Stephanie discusses the future of personalized medicine, her startup Vida Health, and highlights key lessons from her time at eBay, Google, and PayPal.
Insights from Stephanie
On Personalized Medicine:
- “Personalized care will change the face of medicine and transform healthcare in the next decade. We are entering a new era where you are going to have continuous data on yourself, an on-going relationship with someone like a personal health coach, and receive personalized treatment based on your genetic biome and molecular dynamics. Continuous care is the wave of the future. We are truly going to understand how to optimize our health.”
On Constant Experimentation:
- “Be relentless about consistently asking for resources, pitching, and believing. It took me 40 pitches and presentations to convince the team at eBay that investing in payments products for smaller merchants was worth it and two years to really prove it.”
- “When your team members come to you with ideas, encourage them to run with them. Always explore how you can test new things with limited resources.”
- “The lesson that is consistent in both intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship is building prototypes. Build and deploy features as fast as you can. Always be testing and learning from your customers. There is no other way to achieve things.”
- “Every bet into new terrain should come from and for your customers. The evolution of your business will naturally evolve because it’s right in front of you. At eBay, we started with toy cars on the site and then had real cars. There is real truth to the expression: You just have to start. Watch and listen to your customers. They will guide you.”
On Grit:
- “Grit is underrated and underestimated. There are so many success stories in Silicon Valley that were near failures. The visionaries who believed in them kept going. There is a fine line between success and failure. Visionary leaders have an underlying belief and commitment that their idea has to happen to change the world so they don’t give up. Grit also means trying 20 different solutions to a problem. Amazon failed countless times before they launched Amazon Marketplace which is now 50% of their business. Grit cannot be underestimated in those environments.”
- “Even the most successful things you do will never be easy. You have to work hard. There is nothing in building a business that doesn’t require a brick by brick approach.”