How Naresh Vissa Overcame Age Discrimination in His Early Startup Days

Naresh: That’s a very important point, making sure that your clients are happy. Many people in my industry, are looking to make a quick buck. And this was the lesson that I learned early on. This was terrible advice. So personally I don’t come from a business family. You brought up the whole age thing and what people are asking you. I don’t come from a business family, really. I come from a family of like engineers and doctors. Like workers, you know, like more – like specialized workers, not business or entrepreneurs.

Sean: So the advice I was getting was from, like, engineers and doctors, and it was just completely off base because most of them were telling me, oh, you know, just charge your clients as much money as possible. And yeah, literally, that’s what they told me. They’re like, just, just charge as much as possible. That’s the way that you build. And why? Because here in the United States and our health care system, the philosophy is, oh, just charge the insurance company as much money as you can, and then the insurance company is going to come back and say, oh, you want to charge 100,000 for this procedure? Well, we can only cover 50,000 of it. So then the doctor is like, okay, that’s fine pay us 50,000. That’s okay with us.

Sean: My goodness.

Naresh: That’s that’s why everything is so health care is so expensive here in the United States because you can just charge whatever the heck you want. I mean, there were COVID tests that were selling for $5,000 that they build the insure for simple COVID test. I mean, you can go to the store across the street and get it for $10, if not $5, but you get insurance involved or you get a medical practice involved. And they’re going to be like, okay, let’s just bill the insurer. And guess what? The insurer paid for it. They billed the insurer. Something like 10,000 insurers said, Oh, we’ll pay 5000 for this. And they paid it, the insurer paid it and the patient did not care because the patient’s insurance paid for it. So the patient didn’t have to pay anything for it. But when you look at the bill, it’s like that simple test cost 5000 and that’s why everything is so astronomical.

Naresh: So the advice I was getting from my family of doctors and engineers was, yeah, just charge as much money as possible. And so that’s what I did when I got started. And it was great. As I said, the first year was great, but then I ran into some issues because some clients were like, You know, you’re charging us a lot of money and we thought we were going to be getting the moon if we’re paying this much money. And it started causing a lot of problems to the point that I even got into a lawsuit with a client who was like, We’re not paying. And so that was a soul-searching experience when I got into that lawsuit because I realized that if I wanted to build a truly sustainable business, that would overcome any downturn, a COVID or recession, whatever it might be, I had to change my business strategy so that it would be high quality, low-cost provider.