Some days you cry

Some days I have a really hard time working in the industry that I’ve chosen to be in. Navigating healthcare as a 19-year old can be really hard. People tell me I’m unqualified. Doctors don’t trust part of their workflow to be maintained by someone that’s so young. Older entrepreneurs continuously try to convince me to leave Nightingale to go be their CTO instead. Hell, I even had a breakup that tore me up two weeks ago.

Today in particular, there was a primary care physician who was enthusiastically talking about how he’d love to use our product, but when I let my age slip, he hung up the phone on me.

Times like that I feel beaten down. I want to just go waste my day on Reddit and watching YouTube videos.

I decided instead to reach out to a couple of our most active users and ask them why they used our product.

Two of them emailed me and used the words “I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying you have literally changed my life” within minutes of one another. When I read this, I broke down, and I cried. I cried because my entire life I’d always wanted to just help people. I cried because I was so frustrated by our current healthcare system and wish I could change it with a snap of a finger. I cried because I was so fucking happy I was trying to fix it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t try to do a startup unless you’re willing to cry about it. Otherwise, on days like today, you might just give up.