Doctors and DAOs... 🩺💻

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Happy Monday, folks.

So the fight might be back on again? Maybe?

At this point, I don’t know. I’m still betting on Zuck, Elon’s intense office dumbbell curls and all. At this point, though, I think the real market is around whether it will be live streamed on Threads or X.

All this betting talk has me feeling like Phil Mickelson… Let’s talk startups.

I can’t go and perform open heart surgery on a patient in my local hospital.

This is partly because I am not a doctor. It’s partly because I get shocked more than if I had been dumped into a pit of electric eels whenever I play Operation. And it’s partly because the medical industry is notoriously terrible about its strict and obnoxiously inefficient administrative processes. Mostly the last one.

Regardless, the medical industry is notoriously bureaucratic and inefficient, and communication and documentation is often complicated by rules and systems which encourage high degrees of centralized control. It wastes time and money that could be spent saving lives, or at least fixing patients’ noses.

Doctors are not even able to carry around their own credentials, meaning that any time they want to move jobs or prove they’re more qualified than the guy who camps out at Starbucks watching Grey’s Anatomy everyday, they’re required to rely on outsourced credentialing, a 3-6 month process which costs our healthcare system an average of $3K per physician, per credentialing event – amounting to an annual spend of over $5B. That seems like a lot.

HPEC is building the future of the medical information industry, proving to even the least techno-savvy that Blockchain technology has actual value. That’s broad, I know. But that’s literally the scope of what this “startup” is doing.

I throw that in quotes because HPEC (Humanitarian Physicians Empowerment Community) is actually structured as a DAO. For the less degenerate of you, the acronym stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, an online community governed by token holders which grant voting rights.

Think the first form of democracy in Ancient Athens, but instead of a bunch of togas debating in the Agora, it’s a bunch of anime pfps sending “wen profit?” on Discord.

The company was created by doctors, for doctors, and is entirely owned by doctors, only raising capital through a $1 million private token sale of its yet-to-be-traded token and a nearly $250K crowdfunding campaign. Its total valuation is up to an estimated $21.5M.

The DAO was formed to move medical information on-chain, empowering doctors to own their credentials, build communities, and overcome administrative burdens to deliver the best care to their patients.

Right now, American doctors can sign up with a wallet when they provide their email, password, identifying number, and government ID to be verified. Doctors are then provided online digital credentials which they can carry wherever they go, meaning they can answer the Caduceus call in any nearby facility, pretty much enabling Uber for people who can’t write legibly.

Eventually, this could open up the potential of a global network of opportunities for work and talent.

The platform also includes a network of other practicing doctors, where members can network, vote on proposals and regulations, and complain about the change from Coke to off-brand in the hospital lounge.

Platform messaging is private and secure, meaning that doctors are able to hit each other up for advice, share [redacted] patient info to collab on cases, and ask each other the optimal time to send out their newsletter to maximize open rate. At least I think that’s what they would talk about.

While this isn’t necessarily some innovative feature on its own (LinkedIn???), it opens up the possibility of on-chain reputation, almost a real life system of karma which can be used to flag the doctors who tried to “bandaid and some ibuprofen” a compound fracture.

Eventually, patient records could be moved on-chain, making they’re tamper-proof, secure, and easily transferable to whoever the patient chooses to share them with. This could drastically improve industry efficiency, cutting down on waiting room times so much that physical Nat Geo magazines might go out of business.

Doctor-patient communication is also worse than trying to coordinate a hometown friend get together over Thanksgiving. In the future, doctors will be able to send messages securely and conveniently over the platform. This is a cool feature, but me being the eternal skeptic I am, I can only imagine how many “u up?” messages from the family doc are going to end marriages.

Though it seems like much of the potential is still yet-to-be-achieved, the DAO, founded in 2019 by blockchain and physician autonomy enthusiast Dr. Leah Houston, has seen some traction, scaling to more than 1000 US doctors with its MVP.

The DAO is still pre-revenue, and efficient monetization will be arguably just as challenging as getting a bunch of doctors to join a “DAO”. They’re considering charging for verification, possibly even through the issuing educational institutions themselves. They even have two pilots with approved academic residency programs

There are also opportunities to charge employers to post job opportunities, and though it would be completely optional, they could allow members to sell access to their data. Ngl, I’d give up my age and location for some Robux.

The global blockchain in healthcare market size was valued at $1.97 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 68.4% (so close) from 2023 to 2030 to $126.02 billion by 2030. Much of that is related to the drug discovery and supply chain management sectors of the industry, but credentialing represents a massive opportunity as well.

Hence, it’s no shocker that other companies are trying to create some CryptoDoc NFTs, too:

• MediLedger uses blockchain technology to track the movement of drugs from the manufacturer to the patient, ensuring that drugs are authentic and not Tic Tacs

• Blockchain Medicine allows researchers to share data securely and efficiently, and to track the progress of clinical trials in real time, pretty much open sourcing data flows

• ProCredEx makes it easier for medical staff to curate and share their credentials for telemedicine, contract, or temporary jobs

Given the network benefits, this might be a winner-takes-all market. Plus, there are certainly other significant risks that HPEC faces:

• The healthcare industry is heavily regulated. Well-intentioned, but HPEC will pretty much need to build the Lego Millennium Falcon with no instructions to comply with a variety of regulations across countries

• The HPEC platform will need to be adopted by a large number of physicians and patients in order to be sustainable, and these people might be smart enough to cut some little wires in your brain, but most of them still type with their pointer fingers.

• There are a number of technical challenges that HPEC will need to overcome, such as decentralizing onboarding verification and on-chain security

• While DAOs are a super fascinating organizational structure, a problem that many governance protocols and projects have run into is that of monetization, which, for a business, is prolly a little important.

Despite these very real, very imposing risks, the innovative approach to this wildly inefficient space and the strong founder-market fit of the team give HPEC the potential to reshape the medical information industry.

Just wait. Mayo Clinic is about to rebrand as Satoshi General.

HPEC, a DAO, is transforming the medical industry by enabling doctors to control their credentials and overcome administrative hurdles. By moving information on-chain, it offers seamless identity verification and secure networking opportunities. Despite challenges, HPEC's unique approach and strong team position it as a promising innovation in healthcare.

So what do you guys think? Is HPEC gmi?

Joe Says to Tell Xi, That If He’s Got Beef, That He’s a Vegetarian and He’s Not Scared of Him

Joe Biden wants all the smoke.

Or, he doesn’t want China to have all of the semiconductors, AI, and quantum computers.

This past week, the White House announced a new round of controls on investments in the holy trinity of tech from US investors in an attempt to hamper Chinese military capabilities.

This means that American PE and VC investors aren’t allowed to invest in the three technologies which have been deemed threatening to US military superiority. They’re also widely thought to be the tech that will provide the foundation for the next 100 years of tech innovation.

Though the currency restriction hurts (the world does love its money greens), the bigger underlying motive was the relationship and knowledge capital that often accompany investments, including investors connecting their new portcos with their network of brainy bros. While everything you touch might be Made in China, it likely wasn’t invented there.

Though the rules might not be specifically focused on hampering China’s economy, they certainly won’t help, and the Beast of the East is still feeling the heat.

While Jerome and the boys are trying to #MakeEggsAffordable again, Xi is facing the opposite problem, practically begging people to pay for stuff as the country’s slowing economic growth and rising youth unemployment problem is causing a bad case of deflation.

This is just the latest in the US-China rivalry, and Biden says that you can tell Xi, that if he’s got beef, Joe’s a vegetarian and he’s not freakin’ scared of him.

SoftBank Realizes Investing is Hard Work

It might be called SoftBank, but the company is making it seems like investing is a hard business.

To say that the Japanese holding company and venture investor has massive holdings would be as big of an understatement as saying Jersey likes Wawa, though I don’t even think Snookie will be touching that pizza.

Last week, SoftBank posted a second consecutive quarterly loss, though results were mixed across its various funds. The company’s popular Vision Fund arm actually saw a profit, its first in 5 quarters.

More importantly, after slowing investments because of this recent bad performance, the company is dusting off the Robinhood app to start getting brazy again, saying it will be applying a balance between gas and brakes. I don’t know how the Toyotas work over there, but here we call that not moving.

In a final note of confirmed group think, the firm expressed particular interest in the potential of AI.

I get it’s promising, but don’t you guys think we might be nearing the top? Just spitballing here. Maybe Pokémon Sleep on it.

I literally had ChatGPT help me put together a web scraper that saves me ~10 hours per week on outreach emails. My goal is to automate my life to the point where I can clap twice and send you this email. How do I stay up to date with all things Terminator? I read WhatAi Newsletter:

If you’ve read this far, I like to think that you found this valuable. If that’s the case, I have a teeny tiny favor to ask. Can you share this with one friend? I get the growth I need to tell myself I’m not writing into the abyss, your friend gets a knowledge shot every Monday, and you get to become the smart, sophisticated member of the friend group who is known for reading educational content. It’s a win-win-win.

Always looking for feedback. If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and give me a quick review so I can tailor The Startup Breakdown to what you guys like :)

Cheers to another day,

Trey