00:00:00 – 00:00:08 Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Preetha Ram. Preetha, welcome on the show.

00:00:08 – 00:00:09 Preetha Ram

Hi, Nitin.

00:00:11 – 00:00:13 Nitin Bajaj

It’s great to have you here. Let’s start with: who is Preetha?

00:00:15 – 00:00:38 Preetha Ram

You know, Nitin, if you had asked me this 20 years ago, I would probably have started by listing my degrees, you know, my PhD from Yale, my MBA from Emory, my work at IIT. In our community, you know, we’re often taught that we are our achievements. But today, what I’ll tell you is instead: I am, Preetha is, a bridge builder.

00:00:38 – 00:01:07 Preetha Ram

My life hasn’t been a straight ladder. You know, it’s kind of been a mosaic. I started as a scientist, biophysics, and then because I wanted to understand at a very molecular level how the world works, how our health works. But then I realized that the world’s hardest problems, especially in health, they’re not solved in the lab alone. They’re kind of solved at this intersection of technology, business, and then, of course, pure human grit. Let’s not underestimate that.

00:01:08 – 00:01:36 Preetha Ram

So today, with that realization, I have walked away from a perfect academic path. You know, I spent some time being a scrappy entrepreneur, and now I’m a venture investor. And I lived all these three different cultures, from academia, and then pivoted from that to startups, and now venture. And I’ve learned that failure isn’t the opposite of success, but it’s what you build on. It becomes like the raw material that helps you toward success.

00:01:36 – 00:02:02 Preetha Ram

So who’s Preetha? I’m here to tell you and everybody who’s listening that you don’t have to choose between being a scientist, or an artist, or a dreamer, or a realist, whatever. You can be all those things. And my mission today, where I am with Pier 70, is to show you that, you know, you can use the tools of technology and create a more abundant future.

00:02:02 – 00:02:18 Preetha Ram

But my true why, why I do, or why of who I am, is that to tell you that our careers, your career, my career, doesn’t have to be a straight line. You know, it can zig and it can zag, and that’s perfectly all right. So that’s who I am, Nitin.

00:02:19 – 00:02:31 Nitin Bajaj

So beautifully said. And I know you captured a life’s worth of work in a minute. Hopefully we’ll dig into that a little bit more here in the next few minutes.

00:02:32 – 00:02:45 Nitin Bajaj

You know, you started touching upon the why, and I want to double-click on that. Tell us why you do what you do, and specifically as you work through your mission at Pier 70.

00:02:45 – 00:02:52 Nitin Bajaj

Also tell us how you got there and what brought you to this moment in life.

00:02:54 – 00:03:22 Preetha Ram

That’s a long story, but let’s start with how I got there, maybe. You know, people ask, what’s the strategy? And exactly what you’re asking, how did I get there? And as I’ve said before, it wasn’t a straight ladder. And in fact, the story of how I joined Pier 70 is just that. It wasn’t a pitch deck, it wasn’t an email reach-out, it wasn’t a recruiter. It was actually a relationship. And it was a relationship that came out of genuine respect.

00:03:22 – 00:03:56 Preetha Ram

I’d met someone at a conference, we clicked, and then months later he reached out to me and he suggested that, oh, you know, I can sort of advise their fund. And it was COVID. And it was right during COVID, and I was in transition. I liked the team, I liked them, and there was a genuine mutual respect. And so, you know, they said, would you like to be an advisor? I said, yeah, of course. You know, why not? And it was COVID, remember? And I had just transitioned out of my last academic role, and we were all kind of in limbo at that time, trying to figure out what the world was going on, what was happening there.

00:03:57 – 00:04:27 Preetha Ram

And so I became an advisor, all unpaid, of course. And I was, you know, generally looking for a way to add value to these people that I respected and I trusted. But then, surprise, slowly, I kind of became indispensable. I was helping them set up their technology, and then it grew from that. And it was COVID, remember, how we were all relying on all our technologies. And then one day they kind of just looked at me and they said, why aren’t you a managing partner? Or something like that. So I joined them as a managing partner.

00:04:27 – 00:04:56 Preetha Ram

And I think the lesson I learned, and I’m happy to share this with anyone who’s stressing about their lives and about, oh, networking, how do I get that first role? I think you have to stop being strategic about it. You’ve got, you know, a lot of this just happens. And, you know, give your time. Give your time freely. Don’t give it an expectation of getting something in return. Volunteer.

00:04:56 – 00:05:32 Preetha Ram

And, you know, whether you’re volunteering your time or your brain power, remember that people will respect you for that. And if you build your relationships around just giving freely, without an expectation of anything in return, you and I both know, think of how we met, that life has a way of just coming right around and giving you something when you least expect it. So I think I’ve kind of realized that, and I’ve seen it now around me so many times. So I’ll stop there. So that’s how I joined Pier 70.

00:05:33 – 00:06:04 Nitin Bajaj

So true. And I think this word reflects in pretty much every aspect of your life. You mentioned it before, abundance, and bringing that mindset of not looking at things in a transactive way goes a long way, especially in the times we live in. Now, with your work at Pier 70 and also the other work you do, advising others and especially younger career folks, give us a sense of the impact your work has created.

00:06:05 – 00:06:40 Preetha Ram

Wow. So, you know, we can define impact in many different ways. We like to think of ourselves, the mission of Pier 70 is, in a sense, the mission of health. So we look for and support, and we see our number one mission to support innovation that creates this future of health, which means it’s not there right now, and it’s kind of somewhere out there, and we, someone needs to help get this innovation into the hands of people so that it can matter.

00:06:41 – 00:07:23 Preetha Ram

So when we look first, when we pick, our impact comes from the kinds of things we pick. And we have a POV on what this future of health will look like. We think it’s going to be AI-centered, data-centric, wellness-focused. It’s not just about, you know, oh, you’re sick, I’ll fix it for you, but how can we create a more well you? And also, that kind of goes with patient-centric. And I’m starting to believe we have to give people the tools in their hands, you know, health in your hands. And all of this goes together. So we pick and we choose companies that are aligned with our perspective on what the future looks like. So that’s one.

00:07:24 – 00:08:03 Preetha Ram

We also look for diversity. I believe very strongly that a diverse team is a stronger team. There’s data on that. We’ve known this for years. We’ve got to do something about it. And, you know, and it translates into what VCs care about, financial metrics. So we look forward to, so we also measure our impact in terms of the companies we have invested in, what fraction of them have diverse leaders, you know, CEOs, CEOs. And I’m so happy to say that more than 50% of our companies have diverse leaders, whether it’s a woman or a person of color or whatever it is. They’re not all the same.

00:08:04 – 00:08:25 Preetha Ram

We also look at things like patients served, if it’s already out there in the market. And some of our companies are out there in the market. They have FDA approval and they’re being used. And then we count the impact in terms of thousands of patients saved. So we look at all of these metrics together in terms of the impact. But at the end of the day, I think it’s all about

00:08:28 – 00:08:57 Preetha Ram

changing our mindset, yours, mine, and then people who are waiting to take the innovation, stick it into their hospitals, create that next engine. So creating that mindset in them that this is good, this can make an impact, and so on and so forth. So that, that isn’t, that can’t be measured except in economic terms of, you know, adoption and scale, those kind of metrics.

00:08:59 – 00:09:20 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah, it is a deep stakeholder system. And the impact is multi-fold. And I’m glad that you’re enabling the innovation, the passion people have to serve humanity, to serve our community. And you’re doing it in a truly representative way. So thank you for all of that.

00:09:22 – 00:09:32 Preetha Ram

It’s the right thing. It’s not only the right thing. I keep telling everybody, it’s financially a better way to do this. Everybody will win at the end.

00:09:32 – 00:09:32 Nitin Bajaj

So true.

00:09:32 – 00:09:33 Preetha Ram

Anyway, okay.

00:09:34 – 00:09:54 Nitin Bajaj

Now, as you go around, you know, making a lot of these decisions, meeting people, figuring out who to invest in, and then how to back them all the way, I’m sure you come across a few challenges. What’s the biggest one you would like to call out?

00:09:54 – 00:10:06 Preetha Ram

Well, you see, over the last, I’ve been doing this for about four years. So over the last four years, and it’s surprising, I never thought of this before, but health innovation has now become deeply personal.

00:10:06 – 00:10:35 Preetha Ram

Every day, as you said, I listen to pitches, and I’m constantly blown away by the grit, the creativity of these founders. So it’s personal to me because innovation is about hope. And how can you not be excited when you have evidence of hope around you? It’s hope for my own health, as well as for yours and everybody else, and my kids, and the next generations to come. But that’s what makes me get up every morning.

00:10:35 – 00:10:49 Preetha Ram

But what can be a bit of a downer, the bittersweet reality of what I do. You know, I’m energized every morning by the possibilities. When I go to bed, I’m often sighing at the weight of this particular challenge.

00:10:49 – 00:11:08 Preetha Ram

The hardest part of my job is the saying no. You know, there’s so many brilliant, passionate people, but I just don’t have the assets, the resources. And so it’s the tension between wanting to fuel every dream that comes my way, and that reality which you mentioned of having to choose.

00:11:08 – 00:11:26 Preetha Ram

So the challenge is, how do I find ways to support the innovation in more ways than straight-out writing checks? Because I’m rate-limited by the number of checks I can write, but maybe there’s something else I could do. So that’s the challenge.

00:11:27 – 00:11:37 Nitin Bajaj

That’s a beautiful challenge to have, but one nonetheless. Now, on the flip side of challenges come opportunities. What’s one you’re most excited about?

00:11:37 – 00:11:57 Preetha Ram

You know, today, things happen. You know, markets and trends and excitement builds up. And, you know, we’ve all been excited about AI and all that. But there’s something else that’s happening in the market that I want everybody else to be thinking about. I believe today we’re seeing a convergence of three things.

00:11:58 – 00:12:27 Preetha Ram

There’s the market opportunity in what we call the female economy. Women having the power, the authority, and the money to make decisions. So that’s a global women’s economy. And it’s not just health. But within that, it is a 600 billion women’s health opportunity. You know, the folks. That is the need for solutions which address women’s health. So that’s the market.

00:12:27 – 00:13:02 Preetha Ram

The science has been started coming out. And everyone should know that for the longest time, there was very little research going on in women’s health in particular, but now it’s coming out and you will be seeing things around you that bring out little known facts like, oh, did you know when a woman is having a heart attack, it looks very different than when a man is having a heart attack? So for all these years, they never recognized it. And women, number one disease that would kill women was cardiovascular disease because no one knew. So science is coming out. That’s the number two thing.

00:13:03 – 00:13:27 Preetha Ram

And then finally, society, that’s you and me and everybody else. We’re starting to recognize it. So when you see the convergence of three forces, that’s an opportunity. Whether you’re an investor or whether you’re an entrepreneur or you’re someone out there thinking, is there going to be a solution to my endometriosis for which there is no drug right now in the market? So that’s what I’m excited about.

00:13:27 – 00:13:52 Preetha Ram

I think we’re going to see a lot of leaps and bounds, you know, changes that are going to happen. And I think we, and let’s face it, with 50% of the world and nothing can happen, we can’t have future generations of women not healthy. So I think it’s very exciting. And I’m hoping that we’ll all join, you know, whether you’re a man or a woman, we all benefit from healthier women all around. So that’s where I’m looking at right now.

00:13:53 – 00:14:10 Nitin Bajaj

So true. And as a parent of two daughters, I am super excited and confident that with you at the helm and making these choices to make the current and the future generations healthier, I am really excited about that.

00:14:12 – 00:14:38 Nitin Bajaj

Now, as we look into the future, I like to pause and reflect. And I’d love to invite you to share two moments from your past life. One where things did not work out as you had expected. There was disappointment, failure, lessons. And another where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

00:14:41 – 00:15:24 Preetha Ram

So the failure story, when I was in college, genetics was just coming out. Long ago, there was this gentleman called Hargobin Khurana who created the science of genetics. And we were all super excited. And I said, I will go find a cure for cancer. And because of this, and so we know followed that path, you know, left India because, you know, research was so much more efficient here. And I figured that one day I will find a cure for cancer or, you know, those days we were all looking for cures for cancer.

00:15:25 – 00:15:54 Preetha Ram

So I haven’t found a cure for cancer. And somewhere along the way, I stopped being a scientist in the lab. And some people, and for a while I thought that was a failure. You know, I could never achieve a Nobel Prize. I doubt if anyone will give me a Nobel Prize right now. But then, and as it’s the case, you know, when you look at failure, you ask yourself, and as I’ve said, failure is often a stepping stone to the next success.

00:15:55 – 00:16:23 Preetha Ram

So when I realized that I was not the Nobel Prize, Marie Curie, who was my, you know, she was a hero for me, it also brought me the awareness of what I am. And when you realize what you’re not, you realize what you can be perhaps. And so I realized that a lot of my strengths were elsewhere. And that is when, and it was, so where was I? I don’t remember where I was. There was some point in my life, that’s true.

00:16:24 – 00:16:58 Preetha Ram

I decided that instead of just run, instead of pursuing a career in academic research, what I did enjoy instead was people, interacting with people, teaching. I set out to become a teacher instead. And even though some folks might have said that’s a fail, instead of being a researcher and finding a cure for cancer, I loved it. And I went on. And sometimes when you realize what you’re good at, you do well in it.

00:16:58 – 00:17:24 Preetha Ram

So I was, I had received Emory’s Award for Best Teacher, and I was surprised. And I said, oh, really? But it was amazing. So I am proud. I feel like in a sense, yeah, I was a failure. But the important thing was I just moved on. I learned to move on. I looked at myself. So that, I don’t know if it’s a failure or not, but I’m never going to get a Nobel Prize to find a cure for cancer.

00:17:24 – 00:17:53 Preetha Ram

So my mother, in fact, tells me this, you left, you left India saying you’re going to do this and then you’re not. Why do you, then I hear I am for all your audience. It’s okay. We think who we are when we’re young. And then life teaches us what we really are. So, okay, I can go on about this, but here’s my success story, what I’m really proud of. It kind of is also a failure in a sense.

00:17:54 – 00:18:21 Preetha Ram

I started a startup because I enjoyed working with students. And I realized that, you know, students were pinging me at night, like at midnight, and they wanted help. And so we created, my husband and I created a startup, a company called Open Study, where they could ask each other a platform. And it kind of was going up and down. And then there was this one time when, you know, things were down, there wasn’t that much funding. And we were at the end of our tether.

00:18:22 – 00:18:45 Preetha Ram

In fact, so much so that I was sitting and doing a lot of the tech work. I was, you know, manually fixing bugs and restarting servers. And usually in the night. I don’t know why servers have to go down in the middle of the night at around two o’clock, but they always do. So one night I went to bed thinking, okay, this is it. I can’t deal with this anymore. It’s been so many years. Tomorrow I will shut it off.

00:18:46 – 00:19:20 Preetha Ram

And I kind of woke up at four o’clock in the morning. There was an alert on my screen. You know, I had my Open Study screen on all the time. It was a high school student from New York, young man. And he says, oh, Preetha, everyone called me Preetha. Oh, Preetha, I just wanted to tell you this. I’m so excited. I just got into engineering school. My dream, and this is what the kid says, was to become an aerospace engineer, but I was failing math and I just didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t afford a tutor, but I was on your site and some person from somewhere began working with me. And over time, my grades improved and now I’ve gotten. I just want to tell you that. Thank you.

00:19:21 – 00:19:21 Nitin Bajaj

Amazing.

00:19:22 – 00:19:36 Preetha Ram

I just couldn’t do it after that. I thought, oh my God, is there another place? And Gemini wasn’t there then. Is there another place where kids like this, students like this, aspirations like this could be supported? And I said, I can’t do it.

00:19:37 – 00:19:51 Preetha Ram

So I think that’s my success story. That was when I, you know, we put out some of our money in, we just persisted, we went back with greater energy, and then we managed to, you know, take the company to an exit with 65 million users.

00:19:51 – 00:20:07 Preetha Ram

And I feel of all the things I’ve done, that creativity, that innovation, that grit, I stuck it out for a long time. I’m very proud of that. I’m glad we did that. That changed me forever. I’m just telling you, I could, I just, it was an experience.

00:20:08 – 00:20:22 Nitin Bajaj

That is so cool. That is so cool. And congratulations and kudos to you, both for the eventual success, but also for the grit, the resilience in sticking it out.

00:20:22 – 00:20:41 Nitin Bajaj

And also to your previous story where you said the failure, I think you were meant for a higher purpose. And sure, you could have done wonders with researching yourself, but I think over the years you’ve enabled thousands of others to become those researchers. And your impact is now multi-pronged, multi-faceted.

00:20:42 – 00:20:47 Preetha Ram

Very kind of you to say that. I’d like to, all of us like to believe that, but thank you for saying it. I do appreciate that.

00:20:49 – 00:20:52 Nitin Bajaj

Now, switching gears for a bit, what do you do for fun?

00:20:55 – 00:21:12 Preetha Ram

I have a lot of fun. If you come by my place at any time, my house is filled with art. You’ll probably find me on a weekend or a night. And I have an easel right here, right next to me so that I can, you know, and it was, and again, one of these things you don’t think of yourself.

00:21:12 – 00:21:36 Preetha Ram

You know, I’d always worked as a scientist, data and logic and, you know, putting pieces together. And then COVID hit and I just started exploring painting. And I just learned. It was just something I just picked up with YouTube videos. And I was, I’m a self-taught painter. But I feel like it has unlocked a part of my brain that wasn’t ever engaged.

00:21:37 – 00:22:02 Preetha Ram

And to me, it’s not only a way to decompress at night. I have started seeing the world differently. Honestly, as an artist, I see color and light and texture and shadow and the interplay of all these things. And when I paint, I think of ways to convey tenderness or energy or love or passion. And I’m just amazed that one can actually do that.

00:22:02 – 00:22:34 Preetha Ram

So I do a lot of painting. I also am a very good gardener. You should see my vegetables and my dahlias this time were like humongous. I have a green thumb. And I, what else do I do? We like to travel. I’m an excellent cook. And I apologize for giving myself so much praise. No one else can. I can’t serve this to you right now. But I do enjoy these kinds of things, you know, sort of creating these things.

00:22:34 – 00:23:02 Preetha Ram

And then it’s kind of come back also to what I do. Creativity is a very important part of innovation. And when I see and I hear pictures and I hear a creative solution, not just a logical solution to a problem, but I see that the entrepreneur has been creative. We call it a hack. You know, they hack their way around a problem. Oh, that’s a clever way of thinking about it. Then I appreciate that.

00:23:02 – 00:23:21 Preetha Ram

Because you and I know, Nitin, life happens. Things don’t always go the way you want it to go. And we want that entrepreneur at the end to come up with these creative solutions, not just logical, you know, well thought out. We want that to be too, but I think creativity is a very important part of innovation as well.

00:23:22 – 00:23:22 Nitin Bajaj

I agree.

00:23:22 – 00:23:23 Preetha Ram

So it helps me recognize that.

00:23:24 – 00:23:50 Nitin Bajaj

And also, as you said, using a different part of our brain also makes us appreciate other things we see. You see the creativity when somebody is pitching to you. You see the choice of colors and you kind of get to know them at a deeper level. If you yourself are aware of all of our faculties being put to use, consciously or subconsciously. And a lot of that kind of transpires in the nonverbal.

00:23:51 – 00:23:51 Preetha Ram

Yeah.

00:23:53 – 00:23:58 Nitin Bajaj

Now, is there a book or a podcast that is a favorite and you want to share?

00:23:59 – 00:24:25 Preetha Ram

A while ago, I think it’s still on my bookshelf here. I didn’t realize it then, but I read a book and I’ve gone back to look at it now called The Power of Nice. And it’s how to conquer the business world with kindness. It was a radical thought and everyone thought it was a kind of a womanish, you know, like, oh, I think it even had a pink cover. Now it’s a yellow cover. So it’s by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Kowal.

00:24:25 – 00:24:58 Preetha Ram

And it’s actually a business book which argues that genuine kindness, goodwill, and cooperation, you get business impact and business productivity, as well as goodwill, of course, and success rather than this, you know, this shark-like throat kind of mentality. And I think the reason she had it at bank in the olden days was because we don’t normally think of the business world as being a place where one can be nice.

00:24:59 – 00:25:35 Preetha Ram

But over time, I found that, and this I go back to what I said at the beginning, you know, be nice, be helpful, and that sort of mentality will really benefit you a lot more than that transactional. I think people who start out thinking that the pie is large enough or the pie can always get larger. And by helping someone, I’m not negatively impacting myself.

00:25:35 – 00:26:13 Preetha Ram

And even though I don’t see a value in helping someone today, if I believe that helping someone, being nice to someone, courteous, gracious is who you are, I think in the long run, it will come around. One should just believe in it. It may not happen tomorrow, but as I, you know, I’m very fond of telling folks that a lot of my opportunities have come my way because I’ve had long relationships of being nice to people. I mean, sometimes it’s a very small thing.

00:26:13 – 00:26:18 Nitin Bajaj

So true. And as you said, you know, you’re being yourself any which ways. So it doesn’t hurt you.

00:26:19 – 00:26:19 Preetha Ram

It doesn’t hurt you.

00:26:20 – 00:26:25 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. It’s beautifully said. Now onto my favorite part of the show, Preetha, we call this.

00:26:25 – 00:26:26 Preetha Ram

Oh, yeah, you asked me, right?

00:26:27 – 00:26:32 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah, the one-line life lessons. I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

00:26:33 – 00:26:44 Preetha Ram

So I think my first one is from my first point. Your career is a mosaic. It’s not a ladder. So instead of trying to climb it, think of building it. That’s number one.

00:26:44 – 00:26:56 Preetha Ram

Don’t network. Lead with, how can I help? And the right doors will open for those who keep them open for others. So think about that.

00:26:57 – 00:27:23 Preetha Ram

And then, you know, this is my cancer story, which is failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the raw data that you need to iterate towards success. I’m a scientist. Logic has solved many problems. So logic solves problems, but creativity unlocks the solutions that we haven’t imagined yet. So let’s bring that in.

00:27:23 – 00:27:39 Preetha Ram

And then finally, I’m a VC. We meet with startups all the time. So here’s my last one for you. Think of yourself as a startup of you. Iterate, innovate, and imagine. And then let the kindness be the wind in your sails.

00:27:42 – 00:27:43 Nitin Bajaj

Love that.

00:27:44 – 00:27:44 Preetha Ram

No, anyway.

00:27:45 – 00:28:15 Nitin Bajaj

It’s so beautifully put. This is amazing. Preetha, thank you so much for making the time for sharing your journey, your story, your life lessons, but for most importantly, being you and bringing so much of your passion and vision to helping the entrepreneurs, but also keeping an eye to the future generations, making us healthy, making us lively, and bringing that mindset of abundance. Truly appreciate it.

00:28:15 – 00:28:21 Preetha Ram

Well, thank you so much, Nitin. These were amazing questions and you had, thank you so much for bringing it out. Well, thank you.