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All opinions expressed by the guests are their own. 9×90™ and its affiliates do not endorse or guarantee any specific outcomes discussed in this episode. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and consult with professional advisors before making any investment or business decisions. Nothing discussed in this episode constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. Any such offer or solicitation will be made only through official offering documents and to qualified, accredited investors, in accordance with applicable securities laws. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or 9×90™.

About this guest

For those of you who do not know Alex Fair,

1. 1. Pioneered Healthcare Crowdfunding with MedStartr
   In 2011, Alex Fair co-founded MedStartr, a platform designed to empower patients, doctors, and innovators by enabling them to fund and validate healthcare innovations through crowdfunding. Unlike traditional platforms, MedStartr specifically caters to the healthcare sector, allowing stakeholders to support and invest in medical projects directly. This approach has facilitated the launch of numerous startups and innovations in the healthcare space.
   
   2. Developed the Healthcare CrowdChallenge Model
   Alex Fair created the Healthcare CrowdChallenge model, a platform that has delivered over 40 times the return on innovation investment for clients. This model leverages crowdsourcing to identify and support the most promising healthcare innovations, accelerating their development and implementation. It has been instrumental in connecting startups with partners and investors, driving significant advancements in healthcare.
   
   3. Led One of the World’s Largest Health Innovation Communities
   As the founder of Health 2.0 NYC, Alex Fair established one of the largest health innovation meetup groups globally. This community serves as a hub for healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, and innovators to collaborate, share ideas, and drive change in the healthcare industry. Through this initiative, he has fostered a collaborative environment that has led to the development and funding of numerous healthcare innovations.

About this episode

What happens when a retired-at-38 scientist turns a crowdfunding platform into one of the most predictive biotech VC machines on the planet? In this high-voltage episode of 9×90™, Adi Soozin interviews Alex Fair, founder of MedStarter, a medtech and biotech fund redefining early-stage investing. With a 44% IRR, MedStarter’s data-driven approach—built on founder psychometrics, expert networks, and founder grit—has funded companies that now move billions and influence healthcare policy.

Alex reveals the secrets behind Fund III, their $40M accelerator-backed investment vehicle designed to identify 130 future game-changers before they hit mainstream. You’ll also get a rare look into the elite salons where billionaires, policy-makers, and innovation freaks collaborate, and how “Dinner with the Winners” is helping surface the next great unicorns.

Whether you’re an LP looking for alpha, a founder with something to prove, or a connector seeking the next wave of disruptors—this is the episode you don’t want to miss.

Alex’s Contact Information

1. 👥 Learn more or connect at medstartr.vc or the upcoming medstartr.capital
2. 📧 Contact Alex Fair (with that famously missing ‘e’) for access or deal flow opportunities.
3. Managing Partner, MedStartr.vc (Venture Fund & Accelerator) 
4. CEO / Emcee, MedStartr.com (Crowdfunding, events and contests) 
5. Organizer, MedStatr.nyc (our NYC meetup group where this all started)
6. Host, MedStartr.tv (videos of all our events and contests plus interviews, and some fun things)
7. Book a meeting at bit.ly/meetABF
8. @alexbfair everywhere (Twitter, IG, Linkedin….)
9. Startups: Want to get on stage at our next pitch contest at SXSW, HLTH, ViVE, CES, HIMSS or in your local MedStartr-affiliated Healthcare Innovation Community?  Apply here.  Winners will be included in our next accelerator class or other funding programs.

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Show Notes Generated by Gemini

These show notes were generated by AI

• Introduction to Alex Fair and MedStarter Adi Soozin introduced Alex Fair, the founder of MedStarter, a platform and fund focused on medtech and biotech innovation. Alex has a track record of leading innovation challenges and his platform includes a fund family that invests in and accelerates promising startups (00:00:00). Adi highlighted the success of MedStarter in launching and scaling numerous impactful healthcare companies (00:01:18).
• Alex Fair’s Background and Early Ventures Alex Fair shared their background, mentioning their retirement at 38 to pursue meaningful work, which led to the creation of a popular crowdfunding site, meds.com. Alex recounted how GE approached them to leverage crowd validation for their health innovation fund, and the success of early challenges, including one that funded Medal, now a multibillion-dollar company (00:02:27). Alex noted the evolution from crowdfunding to focusing on challenges and crowd validation to identify promising ventures (00:04:25).
• MedStarter’s Performance and Funds Alex Fair discussed the performance of their funds, noting a 44% IRR over the last six years, with the first fund achieving 199% (00:05:21). Alex explained the structure of their current and upcoming funds, highlighting that Fund III aims to bring in 130 new companies for their accelerator program with relatively small initial checks. Subsequent funds will then invest in the validated companies from the accelerator (00:06:52) (00:09:39).
• Fundraising Details for Fund III Adi Soozin and Alex Fair discussed the details of the current $40 million Fund III, including the participation of previous investors (00:08:39). The minimum investment size is generally half a million, though it can be lower for investors bringing more than just capital, with a maximum target of $5 million per investor (00:09:39). Alex mentioned that Fund IV would be the target for larger allocations for those interested in investing in more mature, validated companies (00:10:25).
• MedStarter’s Method for Identifying Winners Alex Fair detailed MedStarter’s unique approach to identifying promising startups early on, which they consider their “secret sauce”. This involves an algorithm with numerous data fields, including metrics on founder grit and engagement (00:11:28). The platform also analyzes the interactions and credentials of a large community of experts to validate the potential of ideas, resulting in a highly predictive system (00:12:40).
• The Role of the MedStarter Network and Salons Alex Fair emphasized the importance of their extensive network of over 1,200 healthcare innovation activists and leaders who act as mentors (00:10:25) (00:14:36). Alex also highlighted the value of their WhatsApp groups, or “salons,” where experts discuss ideas and even influence policy (00:15:45). Adi Soozin shared a personal anecdote illustrating the power and caliber of the individuals within these groups (00:16:54).
• MedStarter’s “Freaks and Friends” Philosophy Alex Fair described the entrepreneurs they support as “freaks,” individuals with unique, sometimes unconventional ideas, who become “heroes” after years of relentless pursuit (00:18:38) (00:23:53). Adi Soozin contextualized Alex’s use of “annoying,” clarifying it means being relentless and uncompromising with quality (00:19:39). Alex shared the personal story behind this term, linking it to their persistence and mission-driven approach (00:20:18).
• The Importance of Founder Psychometrics and Real-World Validation Alex Fair stressed that while data and algorithms are crucial, in-person interactions and evaluating founder psychometrics are equally important (00:23:00). MedStarter conducts “dinner with the winners” to gather deeper insights and feedback from trusted advisors on the founders (00:22:05). Alex believes a holistic approach, combining data-driven analysis with qualitative assessments, is essential for successful early-stage investing (00:23:00).
• MedStarter’s Support for Portfolio Companies Alex Fair outlined the comprehensive support MedStarter provides to its portfolio companies through a three-year in-person and virtual program (00:10:25) (00:28:19). This includes mentorship, connections to their network and partners, assistance with business development, and access to an AI-powered “mission control” system that monitors key performance indicators (00:30:21). Alex emphasized their proactive approach in identifying and addressing potential issues within their portfolio companies (00:31:25).
• How to Connect with Alex Fair and MedStarter Alex Fair provided contact information for prospective investors interested in learning more about MedStarter. They directed listeners to medstarter.vc or the upcoming medstarter.capital website for LP onboarding and contact details, and also shared their direct email address. Alex humorously mentioned the missing ‘e’ in their email address due to early internet trends (00:32:23).
• Acknowledgments and Closing Remarks Adi Soozin thanked Alex Fair for their participation and Sarah for facilitating the conversation (00:32:23). Adi highlighted Sarah’s significant contributions to the success of many individuals in their network. Alex reciprocated the gratitude and acknowledged Sarah’s instrumental role (00:33:19). The conversation concluded with mutual appreciation and plans to reconnect in person .

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Transcript

This transcription was generated by Gemini & edited by ChatGPT

Adi Soozin:
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of 9×90™. Some of you know I have a twin—her name is Sarah. She’s also a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jew from the NYC area, but her eye color is way cooler than mine. She has an amazing partner, and we have him on the show today. I’d like to introduce you to Alex Fair.

He really should have been a judge—his last name is just that epic—but instead, he’s working in medtech innovation, helping cure conditions I don’t even fully understand. I’m just grateful someone is fixing them.

Alex led the National Innovation Challenges sponsored by major institutions like the American Medical Association, GE, Aetna, and HHS. He helped select top healthcare startups from thousands of applicants to transform patient care, policy, and infrastructure. He’s also the founder of MedStarter—an absolutely brilliant platform.

Some of you know I have Molo9™, and we have an elite startup toolkit that founders have to go through before I introduce them to investors—because if they can’t handle the prep, they won’t survive the scale. Alex has something similar, but tailored for medtech, healthtech, and biotech. MedStarter includes a fund family and an accelerator—he identifies the winners and finances them internally.

If you’re interested in funding the next generation of medtech and biotech success stories, this is the guy you want to talk to. His fund has helped launch and scale hundreds of high-impact startups including Medal, Unite Us, Misfit Wearables, and StartUp Health—driving real change across the healthcare ecosystem.

Alex Fair:
Wow, that’s quite the intro, Adi. Thank you. It’s been wonderful getting to know you and Sarah over the last couple of months—especially contributing to Tools of Marketing Titans. That was super fun, super fast.

I actually retired when I was 38 and thought, “What can I do that’s really meaningful?” So I started a Meetup group that turned into meds.com, which became a really popular crowdfunding site when that space emerged around 2012. Not long after, GE came to us and said, “We love how crowds validate which ideas are most likely to succeed. Let’s apply that to our $6B Healthymagination Fund.” Basically, their internal teams weren’t great at identifying winners due to bias.

We got thousands of people to engage and select winners through these challenges. The first crowd challenge we ran was paid for by GE and partnered with HHS (now run by either Dr. Oz or RFK Jr.—depends who you ask). Their goal was to identify new ideas not to “cure” but to care for people with cancer. The word “cure” gets avoided.

A company called Medal got its first $25,000 from that challenge. It’s now valued around $2.7 billion, last I checked. But we weren’t investing at the time—we were just running the contests. So we missed out on early equity in Medal, Unite Us, OneWay, and others.

But we noticed something important: companies were getting more than money—they were getting traction, partnerships, and even acquisitions straight off the platform. One company was bought within four days of being listed. So we shifted focus from crowdfunding to what we call “crowd validation.” Since then, we’ve helped thousands of ideas get to market faster, connect with customers and partners, and in some cases, drive clinical outcomes. One of our companies, for example, is a digital therapeutic that reduces the cost of care by 42% by preventing autoimmune attacks.

Adi Soozin:
That’s amazing. And for those listening instead of watching, can you describe what’s on your screen?

Alex Fair:
Yes! I have a visual of our fund performance over the past six years. The bottom line is our IRR has been about 44%. Our first fund did 199%, though it was quite small.

Adi Soozin:
Let’s pause and walk people through your track record. What was the size of your first fund?

Alex Fair:
Calling it a “fund” is a bit generous—it was just my own money. I made four investments totaling $130,000. That turned into about 3x in 18 months, which came out to a 199% IRR.

Adi Soozin:
So you turned $130K into roughly $390K, and that success attracted new investors?

Alex Fair:
Exactly. That got 26 other investors on board, and we launched a second fund of about $2.89 million. From that, we’ve had two exits so far. The portfolio is now worth about $9.25 million. Our DPI is about 24.5%, and the net MOIC is 3.66x—so we’ve tripled the capital over six years.

Adi Soozin:
And now you’re raising your third fund?

Alex Fair:
Yes, Fund III is targeting $40 million. We’re doing our first close this month. It’s the same model: we run crowd challenges, find the strongest 130 companies, and support them through a structured accelerator. Based on our experience—19 deals across 12 companies—about a third of them have generated returns between 12x and 30x.

Adi Soozin:
And you’re reserving space for new investors in this fund?

Alex Fair:
Yes. Prior investors have first right of refusal, but we do have space for a few more LPs. Maximum check size is $10M, though ideally we’d keep it under $5M per LP. The minimum is $500K—possibly as low as $250K for highly strategic investors who bring more than just capital.

Adi Soozin:
And you already have companies lined up for this fund?

Alex Fair:
We have a number of “warehouse” deals—companies we’re watching. Fund III is all about finding new companies ready for acceleration. We help them refine their go-to-market, connect with strategic partners, and structure the right team. We also introduce them to leaders at major health systems—HCA, Mount Sinai, Contra Costa—and support them with our 1,200-person mentor network.

Adi Soozin:
How does MedStarter consistently spot winners before the rest of the market catches on?

Alex Fair:
That’s our secret sauce. After working with 160 partners like HHS, GE, and Etna, I developed a predictive algorithm based on 126 data fields. One of those fields, for example, is how many of 100 requested tasks a founder actually completes—this gauges grit. We also have psychometric tools to measure ethics, honesty, listening skills, and overall leadership.

Our platform tracks 17 different types of engagement—like, follow, share, try, pilot, partner, mentor, join, invest. And we credential every user, so we know the difference between a friend clicking “pilot” and a credentialed MD doing it. We also analyze social graphs and patterns of influence.

After running this for a decade, we found that our top 3% scorers—selected purely through the algorithm, no due diligence—had an IRR between 187% and 244%, with a p-value under 0.05. When I first saw the results, I didn’t even know what IRR was! But once I figured it out, I realized we had something powerful.

Adi Soozin:
Incredible. This methodology gives your investors a real edge in an industry where finding winners early is everything. Thank you for sharing all this with our audience.

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Alex Fair: It’s the best job in the world.
Adi Soozin: Oh. Oh, funny. Yeah. Well, I mean, usually when you get started down this path, you know a lot about one or two specific things and then you find other people who know a lot about other specific things and you kind of just pull top talent in to fill your weaknesses, right?
Alex Fair: Well, we’ve taken that to an extreme. So, everybody who comes into the site logs in with LinkedIn. They self-categorize in 77 categories, right? And then we watch what they do and credential them if they actually click on anything or even if they watch a video for more than 17 seconds. If Eric Tolpool comes in, he’s probably one of the top guys in healthcare and then he clicks on something and he runs the Scripts Transformational Institute or somebody like Amy Gleason who’s now the head of DOGE, acting administrator for DOGE, put her idea on MedStarter back in 2013 and raised funding, then raised another 8 million or so and that company did really well for a while.

Alex Fair: So, if you’re watching the video version of this, you’ll see behind me a few of my favorite people from the Medsider mentor network, which is over 200 healthcare innovation activists, leaders, friends, and guys like Tom Sang, who started Valera Health, which is one of our portfolio companies. He also wrote the High-Tech Act, which—
Adi Soozin: And—
Alex Fair: made—
Adi Soozin: And if—
Alex Fair: Go—
Adi Soozin: You’re—
Alex Fair: ahead.
Adi Soozin: If you’re not watching the video version, you can look at the show notes later and we will have this presentation embedded.
Alex Fair: Okay. So my point is that we have this very engaged audience, this group of people who are very interested in driving healthcare innovation. We also have a WhatsApp group, actually about 97 WhatsApp groups all in different categories, hundreds of people talking all day long about Alzheimer’s, or AI in medicine, or the latest changes in HHS. I can’t say specifically, but there’s one member from government who seems to use us as her think tank.

Alex Fair: She’ll say, “How do we do this better?” and the 317 people in that particular group will say, “Well, we can do this, or I saw this, here’s a great idea.” A week later, an RFI comes out and a lot of the ideas that were discussed in the salon—that’s what we call it—started out as just a place for all of our MedStarter mentors to hang out, talk about what’s going on, bang around ideas, just like the salons of the 17th century in Europe and India, a place for discussion.
Adi Soozin: I—
Alex Fair: A place—
Adi Soozin: I—
Alex Fair: For—
Adi Soozin: Think—
Alex Fair: Things.
Adi Soozin: I think your WhatsApp groups are very, very cool. You have some very neat people in there. For example, when I was launching my real estate fund, I posted in one of your groups, said, “Hey, we need someone to interview my partner and me.”

Adi Soozin: And the minister of finance for Macedonia is in your WhatsApp group and he reached—
Alex Fair: What?
Adi Soozin: Out.
Alex Fair: Really?
Adi Soozin: Yes. He reached out and said, “Hey, I’m the foreign minister of finance for Macedonia. Would you like me to conduct the interview? I know a thing or two about financial markets.” It was unreal. I told some friends and they said, “You have to meet Sarah and Alex.” I have a very stacked black book, but it’s very private and guarded because I’ve been stabbed in the back so many times. I keep it like an ultra-secret society. As soon as someone does something sketchy, I kick them out. It’s super tight.

Adi Soozin: We have a very small group with people from the Medici family, Guggenheim, Seagar, Sats — power players — but it’s a tight group. You have this huge community with some crazy, equally powerful people in it.
Alex Fair: Oh yeah. We’ve been at this for years. Sarah Pustilnik and her network have been amazing. It’s a merging of two communities. I had millions come to our websites and we selected thousands of the best. I literally went through 15,000 people and selected 177 on February 16th last year. I wanted to talk to my friends about ideas. That’s how it started. We had very tight control, very velvet groups.

Alex Fair: We called it, okay Sarah’s gonna hate me for this, the freaks and friends.
Adi Soozin: Okay.
Alex Fair: So—
Adi Soozin: You guys—
Alex Fair: I—
Adi Soozin: You have to know that Alex is very self-deprecating. He called himself the most obnoxious person in his contribution to the book. I said, “Alex, you’re in my book because you’re an industry titan. You can’t be self-deprecating here. It doesn’t translate everywhere.” We kept deleting these things for him.
Alex Fair: Okay.
Adi Soozin: Yeah.
Alex Fair: Go read that chapter in the book. It’s about being annoying and my mother’s second to last words to me. We’re not going into the story, go read The Skills of Marketing Titans, available on all platforms.
Adi Soozin: You—
Alex Fair: So—
Adi Soozin: Cannot—
Alex Fair: Page—
Adi Soozin: Just—
Alex Fair: 396.

Adi Soozin: Call yourself annoying? He means relentless. You can’t just tell people you’re annoying — they don’t understand the context. The audience is in 56 countries. He’s from New York. What he means is he’s uncompromising with the quality he expects from himself, his portfolio companies, and those around him. He invites people to be annoying — to be uncompromising with quality. So it’s a good thing when he says annoying.
Alex Fair: Yeah.
Adi Soozin: What—
Alex Fair: Sure. Let’s go with that answer. No, no, no.
Adi Soozin: Do you say?
Alex Fair: I am extremely persistent, and yes, I don’t give up. I’m on a mission. Everybody in my family had their own businesses.

Alex Fair: Some went public, bought by IBM, things like that. I went into theoretical physics and wanted to cure cancer, went into pathology, scientific papers. I was going to be a scientist. I didn’t believe in business stuff — that’s annoying. This is from my last conversation with my mom. I started to apologize after she said, “Sorry I was such a hard kid to raise,” and she came out of sedation about to go to hospice and said, “No, no, no, it was amazing. It was the most wonderful experience,” and then sedation kicked back in. So that’s where the annoying story comes from.
Adi Soozin: Thank you.
Alex Fair: But you’re absolutely right, Eddie.

Alex Fair: I can be hard on people and don’t pull punches. I tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
Adi Soozin: That’s what makes the best results. I gave my pitch deck to one of my godfathers who’s doing almost $200 billion worth of real estate projects. I told him, “Don’t be nice. Rip it to shreds. I want great, not nice. I need the feedback to be great.”
Alex Fair: Absolutely. People don’t always take it, but that’s a metric. In addition to online metrics, we take the top 5 to 20 teams, put them on stage at big conferences, put them in front of thousands of people, and gauge the crowd.
Alex Fair: We fill the crowd and go out with them afterward — we call it dinner with the winners. We get to know them well. We fill the room with people like Sarah, like you, people we trust, our Medsider mentors, who tell us what they really think — “In three years this person won’t listen,” or something like that. These are important things. But in real life with someone, you can’t substitute for that. You can’t just be a technocrat or rely on data. You have to go deep in founder psychometrics — check all the boxes: smart, able to listen, learn quickly, adapt, have a good moral code.

Adi Soozin: Yeah.
Alex Fair: Going back to freaks and friends — I gave a talk at Stanford in 2013 called Geek to Freak to Hero. That describes a lot of these people: doctors, patients, people inside companies who know something in great depth — cardiovascular surgeons, for example — and get an idea they could do better, like using checklists to avoid mistakes. Atul Gawande wrote The Checklist Manifesto and got famous for that. He was initially a freak saying cardiovascular surgery could be better with a checklist, and everyone thought he was annoying.

Alex Fair: You become a freak to those around you and quit your day job to become a writer or start a company. For example, a company called Canary: an anesthesiologist monitoring a patient wanted voice-activated controls in the OR ten years ago, now doing big deals with Microsoft or Amazon. We’ve seen thousands of people take this path, become strange, and six years later be heroes to millions and make a difference in healthcare. We put people on that path and help them. When I call them freaks and friends, it’s because we are this group.

Adi Soozin: Yeah. One of the greatest lessons you learn as an adult is how to make your unique differences an advantage instead of a liability. In grade school, you’re told to fit in, fit in — tests, marks, uniforms. Then you get to adulthood and they say, “Show me how you’re different and your competitive edge.” You’re like, “Uh, what?”

Alex Fair: Fit—
Adi Soozin: Your—
Alex Fair: Into—
Adi Soozin: Mom—
Alex Fair: This box your whole life, and now, yes, show us how you elbow your way out of that box. That’s a very good example.
Adi Soozin: Then you’re mislabeled as annoying when you should be labeled innovative, forward-thinking, revolutionary, and more.
Alex Fair: The education system really wasn’t designed to create entrepreneurs.
Adi Soozin: No.
Alex Fair: It was designed to create employees.
Adi Soozin: Yeah. I had Paul Hutchinson on the show today. He’s a co-founder of Bridge Investment Group, now worth $40 or $50 billion AUM. He helped get the first $10 billion. He dropped out of college. The guy’s a genius. His brain operates on another level. He said, “I’m a college dropout. I shouldn’t be here. I had to hire people with prestigious degrees to do these things.” The school system is made to make employees.
Alex Fair: And let’s not even talk about PhD programs.
Adi Soozin: Oh—
Alex Fair: Right?
Adi Soozin: Yeah, because you—
Alex Fair: I—
Adi Soozin: Dropped—
Alex Fair: Mean—
Adi Soozin: Out of your PhD.
Alex Fair: Seven years of your life working for peanuts. I got four and a half years in mine and they said I had to switch labs. I already had five scientific papers. I was ready to take my qualifying exam, but they wanted another three years. I said, “I’ll just start a company.” I started a company, it took off, sold it, haven’t looked back.
Adi Soozin: Yeah.
Alex Fair: So, yeah.
Adi Soozin: So, you walked us through the predictive algorithm behind MedStarter AI and how you derisk early-stage healthcare investments. You started, but I think dumb it down a little for people listening on their commute. They need step one, step two, step three.

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Adi Soozin: What kind of track record have you seen from the startups supported by your platform and what does it mean for the current fund’s performance?
Alex Fair: Oh yeah, we have learned a ton. So while we had seven years of running the algorithm and preliminary data, when I first started investing, we had to learn about due diligence and the realities small companies and small investors face. Being able to be there for them—to be what we call their MVP, their MedStarter venture partner—was crucial. There were three of us, and we would divvy them up; one of us would talk to the CEO or other leaders every couple of weeks for years. Always being there for that first call was really important.

The algorithm predicts which companies to select, but then we’re really good at deep due diligence. Remember, we’re only looking at about 60 companies a year out of around a thousand applicants. We do due diligence on about 60 a year, so we have a lot more time to dig deep compared to a typical fund, which might be doing four meetings a day with analysts making books and such. We do all those things, but with much greater depth. We have time to call, check references, get to know all the people. We have tons of data going into it, which is a real competitive advantage.

I don’t like playing roulette; I like playing blackjack because I can keep track of the numbers depending on which…
Adi Soozin: Yeah.
Alex Fair: Sorry. Anyway, but…
Adi Soozin: No, I do the same. I do the same. Yeah, we all do the same.
Alex Fair: So we have literally a million data points a month on 100 to 120 companies.

Alex Fair: Then we pick which of those we’re actually going to bring in and do due diligence on. That’s steps one and two. Then we do the deal. Our accelerator deal is, we think, the best in the industry because it respects that they do need money, but we also need additional equity in exchange for our help. They get $100,000 in cash, we get $150,000 in acceleration revenue, which is how accelerators work, and that helps us pay MedStar mentors, staff, run events, or do promotional campaigns to help these companies get where they need to go. We are experts, and we have some of the best experts in the world working with us, plus an entire alumni network of people who have done amazing things with MedStart’s help—like Sunny Vu, Amy Gleason, Fred Troder (now working at the US Digital Service), one of the best data activists and healthcare policy experts.

Alex Fair: The third step is really bringing in additional resources to the network. That’s all managed by the MVP, the partner in charge of that company, who represents them. Our meetings ensure updates and progress. Even better now, we have “Mission Control,” which brings in all the startup’s data—from QuickBooks, their CRM, their CMS, contract management system—with an AI overview of that data. It actually helps the MVP know exactly what’s happening.
Adi Soozin: Oh.
Alex Fair: For example, if sales went down 20%, we might know before the startup knows. We built a lot of tools and infrastructure around that, plus a knowledgeable team.

Adi Soozin: Okay. So what is the best way for prospective investors to get in touch with you?
Alex Fair: We have many ways. You can go to medstarter.vc today, or medstarter.capital, which is the next version we’re spinning up as the new GP. There’s onboarding for LPs and contact info. If you want to reach me directly, I’m always alex@medstarter.com. Back in the days of Tumblr, it was cool to drop the ‘e’ in ‘starter,’ so the domain medstartert.com is missing the last ‘e.’ If you type in medstarter, it still goes to us anyway, so we never bothered getting the correct one. Maybe someday we will.

Adi Soozin: Yeah. Okay, very cool. Well, Alex, thank you so much for coming on the show. Sarah, thank you for making this happen.
Alex Fair: I’m here, I’m here.
Adi Soozin: Sarah is our token extrovert.

Adi Soozin: She’s the invisible hand that helps all of us move. She got me on a prestigious panel and helped a bunch of her friends become bestsellers. If you see all these ultra-successful people and wonder what the invisible thread is that holds us together, it’s Sarah, who’s actually on the couch during this interview.
Alex Fair: Her name is Sarah. She even gets me on really cool podcasts too.
Adi Soozin: And…
Alex Fair: Thank you, Sarah.
Adi Soozin: Books, oh my god.
Alex Fair: Absolutely.
Adi Soozin: And…
Alex Fair: Thank you so much, Addie.
Adi Soozin: Sarah’s the reason my book came out on time.
Alex Fair: Yes, absolutely. She persistently says, “Do this, do this.” She does that to me every day.
Adi Soozin: She slept over and helped me negotiate 15 contracts in one day, which no one in their right mind could do alone without someone like Sarah sitting there on the couch saying, “What do you need help with next?” and giving you pep talks every four seconds. She’s the invisible force that’s helped a lot of us become very successful. We love you.
Alex Fair: I love you guys more than you can possibly imagine. I’m male, so I have trouble expressing such emotions.
Adi Soozin: All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’ll send this to you guys shortly. See you back in New York.
Alex Fair: Okay, thanks for having us.

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