Nothing Matters as Much as Execution and Iteration
Interview with Wyndly CEO Aakash Shah
Key Learnings From Aakash's Experience
Focus on streamlining healthcare processes while adhering to changing consumer behavior. Digital health is a ripe market where you can provide convenient, accessible solutions that align with modern consumer demands, and reduce barriers, be it financial, geographical, or logistical.
Experiment constantly and learn by doing. Practical experience is invaluable; the nuances of any endeavor, including business, are best understood on the fly rather than through theory alone.
Craft a simple, straightforward pitch to convey what you're doing and why it matters to your customers and investors. Don’t use technical jargon; it’s often confusing for your audience. Continuously refine your narrative based on your experience with how it lands. Storytelling is a skill that can be learned and it is vital for a CEO to attract customers, inspire a team, and persuade investors.
Like many engineers who saw the ‘Social Network’ as a student, Aakash Shah was always interested in leveraging his technical background to start his own business. Inspired by his family's medical background, Aakash saw an opportunity to apply his engineering skills to the healthcare industry.
Teaming up with his cousin and ENT specialist Dr. Manan Shah—who would later become his co-founder— Aakash’s first endeavor in the field was digitizing Dr. Shah's practice. In doing so, they quickly realized there was a huge demand for remote consulting. Capitalizing on that customer demand, they turned part of Dr. Shah's practice into a more consumer-facing telehealth model. This is one part of Wyndly’s story.
Working closely with an ENT specialist, Aakash also realized that—as a lifelong allergy sufferer who had been stuck in a cycle of antihistamines and allergy shots with little relief—the traditional way allergies are treated is just symptomatic and doesn't get to the root of the problem. He says, “There's no better way to spark innovation than realizing you can't breathe due to severe allergies, struggling for many months, and jumping through countless hoops to find a solution. You think, ‘There has to be a better way, and I'm going to build it.’”
Today, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Wyndly, dedicated to giving people a life without allergies. The company offers personalized, at-home sublingual immunotherapy—a treatment called oral allergy drop immunotherapy. Their three-step process goes like this: Patients buy a Wyndly at-home allergy test online. After completing the test, they virtually connect with a Wyndly doctor to discuss the results. Then, they receive a personalized treatment plan that offers the same clinically-proven benefits as traditional allergy shots.
Traditionally, the treatment is to go to an office to get allergy shots. “That's just a limitation on so many people's lives. Five years in one place is not the stability that many people have. I think the average time people are staying at their jobs is three years. So if you're using insurance, the timeline of your treatment doesn't even fit how long you're on insurance, and then you're going to have to bail on the treatment after a few years,” Aakash explains. By eliminating the need for frequent in-person visits and offering unlimited doctor time via telehealth, the company makes allergy relief more easily accessible.
Today, Wyndly is up and running across all 50 states in America. Looking ahead, Aakash is excited about expanding Wyndly's treatment scope to move past just pollen, pets, and dust to include food allergies, which affect millions of people across the globe.
Guest
Co-founder and CEO of Wyndly
Aakash Shah co-founded Wyndly, a telehealth company specializing in allergy immunotherapy, with his cousin, Dr. Manan Shah, and participated in Y Combinator W21. As the CEO, he’s led the company from early inception through product development and eventual commercialization. Aakash holds dual degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia. Outside of Wyndly, he often presents on healthcare, telehealth, and startups, advises entrepreneurs, and hosts the Founders and Builders podcast.
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Simplify Healthcare for Broader Adoption
Patients often jump through hoops when seeking medical advice for minor issues. To see a doctor, the all-too-common scenario is to take time off work, endure long waits, pay copays, and then only get limited face-to-face time with a physician. That’s why the first instinct for a vast majority is to turn to the internet, pointing to a shift in patient behavior.
Today's consumers are digital natives accustomed to the convenience of online services. As Aakash puts it, “People are taking health into their own hands. Everyone wants to be the guardian of their own health.” He also observes, “What we're seeing is that the vast majority of people, the first thing they do is they Google their symptoms, or they ask ChatGPT, or they look on TikTok to see who else is experiencing this. So that's how most people find us.”
Embracing telehealth and digital tools to provide accessible care has proven to be a winner in today's healthcare environment. Plus, platforms like Amazon have conditioned users to expect products and services delivered right to their doorstep. To catch this wave, Aakash’s advice is to aim to streamline processes, cutting out the unnecessary steps that frustrate people. In Wyndly’s case, after a lot of experimentation, the team streamlined the patient experience to three steps within which they got access to a personalized, at-home allergy treatment plan.
Digital channels can reduce the barriers to entry—whether they're financial, geographical, or logistical. By leveraging them, you can open your services to a broader audience. Convenience should be at the forefront of your offering so that it’s easy for your users to integrate your solution into their lives.
Action Trumps Theory
For Aakash, taking initiative and learning by doing is paramount. "You can't learn how to cook by watching food TV," he notes, "There's just so much little nuanced bits and pieces that you really only get by doing." For him, harnessing the power of constant experimentation accelerates both personal growth and business development.
Aakash is all for trial and error to find the most effective business model for scaling. He explains, "It's constantly experimenting until you realize, okay, this is how the buyer wants to interact with what we're doing."
For example, Wyndly tested many models, including having patients talk to an online allergy consultant first, before they figured out, “People already knew how to buy diagnostic kits online.” For Aakash, this was an unlock, “The more confusion you can avoid, the easier it is for people to understand how you're going to get them from their current state to their happy place.” And this is how Wyndly decided that the first step in its customer journey was to ship the allergy test kit. Finding the optimal model is vital, as for Aakash, speed and agility are non-negotiables for success. "Nothing matters as much as how quickly you're able to execute and iterate," he says.
"You get to choose how quickly you want to learn. If you try something new once a month, you'll learn 24 things in two years. If you do something new every week, that's 104 things." He points out that consistent experimentation brings exponential benefits. The difference between 104 and 24 learnings is not linear; there’s also the compound growth you're gaining on top of it.
“The most fun part is it feels good to get better at stuff,” Aakash shares. “Just get started, and then you'll start getting better. And it doesn't matter because at the end of it, you'll be like, ‘Awesome. I now have skills I didn't know I had before.’"
A Simple Message Goes a Long Way
Raising capital, especially when you're just starting out, can be approached in many different ways depending on whom you're reaching out to and what your goals are. For example, you can secure funding from a bank, i.e. take on debt—although landing a $10 million loan isn't easy. Alternatively, you might consider private equity firms; they'll invest in your company, often buying 30–40% ownership. Venture capitalists are the more obvious route, but many entrepreneurs begin by reaching out to friends and family.
While it’s true that fundraising is a numbers game, you have to have a good pitch. Aakash says that simplifying their message from “sublingual immunotherapy” to "permanent lifelong allergy relief," resonated immediately. “You've got 30 minutes with someone; you spend 15 teaching them how to pronounce "sublingual." Not quite what you want to be doing,” he shares. This is a prime example of how confusion leads to churn. To engage both customers and investors, you need a clear and straightforward message.
It’s also important to refine your pitch based on feedback, to improve how stakeholders see your value proposition. Aakash approaches pitching to investors like running a series of A/B tests: "You should be changing your story every five meetings. And then at the end of the 50th meeting, you've done 10 iterations. You've improved 10 times," he says. However, he’s also quick to caution about reading the signs. If you’ve talked to 500 people and still haven’t received a check, “Then you’re probably doing something really, really wrong.”
Aakash advises entrepreneurs to hone their storytelling abilities. "Get good at bringing people into what you're doing and why you want to do it. It’s a learnable skill," he asserts. Effective storytelling is important in attracting customers, inspiring teams, and persuading investors.
Social Media is Not Just for Consumer Businesses
Over the past 20 years, we've witnessed an explosion of new marketing channels. SEO, Facebook, social media, podcast advertising—none of these existed in 2000. Yet, many in the B2B space hesitate to leverage these platforms. Aakash emphasizes, "Algorithms are really good at getting your message in front of the right person nowadays."
So, if you're talking to people, if you're selling to people, you need a social media presence. And not just any presence; it needs to be video-based. "Video is where we're currently seeing the ability to get real reach, especially on TikTok and YouTube Shorts," he notes. Once you see what's working, you can expand to LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms.
Aakash shares his own experience, "We were just trying to talk to patients and democratize the allergy visit experience. I literally just put a camera in front of my co-founder and said, 'I have a cat allergy. You're the allergist that I'm seeing. Tell me about it.' And we were just recording that and putting it out. And we naturally saw that this was getting hundreds of thousands of views. And now we're doing millions of views per year."
Creating content doesn't have to be a massive time sink. Aakash highlights that your investment on it compounds over time. Interestingly, many of their B2B customers started as individuals who engaged with their content. "They got an incredible experience, and then they're like, 'Okay, I'd like to bring you into my 20-provider practice,' or 'I'd like to bring you into my chain of private equity-backed offices.' And that's because decision-makers are still people," Aakash shares. Whether you're in B2B or B2C, your potential customers and partners are online, consuming content, and making decisions based on what they see and hear.
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