The Stanford MBA Who Is Reshaping Healthcare

THE RULE-BREAKING ‘GOOGLER’

Wanting to expand on his business prowess, Shakil left Edwards Lifesciences in 2010 to enroll in the full-time MBA program at Stanford Graduate School of Business. But Shakil stayed close to his medical technology roots, spending his summer in-between MBA years at Intuitive Surgical, another enormous medical devices company. Based in nearby Sunnyvale, California, Intuitive Surgical focuses on robotic surgical devices and created the da Vinci surgical system in 1999.

Shakil graduated with his MBA in 2012 and immediately went to work for a medical tech company, MC10. Three months into the job, Shakil had the moment that would change his immediate life significantly.

“Somewhat breaking all the rules, a Googler in a social setting said, ‘Hey guys, I have this prototype of this thing called Google Glass, I’m not supposed to have it out in the wild, but here it is.’ It was very coincidental and very magical,” says Shakil. The undisclosed Googler proceeded to pass the product around the table,  while swearing everyone to secrecy.

“I just couldn’t give Google Glass back to this person,” Shakil recalls with growing excitement. “I was instantaneously putting together all of these previous experiences. About majoring in biomedical engineering at Duke and learning how to run a business at Edwards and then my time at the GSB, which is a cauldron of entrepreneurship.”

ESTABLISHING THE VERY FIRST GOOGLE GLASS COMPANY

The puzzle pieces were falling into place. “I kept thinking, this eyeglass certainly doesn’t need to be in the hands of consumers yet, but it does need to be in the hands of doctors. And I knew exactly how to do it,” says Shakil. “And there’s no better time to do it than right now. When you’re right out of business school and the world is eager to forgive you if you take big risks.”

Shakil reached out to Pelu Tran, a medical student he met at Stanford. Tran and Shakil spent time together in previous classes at Stanford that were designed specifically to mingle people from different departments for projects. “In a way, it was structured founder dating,” Shakil explains. “Because we realized we wanted to do something big together in startups, entrepreneurship and healthcare, we just didn’t know what. But we knew we could work well together.”

The project would be getting Google Glass into the hands of physicians. Within weeks, Shakil abruptly left MC10 and Tran took a “leave” from medical school, and they founded Augmedix. He wanted Augmedix to be the first “anointed leader” in the category. “There was certainly a lot of buzz around the applications for smart glass and that included healthcare and enterprise,” says Shakil.

And it worked. “We were the very first Google Glass company,” Shakil boasts. And they’ve rapidly established themselves as the category leader. Augmedix has spread from California’s Bay Area and now offers its services in any English-speaking area around the world. Shakil says they are officially partnered with seven “large national health systems.”

SAVING A PRODUCT GOING EXTINCT

And now, Augmedix might single-handedly be sustaining a product on the brink of extinction. When Google released Glass to the market in 2012 for about $1,500 a pop, those with the funds to spend on the product were dubbed “glassholes” by many. Just last week, Google turned off the lights on all Google Glass social media accounts and axed the product.

Except physicians and patients continue to love the Glass wearables. According to Augmedix’ website, the service is cutting down documentation time for physicians by about 70%. And about 80% of patients say the service has improved interactions with physicians.

And now, Shakil is making it a point to change a society that hits personally close. “A mission of the company is to hire hundreds and thousands of employees,” says Shakil, noting Augmedix employs “hundreds” of scribes in Bangladesh and India and is making an effort to create a middle class in those countries. “We want to give them real meaningful jobs. And make them part of the healthcare provider team without taking away from jobs here in the United States.”

‘WHEN YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY THAT’S COMPELLING, DO IT’

Recently, Shakil, Tran and team have been able to gain the backing of some top venture capital firms. After building and scaling for nearly two years, Augmedix announced it’s first $7 million seed round in June of 2014. In January of 2015, they announced a $16 million Seed A round, led by DCM Ventures and Emergence Capital Partners. The combined $23 million placed Augmedix at 27th of this year’s Poets&Quants’ top 100 MBA startups ranking.

For Shakil, the plan was always to create and run his own technology company. He just thought it would be later in his life. “It’s never apparent and there’s never a good time,” says Shakil. “But when you have an opportunity that’s compelling, do it.”

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