Frictionless Generosity & Health Tech Grief

Diversifying generosity across asset classes + finding reasons for optimism in fixing U.S. healthcare.

The Deep End is a podcast where visionary builders, creators, and experts discuss world-changing ideas. We skip the surface level and go in-depth into ideas that matter.

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Announcements

• On Deck is always hiring, but this role may be particularly interesting for Deep End listeners. We are hiring a Researcher in Residence to be a “personal trainer of the mind” for our two co-CEOs.

• We are also seeking high energy and deeply thoughtful VC investors to work in our ODX team in Associate and Manager level positions. Help us put the next generation of founders in business.

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🎧 Episode #42 | Frictionless Generosity with Overflow’s Vance Roush

Listen on Apple or Spotify

Vance Roush is founder of Overflow. Overflow is building the infrastructure to make generosity frictionless across every major asset class.

Vance is on a mission to democratize philanthropy to the masses.

Through his experience with churches and other non-profits, he has become keenly aware of how top percentile has leveraged wealth management tricks and tips to donate stock (instead of cash) for decades. There are huge tax and savings benefits to doing this. Vance knows that that benefit can be extended to others with technology. 

This conversation is about  why and how philanthropy can be diversified across asset classes.

At On Deck, we have an obsession with access because we believe that talent is broadly distributed but opportunity is not. In 2020, we created the On Deck Access Fund to enable more people from around the world to participate in our programs by removing financial barriers. In 2021, we’ve awarded scholarships to more than 1,000 Fellows, totaling more than $1,000,000. And this is just the beginning. We recently announced “ODF Advance” a program to provide up to $25,000 in funding to would-be founders who are exploring a startup idea. Through our Access Initiatives we are unlocking opportunities for thousands of high potential entrepreneurs. If you’d like to learn more about our Access Initiative, visit www.beondeck.com/access-initiative.

🎧 Episode #43 | Overcoming the Six Stages of Health Tech Grief with Nikhil Krishnan

Listen on Apple or Spotify.

We’re joined this week by Nihil Krishnan, author of the Out of Pocket newsletter. Out-of-Pocket is making the business of healthcare easy to understand. Nikhil writes in plain English and compliments industry analysis with memes and humor.

We haven’t done a true digital health episode yet, and Nikhil was the perfect person to provide us with an overview of the space.

The first question we asked was probably the hardest for Nikhil to answer. Marshall asked “What the problem is” in US healthcare right now, and Nikhil laughed. The American health system is uniquely complicated. Everyone thinks everyone else is the bad guy and an obtuse system means that nobody knows what the best direction to row in is.

Nikhil points out how healthcare is more emotionally charged. The industry has a fundamentally different risk-reward dynamic when the stakes are quite literally life and death. 

Still, there is reason for hope, amid all the grief. Nikhil helps identify all the areas where health tech entrepreneurs might be able to create meaningful change in an industry that has been particularly ravaged by COVID during the past two years. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• This episode was based off of the six stages of healthcare grief

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That’s all for now! If you haven’t yet, subscribe to get future issues in your inbox every Friday.

You might also want to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts, and YouTube.

See you next week!

- Jackson (Producer of The Deep End)