7% of This Will Make You a Baseball MVP. (Or 17 Reasons WellAI Will Be a Home Run.)
If you ever watched a baseball game, you must know what a batting average is. With some exceptions, it’s defined as the probability of hitting a baseball every time you swing a bat. A batting average across the Major League Baseball (MLB) professional players is around 0.25. It means that every swing at a ball results in a hit 1 out of 4 times. The best MLB players can reach a batting average of 0.35 – i.e. 35% of their swings at a ball result in hits.
But do you know what is the probability of hitting a home run every time a professional baseball player makes a swing at a ball? That statistic is not advertised very much. However, for a startup owner, probability of a home run is what she/he would like to know – to be more precise, not the probability itself, but information on how to improve the odds of a home run.
There is another common statistic in baseball – at bats per home run. This calculates how many times a player has to swing a bat to get a home run. What we are interested is the inverse of that: number of home runs per swing of a bat. That number happens to be 2% on average across all MLB professional players and could reach 7% for the best players.
Hence in baseball, even the best players have 7% of hitting a home run. Is it possible to increase these odds? It’s really hard. If you play in the MLB, you are already one of the best. If you reach 7% and higher in probability of hitting a home run, you are the best of the best. Most likely, you’ve reached it through a combination of talent and hard work.
This baseball analogy transfers perfectly to my startup, WellAI. How do we improve the probability of WellAI hitting a home run – i.e. becoming one of the most successful companies in the artificial intelligence applications in healthcare? We already mentioned talent and hard work. We definitely got those. We counted at least 17 reasons in total of why we think WellAI will be a home run. We would not be doing this if we didn’t think WellAI would succeed. Here are our 17 reasons.
1. There is a problem. WellAI has a solution.
This is it. This is the most important reason by far. In a nutshell, healthcare cost is a massive issue in the U.S. for both employers and their employees. It creates pain. It creates inefficiencies. It creates an uphill battle against a massive hospital – big insurance oligopolistic collusion. At WellAI, we believe the machine learning technology can and will provide a solution.
2. Talent
In terms of talent, we are convinced we got the best of the best in each team member’s own craft. It took a while to get the team together. It is constantly evolving. We are very selectively adding new team members.
3. Extensive startup experience.
We are a team of serial entrepreneurs. We’ve got our feet wet in a startup world quite a bit, to the extent that it’s more than just feet at this point. 😊 In particular, Daniel Satchkov, WellAI’s co-founder, has run a number of startups, the most recent one being RiXtrema, a successful fintech company.
4. Work ethic.
WellAI is what everyone on the team lives for. Everyone has a mutual understanding that they are working to create a platform for the greater good of millions of people. For example, when we saw the White House’s call to action to use AI and machine learning to fight COVID-19 in March 2020, the team didn’t sleep for days working as one unit and delivering very quickly and very efficiently. As a result, the WellAI COVID-19 analytical tool is available for free to medical researchers around the world.
5. Respect within the team.
We are all very different at WellAI. All of us have unique experiences, diverse backgrounds. There is a mutual respect within the team. The team spirit is amazing.
6. Having a thick skin.
WellAI has already had its share of ups and downs. We’ve had business issues. We’ve had family hardships. We’ve had geopolitical concerns. Through thick and thin, we’ve overcome and will continue to overcome.
7. Profound knowledge of machine learning.
WellAI is not just based on data science. To paraphrase the words of Cassie Kozyrkov, while most people use a microwave, we build a microwave. In other words, while most data scientists are users of Google’s open source library and other sources, we actually know those algorithms inside out and understand nuances of when to apply a certain algorithm.
8. Credibility and research.
We are proud to be recognized for our achievements by numerous peer reviewed publications and media appearances – e.g. CNBC and Amazon Prime Video, among other.
9. We love what we do.
We are all happy we are part of this exciting project. Happiness is related to the respect and the work ethic that we already mentioned. However, I think the main reason for the team happiness is the uniqueness of the project. No one else is doing what we do. It’s a new project, a new technology. The team is excited because they are doing something very distinct and very important.
10. We are not just data scientists. We are business developers.
As a team, we have an extensive experience building products, building technologies and selling them to clients who really need those. As many startup founders know, one could have the best product. Finding a client who really needs the product is a very unique skill.
11. We are in advanced stages of technology development.
Over the last several months, we’ve had tremendous success building models and understanding relationships between medical concepts. We have developed the Amazon’s Alexa of Health, so to speak. We believe there is nothing quite like that out there.
12. We use real doctors to validate machine learning models.
Some people caution we cannot fully trust machines with their model predictions, no matter how good we think those models are. To address this, we’ve hired real doctors to help validate machine learning models. In particular, the doctors are making sure that clusters of medical concepts created by the machine learning algorithms are in line with their own medical knowledge.
13. We take data privacy very seriously.
WellAI is HIPAA compliant. We don’t use or resell user health data. The WellAI team has world renowned experts in blockchain. Blockchain keeps customer private data secure and safely shareable – for example, if a user wants to share the data with a doctor.
14. We are very lean.
We are staying lean, being smart with the money. Our coders, software developers and engineers are in Russia and Belarus. That allows us to get some of the best minds for little money. As of now, we don’t have outside investors. We are laser focused on delivering a product.
15. We know how to say No.
Over the last several months, we’ve had numerous conversations with friends, colleagues, partners, investors. Once they learn about WellAI and what the platform could do, they tend to give a list of very interesting ideas, along the lines “You know, you could also do this with your technology…” We are used to saying No to many great suggestions because we want to be focused and to execute according to our plan. To be clear, we say No for now. We take a note of some of the interesting suggestions for our future longer-term plans.
16. Clear Plan.
Once we’ve determined that the problem in the market exists and we could help, we’ve developed a very clear plan how to execute. We are following this plan, continuously hitting the plan’s milestones along the way.
17. Customers are always right.
Our plan is clear. However, it is also very flexible. Our startup experience has taught us to be humble. We understand that once our products hit the market, the market’s reaction and customer feedback are what determine the future of the products and the future of WellAI.
These are our 17 reasons for WellAI’s success. More importantly, living and breathing WellAI on a daily basis and seeing team’s excitement makes us very confident in the future of WellAI.
The WellAI app called Doc In A Pock is now available on your smartphone. If you are an employer and would like an app that makes your employees healthier and happier, and save 34% to 45% on your healthcare costs, please visit https://wellai.health to sign up for 1-on-1 demo.
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