Welcome to the Stage: Abrar Tanveer
Strategy Analyst at Guideway Care
Startup Spotlight: Guideway Care
Guideway Care bridges gaps in the care experience, giving patients a less troubling and difficult care journey, a higher quality of life, and often less cost while maintaining the best quality of care. The health system receives an easier, more seamless patient interaction and can provide a more comprehensive continuum of care. Their technology platform combines people and tech to allow hospital systems to redesign their care delivery for their patients by helping nurses get back to doing what they do best, nursing.
Meet Abrar Tanveer, Strategy Analyst, Guideway Care
Abrar Tanveer is someone who cares deeply about the world of Healthcare tech. A native of Cincinnati, OH, and an economics graduate of Ohio State University, Abrar joined Venture for America after college keen on finding an early-stage health care start-up to work at over the course of his fellowship. Fortunately, he found Guideway Care right here in Birmingham, Alabama. He has helped the company grow from just nine employees to over 20 while focusing on making sure Guideway Care is using data to best drive their sales processes and maintaining key partnerships with the likes of the University of Alabama- Birmingham School of Public Health. Abrar is an incredibly driven and passionate early-stage operator who believes in Guideway’s mission of improving patient care wherever the patient is located. He is a great friend of mine and I couldn’t be more excited to share his story and his insights!
1. What's been the biggest challenge you've faced as a young early-stage employee?
I've had the pleasure of joining Guideway Care back in the fall of 2018 as employee number 9. Since then, we have grown to over 20 full-time employees with 2 interns and are projected to grow at an even faster rate this coming year. Seeing the amount of growth that we've had has been incredibly inspiring. Throughout my time though, I've noticed that the biggest personal challenge I've faced is figuring out how to let go of tasks that I am in charge of so that I'm not managing so much at once. Being such a small company, we have to be scrappy and help pick each other up so that the ball isn't dropped on any occasion. That means that even though my focus is on business operations/strategy, I've had to help out in product development, implementations, marketing, sales, HR and really anything else the company needs to make sure we succeed.
It's been an incredible experience to see the in's and out's of the entire company and I definitely feel that I've gotten a sense of what it takes to run a startup. As we continue to grow though, it has been difficult to let go of projects that I manage because I no longer have the bandwidth to work on all of them. Being entrepreneurially curious as I am, I want a taste of everything at every point of the way but I know that this is not scalable for the long term. My manager (COO Tina Graham) and I have worked hard to figure out how to break out my role so that we can continue to grow at a fast pace which I know will be beneficial to the organization's health as a whole going forward.Â
2. Is there someone or something that you rely on to get through the tough days?
I would have to say on tougher days I really rely on my family, my friends, and my manager. My family is incredibly large with 9 first-cousins (this is only in the states), roughly 20 second-cousins I'm close with, my multiple aunts/uncles, my grandparents, my brothers and of course my mom. I talk with each and every one of them all the time and they always help me ground myself whenever I feel like I am losing control of my day-to-day life. Even though they constantly bugging me to get married (I could be an angel investor if I had a dollar for every time I've had one of them tell me I should be married by now) they really are always by my side whenever I need it.
Outside of my family, I have been incredibly lucky to have so many loving friends in my life that I keep in close contact with even though a lot of them don't live in Birmingham. I can text any one of them with a personal or professional issue and they will be ready to answer the phone to help me talk through it. I seriously have some of the best friends in the world due to VFA, college, previous internship, and random encounters that I don't know where I would be without all of them. Lastly, my manager Tina Graham has been an incredible source of support for me this past year and a half. I knew I wanted to work for Tina when during our first conversation she told me "I would never hire someone unless I wanted to invest in them for their own development" and she really has lived up to those words since day one. Not only is she incredibly brilliant to learn from, but she's also incredibly kind and makes sure that my heads above water when things have gotten tough in personal life. Without this support network, I probably wouldn't be where I am today.Â
3. What excites you most about Healthcare Tech?Â
There's so much cool stuff happening within Healthcare Tech that I could honestly talk about it forever. Just ask my roommate Nico, whenever I tell him about some new article posted online relating to a scientific discovery or a new startup that I just found out about I end up rambling on for too long. For me personally, I'd have to say I'm excited about companies focusing on a vertical of healthcare managing that specific data collection and utilizing new technologies to discover biopharmaceutical drugs.Â
One of the most interesting companies making huge innovations within the healthcare space is called Flatiron Health. They were founded by two individuals, Nat Turner and Zach Weinburg, who were driven to streamline data collection for oncology (cancer) so that it is useful for physicians, health systems, pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and the patients. Back in 2018, they were acquired by Roche Oncology for $1.9 billion dollars and have since then scaled to over 1,000 employees who are all focused on the end goal of trying to solve cancer through real-world evidence data collection. I've spoken to two VFA alumni who currently work there and they both are incredibly excited for what the future holds. A newer company that is doing something similar but for neuroscience is called Blackfynn and they are located within Philadelphia. Dementia, Alzheimer's, and other neurological diseases are still poorly understood even though we have so much technology. By having a company focusing on collecting all the data available relating to neurological diseases, they can provide it to healthcare institutions to help drive change and move the needle to better understand how we can manage these diseases. I truly believe in Blackfynn's mission and believe they will be a big player in the neuroscience space within the next couple of years.Â
Lastly, one part of healthcare that I am not an expert in but I think could have big implications in the future is to utilize AI/ML to develop biopharmaceutical drugs based on an individual's specific genetics. One company in particular Variant Bio's goal is to find unique individuals with these highly rare phenotypes to analyze them for drug development. The literal job of the CEO/CTO is to travel all over the world for this goal and I personally think it's one of the coolest things I've heard about in the past year. I obsessively check their website to see all the new studies they post. To get a real sense of the potential for this company, check out Josh Wolfe's interview with Michael Plum here and skip to the 12:00 min mark. It's so cool what they are doing.Â
4. You've been in the Southeast for two years. What can be improved to make it a better home for startups?
Personally, I'm a huge fan of public transportation. I know that Atlanta, Birmingham, Huntsville, Nashville, and New Orleans all have growing tech hubs and if there was some way to create an efficient high-speed rail system to connect all of these cities - we would see a huge tech boom within the Southeast. However, I unfortunately don't think that will happen but one can dream.Â
From a Birmingham perspective, I think besides better public transportation in the city one thing that will make this a more attractive home for startups is the interconnectivity of young professionals. Birmingham has done an incredible job growing its tech ecosystem within the past couple of years due to companies such as Shipt, Fleetio, Birmingham Bound, along with the countless other startups that are growing every day. While the Birmingham tech community is very tight-knit, it still feels siloed off from the other professions within the city. We have two large banks (Regions and BBVA), one of the top medical schools in the country, several law firms, and a variety of other professionals within the city that are all highly respected within their industry.
I think there is a huge opportunity to push an initiative to get these groups of people to share thoughts and ideas to develop growth for Birmingham. Also, the stronger this interconnectivity is, the more likely people will feel a strong sense of connection to the community of Birmingham. Can you imagine a scenario where a med student from UAB, an employee of Shipt, a lawyer from Maynard Cooper all sit together and try to come up with a good business idea? In my personal opinion, I truly believe that by getting the young professionals interconnected within the city on a larger scale we will create a better talent pool of candidates that a startup founder will want to tap into.Â
Want to learn more? Check out Guidewaycare.com, questions or comments? Comment Below!