Huma CEO: Dan Vahdat

Did you start doing sales of the product? How did you learn about sales?

I think I never had the ego of being turned down. I don't mind saying hi and someone telling me to go away. So I was pinging and contacting people. No one really wanted to do anything. The first investment I ever got was 2,000 pounds. The follow-on investment or grant was 5,000, and they decided not to give it to us. In my view, it's similar to being a politician because if you have original ideas, you are controversial.

How do you communicate with these folks? You always have to align interests. Some politicians are just smiling and want to be polite, and then there are those politicians that see something.

Everybody is just eluding that you are an exceptional storyteller. How do you advise people to tell the best stories, and how did you learn?

One of the things that really helped me get to that level is sport and activity. You need to be very connected to your own self because a nation that exercises is a nation with hope. The chance to do something for a nation, if we can become this platform that more entrepreneurs can build their companies on top of us, is just the greatest joy.

Before we start with Huma and your history, I've seen you with Macron and Mitsotakis. What's your opinion about politicians, and how did you find those two?

In my view, to be a politician, you cannot have original ideas because if you have original ideas, you are controversial. Controversy doesn't do well with politics and likeness. How do you communicate with these folks? It's a very tough question because politicians are very different. Depending on what kind of positions they have in the government, I often try to invest my time when the politician just started.

If you're toward the end or the middle, by the time you can get anything done, there is not enough time. Ideally, you want politicians who have already been running for one or two rounds. In countries like Greece and France, they have been in power for a few years. If you can combine how they can leave a legacy in our industry, being healthcare, an industry that touches everyone's lives, plus a bit of modernism and a different voice, you can have a huge impact, and they buy into it.

How did you learn this first? Were you thoughtful at the beginning, saying, "I'm going to go for the politicians in their first election," or did you learn this in a nuanced way?

No, I learned it because when you start talking to a bunch of them, you realize if they're toward the middle, they have different priorities versus when they're at the beginning of the round. If they have ambition to get reelected, they have a different way. You always have to align interests. This is the reality of the world. Even when you work with an enterprise customer, you have to align your interests with the goals of the enterprise and the individuals driving it.

We made mistakes, investing time with someone at the end of their round, or we progressed a lot, and then they didn't get reelected. We had to start from scratch.

How did you find Mitsotakis specifically?

I really liked him from the first time I met him, maybe three or four years ago. He was super open to engage. You can tell based on how people share their contact details and interact with you. Some politicians are just smiling and want to be polite, and then there are those who really want to explore. Slowly, you have to build a relationship. I met him at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and we stayed in touch. We managed to connect and do some projects in Greece. I kept him up to date on what we were doing, and this is how we built the relationship.

You're Persian, I'm Greek. Have you ever theorized why Persia was an empire, Greece was an empire, and why they are not today?

I've thought about this a lot. A big part is that people lost their discipline. They fell into the trap of justifying everything and always going back to the idea that we were great, so we deserve to be great today. But if you want to be great today, you have to put in the discipline, work hard, push the boundaries, and suffer. These two things are not complementary. If you had a great history, you cannot rely on that.

You need to say, "We had a great story, but if we want to be great again, we have to work really hard." Both countries lost the mojo of working hard and the ruthlessness of doing whatever it takes. Slowly, things dropped. Both nations, Persia and Greece, lost adopting the new wave of technology. Greece and Iran lost industrialization, which means a 10x to 20x GDP drop per capita. We lost the utilization of new technologies and advanced military.

If you don't have military, you are contained within your limits. We lost resources during that. Now is a tricky time. If certain countries that lost industrialization also lose AI adoption, which is another 10 to 100x GDP per capita increase or loss opportunity, we will be doomed. Certain nations will disappear unless they adopt this technology. In Iran, with AI, there's a huge opportunity because it's easy to adopt.

Every country can make it part of their daily routine. Citizens can reskill themselves. If they are disciplined, hardworking, and want to learn, they can learn fast. In Iran, with 90 million people, they can become superhuman and do stuff. If connected to the world, they can massively increase GDP. Only the young population, 20 to 30 million, if they adopt AI, they can become super relevant in the world of talent, increasing the GDP by $1 trillion. The totality of the country is 400 billion. It's an exciting but scary time.

You're running a big business. You need to build a culture in the organization. Many times I wonder, yes, this is the culture necessary to reach this status. But then maybe in Iran 2,000 years ago, what led to this culture? What was the axiomatic thing that got people into being hardworking and ambitious? If you wanted to reinvent this today, what's the approach? How can you make people believe?

One realization I've had, personally, because I grew up in a small city, village, very basic life, and then slowly went to the capital in Iran, moved to the US, studied there, then the UK, and built a company. I've had a chance to get to know the greatest people in the world and hang out with them. I can say that I've met the greatest people in the world, from CEOs of the biggest companies to governments.

The reality is we are all the same. No one is magically special. Certain people had the discipline, worked hard, leveraged opportunities, and became who they are. Now, you have a country like Iran or Greece that is not where it should be. The first thing that should happen is accepting reality. If you don't accept that you're in a bad place, how do you progress? Put measurable KPIs that you can quantify.

Are we progressing? Are we working harder? Are we producing more? I'm not the biggest fan of GDP, but it's a proxy for the economy. Be cautious with money, be frugal, don't create pseudo jobs, stop corruption. Slowly, savings increase, revenue increases, costs decrease. A nation in debt becomes richer, and money helps invest in infrastructure, technology, compute, industrialization, and that has a compounding effect.

By doing something simple, you start a progressive path. This doesn't take a hundred years. Look at Argentina, from $20 billion in debt to more than $10 billion surplus in a couple of years. Sometimes you don't need to do much, just not mess up. In the past 50 years, Iran made $40 to $120 billion per year from oil and gas. If they parked $25 billion every year and invested in S&P 500, after 50 years, it would be worth $30 trillion, 60% of S&P 500.

Every household in Iran would have $2 million in assets. Now they don't even have $20,000. Sometimes it's better to do nothing. It requires good decision-makers, set the framework, create an environment, and invest in the right things. You can turn countries around. Greece has done that. Albania has done a phenomenal job, now the fastest-growing economy in Europe, growing close to 8% year on year. You can tell by the number of immigrants a country has. People will come back if you get things right.

What's your opinion about the incentive structure for politicians? If elected every five years, does this incentivize short-term thinking?

This is a very good question. Even in a startup, in four or five years, there's only so much you can achieve. True value comes from compounding certain investments. At the beginning, they don't do much. If you invest $25 billion today in S&P 500, next year, maybe it's up $2 billion or down. In the long run, it's guaranteed success. I'm a big believer that people should still vote because you don't want to get stuck with a bad movement for a long time.

It has a negative compounding effect. Four or five years is too short. There should be a new way of elections, selecting someone for 10 years. If they miss certain metrics, you fire them, like CEOs. Elect them, and if they're not performing, you replace them. The world needs reinvention of governance and responsibility. Governments have no accountability. If you mess up a country, there's no accountability.

Resigning shouldn't be a bad thing. If you can't deliver on the promise, you should resign. Longer terms are better. Countries with progressive growth, like UAE, China, Singapore, have longer terms.

It's also about skin in the game for the downside. If they don't suffer from the downside of their actions, it's like a consultant. They don't learn, and the system doesn't learn.

That's correct. There's another problem with election cycles. I don't believe politicians should run countries. Builders should. What is a politician? Someone who waits to be elected every four or eight years. In between, what do they do? Not much. If your only career is being a politician, it's normal to do things that secure your job. But if you're a successful individual, you can try to add value to your country for a few years.

If it doesn't work, you still have a great life and work. The notion of politicians being only politicians creates a self-fulfilling agenda. To protect my job, I won't do things that might impact my popularity.

At the end of the day, a country is like a big company. If you take Cyprus, with 700,000 to 800,000 people, and a government with 200,000 employees, it's too big. If you're a politician, you need to know how to run a big business.

100%. I agree that every country should be looked at like a big company. As a leader of a country, you have to be cautious about justice. In companies, you don't worry about justice. But as a country, you have a captive audience, your citizens. Justice ensures decisions are just, and no one is compromised. That's the part every head of state should complement.

I was doing a podcast with another Persian who dropped out of school. Is dropping out a prerequisite to start a business? You were doing a PhD and dropped out at the last minute, right?

That's correct.

How do you decide to drop out after so many years?

For an international or foreigner, the dynamics are different. If you're not on a student visa, you get kicked out of the country. You need to be careful whether you have an alternative path. Culturally, I didn't grow up in a culture where it's okay to drop out. My family expected me to finish my PhD, get the doctor title, and then do whatever I wanted. But inside, I didn't want to finish. My PhD was fun, and I worked hard on it.

I had great professors who believed in me. But I was thinking, "Where would this lead?" Immigration and cultural factors caused me to delay. If I were an American or European citizen, I might have dropped out in undergrad.

How did your parents deal with this?

My father was very upset. My mom was kind of okay. He had a valid point, saying, "Finish your stuff, you're close." But I didn't want to. He's super happy now.

What's the first few months of Huma like? How did you come up with the idea?

I was working on a few projects. When I decided to leave, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I was doing my PhD, but on the side, my professor knew I was working on projects. Although I studied biomedical engineering, I didn't want to do anything in healthcare. My professors at Hopkins advised against it due to regulations. I was cautious, even though I loved the space. I was looking at it as a hobby project.

The hobby project was around the iPad, which was new in 2010-2011. The idea was to bring all patient data from hospitals and patients into one place. That was the problem I observed with my father and professors. Doctors were running around to find patient information. That was the idea. On the side, I was excited about electric cars. We built concept cars, but it was too expensive. The hobby project of bringing data was coded over weekends, and people liked it.

The mistake was thinking doctors liking it correlated with adoption. Convincing customers and having a payment model was tough. I focused on this for years with no customers. It was a chicken and egg situation. On the funding side, I started in the UK because I found a startup visa scheme. The first investment was a 2,000-pound grant from the Royal Society of Art. The follow-on investment was 5,000, but they decided not to give it to us. I was living under-

Where are they now?

I don't know. I was living in an office given by Oxford, in an ex-mental hospital building. I would sleep there at night, illegally, waking up at 5 a.m. before cleaners came. That was my life for almost a year. I had no money.

That's the way entrepreneurs start, isn't it?

Yes, and my food was a one-pound soup and baguette from Pret. That was my lunch and dinner.

How do you go from year one to year three? Did you start doing sales?

I never had the ego of being turned down. I don't mind saying hi and someone telling me to go away. I was pinging and contacting people. No one really wanted to do anything.

What was the medium, emails or texts?

Emails most of the time. Sometimes conferences, trying to push yourself into it. The cloud was bad because of the NHS project. No one wanted to invest. Two years in, I got an email from BMI, a hospital chain. They became our first customer, a non-paid pilot. That cracked the chicken and egg situation.

What was that conversation like?

We showed them our product, mostly MVP and mock-up. They liked it and gave us access to their systems. We showed them how it worked, adding more features. That opened the door to another hospital, Kent NHS Trust. Then we got lucky. We built stuff for BMI, and one of our iPads had a problem. We went to the Apple Store, and the demo app was running. An Apple executive saw it and asked for my contact details.

He disappeared for eight months, then called us for a meeting at the Apple Store headquarters. They liked it, and then disappeared again. After a year, Royal Free NHS Trust contacted us, recommended by Apple. They became our first paying customer, and that was the start of our commercial move.

There are a lot of founders listening to this podcast. You mentioned 300,000. There's an art in pricing. How did you know how to price a customer at $300,000, and how do you do it today?

We didn't know. We calculated some costs and tried to understand their budget. You ask, and usually, they don't tell you. You ask again, and between the words, you get some indication. If they told us 50K, we would do it. Our previous best deal was zero. If a bigger company did the same thing, they might pay a million. 300K was a great deal for them and a fantastic start for us.

Is there a correlation between the size of the company and pricing?

Yes, there is. One CIO told me, "Big companies have a lot of costs, marketing, this and that. You guys don't have those costs." It's a mindset. People understand big companies have big costs, but also feel secure working with them. When we raised our 100 million-plus round, deals we charged 200K for, we could get 1 million. Deals for half a million, we got paid 5 million. Perception is important.

Palantir is a company I love. They charge five to ten times more than others, and people are happy. It's about trust and joyfulness of work. Alex from Palantir looks at the value created for the customer. If the value is 100 million, he charges 50 million. In the enterprise world, pricing is harder. My principle is to hit certain margins. If we can't hit that margin, we don't do it. If the customer has a bigger budget, I forbid my team to charge more.

We think we're a business, and we charge for it. If the customer has 3X more budget, great, keep it for the future. In the long run, that creates good feelings between the customer and us.

Speaking of Palantir, what parallels would you draw between Huma and Palantir?

Palantir has done something extremely smart. Whether this smartness came from planning or connecting the dots looking backward, I don't know. When you look at Huma's journey, it started with building applications for health systems and hospitals, and later pharma companies, to interact with rare disease patients. To be able to do that, it's not that you can build...

You can't just build one app for a rare disease and make a business out of it because there are so many different rare diseases. You can't make money from one use case. So, what should you do? You have to do many of those. But if each time you have to build an application from scratch and go through regulatory processes, your cost is high, and the market demand isn't that high. People don't want to pay more for rare disease software.

So, we decided to be intelligent and use all the components in a reusable way. We built our tools, and these tools became a platform. Now, when I need to launch a new disease application, I don't have to build everything from scratch. This is how Huma built the technology stack, now called the Huma Cloud Platform.

What is the Huma Cloud Platform?

It's a library of tools, widgets, functionalities, integrations, and interfaces that help someone, even non-technical people, to create applications. You can type, "I want an application for Parkinson's disease," and it builds you an MVP. You can configure it through drag and drop or code for customizations. We also managed to get regulatory approval for certain applications, so whatever you launch comes regulated.

We solve technology, regulations, infrastructure, and scaling for our customers. We also allow integration of third-party solutions. You don't need to build the whole building; you just need to bring the furniture or design it the way you like.

We were giving this platform to our customers, like big pharma companies and hospitals, and we observed something interesting. They were building things we hadn't thought of, like interfaces for tracking logistics or booking appointments. We realized we were sitting on something interesting. We built lots of capabilities and tools for digital health, solving hard problems, but the same engine can solve easier problems like appointment booking and light EMRs.

Now, we're working with some countries to build their healthcare on top of the Huma Cloud Platform. We can bring all the data from existing systems into one place and launch EMRs, appointment booking, e-referrals, and e-prescribing quickly and seamlessly.

That's the parallel with Palantir. How did you start thinking about this moat?

We didn't have a planned strategy to create a moat. We were solving our own problems. Launching different applications and going through regulatory processes was costly. We thought, can we get regulatory approval for everything we've already built? We built configurable technology to launch applications fast. It became a moat, something our customers like, and a reason why people want to partner with us. It wasn't a super thoughtful process; it was about solving problems.

How do you keep a coherent culture when acquiring multiple companies?

We started M&A five or six years ago, made mistakes, and learned. Doing M&A is hard because of cultural integration. We realized we needed to solve the problem not just for M&A. In 2022, we had grown a lot, signed many projects, and had a complex organization. It was a mess. We decided to break the company into smaller pieces and put one person in charge of everything. We call them CEOs. They are responsible for their business unit's growth and profitability.

This approach made us EBITDA positive. When we acquire a company, we integrate them like one of our units. We keep their culture and brand, integrate technology, and offer cross-sell opportunities. It's not perfect, but it's working.

You've raised almost $300 million. How does fundraising change across stages, and how did you experience it?

Raising from partners and not traditional VCs was intentional. European VCs didn't want to take risks. I thought, why not bypass them and go to their LPs or corporates we work with? I didn't want anyone to own a big part of Huma. No one should buy more than 5% in each round. It made fundraising harder because I had to talk to more people, but it was important to explain what we do in detail. No investor owns a big position, which allows us to make mistakes and learn. So far, I'm happy with the decisions, but we'll see in five years.

When do you think AGI is coming?

I'm fascinated with AI, but I don't think true intelligence is here yet. People talk about models being more intelligent, but I see them as statistical outputs. True intelligence isn't here yet. If it comes in the next few years, I'd be surprised. Nothing in nature or humanity has happened so quickly. It feels like AI is everywhere, but it's not AGI. We still have a long way to go.

I'm a bit disappointed with the progress. In San Francisco, there's a war going on with AI startups, but in Europe, I don't see much change. I expected AI to contribute more to GDP.

I agree. I look around and wonder where the trace of AI is. It's magical for refining emails or finding information, but where is it in the real world?

People say you're an exceptional storyteller. How do you advise others to tell the best stories?

When I talk, it comes from my heart. It's a true reflection of my heart. Even if I don't know the exact vocabulary, it lands because it's genuine. Most people have layers between their heart and what they project. I don't have that, or it's very thin. It's about originality and authenticity. When you say something you believe, it resonates.

Do you do sports?

Yes, I run, sprint, and do core exercises. To talk from your heart, you need to be connected to yourself, and exercise helps clear your mind. I encourage exercise for mental clarity and hope. A nation that exercises is a nation with hope. Exercise makes people smarter and helps strategize better. It can transform a nation in less than 10 years.

There's something in the suffering that makes the brain function better. It's like early hunter-gatherer days, strategizing while moving.

Which historical figure inspires you, maybe from Persia?

I admire the Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great, and Darius. They brought a culture of humbleness and intelligent management. They broke the empire into smaller pieces with autonomous leaders, similar to our field CEOs. They invested in infrastructure, comparable to today's innovations. They achieved something no other empire has, holding half of the world's GDP. Their management style and values are inspiring.

If we do this again in 10 years, how does Huma look?

When I started, I couldn't imagine raising millions. Now, we've raised a few hundred million. I never thought we'd get here. There's no precedent for someone from Iran launching a billion-dollar company in Europe. It's a combination of luck, hard work, and survival. I don't know what will happen in 10 years, and I don't want to know. It's exciting to transform countries and build a platform for entrepreneurs. I look forward to working with amazing team members and seeing what we can achieve. But 10 years in, I don't know, and I don't want to know.

It's the most different answer I've ever gotten to this question.

Thank you. I really loved it.