Meet the Online MHA Faculty: A Conversation with Professor Brenda Schmidt
Can you tell us the story about what brought you to entrepreneurship?
I've had a circuitous route into entrepreneurship. My educational degrees are in science: my undergraduate degree is in microbiology, and my master's degree is in immunology.
I went into pharmaceutical sales and then a marketing product manager role at Baxter, and stayed there for 15 years. It was the perfect opportunity to understand the foundation and quality of a Fortune 100 company, and a great way to grow and learn. In my last six years at Baxter, I was responsible for building one of the divisions in Latin America and acted as an entrepreneur within the firm.
From that experience, I decided I wanted to try it on my own as an entrepreneur. In 2005, I negotiated a layoff, and had 18 months of runway to work with. It required a lot of discipline to build a revenue-generating business in a short amount of time. I bootstrapped a healthcare company for about 10 years, then pivoted and started Solera Health in 2015. Solera raised $72 million in capital and grew quickly.
In December 2019, I left Solera Health to start another firm, and I am now CEO of Coplex, a Venture Builder that partners with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and corporate innovators to start high-growth tech companies.
A common theme throughout my career is curiosity and the quest for learning.
Looking back, what are the catalysts or inflection points in your career?
One inflection point is when I raised my hand and said, "I want to be responsible for Latin America." I wasn't fluent in Spanish, and never really traveled out of the country. But Baxter sent me to a language school, and I had the opportunity to understand if I had the skill-set to actually build something.
In 2003, I went to the Center for Creative Leadership, which was a tipping point. I did a lot of self-reflection and analysis around the trajectory I wanted my career to take. From that experience, I decided that I wanted to start my own firm—I didn't want to look back and regret that I never took that leap. Now, 15 years later, I couldn't imagine doing anything else other than starting companies.
What are the essential traits and experiences of a successful healthcare entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurs fall into four main categories: technologists, sales and marketers, operators, and idea people.
It's vital to cross all four categories. Understand what you are good at and passionate about, and surround yourself with people who complement your strengths.
Then, gain comfort with ambiguity. There are going to be challenges going down the entrepreneurship path. If you are incredibly excited about the problem you are trying to solve, you are much more likely to be successful. I've learned to be flexible, experiment, pivot, and adapt to different situations.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How will they impact the world?
In addition to my role at Coplex, I am co-founding a company with a completely different market model for healthcare.
The company provides a value exchange service that aligns incentives across multiple health plans to invest in interventions with long-term returns. We track individual consumers over time and then pay dividends back to the health plans for investing in interventions with a proven ROI.
For example, if a member is with a specific health plan, that health plan is investing in their health. If that member moves to a different health plan, there will be an opportunity to fractionalize the credit of the health of that individual and pay it back to the original health plan.
It's a proxy for a single-payer system because it is aligning across incentives with all health plans. The big question I'm trying to answer is, “How do you amortize the return on investment of costly treatment overtime when that individual may not be with the health plan long enough to see the return on investment?”
This is my next big project, and I'm going through the entrepreneurial journey as I teach healthcare entrepreneurship courses at NYU.
Do you have a blueprint for the healthcare entrepreneurship journey?
I always start with an idea. Reflect on something that was frustrating for you in your job or personal life, then find a solution and validate that idea.
Validation, understanding the market, and how your solution solves that problem, increase your chance of success. To do this, start talking to hundreds of people—potential clients, influencers, stakeholders—and get their feedback. This should happen before you ever build a piece of technology, innovation, or product so you understand what the minimum viable product looks like.
Next, understand the target market and the business model. How are you going to make money? How much are you going to charge for this?
As you get indicators on whether or not this is a viable business, learn to pivot. Maybe it's the wrong audience, or perhaps the wrong positioning. Adopt the lean startup methodology to quickly validate if a business is viable.
What are your "Three Things I Wish I Knew"? Can you share a story?
I wish I had been more confident that I had the skill-set to break out and become an entrepreneur much earlier. It took me a few years before I said, “Yes, I can do this." It's easy to feel like an imposter when you first start a business. Sometimes you think, "Who am I to start this?"
Second, I wish I had known more about venture capital when I first started. I bootstrapped a business and did not have any outside institutional money or funding for ten years. It made it a lot harder.
Finally, I wish I had relied more on the community, organizations, and people who are really passionate about helping entrepreneurs. At first, I felt like an island, and I was plowing through and doing it myself. I learned that the support, funding, mentorship, and advisors are there. I wish I had sought out these resources sooner.
What is your life philosophy?
I've always given without expecting anything back. There is a great book called The Go-Giver. Its premise is that if you give freely because it's the right thing to do, whether it's introductions, advice, or information, you will get it back in spades. It has helped me create a vast, supportive network over time.
Finally, be generous and kind. Assume good intent. It's a small world, and relationships are incredibly important as you build a business.
Why NYU Wagner?
I have been incredibly impressed by how supportive the faculty and staff are in a time of crisis. NYU has been flexible around individual student needs. The training that the institution provided, and the pivot to 100% virtual circumstance, is impressive. They are really committed to both the students' and faculty’s success.
What makes your course stand out? What will students learn from your course that they wouldn't learn anywhere else?
I teach Entrepreneurship for Healthcare Organizations and provide practical, on-the-ground experience and insights from my 15 years of entrepreneurship. I add color to the case studies and examples that we cover. I know the CEO’s and their firms and journeys. I not only offer behind-the-scenes, insider tips on those case studies, but also concrete life-hacks and experiences.
Brenda Schmidt is Senior Lecturer of Health Administration at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and President at Coplex, a startup studio.