Jeremy Friese — Dec 8, 2025

Attendees: Thomas, Michael, Jeremy Duration: 30 min How we connected: Brad Fluegel (Wharton professor) introduced us.

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Jeremy's Opening Frame

• "It's a big enough problem. We need more people jumping in to solve it. I have zero concerns of competitive challenges."
• AI adoption in healthcare is 2x faster than any other industry, driven by: (1) ambient dictation/AI scribes, (2) back-office — coding, prior auth, medical necessity, concurrent review
• Key insight: concurrent review, prior auth, and medical necessity are all the same problem with different niches. Same tech deployment, different applications. Tells us to frame it that way for investors: "We're starting in concurrent review. It's the same problem as PA and medical necessity. We'll expand."

MCG / InterQual Warning (CRITICAL)

• Their moat is "a bunch of really high paid lawyers." MCG especially is litigious.
• They care more about payer customers than provider customers → provider side may be safer to start
• DaisyAI is already on their radar after approaching InterQual (they brought a lawyer to a student call)
• "5 billion incentives to make sure you are not successful"
• Don't be sneaky. "They will know. It will either be so tied up you can't raise money, or it will kill your company."
• Not about ethics — "anybody can sue for anything" — it's about not catching their eye
• Iodine precedent: Took first-principles approach on CDI (similar to our approach). "Worked until $100M, then went completely flat and started going down."

Strategic Advice

• Start unsexy. Workers comp is interesting — sizable market, MCG/InterQual don't care about it. Legal profession angle also worth considering.
• Don't think about scalable sales process yet. Build trust, understand one person's problem, build for them. Just make sure their problem is the same as 10 others' (don't build a one-off).
• Tandem example: $1B business selling to tiny clinics. Serve a market segment others ignore.
• Get a clinical person on the team ASAP. Healthcare buyers are skeptical of non-healthcare people. Borrow credibility. "Between Doctor Joe and I, we've done 10,000." Find a nurse with sales instincts — most don't have it.
• Don't raise until you have to. "Once you raise money the clock is ticking." Get as far as you can with bootstrap + first contracts.

On Concurrent Review

• Jeremy has always planned to expand Humata into concurrent review but hasn't — "it's a quagmire" with MCG/InterQual dynamics
• Prior auth keeps exploding so he hasn't needed to
• Every single health system customer asks him for concurrent review help. "No doubt there's a need. You just got to thread the needle."

Relationship Signal

• Extremely generous, zero territorial instinct
• "I exist to solve this problem and I can't do it alone"
• "Please keep me posted. I would love to be on your list of folks to talk to."
• HBS/Wharton banter — good energy