Shownotes
Zara Hajihashemi
Bio
Zara spent six years at Apple as a tech lead and AI scientist, driving innovation and delivering impactful projects. Inspired by her personal experiences and driven by her passion for women’s health, she founded Cybele Health an AI-powered platform designed to help women proactively manage their health and well-being.
Intro
Zara Hajihashemi's journey from Iran to the United States is emblematic of resilience and innovation, and serves as the focal point of our discourse. In this episode, we delve into her profound commitment to transforming women's healthcare through artificial intelligence, particularly as the founder of Cybele Health. Zara elucidates on her academic endeavors, including her PhD in AI and healthcare, and her impactful tenure at Apple, which provided her with invaluable experience in technology. We explore the myriad challenges she faced as an immigrant woman in tech, the systemic inefficiencies she identified within healthcare, and her vision for creating personalized care solutions for women. Join us as we uncover the compelling narrative of Zara's entrepreneurial path and the driving passion behind her mission to enhance the health and well-being of women everywhere.
Story
In a thought-provoking episode, we engage with Zahra Haji Hashemi, who embodies the spirit of innovation and resilience in the tech industry. Zahra’s journey is a remarkable narrative of overcoming societal expectations and personal challenges. Her early life in Iran, where she faced substantial limitations as a woman, instilled in her a profound understanding of the importance of education and empowerment. Moving to the United States for her Ph.D. was not merely a change of scenery; it was a pivotal moment that opened doors to a world of possibilities. At Apple, Zahra's work on cloud infrastructure allowed her to refine her skills and understand the operational intricacies of a tech giant. However, her true calling emerged during her tenure there, as she identified critical deficiencies in the healthcare system, particularly in how it served women. Zahra's vision for Cybele Health is rooted in her commitment to enhancing healthcare outcomes through AI, recognizing the urgent need for personalized care models. This episode explores her strategic approach to entrepreneurship, including the significance of building from personal experiences, identifying market needs, and fostering innovation in a traditionally conservative industry.
Takeaways
- Zara Hajihashemi's journey exemplifies the resilience and determination required to navigate cultural barriers and achieve success as an immigrant entrepreneur.
- The transition from a stable corporate position to the uncertainty of startup life necessitates a mission that transcends personal ambition.
- Zara's experience highlights the significant gaps in women's healthcare, which she has identified through her own challenges in balancing work and family.
- The development of AI agents for healthcare providers aims to address the inefficiencies in personalized care for women, emphasizing the need for tailored healthcare solutions.
- Building a startup in a competitive landscape requires a focus on smaller clients initially, allowing for rapid iteration and freedom to innovate without cumbersome institutional constraints.
- Zara's story underscores the importance of grit, shaped by early life challenges, as a vital trait for overcoming obstacles in the entrepreneurial journey.
- Cybele Health
- Zara's LinkedIn
- Jothy's TEDx talk - On why those with disabilities tend to overachieve
- The Who Says I Can't Foundation - Jothy's non-profit that helps disabled kids get back into a sport they love to restore their self-esteem
- Our YouTube channel
- Designing Successful Startups — Jothy Rosenberg | Author | Speaker | Podcaster - Site with all podcasts
- Tech Startup Toolkit book
- Please leave us a review
Transcripts
Hello, I'm Jothi Rosenberg, the host of the Designing Successful Startups podcast, where today you will meet Zahra Haji Hashmi.
Speaker A:So how did that happen?
Speaker A:How did.
Speaker A:How did the connection between you and Apple, how did the two of you make that connection?
Speaker B:I was here in California.
Speaker B:My husband was here.
Speaker B:So after graduation, I moved here to stay with him.
Speaker B:And I was looking for different roles and I was applying, but it was through a friend who sent my resume.
Speaker B:But at the end of the day, it was the hiring manager who came across a couple of my papers, which they were trying to do the same thing.
Speaker A:Welcome to Designing Successful Startups, the podcast where we dive into journeys of extraordinary founders who've defied the odds to build innovative companies.
Speaker A:Today we're speaking with Zahra Haji Hashemi, an aspiring immigrant founder who's leveraged her background in AI and healthcare to revolutionize women's health.
Speaker A:From growing up in Iran, where opportunities for women were limited, to earning her PhD in the US and working at Apple, Zara has demonstrated remarkable grit throughout her journey.
Speaker A:Now, as the founder of Cybele Health, she's creating AI agents to help healthcare providers deliver more personalized care for women.
Speaker A:Join us as we explore how her unique experience shaped her entrepreneurial path and the vision driving her mission to transform healthcare.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Hello, Zara.
Speaker A:Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B:Hi, Jaffi.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:Oh, my pleasure.
Speaker A:I am very interested in your.
Speaker A:Your background.
Speaker A:Maybe you could tell us all where you're originally from and where you live now.
Speaker B:Sure, yeah.
Speaker B:I'm originally Persian born and grew up, raised in Iran.
Speaker B: d I moved to United States in: Speaker B:And I've been living here since then.
Speaker B:And currently I live in California, Silicon Valley area.
Speaker A:And you actually live in a little, little town that I know well because I live just up the.
Speaker A:Up the hill from you over in Santa Cruz County.
Speaker A:And do you take advantage of being close to Santa Cruz?
Speaker B:We'll do as much as we can, obviously, with the company and kids.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love the beach.
Speaker A:What grad school did you go to, by the way?
Speaker B:It was University of Missouri.
Speaker B:So in Missouri, there are.
Speaker B:There are three campuses.
Speaker B:I was in a town called Columbia.
Speaker B:The journey was that I.
Speaker B:My background has been completely in technology, so I was really good at math without doing any extra effort.
Speaker B:And I figured then I have to maybe pursue engineering, so I studied computer science for my undergrad.
Speaker B:For my master's was the beginning of AI and robotics, so I did my master's in AI and robotics.
Speaker B:Back home in Iran I have lots of family members who are in healthcare space and I remember one time I was talking about that and one of our family members who was the dean of one of the medical schools, he told me that, you know, you have to, there's lots of advancement in the intersection of AI and healthcare and that's, that is going to be really well needed.
Speaker B:And he encouraged me a lot to take into that more seriously.
Speaker B:And I started reading papers and I got more interested and then I started to looking into programs and universities who offer that kind of a joint program and dissertations specifically for PhD.
Speaker B:And that's how I came across university, or Mizzou they call it.
Speaker B:So there was a really great collaboration between School of Engineering in Mizzou and the School of Nursing in UCLA and they had joint project, really big ones with NIH and they had big groups, multiple advisors and professors from very multidisciplinary, lots of grad students, lots of great publication.
Speaker B:So that's how I decided to go to that one.
Speaker B:Because I've been asked a lot, out of all the universities, why museum?
Speaker B:It was a really small town, I obviously applied, but that one gave me the fullest scholarship.
Speaker B:And for me that was also another motivation.
Speaker B:So I joined the program as a CSA student.
Speaker B:But the dissertation was from the NIH grant sponsored by NIH grant and was applying machine learning models for healthcare specifically for senior health, trying to develop models that are more productive because predicting any health declines specifically in senior health means a lot of saving from the healthcare staff, from the insurance side.
Speaker B:So that's really important.
Speaker B:And it's been a big multi year project.
Speaker B:I know that some of the faculties created their own startups out of it and it was very fruitful.
Speaker B:It was very fun to work on that.
Speaker B:I know that lots of people who do chc, they don't have any good memories.
Speaker B:But for me personally, meeting, going to the facility and meeting the doctors and the nurses and working directly with them.
Speaker B:I was paired with a PhD student of nursing at UCLA.
Speaker B:And so we collaborated a lot making sense of all the numbers that we get from our models in terms of the reality of their life and what does it mean in a healthcare setting.
Speaker B:It was another level and you would see a direct impact on people's lives.
Speaker B:So I really love that.
Speaker B:I was working specifically on time series data that comes from a healthcare setting.
Speaker B:So I was modeling a lot of time series data.
Speaker B:I had lots of papers and journals, publications, won a couple of awards.
Speaker B:And because I was working a Lot of time series data.
Speaker B:I got a job at Apple in cloud infrastructure modeling time series data.
Speaker B:And my boss at Apple joked with me and he said that in your PhD you made sure that people are healthy and at Apple you make sure that servers are healthy.
Speaker B:And that's basically the same thing.
Speaker A:The same thing.
Speaker B:And it was, yeah, it was kind of same, same task.
Speaker A:So, so how did that happen?
Speaker A:How did the connection between you and Apple, how did the two of you make that connection?
Speaker A:You're in Missouri and, and they're not probably looking in Missouri for too many people.
Speaker B:No, they were not.
Speaker B:I was here in California, my husband was here.
Speaker B:So after graduation I moved here to stay with him and I was looking for different roles and I was applying, but it was through a friend who sent my resume.
Speaker B:But at the end of the day it was the hiring manager who came across a couple of my papers which they were trying to do the same thing.
Speaker B:And then he reached out and the funny story was that the job description that they sent me was for a front end engineer.
Speaker B:Like it was listed a lot of tasks for front end engineer.
Speaker B:I had no experience, not even a knowledge about how that works as a very deeply focused on machine learning.
Speaker B:And I asked that this is the job description.
Speaker B:You know, I'm, I don't know any of that.
Speaker B:And then obviously they took it, but they had a role open for that.
Speaker B:And then they came across my profile and then I joined to the data science team and worked there for six years.
Speaker A:I'm going to go back just for a second to the university or the know the grad school because so I came up through computer science too.
Speaker A:I got my PhD at Duke in computer science.
Speaker A:That was many years ago and there were no women in the program and there were very few women in the field.
Speaker A:And I wonder if what your experience was where you were, yeah, just a.
Speaker B:Handful of girls and then a class packed by guys and it was even more intense and less of us as we got advanced into the degree.
Speaker B:I remember that in the master's program I think 24 was admitted and then it was just five of us were girl and the rest 19 was boys.
Speaker B:So yeah, and then PhD side.
Speaker A:But then when you get to Silicon Valley, things are quite a bit better.
Speaker A:From what I've seen and heard, Silicon Valley depends heavily on immigrants because they're looking for the best talent anywhere in the world.
Speaker A:And so there's no issue in Silicon Valley about immigrants.
Speaker A:There's also a lot of very accomplished women, not as many CEOs as there probably should be.
Speaker A:So that's probably been a little bit easier for you than almost anywhere else you could have ended up.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I was fortunate to be able to come here and the funny story was that lots of our friends that we went to the same college ended up in the Silicon Valley from the different perspective, different areas of engineering.
Speaker B:I joked with them and I said you traveled pretty much all the states and you ended up in California.
Speaker B:We all ended up in California.
Speaker B:I think it's because of the culture.
Speaker B:It's very welcoming, it's very merit based and it's really based on performance and that clearly shows the result.
Speaker A:You had a good run at Apple six years.
Speaker A:I'm sure you had got a chance to advance your skills and you were looking at icloud cloud infrastructure.
Speaker B:So everything that you use or interact with any Apple products, any app that you run, that underline of it, the infrastructure runs on Apple cloud infrastructure.
Speaker B:So we will make sure that everything is smooth up, healthy and running.
Speaker B:So yeah, I was part of that.
Speaker B:Started very small, Oregon, then becoming really big multi, multi countries.
Speaker B:Now they have teams.
Speaker A:Did you consider staying at Apple longer or something made you decide to leave?
Speaker B:Yeah, I was very fortunate to work on a team of really great people, very supportive engineers and managers, which I'm sure nuts.
Speaker B:Not always the case unfortunately.
Speaker B:You know, different companies culture inside it is different.
Speaker B:Even at big companies.
Speaker B:Org by org is different.
Speaker B:And I could see some of my friends who had challenges working, but I was really lucky.
Speaker B:I had really great people, really great mentors, really great managers.
Speaker B:The VP that I was working under, he also was one of the PhD grads who had startup experience and then sold the startup.
Speaker B:And he was like, I can really relate to that and I'm sorry that you're leaving, but I'm happy for the journey ahead of you.
Speaker B:And we are still in connection and we still talk and he's a great mentor.
Speaker B:To be honest, there were different points when I was at Apple that I was connected with the.
Speaker B:I was contacted with the Bigfooters and it seemed interesting, but because of that team and the people, I didn't want to leave and I wanted to stay until I reached the point that I felt like I have a mission that's greater than my personal interest.
Speaker B:And I thought that I can do something bigger that impacts other people's lives.
Speaker B:And that's what drove me to lean.
Speaker A:Where did the idea for this health startup come from?
Speaker B:Sure, yeah.
Speaker B:The source of it was really my PhD dissertation.
Speaker B:I was during that whole five years I was seeing on a daily basis that what kind of impact it can have.
Speaker B:And that was always with me.
Speaker B:I always wanted to do something about it.
Speaker B:I always wanted to continue with that, especially that recognition that I got from the, you know, the community was really big.
Speaker B:So I knew that this going to be something really good and that can come out of it.
Speaker B:And then the three year point honestly was after pandemic, I had my second one just right around the pandemic and I had lots of challenges managing work and life and I was just getting promoted.
Speaker B:So having kind of a more responsibility and lacking resources as a woman or you know, the health in general.
Speaker B:You know, fortunately I didn't have any specific health issues, but in general I wanted to be more productive, have more clarity of my, like, perform better.
Speaker B:I was digging a lot and researching a lot as a old habit of being a researcher into tools and resources and apps, you know, just as simple as getting answers about questions about my health.
Speaker B:And then that was the point that I noticed there's lots of inefficiency in the system.
Speaker B:Healthcare system in general is very kind of one size fits all approach.
Speaker B:It lacks personalization.
Speaker B:Lots of inefficiencies in the system comes from that, you know, healthcare system.
Speaker B:From my perspective, I would say it's more of a reactive symptom management instead of getting to the bottom of it and finding a cure and being more preventive.
Speaker B:And that was the whole idea.
Speaker B:And it's very important for women specifically because we need more visits, an average woman, for any health issues.
Speaker B:They ended up having more doctor visits than men.
Speaker B:And it's because our hormones and our body functions in a way that it's constantly changing.
Speaker B:And as a result of that, we need constant monitoring and adjustment.
Speaker B:And that is definitely something that recent advancement in AI specifically make it much easier to do without.
Speaker B:Without, you know, our physicians go burnout.
Speaker A:Explain a little bit about what the AI that you're building into your product, how it helps, how it does, what you want it to do.
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:So I explain a little bit about the problems and then makes it more clear why I can help.
Speaker B:So there are multiple problems when we talk about healthcare.
Speaker B:One is one size fits all approach.
Speaker B:The second one is being very reactive and doing mostly symptom management.
Speaker B:You know, any doctor for any conditions, you go, they ask you what are your symptoms?
Speaker B:And then they quickly, you know, prescribe you with some medicines to just manage those symptoms.
Speaker B:And there are very few cases where you have to go to the labs and you know, do more of this screening to understand.
Speaker B:But even though still majority are symptom management and the focus not on the doctors or providers, it's on the whole system.
Speaker B:The whole system is designed in a way that, you know, has to maximize the outcomes.
Speaker B:So it limits the patient doctor interactions.
Speaker B:So they don't have enough time or enough tools to get a good understanding about you and tailor a very personalized kind of treatment for you.
Speaker B:And that highlights and brings more challenges for women's health.
Speaker B:Again, for the reasons that I just discussed, mainly hormonal shifts.
Speaker B:Women go through major hormonal shifts at different stages of their lives.
Speaker B:Everything.
Speaker B:Every time you have a hormonal shift, it's, you know, starting from puberty all the way to Adolphins, you know, pregnancy, multiple pregnancies, before and after that, and then go through the, you know, some specific women's related, like ovarian and those related issues and all the way to the premenopause and menopause and all of that.
Speaker B:And lifestyle plays a very important role in that.
Speaker B:We now know that in the US because of the lifestyle, premenopause symptoms starts in late 30s, whereas the menopause starts in early 50s.
Speaker B:So we are talking about almost 20 years of experiencing symptoms.
Speaker B:So there are these pain points.
Speaker B:And the other side of it is that US has a major deficit in healthcare providers.
Speaker B:Just last year the government issued a report, the Department of Health of the government issued a report that in eight years we are going to face 140,000 deficit in healthcare providers.
Speaker B:And the number it goes higher for staff in the healthcare system, how we are going to do that.
Speaker B:So it clearly impacts lots of trials, has been studied on populations where women either were not represented at all or were minorities.
Speaker B:That means that we didn't have enough coverage of diversity of women.
Speaker B:And now we see that lots of those treatments either do not provide the same results or even have adverse results on women with minorities or from different ethnicities.
Speaker B:So all of those brings lots of challenges to the system and lots of inefficiency.
Speaker B:As a patient you get frustrated because you go to visits after visits.
Speaker B:You are not just spending your money, but spending a lot of your time and still not getting the result.
Speaker B:Frustrated.
Speaker B:You are dealing with a lot of symptoms in this busy work life kind of settings for the provider side.
Speaker B:They are seeing lots of patients, they are burned out, they don't have enough resources.
Speaker B:Lots of things are still manual in the healthcare system.
Speaker B:So I had all of those different pinpoints on my mind.
Speaker B:I was like, where do I start?
Speaker B:How do I Help.
Speaker B:Coming from a family and seeing how healthcare providers live and work, I knew that direct to consumer is one way and there are lots of companies to do that are focusing on that, you know, creating different apps for patients.
Speaker B:I wanted to do something for the providers.
Speaker B:I wanted to enable them to work smoother, with less stress and still provide better results and still perform more efficient.
Speaker B:We are creating AI agents for healthcare providers who have private practice and our AI agents are focused on female patients, very high tuned toward those needs.
Speaker B:We are trying to stay agnostic about health and covering all aspects of health.
Speaker B:Really have a holistic approach.
Speaker B:Having said that, we are building pillar by pillar because obviously this is a very big goal.
Speaker B:We started with mental health as my personal interest and also I happened to found advisors who are in the mental health space joining my team early on and we started with that.
Speaker B:And I know that there are especially like living in Silicon Valley, there's a lot of huge needs for that.
Speaker B:We are targeting mental health providers.
Speaker A:These are going to be agents that are at the provider and what is the data that this AI is getting in order to make some recommendations?
Speaker A:Hi, the podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book Tech Startup Toolkit how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.
Speaker A:This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.
Speaker A:It's like a memoir of my entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker A:I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.
Speaker A:It's for the founder, the CEO and wannabe founders of tech and non tech startups.
Speaker A:You could get it from all the usual booksellers and also from the publisher@manning.com.
Speaker A:i hope you like it.
Speaker A:It's a true labor of love.
Speaker A:Now back to the show.
Speaker A:Hi, the podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book Tech Startup Toolkit how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.
Speaker A:This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.
Speaker A:I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.
Speaker A:You could get it from all the usual booksellers.
Speaker A:I hope you like it.
Speaker A:It's a true labor of love.
Speaker A:Now back to the show.
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker B:So the other thing with the recent emerging of AI agent is that even those AI agents are very generic.
Speaker B:They are trained based on a very generic set of data sets that are available.
Speaker B:And we wanted to do even more personalization because even each provider performs and do the Treatments and even do the diagnosis in a different way depending on their experience and their focus area.
Speaker B:So we started with collecting information from there, from the providers, whatever they have, even grabbing their minds in terms of how do you run your practice, what kind of knowledge do you have, or speaking a lot on a one on one settings with them.
Speaker B:And we create an agent per provider, per information that they have.
Speaker B:So it's a lot of one on one, basically settings and interactions based on the data that they have available.
Speaker B:Making sure everything is really secure.
Speaker B:And all of those concerns about the security obviously is on the top of our list.
Speaker B:The challenge with bigger organizations is the rules and policies.
Speaker B:It gives you a limitation on the amount of, especially in the field of research and R and D and kind of innovative areas that you want to enter into.
Speaker B:That was really my passion as a scientist.
Speaker B:I wanted to have that level of freedom.
Speaker B:So I intentionally decided to go after private practices.
Speaker A:Oh, and the name of your company, by the way.
Speaker B:So at the beginning, like any other founder, I had my pivotal moments as well.
Speaker B:At the beginning, I was very obsessed with working moms as myself, I wanted to do something specifically focused on working mothers.
Speaker B:And I was looking for a name that represents that target audience.
Speaker B:And I am also fascinated with the Greece culture and their goddess.
Speaker B:So I came across one of the goddesses called Tybal, which is the mother of everything else, gives life to everything else.
Speaker B:And I love that.
Speaker B:So the name comes from that.
Speaker B:But then as I started to work more and I started to interview more providers, I quickly realized that it doesn't matter your maternal status, whether you are a mom or not, or you're trying to be a mom.
Speaker B:We should cover everybody.
Speaker B:So now we are open to every woman.
Speaker B:And I'm really glad for that.
Speaker A:So it's cyber health.
Speaker B:That's correct.
Speaker A:Can you tell me one story about something very challenging that's happened where something went wrong or you made a decision that ended up being the wrong thing or something.
Speaker B:That's story of my everyday.
Speaker B:Obviously I'm the first time founder and solo founder so you know, I cannot hide it that I do lots of, I make lots of decisions that not all of them are, you know, right decisions.
Speaker B:Obviously.
Speaker B:You know, I think that whatever the most recent one, since we are small, you know, nothing goes really catastrophic and you know, has really bad outcome, which is a good thing as you're a small, you know, even when things go wrong, it still is manageable.
Speaker B:But timing has been really challenging for me, specifically in terms of getting things done at the time I have the tendency to be very optimistic about things that I can achieve and then everything goes wrong and then pushes back the deadline.
Speaker B:That has been kind of a pattern that I see all.
Speaker A:In my experience, all entrepreneurs, in order to survive, have to be optimists.
Speaker A:Otherwise you're just going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So that was one thing.
Speaker B:The other thing was that hiring people who didn't have enough experience.
Speaker B:So I ended up working a lot to just keep up with that, which I think wasted or burned out some of my energy, which could be, you know, spend it somewhere else, be another experience.
Speaker A:And you're doing this and, and have two young kids at the same time.
Speaker B:Yeah, I have two young kids too.
Speaker B:They are, they are adjusting.
Speaker B:They're both girls, five and nine, so they're somewhat independent.
Speaker B:It's good enough for me.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker A:So I wanted to ask about the experience of being a female founder because you are few and far between.
Speaker A:I know some investors are ageist, they don't like older people.
Speaker A:I've experienced that some of them don't, don't have the same kind of respect for women founders that they should.
Speaker A:I've seen other kinds of issues, so.
Speaker A:But tell me what your experience has been.
Speaker B:I think that it's now not a surprise that, you know, thankfully there have been lots of talks about it that women founder faced a lot more challenges from investments to validations, even to customer acquisition.
Speaker B:If you're going B2B and you know, you need to convince organizations to use your platform.
Speaker B:So there are lots of challenges in every step of the way.
Speaker B:Having said that, especially for immigrant founders and immigrant women founders, one thing that I consistently see is that they've been pushing a lot of barriers at different stages of our lives.
Speaker B:That gives us the grit to push more.
Speaker B:And then those, those, those blockers and those nos and those attitudes doesn't just stop us, which is a good thing.
Speaker B:So I came from a culture that women couldn't do lots of things and I experienced that, you know, as new as, as long as I can remember myself.
Speaker B:So I learned early days that how to not let that mean stop me.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I heard so many noise nos from the investors, even women investors.
Speaker B:I heard so many questions and invalidations from community, from the startups community to the investors, to the potential customers.
Speaker B:But my mindset was that I started this company and I want to build a company.
Speaker B:So one attitude or one no or one invalidation, you know, doesn't affect me.
Speaker B:And I've seen that a lot among Women founder.
Speaker A:I'm glad you mentioned the word grit, because my, my last question was going to be where does your grit come from?
Speaker A:And you've, you've just explained how the grit you have has helped you.
Speaker A:But where do you think it really came from?
Speaker B:For good or bad?
Speaker B:I think it really comes from early days and from the culture and environment that you grew up with.
Speaker B:That's why, you know, I decided to start this startup even when my kids were young, because having a little bit of challenge, early days is good for you.
Speaker B:Falling down, not having the support, saying hearing no's, you know, saying that you don't have the help that you need forces you to push.
Speaker B:Sometimes you can make an opportunity out of a difficult situation.
Speaker B:And I can see that in my girls now that compared to two years ago that they are more independent, they can stand up for themselves because I was not available 247 as I used to.
Speaker B:And also they see me going through some of the challenges.
Speaker B:They hear things, they can see things.
Speaker B:But for me personally, it comes from living in a situation or in an environment.
Speaker B:It was not acceptable.
Speaker B:I was the first girl to immigrate out of the country, you know, in my town.
Speaker B:And I remember my mom called me and said, like, I have to answer so many questions.
Speaker B:I'm so tired of it, I don't go out anymore.
Speaker B:But then India started a movement and a couple of years later, same people who questions my mom that how can you let your girl, you know, without getting married go to, you know, the other side of the world?
Speaker B:It's literally the other side of the world for us.
Speaker B:They started to asking me help their daughters to do the same thing.
Speaker B:So one day I was bullied.
Speaker B:The other day I was asked for help.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But lots of, yeah, it's really started from early days.
Speaker B:And that's also one of the topics that we, we're talking with one of our mental health providers who do a lot of psychology with college students.
Speaker B:And he was saying that I don't see great in the recent, the new generation that go to their college.
Speaker B:And I think it's because of the very easy life that they have, I would say.
Speaker A:But was the life difficult for everyone or was it just.
Speaker A:Are you saying that it's just particularly difficult for women in Iran, for everyone.
Speaker B:But it was exponentially more difficult, especially for a woman, because, because of the government, because of the religion, because of so many different cultural factors.
Speaker B:There's lots of limitations on things that women can do and there are lots of red lines that women cannot Cross.
Speaker B:And you, if you want to be the scapegoat and you want to cross it, you have.
Speaker B:You are going to face a lot of challenges.
Speaker B:And those of us who did, the outcome of it was that we were now very strong and we had the grit and we know how to handle that, which is very important.
Speaker A:And when you made the decision to emigrate, I assume your parents were very supportive of it, even though they had to answer all these questions.
Speaker B:To be honest, not at the beginning.
Speaker B:My mom, I remember my mom told me that you are 20 something, you have to get married.
Speaker B:But here was the thing with my parents.
Speaker B:I was very lucky because we had this open environment that we could discuss and share my feeling and share my thoughts.
Speaker B:Eventually I was able to convince them and they didn't say no and then supported me financially, emotionally, everything else.
Speaker B:But the first reaction was no way, no way.
Speaker A:So you had an uphill battle to get through.
Speaker A:No way.
Speaker A:All the way to okay.
Speaker B:I had to do everything secretly.
Speaker B:And then I showed because here's the thing, especially for coming to the US because of the relationship that doesn't exist.
Speaker B:We couldn't even get visas.
Speaker B:You have to travel to the third country to go to the embassy and do the interview.
Speaker B:And when I got the admission, I showed my mom admission letter.
Speaker B:She was like, okay, this is just an admission letter.
Speaker B:How do you want to get the visa?
Speaker B:I said, well, I traveled to the embassy.
Speaker B:And she said, okay, if you want to show me that you can't live by yourself in another country, you go travel by yourself.
Speaker B:I'm not coming.
Speaker B:So she wanted to test me a little bit.
Speaker B:And then I did that.
Speaker B:I traveled alone.
Speaker B:And then I got the visa, the passport, like the stamp on my password.
Speaker B:And when I showed it, she started crying and she said, I can't believe Adriana seriously like going.
Speaker B:I thought all of those are just an adventure.
Speaker B:But then she was definitely very supportive.
Speaker B:She has been always supportive.
Speaker B:You know, she always really encouraged me to do higher education.
Speaker B:Don't get stuck at a job.
Speaker B:She was also an entrepreneur herself.
Speaker B:She had her own businesses.
Speaker B:Even though my dad was doing really well.
Speaker B:She's.
Speaker B:You still believe that a woman have to make her own money.
Speaker B:And we all five of us and we all ended up although doing higher education and you know, from what doing being employed by how they have all of my siblings also they have their own businesses running on the side and they're all successful.
Speaker B:So I think it comes with the gene as well.
Speaker A:That's cool.
Speaker A:And is it safe?
Speaker A:Can you Go back there to visit.
Speaker A:It's not like they're going to keep you.
Speaker B:Yeah, I was last year, last summer.
Speaker A:I hope given the current very unfortunate climate out of our country that you're completely safe and here.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, you know, there's a spectrum for people that go against very, very vocal in the politics.
Speaker B:Obviously they see more challenges and questions.
Speaker B:I personally have not been involved or interested in politics since very early days.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, I travel very safe and my parents also come here.
Speaker A:Well, this has been great.
Speaker A:I really appreciate it.
Speaker A:I think the people who are going to be listening to this are going to be fascinated with your journey.
Speaker A:So I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:I really also enjoyed our conversation and I hope that everyone enjoyed that as well.
Speaker B:I would like invite everyone to follow us.
Speaker B:We are all over the social media cyber house.
Speaker B:We have also our own platform and our own podcast.
Speaker B:We are live now.
Speaker B:The first thing about health is having understanding or I said like patient education is the main part of the responsibility of a provider.
Speaker B:Just educate you about your different, your problems that you are facing, your symptoms, but also different options that you have.
Speaker B:And with our platform, we are facilitating that especially for women health.
Speaker B:It's very important because for so many years it's been a taboo.
Speaker B:Not many talk about it very normalize everything especially for women.
Speaker B:So many of very serious conditions are asymptomatic, meaning that you can have a series of symptoms that you can just misread it with something else.
Speaker B:You can have endometriosis and you can just misread it with being just burnt out, very busy at work, you know, just tired, just stretch out.
Speaker B:Providing more education about that from a very, you know, expert domain licensed providers, not just any social media influencer is our first priority and we are doing that so you can join our cyber health platform at apps.
Speaker B:That's ivahealth.com we have lots of great courses and information for all of our audience.
Speaker A:And you gave me a bunch of links and I'm going to put all of them in the show notes as well.
Speaker A:Your toolkit takeaways are Embrace the power of grit.
Speaker A:Facing obstacles early in life can be a hidden advantage for founders.
Speaker A:As Zara demonstrated, overcoming cultural barriers developed resilience that served her well.
Speaker A:When facing the challenges of entrepreneurship, find your bigger mission.
Speaker A:The transition from a comfortable corporate job to startup life requires motivation beyond personal gain.
Speaker A:Identify a mission that's greater than yourself.
Speaker A:For Zara, it was improving healthcare for women through AI target accessible markets first rather than going after large institutions with complex approval processes, consider starting with smaller clients where you can iterate quickly and maintain your freedom to innovate.
Speaker A:This approach allowed Sibyl Health to work directly with private practices.
Speaker A:Build from personal pain points Zara's own challenges balancing work and motherhood helped her identify real gaps in women's healthcare.
Speaker A:Your personal experiences can be powerful indicators of market needs worth saving.
Speaker A:The show notes contain useful resources and links.
Speaker A:Please follow and rate us at podchaser.
Speaker A:Com designingsuccessful startups.
Speaker A:Also, please share and like us on your social media channels.
Speaker A:This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.
