Venture Everywhere Podcast: Julie Kennedy with Scott Hartley
Julie Kennedy, Co-Founder and CEO of RubyWell chats with Scott Hartley, Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures.
In episode 56 of Venture Everywhere is hosted by Scott Harley, Managing Partner of Everywhere VC, chats with Julie Kennedy, co-founder and CEO of RubyWell, a digital healthcare platform dedicated to assisting unpaid family caregivers. Julie shares insights how RubyWell supports caregivers, particularly those in the "missing middle," in managing the financial challenges of caring for loved ones on Medicare. Julie also discusses RubyWell’s aim to empower caregivers and their families by offering resources that improve access to care and the logistical burdens of long-term caregiving.
In this episode, you will hear:
RubyWell's solution involves training family members to become certified home health aides.
Policy and regulatory insights that guide RubyWell's business model.
Building a tech stack to assist providers with workflow and reimbursement challenges.
Expanding beyond Medicare Part B to influence broader care models.
Improving system efficiency to reduce costly emergencies with proactive in-home care.
Fostering a supportive community for caregivers through technology and shared experiences.
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Scott: Hi, everybody. I'm Scott Hartley. I’m co-founder and managing partner of Everywhere Ventures. We are a founder community of 500 founders and operators investing around the globe. I'm super excited to be here today with Julie Kennedy.
00:00:46 Scott: Julie is the co-founder and CEO of RubyWell. Julie has an incredibly extensive background spanning health and financial markets and studying prior to that at both Georgetown and Harvard, learning the ins and outs of the policy world.
00:01:02 Scott: Julie, the combination of your background and what you're now building at RubyWell really goes hand in glove. And I'm super excited to have you here today with us.
00:01:10 Julie: Thanks, Scott. Yeah, I'm really thrilled to be here to talk to you. I know how much you care about health care personally, and especially the combination of health care and financial wellness, which is really where RubyWell is playing and what we're most focused on.
00:01:22 Scott: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about RubyWell from a high level, zeroing in on what's the market opportunity and what's the space that you guys are going after?
00:01:30 Julie: Yeah, so RubyWell has been interested since our founding in the financial journey of the unpaid family caregiver. And so when we talk about the financial journey, this includes everything from out of pocket costs, which we know can be as much as seven to ten thousand dollars a year for someone caring for an adult over the age of 65.
00:01:48 Julie: But we really have zeroed in on the population that's caring for a loved one on Medicare. So this is really solidly middle class population. This is what’s commonly called the “missing middle.” They're not eligible for Medicaid benefits, don't have sufficient resources to self-fund.
00:02:06 Julie: And you have an older adult who is essentially, has a lifespan that has exceeded their health span. So you've got a lot of chronic illness and a real need for ongoing, in some cases, 24/7 care. And a family member steps in to provide that care.
00:02:21 Scott: Yeah, and so I think for people to zoom out and just understand the landscape here, we're talking about as you age, if you fall below a certain threshold of income, you're eligible for Medicaid. If you don't, you're eligible for Medicare.
00:02:35 Scott: Medicare is provided by CMS. And then people have all these various complex choices around how to receive those benefits. I have to say, having delved and waded through it for a decade plus now as a health investor, it's difficult to understand which way is up to be honest.
00:02:53 Julie: You make an important point. The first thing is, is that when anyone in the United States turns 65, they essentially age in and are eligible for Medicare.
00:03:03 Julie: And if you're low income, then there becomes this very delicate dance between the Medicaid infrastructure and Medicare as a health provider. And that's where you end up with this community of people who are called dual eligibles. And so they qualify for a lot of the Medicaid lower income benefits.
00:03:23 Julie: In many cases, their health care is actually covered by Medicare, but in the context almost exclusively of a Medicare Advantage plan that interfaces with the Medicaid population. And so that population really is eligible for different and more benefits.
00:03:42 Julie: There's all kinds of complexities associated with Medicare such that if you don't sign up when you're 65, you can be penalized for life, all of this crazy stuff. And we're really focused on actually from a beneficiary perspective.
00:03:56 Julie: The older adult perspective, this is someone who's solidly on Medicare. They could be on original Medicare, which means that it's fee-for-service paid for by CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid or the government.
00:04:09 Julie: And the other one, the other option for anyone on Medicare is a privatized Medicare Advantage plan, which is essentially a managed Medicare choice. It's like operating within an HMO or a PPO. And so rather than fee-for-service, you're operating within your network.
00:04:26 Julie: From a home health perspective, generally, while the Medicare benefits that exist under Part A and Part B are required to be fully represented in Medicare Advantage plans, frequently accessing things like home health can actually be easier. And the amount of time that's allocated can be more robust under original Medicare, under a fee-for-service environment.
00:04:53 Julie: And the Medicare Advantage plans to their credit are really scrambling to find a way to address this rapidly growing population that requires home health. But in general, you'll find that the coverage is more robust under original Medicare right now. But either way, both of these populations, this middle class is who RubyWell is focused on.
00:05:12 Scott: Yeah, so we're talking about a population here that's steadily aging. We're talking about a system that is a Rube Goldberg machine that's been cobbled together with crazy contraptions and ins and outs and exceptions to this and exceptions to that.
00:05:28 Scott: But from a high level, we've got Part A of Medicare, which refers to hospital, inpatient hospital services. Part B is more like preventative medicine and outpatient home services. Part C is Medicare Advantage, where you opt into having a dedicated specific provider that you go to systematically over and over. And Part D refers to the drugs and prescription drug space.
00:05:53 Scott: And so you guys are really zeroed in mostly on, if I understand correctly, the Part B portion, where if somebody is aging and they have a need for in-home care and this could go on for many months or many years into hospice or into whatever that person needs, there's a benefit embedded there that says, “If you have home care, that home care is reimbursable.”
00:06:17 Scott: And so you guys are unlocking and helping educate both recipients of care to say, hey, actually, when your sister takes care of your dad at home and he's getting older, that's a reimbursable benefit that he can receive money for from the government for receiving that care in his home.
00:06:35 Scott: And vice versa, your sister can actually become eligible as a home care provider to be reimbursed for her services. That's kind of the high level of where RubyWell is really zeroing in within this landscape.
00:06:47 Julie: There's a couple of unlocks here that we've been targeting. Just to zoom back out, as you mentioned earlier. This is a huge population. Everybody knows the stats that 11,000 people are aging into Medicare daily, that enrollment in Medicare is going to increase by 50 percent between now and 2030, which is not six years away, five years away.
00:07:06 Julie: And it's going to be more than 80 million people who are on Medicare at that time. And within Medicare Part B, there is a home health benefit. People are really familiar with the Part A home health benefit, which is a post hospitalization.
00:07:21 Julie: You can get up to 90 days of primarily skilled services in-home. But there is actually a continuing care benefit for people who meet criteria. And RubyWell has spent a lot of time building data models and data analytics using CMS data and mapping that data across the country.
00:07:40 Julie: And we very conservatively predict that about 16 percent of the existing Medicare population, which is about 11 million people, are eligible for these continuing care benefits. And about one to two million people are currently receiving them.
00:07:57 Julie: So there's a lot of opportunity here for people within existing law, within existing regulations, with no need for additional funding to access home health in a way that would allow them to stay at home and age within the context of support, both skilled and unskilled occurring at home.
00:08:18 Julie: Now, there are specific criteria associated with the Part B home health benefit. One is you could be rolling off Part A. And the trajectory that's expected by the home health industry is that after 90 days you're discharged, whether you're ready to go or not.
00:08:34 Julie: And in some cases, if you're not ready and you still meet criteria for ongoing home health, it's essentially continuing the existing benefit that is no longer paid for by the Part A trust fund under Medicare, it's now paid for by the Part B trust fund under Medicare.
00:08:51 Julie: But there are certain criteria and documentation that needs to go along with that. But for our population, what we're mostly seeing are what you call community referrals. So these are people just living out in the community who are sick, who need benefits and actually don't even know that they're eligible for benefits or that they could be getting help.
00:09:11 Julie: And so specifically for Part B, this is chronically ill. Someone could have recently suffered a fall or have an infection. And the way we think about this problem, when you ask why are there so many people out there who are not getting this benefit? And there are a couple of reasons.
00:09:29 Julie: There's some really complex policy and billing reasons. But Medicare lost a lawsuit in 2013, a long time ago now, called Jimmo v. Sebelius, that requires them to pay for ongoing home health for someone, even if they are not improving, just to maintain their status or to keep them out of an institution. But for reimbursement reasons and other reasons, but also another big blocker is there's just not enough home health workers.
00:10:00 Julie: And so, again, our unlock is, okay, we know there's 11 million people out there eligible for this benefit and there are not enough health workers to support them. And they've got family members who've left their jobs. Forty percent of the workforce is caring for somebody over 40 hours a week is leaving their job to do so.
00:10:19 Julie: Why don't we get them certified as home health workers? And why don't we transform them from a family member into a health worker? And then they can be hired by the provider, in fact, to deliver this benefit and be compensated for the delivery of the benefit, accompanied with the skilled services that their loved one requires.
00:10:39 Scott: It's so fascinating just looking at the regulatory environment and looking deep into these details within part, you're talking about Part A, where you leave a hospital, you have 90 days to get better. Of course, 90 days doesn't always do it. And you got to transition from that Part A reimbursement to the Part B reimbursement.
00:10:58 Scott: But needing somebody like RubyWell to help that patient navigate that journey, the reimbursement journey to self-advocate for, hey, I know that I'm post 90 days, but I still have this issue and I need ongoing services. The system is so complex and it's so wrought with traps to fail and traps to not be reimbursed and traps to not receive the care that you need.
00:11:21 Scott: In reference to that 2013 lawsuit, thank God they lost in the sense that you have to continue to receive care.
00:11:28 Julie: That wasn't even the first lawsuit. They'd lost previous lawsuits before that. But the interesting thing also about what you say is it's not just the consumer. Our customer is actually the provider. And the fascinating part about this is that the providers struggle with appropriate documentation and workflows in order to be reimbursed and have their claims paid.
00:11:54 Julie: And so there's a disincentive for them to administer the benefit because they're worried about clawbacks or they're worried about claim denials. This really is an opportunity for a rules based system to be harmonized using technology to support creating a tech stack that supports our customer and actually the provider and being able to deliver the benefit because there's huge amounts of disinformation on both sides, on the consumer beneficiary side and on the provider's side.
00:12:26 Scott: Absolutely. And as you talk about, part of the complexity of the system is the incentives and the misalignment of incentives that you talk about. Is CMS incentivized to explain all of the potential ways that they could pay more money for services that are provided? In some sense, the ultimate goal is to provide ongoing care for the American aging population.
00:12:46 Scott: On the other hand, obviously they have limited resources. Within those trusts probably don't go out of their way to explain some of these benefits. And to your point, it's really the providers oftentimes who are caught in the middle where they're providing these services, then they're providing the billing codes to get reimbursement.
00:13:03 Scott: And there's maybe a mismatch or there's a deemed, oh, that wasn't necessary. Therefore, we're not going to reimburse you for that service that you already provided. You already had this sunk cost of providing this care. And so where you guys are sitting is in this middle point.
00:13:17 Scott: To your point, it's amazing that it's terrible, but there are 10 million people roughly who are eligible but not receiving the home health care that they deserve. And then this secondary supply side of the equation, which is you've got, opportunity cost of people leaving work to care for a family member or a loved one.
00:13:36 Scott: The 40 hours a week that that takes to provide that service obviously takes away from the ability to work any other job. And so they need to be able to be compensated for that time. And RubyWell, transitioning them from just a family member to an actual health care provider with all the bells and whistles and all the proof that they are educated in that way and they have the requisite trainings to be reimbursed.
00:13:58 Scott: And that you guys are playing right in this ecosystem. But my big question is, how did you discover this crazy iceberg sitting in the middle of Part B of the Medicare landscape? It seems like many others would have seen this before. How did you guys happen upon this market opportunity?
00:14:13 Julie: So two quick things. And let me just quickly say also, before I answer that question, our goal at RubyWell is not to break Medicare by having 10 million people all of a sudden be added to the payroll. It's really important to state that. And it's really important to understand that the technology that we're building is actually entirely built on protecting Medicare and following their rules.
00:14:36 Julie: There is an enormous amount of research done by CMS, let alone the additional research we've done that shows that, in fact, by bringing on these family members as the care delivery, placing the family member in the role of a home health worker at the center of the care system can actually reduce system utilization in some cases by up to 40 percent.
00:15:01 Julie: So what we're talking about, one example of that is if you are able to pay a family member two thousand dollars a month to take care of their loved one, and one overnight stay in the emergency room is a minimum of five thousand dollars. And you look at that at scale, we are actually intending to reduce Medicare spending by billions of dollars, not increase it. And so that dynamic is really important.
00:15:28 Julie: So my background actually is on the founding team of a previous company that works in the Medicare space and got to know, I've read Medicare For Dummies many times, let alone the actual regulations of Medicare. But there are a couple of big insights.
00:15:45 Julie: One was actually reading some of the circulars that this shows you how I spend my time that Medicare is putting out. And they have actually been publishing to both Medicare Advantage plans and to the MACs, the Medicare Administrative Corporations, who process the fee-for-service bills, claims that they are required to be providing home health benefits and they're not doing it and they better get doing it. And CMS has been putting out this documentation.
00:16:15 Julie: And then the other area where I've done a lot of reading, which honestly, I can't give these guys enough props, is the Medicare Advocacy group. They're a nonprofit organization based in Connecticut, and they have done a huge amount of research and writing about the lost opportunity for home health as part of Medicare.
00:16:34 Julie: I have been a caregiver myself. I understand the burden of being a caregiver. And when we looked at the landscape, there's a lot of startup activity on the Medicaid side, and Medicaid dollars are generally considered easier to access. But I really wanted to think, where can we potentially change the system?
00:16:56 Julie: And so it's understanding the landscape, looking at the landscape, understanding the granular policy environment such that you can be like, wait, what is that? And scratch a little bit more and see whether there's an opportunity to build.
00:17:12 Scott: Yeah, as we were chatting earlier in our journey, investing in RubyWell and us comparing notes on having a bit of background in policy in Washington, and then also on technology and venture, one of the biggest unlocks for me in seeing market opportunities and companies that really can scale quickly are finding these elements of regulatory change or regulatory misunderstanding.
00:17:34 Scott: The one that comes to mind from 10 years back was the KeepTruckin team, the Motive team now, as they're now called, realizing that there were these tailwinds behind electronic logging devices for truck drivers who are keeping paper logbooks, obviously fudging when they were driving, when they were sleeping, how much Red Bull they were drinking to drive all night.
00:17:53 Scott: Obviously, there's a safety hazard associated with a person on the road for 15 hours in a row. So this regulatory backdrop of engine logging devices, electronic logging devices becoming mandatory, and KeepTruckin really skated into that by creating iOS and the Android app and then building this whole business around that regulatory change.
00:18:12 Scott: And similarly, you've identified this pinpoint within Part B where there are a number of different incentives across the board, where you talk about CMS even creating these circulars to popularize this missing benefit because probably from a preventative care standpoint, like you said, it keeps them from paying $5,000 when somebody ends up in the ER. They'd rather pay the 15, 20 bucks an hour to a home health worker.
00:18:37 Scott: And then the other thing that we talked about, which is so interesting, is the burden that this places on families and the fact that if one of your siblings or somebody who is caretaking for a loved one can be compensated, even within a family that mollifies or helps those family dynamics where if one person is taking charge and doing all the work and somebody else has to keep their job.
00:18:59 Scott: All of these things, if somebody can be compensated and become a home health worker under the auspices of RubyWell, that really helps even just the internal dynamics of families as they're going through these really pivotal life changes.
00:19:11 Julie: Yeah, without a doubt. And just to provide a little bit more context, if you think about the things that we know about family caregivers and are part of the national dialogue, which are the emotional, the physical, the logistical challenges that family caregivers face and then the dynamics within families that can be so difficult.
00:19:28 Julie: But the financial impact cannot be overstated. Spending $7,000 out of pocket for providing care is a stat that everybody knows. But the 40 percent having to leave their jobs when you're caring for somebody almost full time, 65 percent of that 40 percent is women in communities of color. That number is much higher.
00:19:47 Julie: So this is a burden that is really placed on women. And for the people who are leaving their jobs, they're losing over $140,000 in wages over a lifetime and $130,000 in Social Security benefits, plus any 401(k) contributions and anything else. And many are using their own retirement benefits, kids’ college funds for sandwich generation.
00:20:11 Julie: And so the financial complexity in terms of creating generations of financial fragility cannot be overstated. If you are taking a child's college fund to pay for an older adult's care, you're actually diminishing the financial future for three generations of people. And when we look at this problem, this is not about asking the government to come in and solve this problem. This is asking, simply, that people be compensated for the enormous value that they're contributing to the economy already for the work that they're already doing.
00:20:48 Scott: Yeah, it's an interesting point that hollowing out of things get paid for, right? But how, they get paid for? Where does it actually eat away? Where is it eroding within the system, that hollowing out of a child's college fund impacting intergenerational transfer of future opportunity for, current crisis when there's money sitting at CMS on the side meant with earmarked benefits for this particular thing?
00:21:12 Scott: Thank you for what you guys are doing in helping both provide more care to people in need, but also for this educational piece that's enabling people to actually earn what they should be earning to provide that care. As you think about the next five, 10 years of building this business, entrepreneurs having jobs and careers and callings. For you, this is really a calling.
00:21:32 Scott: It seems like this is not a job or a career. This is a choice to be building a platform that for the rest of your life is something that has a legacy associated with it. So talk a little bit about that vision, what you hope to build with RubyWell.
00:21:47 Julie: Yeah, for those who know me, including you guys, I was born and raised in Canada, and I've seen both of my grandmothers and my brothers, mother-in-law and other people age in place and how they've been able to do that.
00:21:58 Julie: And when we look at care models around the world and other countries, you frequently see a community approach to care, a very sophisticated remote patient monitoring strategy, ways that allow both the family member to remain the center of the care team, but while still being supported by a system that doesn't place everything on the shoulders of the family member.
00:22:20 Julie: And I think that RubyWell is, we are starting with Part B, but the intention is that this is our wedge into the market and that there is actually an opportunity to build technology and communities to really allow for a seamless family care experience that can really benefit Medicare.
00:22:42 Julie: And so when we're thinking about future models, even within the context of Medicare Advantage models, there's a lot of opportunity to do a better job aligning incentives and to really use technology to create that incentive alignment. But there's a real opportunity for RubyWell to build tools, to build community. And I don't think community can be under stressed.
00:23:05 Julie: We actually have a huge Facebook group for family caregivers. There's a lot of ways that family caregivers and health workers can support each other and community to deliver a better experience. And so RubyWell is really thinking about this wraparound experience, again, while starting with this wedge into the market for plan B.
00:23:26 Scott: One interesting thing that I learned when you explained this to me, that… so if you follow the dollars, it's the beneficiary that has the acute need for home care. They're eligible under Medicare. So Medicare provides capital to that beneficiary.
00:23:43 Scott: And then really what RubyWell is doing is helping that beneficiary receive care from maybe a family member and then training that family member so that they have the sufficient training and licenses and whatnot to receive part of the benefit payment that goes from Medicare to beneficiary of the care to the home care provider. Is that right? How the money flows?
00:24:03 Julie: You raise a really good point. Yeah, the dollars are centered around the Medicare beneficiary. And the interesting thing about this benefit is it doesn't have to be a family member delivering this benefit.
00:24:13 Julie: The benefit is 35 hours a week of a combination of skilled and unskilled care. And it needs to be at least one hour of skilled care per month, per episode. Unskilled is what they're calling a home health aide. A home health aide is actually not unskilled. I would call that actually semi-skilled.
00:24:31 Julie: And so what we are essentially doing is looking at the market. This unskilled or semi-skilled labor doesn't exist. The turnover for home health aides is 100 percent in the industry right now. And so thinking about it from that context, it is that market gap where the family member can step in and become a certified home health aide.
00:24:53 Julie: And what's interesting about that is they can not only then deliver care to their loved one through their provider, but they can also continue to operate with the certification in this space and continue to upscale. And if they've had to leave their jobs, this is actually an opportunity from a future of work perspective to think about continuing to earn social security, earn a salary, continue to at least reduce the amount of wealth loss that you may have, had you just completely left the workforce.
00:25:22 Julie: But it is very much, as you say, in combination with the person they're caring for meeting criteria for this benefit. And there is a seminal relationship between those two pieces.
00:25:34 Scott: And as you guys think about, go to market, obviously, it's not going after individual home beneficiaries. It's going through providers or working with providers that are, these under Part C Medicare Advantage providers of services that need to better understand this benefit or where they could be getting reimbursement from CMS.
00:25:55 Scott: But there may be not leaving dollars on the table for some preventative care that could be offered. Is that correct in how you guys are thinking of sequencing or going to market?
00:26:05 Julie: So our go to market has actually been fee-for-service to start with. We see an enormous demand for Medicare Advantage, actually, again, from the providers who are really frustrated by the reimbursement and the hours allocated through Medicare Advantage.
00:26:18 Julie: And so we've actually already begun conversations with payers for them to better understand how to actually deliver this benefit that they're required by law to deliver. Our initial go to market has actually been fee-for-service. And so working with home health agencies and health systems who are providing these services specifically to traditional Medicare Advantage patients right now.
00:26:43 Julie: But again, as I mentioned, we've already begun to look at the workflows that would be associated with delivering within the context of Medicare Advantage and providers working within that environment to them. That's another differentiator.
00:26:56 Julie: Again, if you're looking at what's going on in the market, there's a lot of dual eligibility activity in Medicare Advantage plans. And we've been more centrally focused on fee-for-service and then moving into the MA world.
00:27:08 Scott: Makes sense. It's kind of two ships passing in the night in D.C. over the last couple of weeks as you were there last week before I was there for the Milken Health Care Conference.
00:27:16 Scott: But as you go to an event like that and you hear all the pundits on stage talking about Medicare and this whole ecosystem, what is one idea that experts often say and state in public that gets you riled up inside, makes your blood boil and says, “No, I disagree with that.” Because part of what we really love seeing in founders is someone who can have a contrarian stance in the world and be right and the timing is right.
00:27:39 Scott: It's not just to be contrarian for the sake of being dogmatic, but being contrarian because you actually fundamentally disagree and you have data to back it up and you're staking your company and your future on this belief. And you're right. So what is one of those things that you fervently believe and why you're building RubyWell?
00:27:56 Julie: The thing that just makes me nuts and you see on the pages of The New York Times, you see on CNN, you see repeatedly stated is Medicare does not provide long term benefits. Now, sure, Medicare is not a long term care insurance policy. Nobody said it was, but Medicare does provide long term home health benefits for those who are medically eligible.
00:28:21 Julie: And this is something that is fundamentally misstated, repeatedly misunderstood, and in fact, means that you've got 10 million Americans who are not receiving services. And it really did my heart good after having this debate. I got an opportunity to talk to Meena Seshamani and then also Gretchen Jacobson from the Commonwealth Fund.
00:28:46 Julie: And people are like Medicare gurus and talk about what we're doing. And they really watching their eyes light up and saying, “You guys get it. This is the direction the market is going.”
00:28:58 Julie: But it is incredibly frustrating. You can walk into half the agencies in the country and they will tell you, “No, this isn't a thing.” And I will pull up Medicare regulations and be like, “It actually is a thing. Let's go.” So that's been fun. It's also a little bit when you're pushing the envelope, it can sometimes cause for a few…
00:29:20 Scott: You can ruffle some feathers.
00:29:23 Julie: Yeah.
00:29:23 Scott: Yeah. So if you have a superpower, what would you say other than reading Medicare Circulars on a Saturday night, what's a big superpower that you think you bring to the table?
00:29:33 Julie: So I'm what is colloquially called a extroverted introvert. I do much better one-on-one than I do publicly, though I've learned, definitely in my job to be public facing. But as a component of that, one of the things that I’m really committed to is listening. And from a team perspective, I make it a real point to listen and hear what my team has to say.
00:29:58 Julie: That's true of our customers. It's true of our investors. And that when you're trying to create change from within in, a very conservative environment, the ability to listen very carefully to where the fears are and then to be able to address those fears in a transparent and clear way has been critical to our ability to unlock our early customers, rather than just assuming that we have the answer and that we're pushing through what is a changing environment.
00:30:31 Scott: Yeah, it's funny. You, Jenny, and I are probably all fall into that bucket of extroverted introvert. We'll get to your book recommendations, but one of my book recommendations might be Quiet by Susan Cain, which is a book about introverts. And the fascinating thing in there, of just shyness and introversion and extroversion are not the same thing.
00:30:53 Scott: And so you could have Barbra Streisand who's an extreme extrovert, but deeply shy and fearful on stage. And then Bill Gates who's a total introvert, but can walk on stage in front of 10,000 people and not care at all. And so this really interesting dynamic of we all fall into that bucket, but it's great to hear that ability to listen absolutely in how you can understand customer needs and then build a product for that subset of people.
00:31:17 Julie: Yeah, I've also learned where I get my energy from, so the quiet times.
00:31:22 Scott: Yeah. If you have any advice to other entrepreneurs out there about to embark on their journey with Trustycare and a number of other experiences, what's one bit of advice you might give for an aspiring entrepreneur?
00:31:34 Julie: My background in entrepreneurship right from the beginning of my career where I started a nonprofit organization called initially DC SCORES and we grew it to a national organization called America SCORES, which is still going on, is I've always done what I know and/or have understood the importance of learning from particularly a social and a policy perspective, the details of something.
00:31:58 Julie: The stars that we look at, the big entrepreneurs in the space have had insights that they've been able to exploit and build on. And knowing and learning is just such an important component of that. And from my perspective, specifically within the markets I've played in, really knowing the policy as well, or better than the experts as we've already talked about.
00:32:21 Julie: But from a techs perspective, understanding what exists in the market, what the gaps are, but then again, understanding that within these laggard industries, which is where I'm building, where there are opportunities to create efficiencies, but where the users in the system are super conservative, that you can build the best tech stack in the world, but you have to bring the customer along with you. And so sometimes that is maybe building in a different way that you would have anticipated in order to bring that customer along with you.
00:32:51 Scott: That's great advice. Well, jumping into the lightning round, speed round, final few minutes of our podcast, what book are you currently reading or podcast are you currently consuming?
00:33:03 Julie: So I have three going right now. Zero to One from Peter Thiel, which has been around forever. And Politics Aside, for our go-to-market, has been a critically important, actually provided some insights for me. But from an industry perspective, there's this incredible book that I'm reading right now called The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life by M.T. Connolly. Of course, it's relevant to me, but it's relevant to all of us.
00:33:33 Julie: And it is just such a profound read for us to think about as we age ourselves, not just about our families, but ourselves as well. And then again, another super old school, which I've just started as a podcast called StartUp, and I'm only listening to Season one, but it's from 2014, but honestly, it's the best thing I've listened to in a long time.
00:33:53 Scott: Listening to something from 2014 is probably deeply relevant for where we are today.
00:33:57 Julie: Yes. Exactly.
00:33:58 Scott: Cycles just go in circles. So...
00:34:01 Julie: For better or worse, I agree, totally.
00:34:05 Scott: Yeah. Well, so if you could live anywhere outside of New York, where would that be?
00:34:09 Julie: I'm really a country girl. My family is from Montreal. And my last name is Kennedy, but we're Scottish Kennedys. And so I've always said I'd love to go spend a year in the Highlands of Scotland, living out of a shack and hiking every day. But from a business perspective, maybe a little more cliche, but I'd love to live in France and Paris or in Barcelona. Two places where I spend a lot of my time.
00:34:33 Scott: That all sounds quite good. What's your favorite productivity hack? Do you have anything, your go-to?
00:34:40 Julie: Yeah, so I have a tendency to turn off all my notifications in Slack because they make me crazy. And then I go in and I love… because this Remind me about this feature, that is just fantastic because you can't respond to everything. And so I'll put all my reminders in and then I'll go back to them when I have time and work through my reminders. And so I love the Remind me about this in Slack.
00:35:201 Scott: Yeah. I'm also a no notifications person, which is funny because we have a lot of two-factor authentication issues where we're all trying to log into various accounts and it creates a lot of consternation within the team because they can't find me for the 30 seconds before the two-FA number expires. But it's the only way to keep mental sanity in this era of always on notifications. And speaking of that, where can listeners find you if they do want to notify you and get in touch?
00:35:30 Julie: So my email is Julie@RubyWell.com. Very easy. We have offices in Midtown on 56th Street where I am at least three days a week and many times more than three days a week. And then my husband and I also have a house in the Hudson Valley where everyone is always welcome to come and find me.
00:35:49 Scott: One of my favorite places. I may just take you up on that.
00:35:52 Julie: You're welcome anytime.
00:35:54 Scott: Well, thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a pleasure. We're really excited about what you're doing at RubyWell. And we couldn't be happier to be supporters on this journey.
00:36:03 Julie: Thanks, Scott. I'm so thrilled to be working with you and Jenny. I've known Jenny for a long time and it's just been such a pleasure watching what you guys have built at Everywhere, the other entrepreneurs that you support, who I learn from every day. And having you guys as backers to remind me where I am and what I'm doing and providing the amount of support you guys provide is just amazing. So thank you.
00:36:25 Scott: Amazing. Thanks so much.
00:36:27 Julie: Thanks. Take care.
00:36:30 Scott: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first-check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, Everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe and we'll catch you on the next episode.