relationship. Communication broke down, trust eroded, and eventually Cindy left. I bought her out with personal loans and brought on Nikita, our first employee, as a new co-founder.

We kept growing — hundreds of therapy assistants, dozens of therapists, millions in revenue — but no management structure. I was hiring everyone: tech, marketing, clinical staff. Nikita handled operations.

We were plugging holes everywhere. I’d patch one issue and three more would open up — workforce churn, payroll complexity, compliance, interpersonal tension.

I realised perfectionism wasn’t about wanting things perfect; it was about control. I didn’t trust others to do things “right,” so I did everything myself — until I burned out.

VC Funding and Pressure

We joined the Galileo VC program — they invested, mentored us, and told us to scale.
 Suddenly we had cash but no financial discipline. We over-hired, didn’t forecast churn, and spent before we built systems.
 Our students would graduate, our churn spiked, and we didn’t have the data to see it coming.

At the same time, investors wanted faster growth. Instead of fixing internal chaos, we were pitching for the next round. The cracks widened.

The Burnout

Loveth:
When did it all come to a head?

Sam:
I started noticing huge mood swings — bursts of energy followed by days where I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d wake up feeling like I was moving through honey.

Everyone else seemed to handle startup stress better. I felt broken.
 My partner saw the truth — she told me straight that it was destroying me.
 Eventually I accepted it: I had to step away or lose everything.

I spoke to Nikita and our investors and handed over control. That was the hardest decision of my life, but it probably saved me.

Fora still exists today, which I’m proud of.

The Diagnosis and Recovery

Loveth:
Looking back, what did you learn — about yourself and leadership?

Sam:
After stepping back, I finally saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with Bipolar II — the depressive kind, without the “highs.”
It explained everything. I’d been running on cycles my whole life.

When I started treatment, it was like, oh — this is what normal feels like.
I told my mum, and she said, “Oh yeah, that runs in the family.” Thanks Mum!

If I could tell my younger self anything, it’d be: get help sooner.
You don’t have to suffer to build something meaningful.

Building Again — Support Sorted

Loveth:
And now you’re building again. Tell me about Support Sorted.

Sam:
Support Sorted was born from a simple frustration.
When I tried to find a psychologist, my GP handed me a list of twenty names.
Half weren’t taking patients, a few had retired, and one had passed away.

It made me realise how outdated healthcare referrals are.
 So I built an AI that maps and updates every provider’s availability, cost, and expertise. A GP or patient can type “psychologist in Richmond for trauma support,” and the AI returns live, verified matches.

We’re starting with NDIS providers, but it can apply across healthcare — physios, derms, specialists. 7 News covered it recently, traffic spiked, and the site even crashed (sorry about that!).

The goal is simple: help people find the right care faster.

Closing Reflections

Loveth:
Thank you for being so open — about the highs, the burnout, and the mental-health side we rarely talk about in startups.

Sam:
Thanks Loveth. It’s been good to share.

Loveth:
This is Fayl Tales — real stories and real lessons.
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See you next time.