Ansel Health Founder & CEO Veer Gidwaney Interview Transcript
Clint Betts
Veer, thanks so much for coming on the show. What an honor to have you. You're the founder and CEO of Ansel Health. You're working on a lot of incredible things. Let's start there. Let's start with how you became the founder and CEO of Ansel Health.
Veer Gidwaney
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Clint. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been an entrepreneur for quite some time now since I dropped out of school, and Ansel is my third company. And the problem we're solving was just something that our team here felt was important to solve, and we wanted to devote our energy to it. And our mission here at Ansel is to make sure that health distress doesn't result in a financial burden, and that's the problem we're working on.
Clint Betts
So what keeps you up at night?
Veer Gidwaney
There's a lot that keeps me up at night, figuratively speaking, although I actually sleep quite well, thankfully. I think, as it pertains to our company, the most important thing is just getting the word out there. I mean, I think we've got a product that has demonstrated its ability to help people, and the world of insurance and benefits is complicated. And I think the biggest challenge facing new entrants with good ideas is that the market just does not pay enough attention to it and recognize it for what it is. So that's the biggest challenge we face and what keeps me up at night. When I am up, that's the reason.
Clint Betts
Give me a sense, or give the audience a sense as well, is what we mean by supplemental healthcare on this platform. Let's go a little bit deeper on that, just so people have an understanding of exactly the best way to engage with Ansel Health.
Veer Gidwaney
Yeah, so let's start off by discussing health insurance more broadly. Before you supplement it, let's get to the core of it. Most folks have health insurance through their employer, and it's a big portion of their paycheck that goes towards paying those premiums. And that's even with the fact that most employers are paying over half of the premiums for their employees. And now one of the challenges with health insurance over the last several years is that, because healthcare has gotten more and more expensive, premiums on your health insurance have gone up, while the quality of the health insurance hasn't necessarily increased.
And at the same time, folks have been facing higher and higher deductibles. So before their health insurance kicks in, there's more money they've got to pay out of their own pocket. And typically, families have deductibles as high as $3,000 or $4,000. Now, the challenge with that is that if you have an unforeseen medical event where you need to pay $3,000 or $4,000, a lot of people don't have that money available to them as liquid cash. So what happens is that many people take on medical debt, and in fact, today, as staggering as it is, almost a hundred million Americans have medical debt. So the idea behind supplemental health insurance is to address that challenge. Now you might, wow, it feels like this challenge shouldn't even exist, but it does, and that's our reality. So our product and products like it are intended to help bridge that financial gap that people face.
Clint Betts
So you said something incredible there, like shocking, actually, a hundred million Americans have medical debt. I mean, there's only 300 million people in the country, and probably a hundred million of those are under 18. So this is a huge, huge, huge, huge number of Americans. How does this happen? Give us a sense for the state of healthcare in the United States, and obviously, the way you're trying to fix it is through this, which is incredible, but what are we looking at right now? I thought the Affordable Care Act and all that type of stuff was to fix everything.
Veer Gidwaney
Well, look, healthcare in America is complicated. And I think one thing that stands out versus all other healthcare systems in the world is that the US system is a private healthcare system, whereas every other country has a public healthcare system. And one of the great advantages of a public healthcare system is that there's a lot more cost control. Now, there are pros and cons to any system, but one of the downsides of what we have in the US is that there's a profit incentive that drives up costs, and those costs are being borne by companies and their employees. And unfortunately, at a certain point, those costs get so high that it just gets unaffordable to pay for insurance that truly protects you for every dollar of healthcare expenditure you might have. And because we can't afford those sorts of premiums, we often have high-deductible health plans or health plans that have relatively high deductibles.
And by the way, it's not just your deductible that is an out-of-pocket cost that you might have, but there are other expenses that come with getting sick or injured. If you've got kids, you might need to get them childcare. You may need to get a car service to work. There are other sorts of expenses that just come with living in America today that get accentuated when you're dealing with a health crisis. So it's unfortunate we're in this spot. I don't think there are easy fixes, unfortunately. And at some level, there needs to be legislative involvement to drive the sorts of changes that we fundamentally need. But in the meantime, the question is what can we do as innovators, as entrepreneurs, to bring solutions to the market that help people out.
Clint Betts
So, give us your story of how you became CEO. I know that previously you were the CEO of a company. Let's see, Maxwell Health, an incredible company, which was acquired by Sun Life in 2018. You co-founded and were the CEO of that. What have you learned in this journey about leadership, and what made you sign up for it? Like, Hey, I'm going to do this again.
Veer Gidwaney
Well, I think there are two things that are, in my view, really important to leadership. One is having a mission that's worth solving or a vision that people are motivated to want to solve. I believe that it's really hard to inherently motivate people. They are either motivated about something, and the trick as an entrepreneur is to find people who are already trying to solve our problems. So when we're hiring folks, we're looking for individuals who have been thinking about this issue, who've been working in this space, who inherently have dealt with the challenges that we're trying to solve, and they've been finding a place to be able to devote their energies towards this mission. So that's the first thing. And the second is values. I think that at the end of the day, any organization is just a combination of people, a mission, and a set of values. Being creative, and I think having a common set of values that work for us that are important, how we operate as an organization, are really key. So to me, those are really the big learnings along the way.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. What causes you stress? Give me a sense of how you manage your day-to-day mental health and just overall stress levels.
Veer Gidwaney
I think one, there's something to be said about experience. I'm in my mid-forties now, which was very different from building a company in my thirties or my twenties. So you just learn to not be too high with the highs and not be too low with the lows. I think having that sort of even keel approach to things is really important. I also think having balance is key. What are the outlets that you have that give you a break from work? And for me, it's certainly my family and all their interests that are exciting. We talked a little bit about hockey before the interview started, so that's certainly a release for me. But I think that those are really important things, and trying to stay physically and mentally fit is also really important. Not things that are new to your listeners, but I think it's hard to practice unless you just have some level of discipline around it. I mean, it's easy not to stop working, but it's probably not good for you, the team around you, or the problem you're working on.
Clint Betts
So, give us a sense of what a typical day looks like for you.
Veer Gidwaney
Most of my day, like I think most CEOs are, is making sure that we're focused on the right things, that we're initiating and progressing the right projects. Not just moving every project forward. Some projects shouldn't move forward because they're not the right use of energy. It's making sure that we've got the right people focused on those problems and that we're clearing roadblocks for them. Certainly, making sure that we're thinking ahead of the curve. Every organization today is thinking about how AI and automation can make a big difference.
So my role as a CEO is to make sure that we're thinking about those opportunities as an organization. So my days are scattered between all those sorts of things, whether it's one-on-ones with our team or meeting with customers or partners, but singularly focused on making sure we're driving this mission forward. It's easy to get distracted. I think that there's always another problem you could be solving or a shiny object you could be going after. We've been really disciplined about being very laser-focused on what we're doing and not adding features and capabilities to the product because we can. That's not a good enough reason. So I think that focus is really key.
Clint Betts
When I think of the areas that artificial intelligence is going to disrupt the most, healthcare is right there at the top of the list. I don't know if it's number one, but it's up there in the top. But that's the specifics of the care itself. And what you're talking about is the benefits in the insurance piece, which I think maybe plays a role in there as well. How are you thinking about AI? How are you implementing AI? Are you implementing it in your product at all yet, or has it just been more of the internal automating processes?
Veer Gidwaney
For us, so far, it's been focused internally on how we operate our business as efficiently as possible. I think in the realm of insurance, where the value we give back to a policyholder, known as a loss ratio in insurance talk, is obviously core to what we do, but what's left over is where we have to find profit. And the more efficiently we can run the organization, the more value we can provide back to policyholders. That's a big driver for us. And I think in many ways insurance is a contract and math, and it would seem like there are lots of ways to be able to bring intelligence and automation to that. And I think there certainly are. So that's been the initial focus.
I think there's certainly some externally facing applications, but at the end of the day, the single most important thing a customer does with us is file a claim. And then the single most important thing we do with it is pay it out if it's a payable claim. We've already been able to automate three-quarters of our claims without using artificial intelligence, but just by simply building a product that is simple and getting access to data that allows us to automate that process. So there's always more to be done, but we've been focused internally mostly at this point.
Clint Betts
What is your best advice for success?
Veer Gidwaney
I think it goes back to a question you asked earlier about what it is that motivates me and why I did this. But I think it comes down to mission and values. I think not all problems are necessarily worth solving, and certain problems probably aren't ones that you should solve. So finding something that you're really passionate about that you think you can have an impact on, I think, is first of all really important. And building a team that is equally motivated to focus on that problem, to me, I think, is the two most important things. I think if you can solve that, there are many problems that you'll encounter along the way that you'll be equipped to solve because you have a team that is excited to do it and is here for the right reasons.
Clint Betts
Right. What do you read? What reading recommendations would you have for us?
Veer Gidwaney
I actually read a lot of fiction. So what I'm reading right now is the trial by Franz Kafka. I hadn't read that. I thought it was interesting, metamorphosis.
Clint Betts
Now let's have a whole different conversation.
Veer Gidwaney
Right. Metamorphosis just before that. But a couple of books I really enjoyed. If you enjoy World War II history, read The Winds of War and The War on Remembrance by Herman Wouk. So there are two books on that topic. One's a prequel to the other, and yeah, phenomenal. I do all my reading primarily as audio.
Clint Betts
Like where you're walking or... Yeah, I love that.
Veer Gidwaney
Yeah, walking, mostly driving to be honest, and trying to get mainly my daughter from soccer practice or games back and forth. It's a fair bit of a drive, so I can get a ton of listening in, usually not on one time speed either. It's actually pretty much more natural, I think, at one and a half times speed. And you can get through a lot of books through the course of the year.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. I love that. Yeah, Franz Kafka. Wow, what a writer. That's incredible. How do you find your purpose? What is your purpose? I mean, do you ever struggle with that?
Veer Gidwaney
Not really. And I just try to keep it really simple. I mean, I have really just two things I'm focused on. One is this business, and we've talked about that mission and the purpose behind it. And second is my family, and that's it. I admire folks who can do more, run more than one company, and have varied other interests. I think for me, it's just been really important to stay really focused. Maybe that's good, maybe it's not, I don't know, but it certainly works for me.
Clint Betts
Is there a moment of failure that you look back on now where you're like, man, at the time, that was a total disaster? I felt like I'd failed and maybe never would recover from it, but now you're like, man, I'm glad that happened because it led to X.
Veer Gidwaney
I think out of all experiences, there are lots of learnings. Nothing is ever a total failure or a total success. There are ups and downs with everything. So I think from my perspective, being humble enough to just look back and say, okay, what did we learn from this, I think is really important. So after our last company, we decided shortly thereafter that really good advice from an advisor was to just, hey, sit down with your co-founder and write down what you learned in two or three pages and make it something that you can look back upon. And we did that, and that's been really important for me. Every couple of weeks, I reread that document. It reminds me of lessons learned along the way, and it's something that we actually share with all of our new employees as they onboard here at Ansel.
Clint Betts
What are the values of the company, maybe your own values, that kind of guide your decision-making? You've covered a decent amount of them here, around like, hey, we're trying to fix this enormous problem in the US health care system, but overall, what are your values? What drives the company's values?
Veer Gidwaney
Yeah, we boiled it down to four things that I think are really important for us, and these are not novel. Definitely one to want to learn from others as much as possible. The first is hardworking. I think that any problem worth solving requires hard work, no matter how you cut it. And hard work doesn't always mean long hours, but it sometimes does, and it certainly means working smart, but I think making sure that people know that if you're going to be on this journey, it's going to be hard work, and that's an important value. The second is about being helpful. Obviously, one, our mission as a company is fundamentally helpful to people, but even within the organization, how do you see around corners? How can you help a colleague by making them aware of something that they may not know that you think could help them save time or be more effective?
So that core tenet of being helpful is really important. I think being humble is also really key for us. I think when you approach things from a perspective of being humble, then you're willing to learn, and you're willing to be curious, and you're willing to take a position but be open to it being wrong. And I think that's okay. And I think everyone having that approach to things, I think, is really important. And the final one for us here is to have high standards. I think that there are lots of things working against a new innovation or a young company, but one of them shouldn't be anything outside of having a high standard. So everything that we create, everything that we do, we should be trying to do it the best we can. There'll be mistakes, but we should learn from them and continue to drive to as high a standard as we can. So those are the four values that are most key for us.
Clint Betts
How would your friends describe you, do you think?
Veer Gidwaney
I don't know. I haven't asked. I mean, hopefully those four things would come up. Otherwise, I'd be concerned that-
Clint Betts
I never asked that question in my life. By the way, this is like here, they're like, make sure you're asking this. I was like, oh, that's actually a really great question.
Veer Gidwaney
It is a great question. I mean, I hope it's those four things, and if it's not, then I've got some work to do.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. A couple more questions for you here. How are you feeling about the state of the economy? I mean, we're halfway through the year, a little over halfway through the year now, obviously some chaos or uncertainty in the first half of this year, particularly around tariffs, which I don't know that that touched you too much in your industry, but how are you feeling about it overall? And what are your expectations for the rest of the year from a macroeconomic perspective?
Veer Gidwaney
Before I answer that full question, but just on an assumption you made there that tariffs may not impact us directly, and while that's true, but they indirectly do because we have customers who are dealing with that economic uncertainty, which means that they might have to make cuts in their workforces or provide less benefits to their employees. So it has a direct impact on us. In fact, if you look outside of payroll, the second-largest expense for most organizations is their benefits, of which health insurance is the number one item, and things around that. So I think that there's a broad impact, but putting that aside to answer your question, I think uncertainty is generally a bad thing. I think one thing that's made America so successful is its predictability, not its uncertainty. And I think it's important that we appreciate that. And when there's a lack of clarity, that causes decisions to be delayed. And worse, it might cause the wrong decisions to be made. And that affects, I think, all sorts of companies, especially young ones that have less cushion to work with than larger companies.
Clint Betts
Finally, we end every interview with the same question: At CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Veer Gidwaney
Well, I'll tell you a quick story. So the first company that my brother and I co-founded, we both dropped out of school, and we really had no idea what venture capital really was. And we were living in Edmonton, Alberta, so kind of nowhere near the center of the action in the late nineties. And our approach to raising capital at the time was to call incessantly until someone would call us back. And I remember one investor we called and called and called, and he eventually met us, I think, primarily to just get rid of us. And that worked itself out, and it was the first million dollars we raised. And that individual has continued to be a mentor to me 25 years later. And what's interesting is that I've become a bit of a mentor to his kids, and his kids have become mentors to my kids, which is sort of a remarkable sort of the way the world turns kind of story. And that individual definitely took a chance on me and my co-founder brother, and it had a big impact.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. Veer, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations on everything at Ansel Health and everything you've done. Really an honor to have you. Thank you so much.
Veer Gidwaney
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Clint. Appreciate it.
Edited for readability.