Kendra T's Profile

Thanks for sharing, James! It is nice to see telemedicine catching on since it allows health care systems to keep people who don’t need to visit in person out of the hospital or care provider in order to free up space for those who truly need in person care. Teladoc certainly fills a need in the health care system and it is interesting to see that relaxed regulations have enabled it to thrive. I like your idea of expanding their SaaS platform and I could see it being valuable for employers, as well. If Teladoc can offer its platform to employers, employees will be able to see doctors virtually from the office for simple concerns that do not require in person care. This would reduce the time that employees spend to visit a doctor in person, which would be valuable for employee productivity. Not only would this be a nice benefit as an employee, it would also benefit the employer immensely.

Thanks for sharing! I am impressed that Michael’s has adapted its business so quickly to begin offering online orders and curbside pick-up, especially considering it has traditionally been a fairly old-fashioned retailer. I would be interested to see if Michael’s has seen an increase in sales due to customers picking up more crafting during COVID-19 since people have a lot more time on their hands. I think it would be difficult to keep customers engaged in crafting post-COVID since people’s lives will fill up with their prior activities, leaving little time to dedicate to crafting. Michael’s may be able to keep people engaged by creating crafting workshops that continue post-COVID or posting nostalgic posts on social media about when people had time to craft during social distancing to reignite the interest in crafting.

Thanks for sharing, Cherish! It’s really interesting to think about how some of the new features, such as video chatting, will continue to be used in a post-COVID world. I imagine that some users would want to continue to use video chats as an easy way to “pre-screen” potential dates prior to actually meeting them in person (which requires significantly more effort). I could see apps monetizing these chats by adding them to the premium paid subscriptions or potentially allowing users to send their date a coffee by delivery (which the app could take a portion of the fee) to add some fun and connection to the chat. I would also be interested to see if users would prefer to have a video chat as the first means of communication, similar to speed dating, rather than going through the process of instant messaging and waiting for the other person to respond.

Thanks for sharing! It definitely seem concerning for new parents that P&G would have access to their baby’s data and information. I wonder if P&G could try to help parents feel more comfortable by avoiding a physical sensor and instead developing an app that parents could use to manage baby care. This may decrease the discomfort with physically monitoring a baby with technology and may change the parent’s mindset to be focused on simply reminding themselves to do something rather than tracking their baby’s data.

Thanks for sharing, Partha! It’s definitely interesting to think about how AI can increase the speed of drug development in the times of COVID-19. As some regulations have been relaxed in health care during this crisis (particularly around telehealth), I am curious if resistance to AI will remain as people start to recognize the importance of increasing speed to market in times like these. I still see clinical trials as a challenge that is difficult to speed up, but using AI in other parts of the development process could greatly improve drug development speed.

Thanks for sharing, Jesse! Beli seems to be filling a hole in the restaurant rating market that personalizes recommendations based on a user’s past behavior and interests. I am curious if Yelp will ever move more in this direction, given its leadership in the rating space and accessibility to users and data. While Yelp now displays restaurants sorted by “For You”, it remains unclear where they get their data from if you are not an active reviewer and I often find that the “For You” restaurants are not actually restaurants I would be interested in. It seems like Beli will have the advantage here if users frequently book through the platform and identify restaurants they would like to try using bookmarks.

Thanks for sharing! The risk of car owner multi-homing seems to be quite high, as you mentioned (similar to Uber vs Lyft). I would also think that customer multi-homing would be very high, since customers have many different options for car rental, ranging from Getaround to traditional car rental companies like Avis and Hertz. In order to prevent multi-homing, Turo needs to differentiate in some way, which they seem to be doing through price and car selection. In order to maintain a variety of cars, Turo needs to remain attractive to car owners, which seems to be difficult.

Thanks for sharing – interesting to hear how ClassPass works with studios! It’s interesting that they have incorporated some value-add services such as SmartTools in an effort to make the platform more valuable for studios to prevent disintermediation. It’s also interesting to see ClassPass moving into network bridging as they have more wellness classes included, such as massages and spa treatments. It looks like ClassPass has attempted to improve their platform, which was previously only fitness classes, by bridging their fitness network with a wellness network.

Zencare sounds like a great way to digitize the process of finding a therapist without augmenting the therapy itself – thanks for sharing! I appreciate that Zencare breaks down the barriers to finding a therapist (e.g., therapists often don’t have an online presence, insurance coverage can be confusing), but it doesn’t require the user to connect with the therapist over video chat. My group for MSO last semester proposed a similar service and we found that many therapists and users do not find tele-therapy to be as effective as in-person therapy. In terms of creating a “stickier” platform that is not disintermediated, Zencare could provide additional services to make therapists and users want to stay on the platform; this could include scheduling support for therapists so that they can fill last-minute cancellations, billing support between users, therapists, and insurance to simplify the complicated billing process, and access to user history data, so that users can switch therapists and transfer the information that they have already shared/discussed to their new therapist.

Thanks for sharing, Jennifer! GoodRx has become extremely popular and definitely helps people save money on important medications, however, I am curious to see if GoodRx remains popular as the prevalence of high-deductible health plans increases. Many people are now on high-deductible health plans, which require patients to pay a certain amount of money “out-of-pocket” per year in order to receive better coverage on costly prescription drugs. While GoodRx helps patients save money on prescriptions, insurance does not count a patient paying for a prescription using GoodRx toward their deductible, so it makes it more difficult for patients to get better coverage to make that prescription cheaper later in the year. I wonder if patients will start to look at how much they save using GoodRx and compare that to how much they would save if they pay with insurance and reach their insurance deductible. That math would be fairly complicated and I imagine patients would rather just save money immediately using GoodRx (rather than later in the year), so I am interested to see how insurance will respond to GoodRx.

Thanks for sharing, Leo! It is especially interesting to see your point on Allbirds’ use of Facebook and Instagram as a way to not only advertise, but also to collect direct feedback from customers. I am particularly impressed that Allbirds is agile enough to incorporate customer feedback into their production cycle, which I imagine is fairly complex. I would be interested to see if other shoe brands are able to imitate Allbirds to change their product development and production based on customer feedback. I would actually be surprised if others are able to do so, given most shoe companies’ long product development processes that are not as agile as Allbirds.

Thanks for sharing! As a One Medical member myself, I love the benefits I get from One Medical. From easy appointment scheduling online to video visits with providers, I have been consistently impressed by how much One Medical’s digital offerings improve my health care experience.

I have been particularly interested in One Medical’s recent IPO. While its IPO has been very successful in its initial days, I am personally concerned that One Medical is incurring such significant losses. It is costly to hire and retain physicians and it appears that One Medical’s low membership fee may not be enough to cover their expenses, considering their net loss of $45.5M in 2018 and $34.2M in the first nine months of 2018 (https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/primary-care-chain-one-medical-files-to-go-public/569822/). As an avid One Medical advocate, I truly hope that they are able to sustain their business model and I am very curious to see how they are able to expand and hopefully become profitable.