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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Calgary's podcast with Mario Tonoghuzzi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_00: Joining me today is Peter Burberg who is the founder and CEO of Numi Health in Calgary.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today Peter.
[00:20] SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me Mario.
[00:22] SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about Numi what it is and what you guys do.
[00:27] SPEAKER_02: Sure so Numi is a digital health company that has been set up to essentially facilitate decentralized care for people.
[00:38] SPEAKER_02: We saw an opportunity a few years ago to begin working on this project actually long before the pandemic began.
[00:44] SPEAKER_02: And we just happened to launch it during the pandemic which was in some ways fortuitous for us as a company getting started at a time when people are looking for care.
[00:56] SPEAKER_02: And we saw an opportunity to essentially make care more accessible for people essentially using technology to create a pathway for people to have care come to them as opposed to the full traditional model.
[01:13] Speaker UNKNOWN: And we saw an opportunity to create a pathway for people to have care come to them as opposed to the full traditional model of going into various clinics and sitting in waiting rooms.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: Okay and what was the genesis of this?
[01:22] SPEAKER_00: Like you have background in the health area?
[01:27] SPEAKER_02: I'm not a health professional.
[01:30] SPEAKER_02: I'm a business person who really enjoys the process of forming companies starting companies capitalizing and putting together the team.
[01:41] SPEAKER_02: And then execute it on the strategy.
[01:44] SPEAKER_02: But the genesis of this company was actually I was down in South America a few years ago on an extent trip.
[01:53] SPEAKER_02: I kind of decided to take a break from the oil and gas business.
[01:56] SPEAKER_02: I've been working in finance and oil and gas.
[02:00] SPEAKER_02: And after the crash of 2014, I decided to take a bit of time off and traveling down in in Columbia actually.
[02:09] SPEAKER_02: And one of the things I noticed is they had a real delivery culture there.
[02:13] SPEAKER_02: They had if you went into a like a year being be that a rented with a friend.
[02:18] SPEAKER_02: They had a fridge full of magnets of all the different things you could have delivered to your condo.
[02:24] SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't very sophisticated like it was kind of what's up based, but you know just a name and a phone number and one of the things on that fridge was medical testing.
[02:33] SPEAKER_02: And I thought that's kind of interesting.
[02:35] SPEAKER_02: You know, because I'd always kind of been annoyed by the process of medical testing in Canada where you know you had to go to your doctor, then you had to go to the lab.
[02:44] SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you had to go back to the doctor and all of those trips took a lot of time and involved waiting rooms full of sick people and things like that.
[02:51] SPEAKER_02: So I decided to test that tested out essentially.
[02:57] SPEAKER_02: So I, you know, chatted with the individual on the other end.
[03:01] SPEAKER_02: And the next morning, eight o'clock AM, a very professional medical, you know, lab tech essentially showed up at the, at the condo took a sample of my blood went away and 24 hours later.
[03:14] SPEAKER_02: I got my results in an email and I thought, wow, that's pretty cool.
[03:19] SPEAKER_02: I had to translate it because it was in Spanish, but, but I thought that's pretty neat that I could get my, my blood check that way.
[03:27] SPEAKER_02: So I kind of molded over some more came back to Canada started doing a bunch of research to see if actually this, you know how this would work in Canada for the possible looking at all the regulatory issues started striking up conversations with various.
[03:44] SPEAKER_02: With different diagnostics companies companies like Alberta position labs, which is owned by HS, Dinalife, Life Labs.
[03:54] SPEAKER_02: And really kind of just realized, yes, it could, it could work.
[04:00] SPEAKER_02: And, and then sort of we started to kind of test out the market as well and talk to people and see, is this something people would buy in Canada where people are used to getting their health care for free.
[04:11] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[04:12] SPEAKER_02: And, and we realized through that process that yes, there was a market for it. Yes, people would, would pay for more convenient care.
[04:19] SPEAKER_02: And so we settled to start building the platform and basically designing it from the, from the ground up.
[04:27] SPEAKER_00: It's amazing. Where ideas come from, man.
[04:31] SPEAKER_02: Totally, totally. And, you know, it's, it's interesting because in Latin America, they, there's actually a company called Raffy.
[04:38] SPEAKER_02: So after that trip, I came back and I ended up getting them, I came up with three company ideas on that trip.
[04:46] SPEAKER_02: And, and ended up kind of working on all three simultaneously.
[04:50] SPEAKER_02: One got off the ground. It was sort of in partnership with the group of other people that already had come at the same problem from a different direction.
[04:59] SPEAKER_02: So I sort of helped them mold and shape the strategy for that company, raise the capital and get it launched.
[05:04] SPEAKER_02: Then, then there was the second one that I, I wanted to do in Columbia itself because I sort of fell in love with the country and the people while I was there.
[05:13] SPEAKER_02: And so I went and actually was spending a lot of time in Columbia over a couple of years.
[05:18] SPEAKER_02: And one of the things I became a great user of was a service called Raffy in, in, in, in Columbia.
[05:26] SPEAKER_02: Raffy is sort of a, a last mile solution for every kind of service or product that you can imagine.
[05:34] SPEAKER_02: You can use this app to get groceries to your house, you can order cash, you know, you're playing poker with some buddies and you run onto cash and you can use Raffy to order some cash.
[05:44] SPEAKER_02: Of course, I'll charge your credit card and then you'll have to pay interest on that potentially. But, but anyway, so it's, you know, the, the booze, you know, clothing electronics, whatever you want it.
[05:54] SPEAKER_02: And, and they have all these people running around now down there that model really works well because it's, you know, the labor rates are quite low.
[06:02] SPEAKER_02: Right. So you can get stuff delivered to you and it doesn't cost very much. You know, a lot of the, a lot of the careers are riding bicycles or motorcycles.
[06:10] SPEAKER_02: So it's a little bit of a different thing here, right.
[06:12] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[06:13] SPEAKER_02: What we're doing is, is very different because we're employing, you know, nurses and paramedics who are going around delivering our services.
[06:20] SPEAKER_02: So that's, that's a bit of a different, a different beast, but, you know, at the core of it is really our platform, which facilitates that transaction between the health professional and the health consumer.
[06:31] SPEAKER_02: And so that's how I characterize us as kind of like a digital marketplace for health care.
[06:36] SPEAKER_00: Oh, super.
[06:37] SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, where does the name come from and what does it signify?
[06:43] SPEAKER_00: No, me, not your last name.
[06:46] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a made up name.
[06:52] SPEAKER_02: It, I can't recall the exact genesis of it. I think I, we had an original, we had another name before, which we ended up the 10, mean, it was too many syllables.
[07:03] SPEAKER_02: And, and I was thinking about our service and what is it represent? And the, the, the NU is, is actually originally, as I conceived it, it was a nurse.
[07:13] SPEAKER_02: And then, and then the MI is me, right. So a nurse to me, right.
[07:18] SPEAKER_02: And then, and then it, then I realized, well, it also sounds like new me, right. So like, use this service. I can deal with some potential problem that I have and I can become a healthier person or, or, you know, a newer person, essentially.
[07:34] SPEAKER_02: So, so yeah, that's where it comes from. It doesn't really have any money.
[07:38] SPEAKER_02: I think it has some meaning in like, in India, I think it is actually translatable there. But yeah, here it's.
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: I'm always intrigued. I'm always intrigued to how businesses and companies, you know, come to come to come to our name for themselves outside of obviously using your own, you know, Mario, ton of music, communications.
[08:01] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[08:01] SPEAKER_02: That's an easy one, right.
[08:04] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, the, you know, it's interesting because the, the business concept originally was very focused on, on sort of decentralized lab tests.
[08:15] SPEAKER_02: And so mobilizing for lab tests. And what we realized in building the platform was that there was a huge opportunity that went well beyond testing it.
[08:24] SPEAKER_02: They went to all kinds of decentralized care. And, and so we actually even shifted a little bit what we were doing originally we were thinking about, you know, essentially hiring lab techs, we running around and, and instead,
[08:36] SPEAKER_02: we went with higher priced talent to work with us, which are, you know, nurses and medics.
[08:43] SPEAKER_02: And we're tending to hire very experienced people that, you know, have a lot of along track record working in, in, in the medical system.
[08:53] SPEAKER_02: Our nurse practitioner has been has been a, our medical director's nurse practitioner has been employed by the Alberta Health Services for around 28 years.
[09:04] SPEAKER_02: A considerable experience working in emergency care, stars are ambulance, those sorts of things, and so she's, she brings a lot of credibility to what we're doing, a lot of experience, and we since brought on other nurse practitioners, and, and we have many RNs and medics that have been, you know, have been providing care to people for, you know, for decades.
[09:26] SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts and plans for the future of the company? What, what's your vision there?
[09:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, it's, I think it's, it's extending our service offering beyond what we're doing right now, you know, we're, like I said, we launched in, in 2020, I was actually, I was living in Madrid at the, when the pandemic began working on another project, and, and so I spent a lot of time actually, you know, just kind of taking my dog for walks that was about the only thing you were allowed to do in Madrid during lockdown, you couldn't even walk your kids, but you could walk your dog.
[10:01] SPEAKER_02: Well, I was taking my dog for long walks through the streets, and, and it was a tough time because I was trying to figure out, like I was trying to get a different project off the ground, but the pandemic was making that really difficult, and, and then I had this kind of this, this project of new me, kind of, it was sort of happening in the background kind of on a slow cook cycle, and, and I, I realized like the pandemic is actually that this is the mechanism that's going to create the market for this business, because, you know, I think it's going to be a lot more difficult to do.
[10:30] SPEAKER_02: Because you're, you're going to have people that are going to need vaccinations, they're going to need regular testing, and, and they're going to have to pay for it, and they're going to be okay with that, because it's a necessity not everything covered by the public system, and we know that.
[10:45] SPEAKER_02: So, so I, so I started working on that, like I essentially went back to this and made this the priority, put it on the front burn, and turned up the heat, if you will, and I kind of redesigned the platform in a way I looked at what had been built.
[11:00] SPEAKER_02: And in the past by the individuals that were involved in kind of the first iteration of our platform, and decided that it should be scrapped, and we should start over.
[11:09] SPEAKER_02: So we kind of actually built it extremely fast, we started in, I would say March, April, and working with some of the team members that we had in in Calgary, but also bringing in a development team in India.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: And they worked extremely fast and extremely hard to get it built in by October, we launched it. So when we launched, we launched with, you know, a very basic product offering, which was essentially vaccinations and testing, and we wanted to start with that, and, and kind of, you know, work out the kinks operationally and build up the platform further.
[11:47] SPEAKER_02: And now we're, now we're launching new elements to the platform, one of them is results in your pocket. So essentially, when people get tested by us, they'll be able to view the results right in the app, and, and, and have that accessible to them at all times, likely be adding vaccination records in there as well.
[12:11] SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, beyond that, there's, there's a bunch of different areas that we can, we can take this that sort of combine both virtual care and the last mile solution, because we have these nurses and nurse practitioners on our platform, they can actually provide virtual care to people.
[12:29] SPEAKER_02: And, and then they can send someone to the person's house, actually, if they need care in their home, and then if the person needs a prescription, we can provide that digitally, and then we can deliver the prescription as well.
[12:43] SPEAKER_02: Like these are all elements that we can add to this platform, just build them onto the base that we have created. And so that's, that's where we're going with it, we're building essentially a vertically integrated healthcare solution that people can use to access different types of services.
[12:59] SPEAKER_02: Of healthcare.
[13:02] SPEAKER_00: You know, you mentioned a few times there are different entrepreneurial stuff. So you seem to have the bug for for being an entrepreneur, where did that come from?
[13:16] SPEAKER_02: That's a good question. I don't probably it comes a bit from my experience growing up, actually, I was, I was on my own at 15 after my mother died. And, and so I had to kind of figure out how to survive.
[13:34] SPEAKER_02: And, and through that, you know, I became, I think a bit of a problem solver in life. And, and, and started to think about, you know, if, if I did have a problem, how could I solve it? And, and then going home and actually solving it. And so, you know, if you think about what entrepreneurship is, it's really, that's really what it's about. It's about some identifying and need.
[13:56] SPEAKER_02: And then figuring out how to how to fill that need or meet that need. And so, you know, sort of through my life, actually, since then I've been very much, you know, kind of often as a hobbyist, you know, because I was a journalist or in my first career at a university. And, and so, even when I was a journalist, though, you know, and I built a new house in a new in a new neighborhood when I moved down to Calgary.
[14:23] SPEAKER_02: I, you know, I, I set up a little landscaping company so that I could get my slot and, and, and soil cheap to landscape my own property. And then I realized everybody that around me, there was hundreds of homesmean built. They all needed the same thing. So I just went around to all of them and said, if you want this stuff, I'll buy for you. And so then I had a little business on the side.
[14:45] SPEAKER_02: You know, I kept it going until I was sort of fully landscaping myself and then I found in that one, because I didn't really want to be a landscaper, not that there's anything wrong with it. It's a great, great, great profession to me in or trained to be a night.
[14:57] SPEAKER_02: I actually did that for a couple of years between high school and university. But anyways, it, yeah, I've always just kind of saw opportunities and got them going. I got a medical training company going with my, my then wife.
[15:15] SPEAKER_02: Years ago and then gone into investment banking eventually after my career in journalism and then into private equity and we're starting up on the gas companies. And so yeah, I just really enjoyed the process of, you know, putting together a strategy coming up with the idea of putting together a strategy building a team.
[15:37] SPEAKER_02: You know, raising capital and it's, I find it really satisfying actually to, you know, kind of be sitting with my team, you know, at a Christmas dinner and seeing all of these people that, you know, have, have employment and, and, and are part of this project that you've created.
[15:56] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[15:57] SPEAKER_02: I just find that really a really satisfying thing.
[16:00] SPEAKER_00: So when you look at your say entrepreneurial journey, are there any people that, that help you along the way that, that you took advice from, or any great pieces of advice that resonated with you or, or even in books that you read that, so advice that helped you on that journey.
[16:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I, obviously, everyone's got those people in their life. I've got, I've got a number of them. They aren't all business people. I've worked very closely with and, you know, had to go through a, sort of a period of kind of understanding myself in ways in my 30s when I was sort of coming to grips with, you know, a lot of the pain that I had in one past.
[16:55] SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm dying and some things that happened around that. And I met some really amazing individuals at that time that, that, that really taught me that it was okay to allow myself to feel and to, and to accept myself and, and not, not blame myself for mistakes in the past and that kind of thing.
[17:22] SPEAKER_02: So that's been important. I've also had the opportunity to work with some great business people who, you know, taught me things about, about business. Certainly when I was a journalist, you know, I was interviewing a lot of business people.
[17:35] SPEAKER_02: That was a financial journalist for about six years, about half the time that I was in the business. And, you know, I traveled around the world meeting all kinds of interesting business people entrepreneurs.
[17:49] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, got to see how they built their companies and, you know, it's interesting because you realize that in that work, like, people are successful business people.
[18:05] SPEAKER_02: They, they often, they seem like gods to us, right? It's like, how do they get there? Right? How did Jeff Bezos get to be Jeff Bezos? Well, when you actually say, when you meet them, you realize they're just human beings, right?
[18:15] SPEAKER_02: They're human beings with ideas and the, and the passion to, to take that idea and turn it into reality. And, and they have a, they tend to have sort of a never give up kind of attitude, right? Like they just, they have this drive. They just want to get this thing done. So, so yeah, I think that all of those experiences contributed to, to my, you know,
[18:38] SPEAKER_02: the, the, the, the, the, the, the, contributed to how I essentially operate as a business person. You know, I made a lot of mistakes a long way and I have, and I've had a lot of failures to, yeah.
[18:51] SPEAKER_02: A lot of this entrepreneurial journey is very, very much about, timing and luck. You know, people don't talk about that, but there is that's a benefit, right?
[19:02] SPEAKER_02: And, and my timing has been good at times and at other times it's not been great. You know, I was, I got caught in the 2014 crash like a lot of people. Yeah.
[19:13] SPEAKER_02: And in the energy crash, I mean, and, you know, saw a lot of value that, that I had created with my partners just kind of evaporate overnight.
[19:22] SPEAKER_02: It's tough to go through that stuff and build.
[19:24] SPEAKER_00: So Peter, what do you do outside of work in your career? Do you have any hobbies or interests that kind of take you away from, from, from the business, so to speak?
[19:37] SPEAKER_02: Well, right now I seem to be working 20 hours a day, but, but when I, when I do have time to, you know, I do like to exercise a lot.
[19:48] SPEAKER_02: I'm have been in my life and I have a cyclist. I haven't done much biking in the last couple of years.
[19:54] SPEAKER_02: I've done a lot of walking lately. I never used to be a walker, but the pandemic actually made me a walker partly because those three hour dog walks I was taking in the grid.
[20:02] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but, but, but since then, I've, you know, I've been sort of kept that up and done a lot of a lot of walking practice a lot of yoga.
[20:13] SPEAKER_02: And, yeah, do a lot of reading and listening to music and, and yeah, that kind of thing. Love cooking.
[20:20] SPEAKER_02: So I've got a bunch of different passions.
[20:23] SPEAKER_00: That's good to have those, right?
[20:24] SPEAKER_00: Because I can't be 24 or 7 at work. It'll drive you crazy.
[20:31] SPEAKER_02: For sure, for sure, and that's been, you know, that's been one of the hard things actually.
[20:35] SPEAKER_02: It's been one of the good things and also one of the hard things about this business because we've been, we've been so busy.
[20:41] SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've had a very strong start as a company and, and it's been really exciting, but it's also been, you know, a little bit overwhelming at times.
[20:51] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, obviously it's been and we were in a kind of like a perpetual game of catch up right now, hiring people essentially, because we, you know, we essentially started with a very small court within
[21:03] SPEAKER_02: late October, beginning of November with operations and, and you know, we're now sitting at around.
[21:10] SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of actually losing count, but I think we're, we're around 50 people now all in.
[21:15] SPEAKER_02: And, and, and so we're growing very quickly and, and dealing with all of the challenges that come with that.
[21:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Okay. Well, super, well, thanks very much for joining us today, Peter.
[21:26] SPEAKER_00: Thank you. Great chatting with you.
[21:28] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, back to that was Peter Verberg, who is the founder and CEO of New Me Health and Calgary.
[21:35] SPEAKER_00: This has been Calgary's podcast with Mario Tanigüzi on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us today.
