Revolutionizing Healthcare: Entrepreneur Extends Lifespan with Tech

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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Entrepreneur, where we talk to the entrepreneurs who are making it happen
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: across Canada and deliver the news, trends, knowledge and opinions from entrepreneurs and business
[00:13] SPEAKER_01: influences across the country. Hello, I'm Mario Toneguzi, managing editor of Canada's Entrepreneur,
[00:21] SPEAKER_01: joining me today on Edmonton's podcast is Samir Dar, who is founder and CEO of NIA Health.
[00:28] SPEAKER_01: Thanks Samir for joining us today.
[00:31] SPEAKER_01: Thrilled to be here, thanks for having me, Mario.
[00:34] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk a little bit about the company, NIA Health. Tell me what it is and what you guys do.
[00:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we're Canada's first end-to-end proactive health platform, so we put together advanced
[00:49] SPEAKER_02: diagnostics, consultation and wearable integration in one cohesive platform that allows Canadians
[00:55] SPEAKER_02: at an accessible price point to get access to best-in-class testing and insight around their
[01:01] SPEAKER_02: risk to health, span and longevity. And of course, the most actual set of things that they can
[01:06] SPEAKER_02: do to get in front of that risk, including any transition to primary care. So,
[01:11] SPEAKER_02: And what did you start this? We started this about 18 months ago now and yeah, started to write
[01:20] SPEAKER_01: right from Edmonton. And can you maybe describe just a little bit of the genesis of this?
[01:27] SPEAKER_01: How did this idea all come about? And why?
[01:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so this is my second business. I previously built and sold a company in the
[01:37] SPEAKER_02: Elder Tech space. We built a sensing solution for incontinence management in nursing homes.
[01:44] SPEAKER_02: And as part of that journey, I actually physically lived out of three different nursing homes
[01:49] SPEAKER_02: for 12 months across North America. And so to me, the impetus or the call to action behind
[01:56] SPEAKER_02: NIA is, how do we keep people healthy as long as possible? So yeah, that's kind of the inspiration
[02:05] SPEAKER_02: behind it. And of course, I think coming out of COVID, we have folks more aware of their health.
[02:14] SPEAKER_02: And there's been a big movement in the longevity space for that consumers are now activated
[02:21] SPEAKER_02: globally towards how do they take more and more ownership over their health. So there's some,
[02:25] SPEAKER_02: there's definitely some tailwinds. And then of course, in the public system here in Canada,
[02:29] SPEAKER_02: we've got 20% or more of Canadians who still don't have access to primary care providers. So
[02:43] SPEAKER_01: timely problem to the tech like. So how did you get involved in this sort of the healthcare field?
[02:51] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, to me, I came, I started my first business right out of undergrad. And the
[02:59] SPEAKER_02: call to action for me first going in on a entrepreneurship was that I wanted to do something that was
[03:05] SPEAKER_02: impactful and meaningful, but wanted to create that impact in a sustainable way and at scale.
[03:13] SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting because in undergrad, I thought I was going to be an investment banker
[03:18] SPEAKER_02: or being high finance and I did summer at Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions
[03:25] SPEAKER_02: here in the course of my degree. But I very quickly figured out that that world was not necessarily
[03:30] SPEAKER_02: for me. And I do have to give a shout out to a program that I got admitted to that made a big
[03:36] SPEAKER_02: difference in my life coming out of undergrad. It's called the next 36 as part of next Canada.
[03:44] SPEAKER_02: And you know, they pick that time they pick 36 graduating undergrad, give you seed funding
[03:48] SPEAKER_02: to start a protect venture. And it basically created this this avenue or channel through which
[03:55] SPEAKER_02: I could actually see myself going the entrepreneurial route immediately post at most school,
[04:02] SPEAKER_02: which I wish I had never even contemplated as an option before that.
[04:08] SPEAKER_01: Where did you go to school?
[04:11] SPEAKER_02: I went into my undergrad at University of Alberta and later went and did a master's in China.
[04:17] SPEAKER_01: So, okay. And what was your master's in?
[04:21] SPEAKER_02: It was in Global Affairs as part of the Schwarzman Scholars Program. I don't know if you're familiar
[04:26] SPEAKER_02: with that Mario, but yeah, was that Chiang Hua University's a radical experience. I still actually
[04:35] SPEAKER_02: learned Mandarin five times a week with a tutor. So it's a journey I'm continuing to invest in.
[04:42] SPEAKER_02: Why?
[04:42] SPEAKER_02: I just think it's a great language to learn, especially if you think about even in a Canadian context,
[04:52] SPEAKER_02: the rates of immigration and the number of Mandarin speakers that come into the country every
[04:57] SPEAKER_02: every year, but just globally the relevance of it in terms of the number of Mandarin speakers
[05:02] SPEAKER_02: globally. I think to just as I've realized to myself, as you get older, especially if you're
[05:09] SPEAKER_02: in more strategic leadership positions, the act of developing a skill and using that part of your
[05:17] SPEAKER_02: brain to, and the discipline on a daily basis to basically be memorizing vocab. And
[05:23] SPEAKER_02: like you don't use that part of your brain as you get older. So I think it's an important
[05:28] SPEAKER_02: it's an important thing to be investing in from my perspective.
[05:34] SPEAKER_01: Now on your entrepreneurial journey, when you first started out, what was the toughest challenges
[05:43] SPEAKER_01: you had to overcome?
[05:46] SPEAKER_01: On this journey or on all my entrepreneurial journey?
[05:51] SPEAKER_01: Just starting and embarking on being an entrepreneur.
[05:55] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I would say, I mean the first thing is always what's the idea?
[06:02] SPEAKER_02: The thing that you're going to devote your life to and work 80 or 100 hours weeks for and
[06:08] SPEAKER_02: stay up all night for and whatnot. And honestly, the decision to commit to an idea actually
[06:17] SPEAKER_02: becomes harder I think as you get older and as you get more experience it doesn't actually
[06:21] SPEAKER_02: necessarily make it easier. It actually makes it harder in my mind to commit because you just
[06:26] SPEAKER_02: know more. But I think finding the idea is one thing is one big monumental kind of gap that
[06:36] SPEAKER_02: needs to be overcome or challenge the app to overcome. What are all the risks associated with this
[06:41] SPEAKER_02: idea? How do you think about de-risking some of those things? Is this indeed worthy of actually
[06:49] SPEAKER_02: spending your time into you? I think that's always like the big first hurdle. And actually in
[06:55] SPEAKER_02: between businesses to start NIA, I spent four years in the quote-unquote wilderness to try to
[07:02] SPEAKER_02: basically figure out what was the next journey worthy of going on. And yeah, this NIA was kind of
[07:10] SPEAKER_02: the consequence of a lot of iteration, many different ideas tried. And a lot of soul searching
[07:18] SPEAKER_02: about what was worthy enough to commit to. So that's one big thing. I think the other
[07:23] SPEAKER_02: challenge that is consistent across companies is that the earliest days, it's not just the idea,
[07:29] SPEAKER_02: but who do you want to go on the journey with? For me, I have never been animated at the prospect
[07:36] SPEAKER_02: of being a solo founder. I've always found benefit in having partners on the journey. Actually,
[07:46] SPEAKER_02: both financially as well as operationally. And it's funny because in both companies,
[07:56] SPEAKER_02: after having been funded, we had meaningful co-founders leave the business. And you end up in this
[08:06] SPEAKER_02: no-man's land of, oh my god, I just raised money. The co-founder decided that it wasn't for them
[08:13] SPEAKER_02: and that they needed to leave. And you somehow had to pick up the pieces and figure out how to solve
[08:20] SPEAKER_02: that existential threat in a very early state of the business. So I think that's another
[08:25] SPEAKER_02: challenge is who you go on the journey with. Maybe goes hand in hand with the idea.
[08:32] SPEAKER_01: So on the journey, did you have any role models or mentors be it people that you knew or
[08:42] SPEAKER_01: just people out there in general who were successful business people?
[08:47] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, on the first journey, there's a number of folks,
[08:55] SPEAKER_02: including the ones that ended up investing in me, that I credit with having supported me
[09:03] SPEAKER_02: through mentorship and even financially backing you. Folks like John Ferguson, his former chairman
[09:10] SPEAKER_02: of SunCore and someone I got introduced to through undergrad. And he was my first,
[09:16] SPEAKER_02: you know, $50,000 check into my first ever business, right? And I remember the feeling as a 20-year-old
[09:24] SPEAKER_02: of somebody like John who I looked up to and I still do so much, saying that he wanted to invest
[09:30] SPEAKER_02: in me and setting terms. And I just thought I thought I made it, right? It was just like,
[09:36] SPEAKER_02: what could be better than this? So folks like him have made a big difference.
[09:43] SPEAKER_02: Even on the knee journey, actually, I got to tell you, I between businesses, as I said,
[09:51] SPEAKER_02: spent four years in the wilderness. And any time I had an idea or was working on something,
[09:57] SPEAKER_02: one of the key figures that I would go to for advice was Boris Works, who's from
[10:07] SPEAKER_02: further and one of the top seed funds in the country. And almost every single idea I tried
[10:15] SPEAKER_02: in those years, you'd just say, yeah, it's not going to work. It's not big enough. It's not
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: a big thing here. But on the knee journey, when I talked to him about this initial idea and the
[10:34] SPEAKER_02: work I did doing on it, etc. I mean, he saw this one as the one in many ways and then said,
[10:40] SPEAKER_02: basically, by the end of a 20, 30-minute call, he said, hey, how do we invest? How do we invest in
[10:47] SPEAKER_02: this? And then he ended up being the first check into his knee as journey. So, yeah, I think to your
[10:55] SPEAKER_02: to answer your questions to Sinkway, wrapping it all up, mentors, slash relationships with people
[11:04] SPEAKER_02: who really respect our instrumental in going on these types of journeys, I think. Any books
[11:12] SPEAKER_02: helpful for you? I mean, actually these days, I've been indexing more on essays and blog posts
[11:28] SPEAKER_02: that have kind of been consistently there for me and times of questioning or what it will
[11:41] SPEAKER_02: in recent times have been some Sam Alpens, how to be successful essay that was written back, I think,
[11:49] SPEAKER_02: in 2019. And that's one that I continued to refer back to and I did even went in the wilderness as a
[11:57] SPEAKER_02: kind of a, you know, a kind of a bellweather of, is this idea big enough? Is this something that
[12:05] SPEAKER_02: I should be going on the path, you know, towards should I continue to have a path like, does it
[12:10] SPEAKER_02: meet these types of criteria? And yeah, like it was super impactful. I also think Paul Graham's
[12:18] SPEAKER_02: Paul Graham's essays in general, pretty much all of them are super relevant on the entrepreneurial
[12:23] SPEAKER_01: journey. So, yeah. So, what advice would you give a young aspiring entrepreneur?
[12:31] SPEAKER_02: I think the first, the first, the first, the first thing is you got to do the work. And I
[12:43] SPEAKER_02: want to say that's a elaborate on this a little bit because I think particularly in the west,
[12:50] SPEAKER_02: I'm seeing this kind of emergence in the past several years and it's significantly shifted
[12:57] SPEAKER_02: into the past 10 years of this emphasis on work like balance on, you know, the kind of minute,
[13:06] SPEAKER_02: 40 hour work weeks, you know, being the kind of standard of the day. And honestly, even right now,
[13:12] SPEAKER_02: as we're trying to recruit folks, I keep running up against this. And it's crazy to me because
[13:17] SPEAKER_02: the reality of getting something off the ground as an entrepreneur is that it takes a
[13:24] SPEAKER_02: curculean effort, right? And nobody, I can't point to a business that was built that made a meaningful
[13:31] SPEAKER_02: dent in the universe on 40 hours a week. I just, I don't know what where that comes from. But anyway,
[13:37] SPEAKER_02: so for, you know, I think doing the work is a big piece of the equation. I think the second thing is
[13:44] SPEAKER_02: you got to find something that, you know, winner lose, you feel is worthy.
[13:51] SPEAKER_02: If, you know, and however you define worthy, you know, that's up to you. But you got to think long
[13:59] SPEAKER_02: term and and and be willing to accept the odds that, you know, you got a 90% chance of failure
[14:06] SPEAKER_02: that, you know, working your tail off for that 10% that that it's worth it. And, and yeah, I mean,
[14:14] SPEAKER_02: I'm super lucky to have found that in the Bernadini app, but as well as my previous journey,
[14:20] SPEAKER_02: it's not so sure. But it's it's it leads to a leading leading life on a much different level and it
[14:26] SPEAKER_02: makes it much easier during the tough times to remember why you're doing the thing you're doing. And
[14:32] SPEAKER_02: and I think that, you know, to the extent that you can find a cause that's more than just about
[14:36] SPEAKER_02: money. I mean, a lot of people are just motivated by money and that's fine. But the more that you can
[14:41] SPEAKER_02: find a cause that's more worthy, more, you know, more nuanced, I should say, or more, you know,
[14:47] SPEAKER_02: a little deeper than just just about financial gain. I think it makes it much easier to to galvanize
[14:53] SPEAKER_02: a crew towards the cause as well as, yeah, as well as yourself being in it. Now, I noticed on
[15:01] SPEAKER_01: on your bio that you were Canada's top 20 under 20, also Edmonton's top 40 under 40. Where do you
[15:09] SPEAKER_01: think, you know, some of your thoughts and ideas about success and and being successful? Where does
[15:18] SPEAKER_02: that come from? I definitely always have to give credit for that type of a question to your
[15:26] SPEAKER_02: parents and your upbringing. I think this is this is not an atypical immigrant story in the sense
[15:33] SPEAKER_02: my parents came from India, however many years ago, 40 years ago or more now. And they instilled
[15:42] SPEAKER_02: this ethic of hard work and achievement and kind of doing things really well. And that's
[15:50] SPEAKER_02: something that I'll forever be grateful for. Now, the interesting part was the immigrant story does
[15:56] SPEAKER_02: not always include entrepreneurship as part of its narrative. And particularly for an Estonian
[16:04] SPEAKER_02: perspective, being a doctor, engineer, a lawyer, a standard path is definitely what's
[16:11] SPEAKER_02: championed as you go through life and you grow up. So taking this kind of less trotten path
[16:19] SPEAKER_02: was a journey. It was also an educational journey at the age of 20 for my parents. Because
[16:28] SPEAKER_02: that was not necessarily the path to success that they were acquainted with or familiar with.
[16:35] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, but I think that if you're true to yourself, sometimes the journey finds you
[16:42] SPEAKER_02: and you can be amazed and delighted by what ensues.
[16:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, now it's regarding the journey you mentioned you lived in a lot of different places.
[16:54] SPEAKER_01: And before we started taping this, we talked about coming back to Edmonton. Tell me about
[17:04] SPEAKER_01: Edmonton, what you like about Edmonton and running a business and just being here.
[17:10] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I mean, I've lived in Toronto and other places in the world over 10 years following my
[17:20] SPEAKER_02: undergrad. And I came back to Edmonton a year and a half, two years ago to start near.
[17:28] SPEAKER_02: Partly because I realized that there's more to life than just being in a big city and having
[17:35] SPEAKER_02: everybody around you also just trying to hustle and grind it out. I think once you've seen what
[17:41] SPEAKER_02: excellent and great looks like, that never leaves you. And so I think the key thing, if you're
[17:49] SPEAKER_02: trying to shoot big is, is know what good looks like. And then it's up to you to decide where you
[17:54] SPEAKER_02: want to live and all that. And Edmonton to me is, I love the people. I love the fact they can hold
[18:00] SPEAKER_02: doors open for you and they're polite and you know, are not all just hustling to kind of be on the
[18:05] SPEAKER_02: rat race. They see other things in life. You got amazing bike trails, etc. and just quality of life
[18:11] SPEAKER_02: is great. Now in terms of building a business here, I think it's also had some advantages that
[18:18] SPEAKER_02: didn't expect where because you have a bit of that more smaller town vibe, which I think is
[18:24] SPEAKER_02: consistent across Alberta, even in Calgary, people are more willing to give you that first shot.
[18:32] SPEAKER_02: You know, take that bet on you and then where it gets around. So how that manifested for us that
[18:37] SPEAKER_02: Nia even has been with our B2B motion. We were able to get small businesses and the business
[18:46] SPEAKER_02: community on board to kind of trial our solution in the very earliest of days. And that was all just,
[18:54] SPEAKER_02: I think because we had this this this community that's super supportive and is, you know, willing
[18:59] SPEAKER_02: and wants to invest in its younger entrepreneurs trying to make it to the universe. So I don't know
[19:05] SPEAKER_02: if it would have been to be honest that easy and Toronto and actually even having a robust network
[19:10] SPEAKER_02: in Toronto, you know, most of our enterprise sales came from Edmonton. So yeah, I think there's
[19:17] SPEAKER_02: something very special about that kind of community smaller town vibe, especially when you're trying
[19:24] SPEAKER_01: to get something off the ground. Yeah. Now, just the last thing I wanted to ask you, you know,
[19:29] SPEAKER_01: you did talk a lot about, you know, the hard work in the hours put into a business. Do you have time
[19:36] SPEAKER_01: for other things? What do you do outside of work that you pursue and spend time? Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
[19:45] SPEAKER_02: I I liked I love to road bike. I love to, you know, run. I love to travel and travel to see
[19:56] SPEAKER_02: friends often. So, you know, with short when you're short on time on a day-to-day basis,
[20:01] SPEAKER_02: like being intentional about being able to spend time with the people who better the most is
[20:08] SPEAKER_02: super important. I mean, I also love to read. You know, so these days I always have an audio book going.
[20:20] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I mean, I got a bunch of diverse interests and like I said too, even from a language
[20:26] SPEAKER_02: learning perspective, I invest hours every week to furthering that kind of manner and journey.
[20:33] SPEAKER_02: And I think I'm going to add French to the mix. Well, again, so yeah, like I think it's, you know,
[20:38] SPEAKER_02: to the extent that you can get a you got to get a try to have other aspects of life. But it's hard.
[20:43] SPEAKER_01: It's very hard. It's not it's not easy. Yeah, exactly. All righty. Well, thanks so much for joining us
[20:49] SPEAKER_01: today. Thank you, Mario. I really appreciate that time. Okay, that was Samir Dhar, who was
[20:55] SPEAKER_01: co-founder and CEO of NEI Health. I'm Mario Tonoguzi, managing editor of Canada's Entrepreneur.
[21:03] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today.