Dan Wilson — Feb 13, 2026

Attendees: Thomas, Michael, Dan Duration: ~32 min

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1. PREMERA UPDATE

Thomas shared the outcome of yesterday's Premera meeting (with their head of analytics and AI data team):

• Landing on FDE consulting work. 3-6 months of embedded "PhD work" — learning their systems, understanding their needs.
• Rate proposed: $150/hr for ~40 hrs/week. Proposal sent, expect response early next week.
• Enterprise product contracting in parallel. Premera said even if we wanted to, enterprise procurement takes 6-9 months through security, review, permissions.
• Two specific workstreams revealed:
  • Auto-auth: Accelerating automated authorizations (MCG/United have versions of this)
  • Appeals processing: Premera is ~12 months behind on the provider appeal AI wave. Getting slammed with AI-generated appeals. Need help making the process more efficient.
• Access level: Will be permissioned like employees. Significant data and system access.

Dan's reaction:

• "That's a great outcome for you guys honestly. You're going to get paid to go to school."
• Contractor access vs. vendor access is "180 degrees different" — as a vendor they'd expect you to have all the answers.
• $150/hr is fair/market. If they counter at $130, take it. Even $100 is still $200K/year per person.

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2. TAX & CORPORATE STRUCTURE ADVICE

• As a C Corp, consulting income gets double-taxed. Consider an S Corp or LLC subsidiary for the consulting revenue.
• S Corp / LLC: pay yourself a minimal salary ($40K), dividend the rest quarterly — much better tax treatment.
• Talk to your tax person about whether this makes sense.
• "It might be complicated but it might be a situation where you want to do some kind of subsidiary that's taxed differently."

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3. STOCHASTIC / CORAL HEALTH — APPEALS CONVERGENCE

Dan is building an appeal letter generator with Coral Health through his Stochastic work:

• Getting all payer decisions to tune the model
• This is the opposite side of what Premera wants help with (provider attacking vs. payer defending)
• "There might be a scenario where we collaborate around that"
• Don't want to waste time rebuilding if IP can be repurposed
• Some of the IP could be built outside the Premera relationship — need to figure out what makes sense

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4. THE VISION — TRANSACTION CLEARING

Dan articulated the end-state vision clearly:

• Think of auth like financial transactions. If both sides are on the same toolset, "for the love of God, can we just clear the transaction more efficiently?"
• But: "What I learned with Moxe is you can't build the end to end and expect both sides to adopt it together."
• Each side has to be valuable independently first.
• Finance analogy: get enough buyers and sellers, then clear the transaction and take both sides of the spread.
• Advice: Keep going at payer side, forget provider for now. But make architectural decisions with the eventual bridge in mind. Build a business model around the idea that you'll eventually get there — "don't screw the other side of the transaction. That'll put you on the right side of history."

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5. THE NEWCO CONCEPT (Evolved from Feb 11 Merger Idea)

Dan's thinking has evolved from a straight merger:

• Envisions a "NewCo" that's an FDE services business
• Partners with Stochastic for platform/tech — when DaisyAI hits a technical ceiling, Stochastic builds the abstracted capability
• DaisyAI focuses on workflow, agents, domain-specific stuff — not building pipelines for 75 document types
• Targets RCM opportunities on both sides of payer/provider
• Key tension he's wrestling with: one company vs. distinct businesses?
  • All-in-one = suboptimal cost allocation, can't amortize tech the same way
  • If Stochastic isn't the best tool for a specific job, you need flexibility to use something better
  • "Intertwined economics but independent operations"
• Not finalized with Glenn at Stochastic — "this is the head of Dan"
• Needs more time to "turn more cards" — what Thomas and Michael are doing with Premera buys that time

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6. TEAM OF 5 UPDATE

• They're going to shut down or sell in the next ~2 months
• Open to acqui-hire: a few million, mostly earnout + vested equity
• Dan's thinking: structure a deal where you get the IP + them long enough to integrate, but don't overindex on them being the forever anchor team
• "I'm gun shy given the fact that they are quitting because they gave themselves a year"
• Andrew is the commercial guy, plus a product guy and clinical data engineers
• If Premera scope grows, could potentially hire them as contractors through DaisyAI and arbitrage (bill $150, pay $75)

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7. DAN STARTS AS CTO OF SUMMA HEALTH (Monday!)

• 3-month contract as outside CIO of Summa Health (hospital system in Akron, OH)
• Brought in by General Catalyst through the Percepta relationship
• GC/Percepta has been frustrated: months of work and they can't get a single LLM provisioned within Summa's infrastructure
• Dan's role: go inside Summa and "clear the way" for Percepta's work to actually happen
• Reports to CEO and CFO of Summa, but brought in by GC
• Thomas connection: Abhinav (Percepta, close friend from school) and Lipsa are both at Summa doing call center work
• Dan: "In about three months from now, I think all of us are going to have collectively a lot more insight"
• Will test whether the Palantir-esque FDE model works in healthcare

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8. FUNDRAISING PUSHBACK

Dan pushed hard against raising right now:

• "Why would you fundraise right now if you've got the FDE thing? What do you need the money for?"
• At $150/hr you can pay yourself properly — that's the insurance you need
• Better time to raise: After coming out of Premera with a product built on real learnings, in use at a health plan, with a pipeline. "Here's our pipeline — that would be a much more successful capital raise."
• AI startup space is crowded. Investors proxy on revenue. Without revenue, it's just a call option.
• Fundraising takes minimum 3 months — "you're going to be trying to do that while really what you should be doing is 100% focused on crushing the Premera opportunity"
• "Leave nothing on the table over there"
• Alternative: Try to get more money from Premera — expand to 4-5 person scope, get expense reimbursement for dev platforms, bundle operating costs in
• If fundraising is easy and pricing is good, "then take the money"
• Offered to invest: "Send me the deck and I may invest"

Thomas's response: "I don't think we've gotten the feedback to not do the fundraise yet, but I think given we just sent this contract off this week... maybe the reality of revenue coming sooner than we expected might give us more optionality."

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9. IP PROTECTION REMINDER

• "Make sure you've got the right protections around IP residuals"
• Use separate computers for Premera work vs. DaisyAI work
• Everything in your head is your IP if developed without Premera IP
• Define background IP / foreground IP clearly in the contract
• "You want to have a place to do stuff that's super clean"

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Action Items

• Review Premera contract for IP protections (background IP, residuals, separate dev environments)
• Talk to tax advisor about S Corp / LLC subsidiary for consulting income
• Seriously evaluate pausing fundraise to focus on Premera
• Thomas: say hi to Abhinav at Percepta/Summa
• If Premera scope grows, explore bringing team of 5 as contractors
• Stay tight with Dan through Summa stint — convergence in ~3 months
• Dan offered to invest — send deck when ready

People Discussed

Strategic Takeaways

• Revenue > fundraise right now. The Premera contract changes the calculus. Dan's pushback is the strongest signal yet to deprioritize the raise.
• The NewCo concept is still half-baked but directionally interesting. DaisyAI as FDE services + Stochastic as platform partner. Need Glenn's buy-in.
• Appeals is a live opportunity on both sides. Dan building provider-side appeal letters, Premera wants payer-side appeal defense. Collaboration potential is real.
• Summa/Percepta will be a case study. If GC's FDE model can't even get an LLM provisioned, that says a lot about the market reality.
• The team of 5 has a ~2 month window. If we want the IP, the clock is ticking. But the Premera work comes first.

Dan Wilson — Feb 11, 2026

Attendees: Thomas, Michael, Dan

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1. THE BIG PROPOSAL: Merger / Co-Founding Opportunity

Dan floated something significant. He's been approached by Great Point Ventures (GPV) to start a UM company. They offered $15M ($5M first tranche, $10M second). He turned it down initially because he doesn't want to be full-time CEO. But pieces are lining up:

The pieces Dan has:

• Epic UM product lead who wants to leave Epic and join something
• Team of 5 who sold their last company to Change Healthcare. Built backend infrastructure for payers to generically connect to EHRs, pull data, put into payer formats, analyze it. They know HL7, ADT, legacy systems cold. One has started and sold ~5 companies. They have a commercial guy too.
• GPV capital: $15M offered. Dan's counter-thinking: start with $2M, then $5M tranche, then $8M. Valuation: GPV wanted 30-40% for $15M (loose, not negotiated).
• Dan himself: Would be executive chairman, very involved but not CEO. Doesn't want to set expectation of being single-tracked.

What Dan proposed:

• DaisyAI founders (Thomas/Michael) bring the founder DNA, the AI capability, and the client (Premera)
• The 5-person team brings decades of payer infrastructure expertise, HL7/ADT/EHR integration
• Dan brings the relationships, capital connection (GPV), and strategic oversight
• Combined: 7-8 people, funded, with both startup energy AND industry expertise
• Could position as authorizations broadly (not just concurrent review) — "platform for all authorization use cases"

Dan's assessment of the team of 5:

• Good engineers, work well together, communicate well
• But NOT founder DNA — they're looking for a "quick flip" ($50-100M exits)
• One guy is the serial acquirer type, doesn't need to work — should be in a diminished role
• The 3 core tech people haven't made their money yet and still want to play for something
• They "know too much" about UM — which makes them think it can't be solved. Need to calibrate between their cynicism and our optimism.
• Red flag: their first foray wasn't successful, they're looking for what's next

Dan's framing:

• "You guys desperately need to be partnered with somebody who intimately understands the state of the state and what's been tried over the last 20 years. I don't think you can learn it fast enough."
• "You can't pay someone to care that much" — referring to Thomas and Michael's founder persistence
• "Those people are not startup founders and they won't have the passion"
• Open to different structures — merger isn't the only option. (Note: the subcontracting alternative was Thomas/Michael's idea from their post-call debrief, not Dan's.)

Thomas & Michael post-call debrief:

• Interested but cautious. Questions about compensation, equity, how it shakes out economically.
• Read on Dan: "Sounds like a man who wants to do it but doesn't want to say it yet." He doesn't want to be CEO but he wants to be deeply involved in UM.
• Michael/Thomas proposed alternative: keep DaisyAI separate, subcontract the 5-person team for ADT/HL7 integration work we can't do. This was our idea, not Dan's.
• Need more info on who the 5 people actually are

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2. PREMERA CONTRACT ADVICE (Critical)

Architecture & deployment:

• Get a full system map — all applications in play, benefit managers, where decisions are made, where medical policy info is held, how it's updated
• Think about dependencies upstream and downstream
• Architect with flexibility: "Don't put a load-bearing wall where you may have to put a door later"
• Don't get overly locked into one payer's infrastructure — think about transferability
• If you can get 2 payer design partners simultaneously, great. If not, don't sweat it — just know the tradeoffs you're making.

Commercial structure:

• Cost-plus model = lowest risk. Bill market rates + 40-50% margin. Problem: looks like work for hire.
• Better approach: Scope well enough to do milestone-based or project-based pricing. Harder to call work-for-hire.
• Frame as license/subscription to existing IP, not custom dev — even if they know the product isn't fully built yet
• Budget $30-50K for lawyers. Probably $10-15K minimum, could be $30-35K.
• Get their BAA early — it'll be their BAA no matter what, don't fight it
• Ask for their sample SaaS MSA (NOT professional services agreement). Work from SaaS language.
• You draft the master agreement, incorporate their terms where possible. Don't promise to edit from theirs.
• Protect background IP. Foreground IP / background IP / residuals definitions are critical. Lawyer needs to spend real time on this.

Warrants:

• Premera may want warrants (like Optum does). This would be a validation signal.
• Structure: first $X of annual spend doesn't earn warrants. Expansion spend or bringing other payers earns warrants. Aligns incentives.

Timeline reality:

• Even with full alignment: ~6 months from handshake to go-live. Dan's fastest was 3 months (Aetna), and that was extraordinary.
• Consider a lightweight services agreement as a bridge: confidentiality agreement + simple consulting engagement. Bill $150/hr + expenses. Deliverables are assessment documents (who cares about that IP). Gets you paid to scope instead of scoping for free.
• "Most SaaS companies would do all that for free. Why would you? Go back to how services firms do it."

Mindset for the call:

• Let them talk. Get them to describe what they're thinking.
• Steer toward "this is bigger than you think"
• Come with a clear idea of the people you'll need behind you
• The degree of integration vs. independence is an open question — more integration = more dependencies = slower

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3. COMPETITIVE INTEL

Kevin Coloton / HURC:

• Dan knows Kevin from Curation Health / Advisory Board / Clinovations days
• "He's super well connected with the United crowd"
• "I would put him in your like... he is a good competitor. He's smart and he knows a lot of people."
• Validates the space, but creates a real competitor
• "The space you guys are playing in is not going to lack competitors. You're going to have to out-execute and move fast."
• "You do have to do this with the payers and with the providers. This is not a thing you can just build independently."