This past quarter marked a huge milestone for us as a business, as we hit our 5th Birthday. We had a blast celebrating with friends and family, and I think are humbled as a team by the support we’ve gotten that made 5 years possible in the first place. As we look to the next 5, there’s so much to be excited about, especially as our industry continues to pick up speed. This quarter, we sat down with Carolyn Witte, the Co-Founder and CEO of Tia, to get her take on building a healthcare services business for women from scratch, our very own Nina Mermelstein continues her Coffee Chats series with entrepreneurs, and I took some time to reflect on some of the things I wish I knew when I started this whole thing. Hope you’re reading this from a beach with cocktail in hand!

— Tim Gordon, Founder & Managing Partner

An Interview With Carolyn Witte, Co-Founder & CEO of Tia

Carolyn Witte is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tia, a New York City based modern gynecology and wellness practice designed to personalize and integrate a holistic approach to women’s healthcare. Designed to be a one-stop-shop for female health, Tia opened their first clinic in Flatiron in the Spring of 2019, with plans to expand in the coming months.

Tim: Tell us a little bit about how Tia came to be, and what inspired you and Felicity to found the company in the first place.

Carolyn: Tia really started out of my own and Felicity’s frustrations with the healthcare system as patients. We very much approached the space from a patient-first point of view, having gone through our own really frustrating diagnosis process in our early twenties that exposed to us everything that was fundamentally broken about women’s healthcare – specifically the fragmentation, lack of personalization, and, something that we talk a lot about: lack of soul in healthcare. It’s been quite a journey over the past two years taking our patient experience and marrying that with the provider reality, and really saying, ‘well, what would healthcare really look like in design, with the female experience at the center of it?’ That’s what Tia has been really about.

Tim: And for those that don’t know, what is Tia?

Carolyn: Tia is a lot of things. We are not a clinic with an app, or an app with a clinic, but at our core: the next-gen women’s platform fundamentally changing the way women interact with the healthcare system at large. What that means in practice is we build all sorts of products, tools, and services, from our personal private women’s health advisor app to our first brick and mortar Tia clinic here in New York City. Everything we do or build is designed to help women be their own patient advocate and get meaningfully better healthcare.

Reflecting On Our First 5 Years:

5 Things I Wish I Knew At The Beginning

It doesn’t feel like five years. In fact it feels like just yesterday I was sitting down at my kitchen table to figure out how to start a company. So much has happened since then, and without the support of my now-wife-then-girlfriend who apparently missed the memo that being an entrepreneur basically means you’re unemployed, none of this would be possible. I’ve watched in amazement as we’ve grown – bigger offices, new website iterations, the launch of this newsletter, new clients, new investments, and most importantly – more team members. The impact of adding each and every one of the people on our team has reverberated through the entire business, taking it somewhere I never could have even flirted with on my own. Through all of that, I’ve learned countless lessons – many the hard way – but on the whole have found these challenges far more rewarding to power through than those that came before. In honor of our 5th Birthday, here’s five things I’ve learned that I wish I knew at the beginning.

Coffee Chats With Nina: Understanding

the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Part III of an Ongoing Series- What They Don’t Teach You in Business School (or startup summer camp)

We often applaud successful entrepreneurs for creating innovative solutions that are aimed at changing the status quo. Our culture prioritizes entrepreneurship skills so much that we now offer summer camps such as Biznovator and school programs like WeGrow to empower young entrepreneurs. Where were these amazing programs when I was stuck sweating in the summer heat at tennis camp? By the time I attended university, my school offered a brand new minor that I was excited to partake in called “Entrepreneurship & Management.” We analyzed corporate case studies, developed business plans, and built mock marketing agencies.

I generally agree with the idea that it is important to instill entrepreneurial skills such as creative thinking and teamwork in children and young adults. However, I have also come to understand through my continued Coffee Chats with Founders and CEOs in the digital health space that there is a lot about entrepreneurship that we can’t learn in summer camp, college, or even business school. Below I’ve pared down my findings into three categories: honing people skills, balancing competing priorities, and leveraging available resources.