Anish Kaushal is an ex-physician turned writer, podcaster, and VC investor.

He Initially set out to be a medical doctor, but his life and career path took several sharp turns. He is now a key member of Amplitude Ventures, a Canadian VC firm specializing in life sciences, including medtech. His book, From Here To There: A Niche Guide to Navigating Career Transitions, published in 2023, delves into his journey in greater detail.

In this Medsider episode, Anish told us the non-linear story of his career, fundraising insights from a VC’s point of view, as well as his thoughts on career transitions and how to manage them in today’s world. 

Anish’s Story: From Doctor to Venture Capitalist

Anish Kaushal was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and had a childhood dream of becoming a doctor. However, during high school years, other subjects like economics caught his interest. His natural curiosity in both hard sciences and business was going to lead to a crossroads later in his life. Upon finishing high school, he applied to both business and science programs, but the safer choice, at the time, was to attend medical school in the UK, even though it meant moving all the way to Scotland when he was 17.

Anish first studied at the University of St. Andrews, followed by three years at the University of Edinburgh. He also worked at hospitals each summer, immersing himself in clinical research and labs. At the time, Anish was all set to become a doctor. However, despite his notable academic achievements, a failed exam during his final year cost him a year of not being able to secure residency. Yet, Anish was resolute in his decision to forge a new path and was able to create opportunities from this seeming setback.

During that year's hiatus from medicine, Anish took the opportunity to explore other industries. He sought advice from professionals in banking, consulting, and pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, their unanimous advice was to return to medicine, Yet Anish felt differently: Inspired by his father, he decided to explore the world of venture capital. But how does one do that, especially without any contacts in the industry? 

“I basically looked up the top 75 VC firms in healthcare around the world, and I just cold emailed them,” he shares. As you can imagine, most didn’t respond. But the few that did, led to his internship at M Ventures in Amsterdam, where he worked with a corporate venture team on therapeutics for six months, experiencing first-hand how a corporate VC operates. However, Anish realized midway that he wouldn’t have a job post-internship. 

He then reached out to more than 100 VC firms in just a few months, doing so “through sheer force, will, and resilience”. That’s how he joined Amplitude Ventures, a VC firm in Anish’s home country, Canada. The firm was just starting out at the time, and Anish’s contributions were instrumental in raising substantial funds. Today, managing a fund of over half a billion dollars, Amplitude Ventures is one of the major contributors to Canada’s healthcare ecosystem with more than 15 startups in their portfolio.

Anish concludes with a thought that resonates with many: "None of us know what we're doing. We're all figuring it out as we go, every day." The point is to be resilient and keep showing up. He is a strong believer in the notion of a tiny bit of improvement every day. That was the mindset when he started writing a blog in 2021 and dedicated himself to writing a post every day. Today, he’s a published author. 

Anish’s story isn’t just an inspiring tale of finding one’s own niche. He shares valuable, real-world insights for aspiring medtech entrepreneurs from a VC’s perspective, as well as life lessons for anyone who’s contemplating a career shift. 

Anish’s Insights as a Venture Capitalist

• Get to the bottom of the problem you’re solving. Clearly define the gap, the solution, the regulatory process, and how it’s going to be reimbursed. Show VCs that you're not improvising and that you have a well-considered roadmap with clear, achievable milestones.
• To make a memorable pitch deck, keep it short and clean. Know your audience, personalize your pitch, include hard evidence, invest in design and readability, and deliver all these in a story that resonates. 
• Always be in fundraising mode. You won't always get an intro so be proactive in approaching people and telling your story. Find them online and send them emails. And don’t be afraid to approach other players in the industry as they often know about the best opportunities.

Do Your Fundraising Homework

You have a killer idea and a great team—all that’s missing now is the fuel to power your engine and take flight. It’s really important to be committed to your mission, as it’s exactly what a capital holder is looking for. But to ignite their belief, you first need to do your homework.

Anish says that “money is out there, and people are definitely looking for opportunities.” Your job is to reach out and convince them that your idea merits investment. And that’s why you need a sleek pitch deck. 

Before reaching out, you need to thoroughly understand the problem you’re solving, where it stands in the greater ecosystem of healthcare, and why it is plausible. Anish warns, “You can tell someone who knows the problem inside out from someone who doesn't.” This isn’t something you can feign—you have to proactively and genuinely engage with the ecosystem so that you see the problem from every angle. This will not only strengthen your hand in securing funding, but also boost your confidence when talking to investors or strategics.

You have to clearly define the problem in your pitch deck, as well as what your product or service aims to solve. This clarity sets the foundation for the rest of your presentation. Following this, provide a detailed description of your product, whether it's a device, a service, or a diagnostic. It's essential to elaborate on how you plan to manufacture your product and whether the logistics are feasible and practical. Equally important is delineating the regulatory pathway and highlighting where your product currently stands in terms of approvals. While having already made significant regulatory progress is not mandatory, demonstrating engagement with entities like FDA can significantly bolster your case.

Next, address the concerns and interests of various stakeholders in the healthcare industry. Your pitch should articulate why your product matters to each group, be it investors, end-users (patients or healthcare providers), or insurance companies. Try to paint a picture of a solution that creates value for all parties involved—the more stakeholders that win, the better your case gets. 

“The best entrepreneurs that I've seen are the ones who really know the problem inside out,” Anish shares. Ideally, this is a problem you've experienced firsthand. However, if that's not the case, learn from those who have. That’s why engaging with every stakeholder, including doctors, nurses, patients, payers, and advocacy groups, is vital.

A critical but often overlooked stakeholder is the payer. Make sure you understand the economics before approaching a VC. Anish advises, “As an investor, in order for us to make money, it's all about commercialization, which is all about reimbursement.” While you don’t need to have secured their buy-in yet, it’s essential to explain why your solution makes economic sense from the payer’s perspective. In Anish’s words, “If you understand people's incentives at every stake, like patients versus doctors versus payers versus hospital admins, and you know how your product is going to help solve their problem, then you have a winning idea.”

In summary, you need to understand the position of each stakeholder and clearly communicate that you have a well-thought-out roadmap with tangible milestones for the path ahead. 

How to Create a Memorable Pitch Deck

For startups, capital is scarce, but for VCs, time is even scarcer. That’s why your pitch deck needs to be as direct and concise as possible.

When sending out a pitch deck, your goal isn’t to close a deal on the spot; it's just to get a reply or a follow-up meeting where you can delve into the details of your idea. So, don’t overwhelm your audience with too much information. Anish advises, "Limit your pitch deck to 10 to 15 slides, and keep text to a minimum." 

However, these slides shouldn’t be disconnected anecdotes; rather, they should come together to tell a story.

You should also research the people you’re approaching. No one likes to read a generic pitch or a mass marketing email that’s been sent to a thousand people. Tailor your pitch to the interests of your audience. One way to get attention that Anish suggests to entrepreneurs is to use the principle of similarity. It's a very simple but surprisingly effective attention grabber. "Find one thing that makes us the same," he says. This can be as simple as a shared interest or background.

One practical approach is having different versions of your pitch deck based on who you’re pitching. Anish offers a quick tip: Have a master version with around 40 slides. Then, filter and personalize your deck based on who you need to send it to. To do that efficiently, knowing who you're pitching to is really important.

Another critical component you should include in your pitch is data. “Telling a story is not enough. At the end of the day, it always comes down to data,” Anish notes. You need to prove you’re following up your promises with hard evidence. Anish emphasizes that you need to not only communicate what you’re going to do but demonstrate how you’re doing it as well.

Transparency is also crucial. Any sophisticated investor is going to expect challenges. Including your slow-downs and how you're addressing them in your pitch is a better idea than keeping those in the dark until the end. “Experienced investors appreciate such honesty,” Anish shares.

Finally, the design of the pitch is important. You have to keep people engaged with your story, and that comes through your delivery. “Just a small, subtle change in design really makes a difference," Anish notes. A well-designed presentation can make a compelling first impression. For that, find a freelancer on a budget, or even use software like beautiful.ai to make the presentation pleasant to look at.

An Entrepreneur is Always Fundraising, Even When They’re Not

“It's really a relationship game at the end of the day," Anish notes regarding capital raising. Building these relationships takes time, effort, and patience. Getting an introduction is best, but it's completely fine if that doesn't happen.

Anish’s strategy to break into the VC world was as simple as it gets. He began by cold-emailing the top 75 healthcare VC firms globally. Most didn’t bother, but the few did get on the phone with him or sent him nice, long, informative replies. That’s how he landed an internship in M Ventures, a corporate VC fund of Merck—or EMD Serono as it’s known in the US. When the internship was over, he repeated the same strategy, cold emailing around 100 VCs in the span of just a few months, with which he ended up locking in final interviews with three different firms. 

Anish’s take-home message for reaching out to people is simple: show up again and again and again. However, there’s one caveat: no one likes to read cold emails sent to a thousand people. You need to personalize your message to your target audience’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

So don’t fret if you lack the network, or don’t even know where to start. Reaching out to people with relevant information pays off—you only need the resilience to send a few personalized emails each day, until you get what you’re looking for.

“A common feature of a successful CEO or a startup executive is that they have conversation channels open with investors and keep them updated. Once you open a dialogue with an investor, make sure to keep them in the loop,” Anish advises. Coming out only when you need money is not a good look from a VC’s perspective. Anish’s advice is to send out a newsletter or a quarterly update to an email list where you can share your challenges and triumphs. Anish shares, “If we haven't built a relationship over a long time and you have no traction, and I haven't seen you progress, it's really hard for me to judge if your case is differentiated.” Remember, if you’re an entrepreneur, even when you're not fundraising, you are fundraising.

Apart from building and actively engaging a network, capital raising also requires you to be attentive to timelines, even when things are moving in your favor. 

Let’s say you closed a meeting with an investor. From the initial meeting to due diligence, term agreements, and finally, signing a contract, the process of receiving funds will be lengthy. "It will take at least three months," Anish estimates, with syndication potentially adding another three to six months to the timeframe. The amount being raised also changes this timeline; raising $2 million versus $100 million involves different processes and timescales.

In summary, you have to always be in fundraising mode, even when not actively seeking capital. Build and maintain relationships with investors, be prepared for lengthy processes, and adjust your expectations based on the amount you’re seeking.

How to Successfully Make a Career Transition

Today, industries morph at breakneck speed and the traditional, singular, linear career path is becoming more and more antiquated. As stressful as it is, it is perfectly normal for a person to change their mind, change their perspectives, and change their careers.

"The world where you’d stay with one company for 30-40 years is over," Anish notes. "Everything is advancing exponentially and massively shifting all the time." As changing careers becomes more normalized, stepping out of your comfort zone to try your hand in a completely different industry isn't always easy. 

Staying in one job if you love what you’re doing is perfectly okay. But if you don’t, there's many things out there waiting to be explored. Even though the options are particularly hard to gauge early in your career, it’s not impossible. Anish shares,”The overarching genesis of why I wrote the book is to show people how to get themselves from ‘I have no idea what I'm doing’ to ‘here's a couple of steps in between that can get you there.’”

Anish stresses that conventional schooling alone doesn't go very far. You need to be actively involved and build something to truly learn. Hands-on experience is the best way to develop the skills you need. Internships in various industries are invaluable for this. But that doesn’t mean you can’t change paths if you don’t have the time and luxury to be an intern. It’s still possible even for people who are in mid-career.

First of all, figuring out what you want to do takes time and shouldn't be rushed. This is why experimenting with lots of different things is a great idea. Also, basic Googling skills and using resources like YouTube, Reddit, and online forums for guidance can get you places you couldn’t imagine. But beyond that, Anish encourages reaching out to industry professionals for advice. “People are genuinely generous, especially with young people seeking advice," he says.

In addition to this, finding your next dream job won't happen overnight. Anish stresses the importance of two things: patience and resilience. As cliché as these words may sound, there’s a hard logic behind Anish’s approach to navigating his career, with the key being constant outreach to people.

“Start with who you know, whether it's within your own company or an adjacent company, or even people that are just in random industries that you didn't even know about,” says Anish. Having made the shift himself, Anish understands that people are always looking for talent and might be aware of opportunities that aren’t on your radar. Therefore, engaging in conversations opens many doors. Anish adds, “The best ideas and jobs often aren't advertised.”

Once you are comfortable with approaching people, you need to learn how to carry the conversation with these people on the fly. “Show them that you care about them first,” Anish advises. Then, figure out how to ask for what you need. He explains how to format and structure these conversations in his book in further detail. But here's a key takeaway: a lot of it depends on who you're talking to.

Just as Anish advises always being in fund-raising mode, he also suggests continually nurturing relationships. “Don’t go to people only when you need something, go to them with updates as you go,” he advises. Spend a little time on research, putting together who you want to reach out to, and talking to them, every day. If you send just 10 emails every day, that adds up to 300 after a month. And that’s how you get momentum.

You will have some conversations that lead to nowhere and hear a lot of hard no’s. Those are the ones you need to dissect to learn what went wrong. And at the same time, just one affirmative response is all you need to make a transition.

“Life happens in the grind, not at the top. Keep going at it. If you’re resilient you will get there. Anybody who keeps showing up is going to, eventually.” But you can’t do the same things and expect different results. Improving even just 1% each day accumulates over time. In Anish’s case, he started writing a blog in 2021, posting daily. “Most of them haven't been seen, but that's how I reached the point where I could actually write the book,” he says.

For those intrigued by Anish’s journey and seeking more in-depth guidance, his book From Here To There: A Niche Guide to Navigating Career Transitions and his website which he regularly updates with new blog  posts are a treasure trove of insights.