Healthcare AI Exit: RedFox AI Success Story

Nick Myers: I just maintained my curiosity and kept going to events, putting myself out there, making sure people knew who I was, and it just like exploded. I guess in that regard,

Jacob Miller: it also sounds like you're not just like, like your intentions obviously, like there's a selfish aspect to networking, like Sure. Just by nature of the nature of it, but it just sounds like you're the kind of person where your intention behind these relationships is like, oh, I wanna make sure that this is mutually beneficial.

Welcome back to the Startup Wisconsin podcast. A show where you can learn about Wisconsin's growing tech scene through stories of startups, founders, investors, and the talented people making it all happen. Today I'm talking with Nick Myers, who recently sold his Madison based startup RedFox AI to recovery.com, where he's now the director of AI innovation.

Nick's story shows how much relationships and proximity matter in Wisconsin startup scene, sometimes in ways you wouldn't expect. Nick's company, RedFox AI tackled one of the trickiest problems in ai. How do you make sure it doesn't hallucinate when someone's health and safety is on the line? We talked about the technical stuff behind all that.

We also dive into some bigger questions like where AI is heading and what it means for jobs in Wisconsin and everywhere else in the future. He also shared some solid advice about networking Wisconsin startup scene. It's less about collecting business cards and more about genuinely trying to help people out, and I couldn't agree more.

So let's jump into my conversation with Nick Meyers.

Nick Myers: It's

Jacob Miller: been a fantastic

Nick Myers: journey that five years. You know, albeit like in the grand scheme of things, five years isn't really that long of a period of time. But let's just say I'm surprised this red hair is not gray. In that five year period. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been an exciting journey.

Of course, running a startup, you know, it has its peaks, it has its valleys. But my co-founder and I, you know, I'd like to think that we did ultimately. Accomplish what we set out to do initially and very grateful to say that we've been able to exit the company and the next chapter

Jacob Miller: looks very exciting.

I'm curious, like how would you describe, you know, to like layman's terms or to the general public, you know, what, what is or what was RedFox AI. And the solution and the problem space that you were, you were trying to solve within like healthcare?

Nick Myers: Yeah. So our overall vision was how can we make healthcare more accessible?

And then that's a really big vision, right? But we were working to condense that down into an AI tool that you could talk to if you were taking a home lab test. So this really emerged coming onto the COVID-19 pandemic. Everybody was taking an at-home COVID test. Nobody had. Had had had a lot of experience taking a home lab test, let alone a home COVID test at the time.

And what we really started seeing as my co-founder, Brett Brooks, and I had already been working in the conversationally AI space for a few years at that time, is wow, people are really struggling to take these. And that really forced me to reflect on my own experience. I am a survivor of childhood leukemia.

I was diagnosed with that at the age of eight. I just remember countless times Jacob watching my parents having to struggle, either giving me some type of therapeutic or a shot or use some type of medical device with the only information they had available being the instructions for use that are written by.

Smart scientific people for FDA approval. They're not really written for people like my parents, the average person to like, understand and navigate effectively. So we decided to. Work at solving that problem and really before AI was anywhere close to where it's at now? Yeah. Um, just technologically and in the public consciousness, we decided to build our own software that you could talk to in natural language like you or I are talking now that would help walk a person through any home lab test.

And that was the vision. And ultimately we went through a couple different repositioning. So the most recent one being we became more of a training support and continuing education tool for med devices. But with that being said, the vision was always to make healthcare more accessible and reduce barriers and specifically.

Leverage this incredible technology to do it. That now is just truthfully, Brett and I joke about this all the time from we got our start in 2016 working with Amazon Alexa tools and you had to like manually type everything in that you wanted Alexa to say, and that's how you would program it. Of course there was some AI magic behind there too, but not like it is now where even in the three years since chat, GPT has come to market to see just this explosion of large language models and the capability of this technology is just astounding.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. I do have a question around, uh, like the, the language models and, and things. One of the, I was looking@therecovery.com, uh, post about the acquisition and something you talk about with, um. With, uh, augmented generation is, you call it rag, um, constrained, rag, uh, uh, retrieval augmented generation, um, to minimize hallucinations because I, I know that's still like a thing in all the models, especially like when you're asking for how do you do this?

Or like, what's the news on that? Or, give me the most recent data on this, and it'll like, make up statistics and whatever. And obviously that's something that, you know, health, the healthcare space, and obviously like finance and all these other big. You know, corporate, uh, enterprise level type databases are like, we can't afford to have hallucinations and healthcare specifically, like people might die because of hallucinations.

Um, stuff like that. So, yeah. How did you kind of approach that like five years ago versus today, and do you feel like that problem has really gotten any better or worse because of the scale of things that are happening? I'm just kind of curious how you, how you think about it.

Nick Myers: Yeah, great

Jacob Miller: question.

Nick Myers: I mean, and I, I, I think to kick it off by saying that, you know, as we had formally founded RedFox AI in 2020, I simultaneously at the time was doing a lot of work in the data privacy space.

I got connected with a former colleague of, well, he's still a colleague of mine. We just have a caught up in a while. John Stein, um, who came from Intel. He had some very high up positions at Macy's and some other notable retailers, but he essentially wanted to form an organization around that time that was just focused on voice technology.

'cause that's where we got our start and what we were working with and how do we ensure. Data protections for the average person in a world where everybody's talking to a computer, theoretically. Right. And ultimately, um, started doing work in data privacy, which then got absorbed into the Linux Foundation.

So it's cool to say that I actually did some data privacy work at the Linux Foundation, but it was interesting that at that time as we had just started building our product, I very much was of this mindset of. We have to make sure the information is accurate and we have to ensure a high degree of data security and data privacy for the end user, which at that time, like the big players were Amazon, the big players were Google, the big players were Samsung and the voice space.

None of 'em were really like talking about. Um, the data privacy piece of this specifically, like how do you ensure the information is accurate? So I think that's always been a large part of what we have built and that was ingrained in the company. And I like to tell folks that it probably took us a bit longer to build our product, redox Navigator, that it should have, because I was so strict on making sure that the information that we put into the system was accurate.

And that we protected the folks using it. And especially in healthcare, to your point, right? You can't have inaccurate information being reported to a patient, specifically in what we were doing, where this AI is guiding you through a process that you don't know if the information that's necessarily giving is the right information, but you have to trust that it is.

So that's why we built. Our product and, and again, my co-founder, Brett, is just, he's so smart and when, when it comes to this stuff, you know, a constrained system to where we would, we had a foundational model at the base that we built on top of, but our proprietary stack was on top of that, and that was where our constrained technology sat.

And what we would do, we would ingest only the accurate information for the specific pharmaceutical company, healthcare provider, whatever it might be related to the device or the home lab kit. And the AI would only pull from that. So especially as large language models started gaining momentum, the rag architecture is something that really began to take off.

And we embraced that and applied it to what we already had. So essentially rag or retrieval augmented generation is you're using a large language model like a Chad GPT, or in our case we were tapping into Mes lama, uh, open source, LLM. But retrieval, augmented generation, meaning it's only retrieving specific information from constrained documents.

Right. So, got it. In our case, we were training it on the structured instructions for use document, any customer support material they had, and the list goes on. But the AI would only be drawing from that specific set of resources. So you mitigated the risk of a hallucination, which is why we never in a million years.

Went to just use Chad GPT, for example, or Gemini or Claude. Because those are such large models, it's really hard to get granular with them and ensure that the information is accurate and they still hallucinate because AI's. Today are still yes machines, right? The whole goal is AI to give you the right answer.

And even if it doesn't have the right answer, it's gonna make something up to like pat you on the back and be like, see, look. I gave you your answer. So that really was our secret sauce and why that's important to recovery.com and why there was high interest for our intellectual property is because they're in the behavior health business, right?

Mm-hmm. So there our it to say our, we now we, 'cause we are part of recovery.com, but. Our business is helping connect patients with treatment resources faster. And of course we need to make sure that the information that a patient is getting is entirely accurate as it relates to a treatment center because there is so much sensitive information in that mix.

So I think what's interesting to recovery and why the acquisition happened in addition to multiple other factors is they really, like we had a technology already set to go that they can potentially use or we can potentially use rather. Implemented their product that meets the standards for patients and for healthcare

Jacob Miller: and the behavioral health space.

When there's a lot of complexity or sensitive information, like where do you feel like there's other opportunities that no one else is really tackling or maybe you've seen people trying to tackle. I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are there. Like within healthcare specifically or just industry wise?

Yeah. We'd be kind of seeing that you're like, oh, if someone could figure that out, like that would be awesome. Or, or do you know of anyone? Or, or just observing from afar maybe. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a, that's

Nick Myers: a good question. That's a big question. Yeah. I mean, I think the number one thing that I keep seeing in the healthcare space that people are actively working on is points with the patient.

Mm-hmm. So, like, especially on the healthcare system side. Like they're dinged by the federal government. I mean, and we, we had extensive conversations with UW Health at one point over a potential partnership and learned a lot about healthcare systems, how they operate, and the, the regulations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, because healthcare systems get dinged if they have readmissions, right?

Mm-hmm. So if a patient comes in, maybe they have COPD, or you know, a respiratory illness, that's something that's chronic, well. Medicare will actually say, well, if that patient is readmitted within the next period of time, then you get dinged and you lose this tranche of funding. Mm-hmm. So I think one thing that I keep seeing, at least on the healthcare system side, and a lot of people are working on this, is how do you prevent readmissions from happening?

How do you make sure that once a patient is discharged, there are enough touch points to ensure that the patient is adhering to the discharge instructions following their medication appropriately? Because medication adherence is a huge problem and one of the primary reasons for readmissions so. A lot happening in that space.

And as we know, there is a crisis across healthcare right now of just available labor. Mm-hmm. You know, we saw a large tranche of nurses and physicians exit after COVID, rightly so, based on everything that happened. But how are we gonna backfill that? There isn't enough people power available, so you have to turn to some of these AI tools and increase those touch points that way.

Yeah. And there are some new research coming out now too, saying that if those touch points are made. Patients do have access to an AI tool that checks in with them, make sure they're adhering to medication, et cetera. The readmissions rate does drop. So yeah, I think that's a really fascinating piece in healthcare.

I mean, the list could go on, right? Like drug discovery. Sure, sure. And, you know, uh, revenue cycling, I mean, billing is just a huge pain in the ass for healthcare systems. How can we use AI to just. Help a hospital system be more effective at billing codes. I mean, like, the list could, could go on, right? But I, I think that's how things

Jacob Miller: ho hospitals save money.

And then also how can we also save money? Like how, how do both sides win? Exactly. It's, you know, it's like,

Nick Myers: well, it, it's all about providing a higher degree of care while saving money. And that's what this whole value-based care model is, that federal government and Medicare, Medicaid try implementing. I think the double-edged sword of that is.

You know, hospitals by nature of just how they're set up in the United States are moneymaking entities, whether they're for a not-profit or a for-profit system. So if the goal is to increase the value of care and reduce the amount of people coming in, well that has then a negative effect on the hospital's profitability and the hospital's ability to stay in business.

So, and it, again, it's a weird vicious cycle right in the US that we see right now where we don't want sick people. In order for the healthcare system to function, you need sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we could have a whole podcast on that topic as well.

Jacob Miller: Of course. Yeah. I didn't mean to open up a, a wormhole or whatever.

Yeah. How did you, uh, work through accessibility, for example, like with the elderly or for people that are like maybe first time tech users, like they're not used to using Sure. Some type of medical hardware or something like that, because obviously everyone has different types of phones and all these different things too.

Or just internet connectivity if they're in rural areas, like obviously that's sometimes a barrier for people. I am curious like how you guys kind of tackled that with AI being a part of it.

Nick Myers: Yeah, so very early on we decided that we did not want our product to be a barrier. One for the patient or the end user, but two for, you know, the pharma company or the lab company or whoever we were working with, because.

If you're giving somebody a tool and then you're asking them to download an app or go set something up, like they're just not, they're not gonna use it unless they absolutely have to. Right? So we went in with the approach of how can we make this as easy to access as possible? So actually without realizing it, we were really pushing the boundaries of web enabled ai.

At the time, we built an entirely web-based system, so you know, very cloud resource intensive, that as long as you had access to the internet on your smartphone, whether that be through cellular or wifi, you could access our tool directly through your web browser, whether that be on Google, Chrome, safari, Firefox.

It didn't matter. So that I think, is the biggest area where we tried to be accessible is prevent the need from having to download an external app. And we were asked all the time, like, well, why don't you just create an an iOS app or a, you know, an Android app? I'm like. Well, one, do you wanna fund that? And two, that's just gonna create another barrier to somebody accessing this tool.

Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. In addition to that, you know, we tried getting a large degree of anecdotal data through some early user testing across a diverse population. So I think the big thing that we noticed there was probably more on the nuances of language and how people speak. So the initial version of the product was voice activated.

Where you could talk to it, right? Well, mm-hmm. Human speech is probably the most complex thing there is, right? Mm-hmm. Because there are so many different ways to speak with all the different languages we have globally, and then you have dialects to that language, and then you have slang to that language, and then take into account, if you're talking to it on a phone, ambient noise.

How do you accommodate for that? So I think. Um, the language piece of that, Brett got really creative and actually built out a way for the system to, in real time, one, detect the language being spoken and we could do 90 different languages at the time, and then also narrow down the dialect to that and then actually translate that on the fly, which.

At the time, we were like, oh, this is neat. Hopefully this will help people. But then reflecting back on it we're like, wow, nobody else had that, or the, at least the capability to do that. So that was another way we tried being accessible. Um, you know, when it comes to the elderly population, I don't think we give enough credit to.

Or 65 and older population for how tech savvy they become. Sure. There's always gonna be a portion of them that just refuse to use it or, you know, adapt to it. Of course, course, yeah. But I think what we found and, and a story I used to tell was about my, my grandpa, who, you know, back in 20. 22, my grand, my grandma had to be admitted to the hospital.

Um, got sick, didn't know it from anyhow, she was admitted. So I showed up at their house. My grandpa was at the kitchen table and they had a COVID test kit sitting there. And I'm like, grandpa, did you, did you guys actually use this? Did you see if if grandma had COVID? And he was like, no, open up the box.

And I said, hell with it. 'cause this is too confusing. But he knew what we were working on at the time. And he said, but I wish I would've had what you guys have. I think that would've helped me a lot. And I was like, interesting. Thank you. But interesting. And I get, he's just like one example, right? But sure there's a lot more of my grandpas out there that have a smartphone and that is long as it's easy enough to use, they could use it.

So all that to say. We went into this trying to be as accessible as possible. Of course there are always areas where we could have done that better. I think that goes for any technology product. Yeah. But we really believed in trying to limit the number of barriers to accessing our tool.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Um, so I, now I kinda wanna talk about, um. Your exit, you know, selling RedFox AI and you recent, it's very fresh, obviously. Very, very fresh. And it

Nick Myers: is, we're a

Jacob Miller: we're three. Congratulations again. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I guess I wanna ask, did you always envision that you'd be building it to sell it? Or was it, you know, or was there like a moment that happened where like, this kind of makes sense also like.

Maybe even talking about just the relationship with your co-founder. It sounds like obviously like it, it's been really great over, over the past five years and just how you have that conversation together to say, Hey, like, this is what we're gonna do. This is what, what's next? So

Nick Myers: yeah. So I, when, when Brett and I started RedFox AI, we knew the end goal was to be acquired.

Hmm. What we didn't know is how that was going to happen. Right. And I, I think it'd be foolish of any startup founder. To say at the outset, they know exactly how that's going to happen because you don't, right. That's like trying to peer into a crystal ball covered in hay is like, it just, you can't do it.

So we knew we were building this to be acquired, and I think one of the fundamental questions that I was asked early on by a close friend and mentor of mine after he and I got to know each other and, and I still a close friend of mine today, respect him a ton, but he, he sat me down and he asked, do you wanna be rich or do you wanna be king?

Hmm. And I was like, interesting question. I was like, I've never been asked that. He goes, well, what's your answer? And I go, I wanna be rich. He's like, that's the right answer. And it's an interesting question, right? Because it sets the stage to really gauge where your thought processes as As a founder. As an entrepreneur.

Because if you wanna be rich, you ultimately know. End game one is to probably be acquired or IPR, whatever that might be, but you also know when to get out of your own way to make sure that's possible. Mm-hmm. If you wanna be king, you're probably not gonna get out of your own way and there's a greater likelihood that your business will probably fail.

That is how I interpreted that question. He explained it to me after the fact and he is like, I never wanna work with people who wanna be gay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Continue to. To mention that to folks and they're like, wow, that's really good. I should use that. Actually, I was catching up with a friend of mine who's a venture capitalist here in Madison, and I actually told her that story for the first time.

She's like, wow, I need to start asking that to the companies that I'm, you know, I'm trying to, to figure out, out if they wanna invest in or not. So, yeah, so I was asked that very early on, and I, I knew that there might be a point where. In order for Redox to Succeed, I would not be involved in that if that meant acquisition or if we grew big enough to IPO.

Right? Yeah. So that was always on the roadmap. I knew there was a chance I wouldn't be involved in it, but ultimately I think for us it just, it emerged because of relationships. It emerged because of proximity. We moved into starting Block Madison in April of 2021 because I needed to get the hell out of my house.

I could not stand working at home anymore. We were still in the throttles of COVID, but I just couldn't do it. And I remember when starting Block opened, um, back in 2017, I think it was, and I told myself, I want to have an office here. And at the time you couldn't get in like. The entire place was filled with the brim, with companies and entrepreneurs.

Oh wow. And found, yes, COVID hit, of course, then every coworking space took a hit and, and I don't think have fully recovered, but I just knew I wanted an office there and I knew that just being around people would result in positive things for us. So we moved in, Brett and I were working out there. Pretty regularly.

And at the time it was us, it was Rehab Path, which is recovery.com now. Um, and then a couple other people who were just solopreneurs kind of working there. And I'll never forget the day when we were working and then our, our pod or our office space was literally like 20 feet from where recovery dot com's office was at the time.

So Ben and Jeremiah come walking out one day and they're like, Hey, we haven't met you guys yet. And we just started talking. They're like, what do you do? We told 'em what we do and they're like, oh, that's really cool. Here's what we do. Then it was just, I don't know. Over time I got involved in more things.

Ben and I started running in the same circles. We became friends and then just being in proximity to rehab path, we got to know Olivia on the team. We got to know more people on the team, and just built a good relationship with them. Never with the intent of thinking like we'd ever be working with them.

But it's funny because one day Brett told me, jokingly, I think it was just one of the. It's one of the lower days in the, in the startup journey. He is like, Hey Nick, if at all else fails, we'll just go work with rehab. So that was your exit

Jacob Miller: strategy? Either way,

Nick Myers: no. You know, life works in mysterious ways, but yeah.

So it's, yeah, and Brett reminded me of that story, you know, as we were nearing the finish line on this. But, you know, one thing led to another, another and a few years later, you know, um, we actually had an opportunity to be acquired last year. That didn't work out. But, you know, Ben and I being, yeah, Ben and I being good friends, you know, I talk with him about that and he, and I.

Often, um, I should say pretty regularly, catch up for over happy hour and just, you know, as friends talk about what's going on in each other's life, businesses, et cetera. Um, and this was in December of last year, Ben and I were at happy hour catching up, and for the first time we had just like a really good conversation about AI and then about what we do and our product and our talent.

And, you know, I could see him sitting there digesting that. And then he told me that. Heading into 25, 1 of their OKRs for the year was to get an AI evangelist or make AI a priority all across the company. And then kind of jokingly, he got silent for one, and he looked at me. He is like, well, why don't we just acquire you?

And I was like, I never thought that of that being a possibility. Yeah. You know, that conversation then led to another conversation, which led to another conversation and, you know, four or five months later we were able to bring it home and it actually happened. That's awesome. Yeah. So, yeah, I, we didn't expect that of, of course, like I said, when you start your.

If your entrepreneurial founder journey, you never really know where that opportunity is gonna come from. But you know, just through the multiple conversations we had with Ben and Jeremiah and we even did a trial project with them just to date and see what working together would be like. You know, there was a strong value alignment.

Yeah, I think that's fundamental for any acquisition, whether it's a smaller acquisition like ours or like the multi-billion dollar acquisitions of these massive companies, right? If you don't have a value alignment, it's, it probably isn't gonna work out in the long term, or there's gonna be a lot of very disappointed people along for that ride who will jump ship.

So we really wanted to make sure that there was a, a mutual value alignment, which there was and cultural fit, and that was the case. So here we are now.

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We're so confident that we'll be the right fit, that we offer a 50% money back guarantee. If you don't think we're working out within the first 45 days ready to see how we can help you and your team. Just head over to headway.io and book a free consultation today. This kinda lines up into the next thing I wanted to talk about was just, um, you know, how did kind of the Madison Startup Health tech scene, you obviously like, you're like, when I saw this place open up starting block, you're like, I want to be in there when it, when I can get in there, I wanna be in there.

And you ended up in there and obviously these relationships formed and obviously you ended up where you're at, like you just shared. I'm just curious like, um. It like how that happened for you? Like were you, did you always, were you always aware of the scene and the people and, and like the programs and the organizations in the area, or how did you kind of come across it, you know, over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years?

I'm just kinda curious like how that kind of formed for you over time. Sure, yeah. When

Nick Myers: we got our start, like, you know, I had just moved back down from Stevens point after graduating, you know, I decided to live in Madison because I have my grandparents live over in Middleton and have since the late nineties.

So I practically grew up here on summer and winter breaks. I have an aunt and uncle that live in the Lodi area up in Columbia County, and then all my friends were here. So I knew this is where I wanted to start my life. Had a, had a good job, good opportunity coming outta college. But as Brett and I started brainstorming what kind of business we wanted to start, I think the good thing that I had going for me is I'm just a very social person and I will actively seek out like networking opportunities and like.

Just any opportunity to like meet people and get involved because I wholeheartedly just think people are intriguing and are fascinating. Yeah. I just love talking and meeting new people. So as we got our start, it actually was a lot of, like, my formal background is in marketing, so it was like a lot of marketing events.

At the time. LinkedIn was blowing up with videos, so LinkedIn local events and that's how I started like running, at least in the marketing. Crowd in town. And then as we started putting work into RedFox AI, and this isn't formally before we actually got things formally founded in 2020, I went to a LinkedIn local event where I met Angela at another, um, colleague at the, uh, I met Angela.

Another colleague at the Wisconsin Technology Council.

Jacob Miller: Oh, sure. Um,

Nick Myers: and Angela and I pretty much had it off right away. She was telling me about the tech council and resources and all that. So I'm like, okay, well that's intriguing. So, um, that I just started. Talking with them or started going to events, um, they were kind enough, you know, at the time I was developing a pretty prolific speaking career, um, across the country and, and actually globally at that time.

Wow. That's crazy. I didn't know that. Yeah. There's, there's, there's a whole nother part of my life prior to gonna gonna say I was, I was traveling the world talking about ai. That that's a whole other thing. Episode. Yeah. But yeah, they, they saw that. I had developed a pretty prolific speaking career locally, nationally, internationally, and were kind enough to invite me to speak at one of their events where I met Tom still for the first time and he and I hit it off right away.

Um, and he and I became friends and he had became a bit of a mentor and I just got really involved in their ecosystem and their resources. Yeah. And I just, you know, went to every lunch I could, and then Tom would introduce me to people. Angela would introduce me to people. And then, you know, by nature of that, I get connected to people in Milwaukee.

So that's how I met Dan Sem and the work that he does out there at the time when he was with Concordia. CU Ventures and the healthcare innovation pitch, which we applied and won in 2022 and like it just kept snowballing. And then I met people up in the Green Bay area, just going to events in the ecosystem.

And then I, I don't know, I guess for me, it's hard to say like what I did because I was just doing what I do best, which is just go and talk to people. You know? Yeah. And like I'm very passionate about the stuff that I work on. So by nature of just being an entrepreneur, I got very passionate over entrepreneurship.

And then, you know, that evolved into me turning into a bit of an advocate. During the last biennium budget cycle, I was going up to the capitol meeting with lawmakers, actually one of the joint finance. Uh. Committee co-chairs that, you know, we had a little bit of an exchange at a wis politics lunch and I wanted to make him put his money where his mouth was.

So I met with him and we ended up getting 25 million more dollars for the Badger Fund. And so it's, it's hard for me to say like how I got connected to the resources. 'cause I actually couldn't tell you like, this is what I did specifically.

Jacob Miller: Sure.

Nick Myers: I just. I just maintained my curiosity and kept going to events, putting myself out there, making sure people knew who I was, um, and it just like exploded.

I guess in that regard,

Jacob Miller: it also sounds like you're not just like, like your intentions because obviously there's like networking for like self, obviously, like there's a selfish aspect to networking, like Sure. Just by nature, the nature of it, but it just sounds like you're the kind of person where. Your intention behind these relationships is like, oh, I wanna make sure that this is mutually beneficial.

Like, I wanna make sure that, like, I know they're gonna help me, but I, like, I wanna make sure like I'm, you know, following up with them, helping them out Yes. In whatever way I can to the, again, to the best of my ability, you know? Right. You don't wanna like burn out, just, you know, always helping people all the time.

Like it's, there's obviously people do that and it's great, but, uh, yeah. At some point, like it is balance. Right. Um, no, for sure. And yeah. Yeah.

Nick Myers: I've always viewed. Relationships from that regard. And I was lucky enough to have a very good mentor back in 20 17, 20 18. Um, she and I unfortunately have lost touch now, but she worked at Microsoft and, and she was mentoring me and like building my personal brand and who I wanted to be.

And I decided I wanted to be that person that one people knew, but they knew that I wanted to get to know them genuinely. Like yeah, I wanted to see how I could help them. It wasn't about like how they could help me, it was about how I could help them. And one of my strategies and, and I, I will preach this from the rooftops, is if you know, you meet somebody and you're talking about how we could help each other.

If they make an offer to help you always end it with, well, what can I do? Mm-hmm. And most people don't expect anything in return, but you'd be surprised at how many people I've said that to are shocked that I'm even saying, what can I do for you? How can I help you? And that's genuine intent. And that's how you build a relationship with somebody.

And I'm glad that's come across because I haven't tried to be anything other than that. Right? Like and, and to your point, we all have a motivation. We all have intention, but I think it's super clear when the intention is for personal gain versus I'm genuinely interested in you, your work, and your life as a person.

Yeah, and I want to learn from you. I view every interaction as a learning experience or an opportunity to learn from somebody.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna actually talk about, because you keep bringing up mentors, like do you feel like there's a good. I don't even know the word to use. I, I don't wanna say platform, uh, 'cause I don't wanna like people in, think in their heads like, oh, it's software or whatever.

Do you think there's a good, um, mechanism right now in like, whether it's in Madison or in Wisconsin for, you know, for founders to find a good mentor? Like, do you feel like. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that's a huge opportunity for, like, how, how are you doing that right now? Obviously it's, you're just meeting with people, it's organically happening, but like, are, are you aware of like other, you know, programs or people that are trying to, like, coordinate those kind of things or I guess I'm curious what you, what you're seeing.

Oh,

Nick Myers: for,

Jacob Miller: oh, for sure.

Nick Myers: I, I think the big one that comes to mind is, um. Suzy's program, Merlin mentors. So, okay. Suzy, of course, being based in Madison, she and her husband Matt have had success being entrepreneurs. Um, and Suzy and Matt both firmly believe in. Resources and what can we do to help foster an ecosystem where everybody feels like they have a resource or a mentor?

Um, so for, I, I wish I knew how long exactly, but for a very long time, Susie has been managing and leading the Merlin Mentors program in Madison. So if you're a startup founder, you can apply to Merlin mentors and she'll pair you with a mentor within their program that will help coach you through.

Usually the initial phases of your business, and it can be from all across the board. Right. Um, but that's a great resource. I most people and most startup founders I know have used that. Okay. I think for me it was one of those things I found out about it as a resource while I was a bit farther along in my journey.

Sure. So I was like, I already have like a really solid group of people, but I tell folks about it all the time who are looking for a mentor. I go, Merlin's probably a great place to start. Sure. Um, I really can't speak for what's going on in Milwaukee. Um,

Jacob Miller: yeah, that's what I was wondering. So. 'cause I, from my perspective, Merlin is only in Madison.

Nick Myers: Yes, it is only in Madison. I know in Milwaukee, like with Midwest founders community, um, I know they've really tried bringing people together and I think mentorship just happens organically from that. I know during healthcare innovation pitch, Dan Sim paired us with a mentor. It was a short term thing, but I do believe that can be an ongoing thing if you want it to be.

So, the, the, the resources and the programs are there. I think you just have to find them. And I think one of the, the big problems we've always had as an ecosystem in Wisconsin is knowing where to start.

Jacob Miller: Mm-hmm.

Nick Myers: Which I know there's like start in Wisconsin and all this stuff, but like, I just keep hearing this feedback, Jacob over and over and over again from new founders that like, until they like met that one person that held their hand to get them involved.

They like, I don't even know where to go. I don't know what resources are available. I don't, you know. Yeah. Who's WEDC? You know, who, you know, like

Jacob Miller: Yeah. All these acronyms are like, I don't know. Never heard of it. Yeah.

Nick Myers: Well, I, I think that is one thing that, that we as an ecosystem can do a lot better. And, and of course the tech council's a resource, bio forwards.

A resource. Um, the stuff's there. It's unfortunately you don't know about 'em unless you know of somebody in it already who can point you in the right direction.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. And that's something that, you know, we're trying to tackle is like, how do we like, like we think of CE Wisconsin as like the front door, like to the ecosystem.

We're not trying to replace or do better than what's already here. 'cause like you said, there's already like incredible resources. Okay. How do we. Show the people the way sooner than later. Like, yes, hey, here's like your introduction. And you know, and we, we do know, like even, you know, like you, you were talking about like there's already a platform that exists, but I think sometimes, um.

The way it's presented can be overwhelming. Like, I don't even know what to search in this thing. Like, I, there's like a lot here. So it does make you think, you know, like we're considering like more of like a, a concierge type approach where you're gonna meet with, you're a new founder, you're gonna meet with this, with this person, and they're just gonna listen and understand what you're going through and what you're trying to figure out.

And then they would have a good sense of the ecosystem and be able to be like, Hey, sound based on where you're at, like. There's three people I wanna ntroduce you to and here's a couple programs or organizations you should, you should check out. Yeah. That might be of interest to you. Um, yeah, because sometimes it's like when people are like just navigating a site, they just also might be too busy to even, like, I don't even know what's here.

I don't know if it's even exactly, but that human connection I think is like, it's harder, like replace that with like. An an app or Hey, we're gonna make a new platform. Make a profile. And like, you know, like even when you were saying with medical devices, like nobody wants to download a thing and it has to keep logging into it.

It's just another thing. And it's like, so how do we kind of like, you know, kind of fix that? And again, it's not, not that we're gonna like solve every single problem for every single person, but like, how do we kind of like increase, uh, you know. Or, or I guess reduce the time it takes for them to meet that right person and increase their chances of luck, right?

Like that's kind of it, like it's not, you can't guarantee success for anyone, so to speak.

Nick Myers: Exactly.

Jacob Miller: And

Nick Myers: you know, I know for a fact a lot of founders getting started, like maybe some of them have saved up a good chunk of cash that they can allocate to the business. Maybe they are, you know, doing double duty and they're working a full-time job while doing this.

I know cash is always an issue, but there are so many good free resources in the state, like the number one Yes. Resource that comes to mind for me is the small business development clinic that is offered through, um, UW Madison, that's available statewide to anybody. Right. Um, and then you have the Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic.

So you don't have to go and spend $500 an hour on an attorney right away. You could use a resource like that. So there are a lot of resources, but again, it's a bit of an insular bubble. Mm-hmm. And until you like crack into the bubble, it's very hard to like. You know what I mean?

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Well, and also too, like because there's, when you're a founder, there's just so much to think through and when it and your mind will make you focus on the thing that you think is the most important thing to focus on right now.

Versus like, actually, let's just get this stuff figured out first. Like, obviously that is important, but like you were saying, the legal part, like figuring out your business model, figuring out like, you know, maybe there's some, uh, some, uh, tax code things that I can work through to figure out, like I can have some tax savings.

Like I don't, right. Like whatever little things you can figure out. Um, for your business that can, you know, give you more runway. So like, oh, we're trying to get our customers, or trying to get this thing built, or whatever. You're like, yeah, it's important, but like, do you also have this other stuff figured out that like, will legal, you know, legally allow your business to Exactly.

Or, you know, stuff like that. Well, that's, and, and

Nick Myers: that Jacob, I honestly think is like, that's the toughest part is just understanding the operational part of all this. Having to file like articles of incorporation with, you know, the state of Wisconsin or if you wanna be a C Corp with Delaware and the getting a tax ID number.

Yeah. And then figuring out what forms you need to file. Like there's all that in addition to just trying to work on your product and find product market fit and do everything else that a startup requires. Right. And

Jacob Miller: yeah,

Nick Myers: I, I do think, like I would love to see more resources to help founders navigate just.

The legal piece of this and, and maybe it's not even the legal piece, it's just like. Getting it incorporated, opening a bank account, getting business insurance, like all of that stuff that, yeah, you don't me think about, but is really the bedrock of your company.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. It allows you to exist basic.

Right, exactly.

Nick Myers: And, and, and quite frankly, like the, the, the government entities that oversee this are very unforgiving. They don't care whether you know or not, but if you miss this deadline and didn't file this paperwork and pay this check, they're gonna come after you for it.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, we'll just be mindful of your time with, uh, I, I do wanna move on to, um, life, you know, after RedFox AI, like you're in this new role@recovery.com.

You, you, you spoke about it a little bit, but I am kind of curious, you know, are you, are you able to share any of the things that you're, you're hoping to do with them or just your approach? Um. And just, or, or you know, just obviously being a part of a team, like how you think about innovation too, versus like, I'm the founder, I can make decisions.

Right. Or, you know, or does Ben, Ben has given you the freedom to like do this. Obviously you're making decisions together. I'm just curious what, you know, what that's like for you. Yeah.

Nick Myers: I'd say, yeah. Uh, on the whole, my, my priority first and foremost in, in this role as director of AI Innovation, is to help enable AI all across recovery.com, whether that be on the operational side and figuring out within each team.

If we're not, if we're using a tool, how that tool can be used better to create more efficiency. If there's a tool available that we're not using, can we use that tool? Does it fit in? Mm-hmm. And then on the flip side, the product side, right? Like how can we use AI to make our product better and more personalized to our users and our patients coming to us to find treatment resources?

I think the big picture vision is somebody. Coming to recovery.com and typing in, you know, I'm so and so. You know, I've been an alcoholic for 13 years. I'm at the point where I'm ready to seek recovery options. Here's my age, gender, I mean, all this information insurance. And then they can get a personalized set of treatment options or treatment center resources tailored to exactly what they need.

Mm-hmm. I know we've talked about that, and I think that ultimately is the big picture vision, but to Ben and Jeremiah's credit, they have fully recognized that AI is just one of those transformational technologies similar to the internet and mobile, and they do not want to miss the boat on that. They do not want to be left behind.

And that was a large part about why this acquisition happened as well, because, you know, we were at our team huddle on Wednesday and Jeremiah just, I, I admire him 'cause he's just, he's super, super smart and prescriptive with things that he says, but he's also like really funny and like he got up to do his piece for the huddle and he showed us like a picture of this empty looking warehouse or like back room somewhere.

And he is like. This is the Joanne fabrics over on the west side. He's like, they're gone. Like as of last night when I took this picture, like there are no more. He's like, I don't want us to be the next Joanne fabrics. And, and, you know, went on to talk about. Not missing the boat on AI and why that is such a fundamental piece to recovery.com moving forward because they recognize the shift that's happening, right?

Sure. So a lot of my initial work will be to identify the opportunities within the organization where we can use AI tools both internally and how do we actually do some cool things with the product that really benefit our users and. You know, recognizing that I'm good in front of people and have a public speaking talent.

You know, part of my job will also be to go out and represent recovery.com at, you know, conferences and trade shows, and. Other events where I can talk about what we're doing with ai, how we're being innovative in the behavior health space, you know? Yeah. Further, you know, growing our market reach to, to the folks we're trying to get to use the platform.

Yeah. So, and it's, there's a lot more to it as well, and I think it'll be one of those things that'll be evolving over time, but.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. I'm curious, um, it, because it is, from what I've read in the past, you've been involved with some AI policy or just, uh, uh, I, I don't even, I don't even know like what that looked like exactly.

But, uh, I'm just curious around like, do you imagine recco you and recovery.com being involved with AI policy that's happening in Madison and in Wisconsin, and to just be a part of that conversation? Yeah, I think from

Nick Myers: a policy perspective, that is definitely something that I've talked about with the team here.

And ultimately I do view my innovation role kind of at some point expanding to include some public policy initiatives. So like I. How can we as recovery.com go and meet with lawmakers potentially about protecting certain grant funding for mental health and behavioral health treatment programs? Sure.

You know, is there policy that'll emerge at some point that will make access to treatment more widely available through insurance providers? Like all that's to be determined. Right? But I do foresee that being on the roadmap. I think as it comes to AI policy specifically, that'll just be me championing what I've always done.

You know, and being Nick Myers, the citizen, you know, Mr. Myers goes to Washington to meet with our state lawmakers and Yeah. Um, federal lawmakers about proper AI policy and regulation. Because I, I think my biggest fear Jacob, right now that keeps me up at night with AI is the general public and, and, and to their credit, and no, AI is important, but there is a gross.

Lack of understanding the gravity of how this is going to affect the labor market. Mm-hmm. And like I don't hyperbolize when I say that I did. Countless hours of research when I was working with the Linux Foundation into AI's impact on the labor market at the time. And at the time, a lot of this data was pointing to, oh, it's gonna be similar to like the internet or the industrial revolution, where, sure, it'll automate some jobs, but it'll have a net positive effect on that, A complementary effect for maybe like two or three or four new jobs are created as a result at the time.

I agreed with that. This was before large language models. This was before chat GPT. This was before cloud Cloud four. Being able to program better than an entry-level engineer, I don't agree with that anymore, and I easily foresee within the next three to five years, potentially even sooner. We are going to see a huge reaping of entry-level positions in the United States and, and quite honestly globally because these tools are, are, are growing exponentially day by day in their capability.

Mm-hmm. And we are just not talking about that enough. We are not strategizing enough about that. And the government's approach right now is very laissez-faire. Right. Because they want to compete with China, which great. I also want to compete with China in the AI space, but if we don't. Try and mitigate some of this now through proper policy and regulation, this massive wave of unemployment is going to hit us.

And then you're going to have this huge backlash from the general public. And we're gonna start having drum circles of no AI and this anti AI movement, which I still forget is probably happening. But that's the biggest thing that keeps me up at night is this is just going to happen like. Snap with a finger flick of a switch and we are not going to be prepared for that.

Um, and I, I, I want lawmakers and the thing is, the politicians know this is coming. At least some of them do. But you also don't wanna bring up to your constituents that there's gonna be job loss 'cause no politician wants to talk about Yeah,

Jacob Miller: of course. Yeah. But yeah, it's. Go ahead, sir. I was saying,

Nick Myers: uh, to, to cap off my, my, my soapbox here.

We need to be talking about this more specifically on the AI safety, data privacy side, but again, how this is going to affect the labor market and we need policy and regulation, good policy and regulation that simultaneously protects that innovation and development. But also protects the average person.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's such a, it's hard, it's hard to know. 'cause we don't know how it's fully gonna play out yet, like timelines and, and scale. Like, but yeah, like if you really look at it like, yeah, data entry won't be necessary by a, by a person other than. Some if, if the computer or the tool is asking you a question about yourself to under, to, to gather data.

Right. It'll no longer be, you know, whatever we know today. And it's hard to imagine the future. Right. It's hard to, right. Even when people talked about horses to automobiles. Exactly. And electricity. Like you can't, like, or even cell phones, like, you know people, my dad always jokes like, yeah, I used to watch Star Trek and now we have cell phones and we have like computers in our hands.

And,

Nick Myers: which is funny that like. A technology like cell phones have only been around really in mass the last 15 years, right? Yeah. If you consider our history, like they're, it's still a new technology when you think about it, relatively speaking.

Jacob Miller: Yeah, but it's also more manageable because it's like in a box, right?

Where like this whole thing is like, it, it affects everyone and every which way you can think of, it's just kind of like, so I think. It's hard 'cause like, you know, people say, oh, it'll create different jobs in the future. And it's like, well what do those look like? And or is it one of those things where like if the US is successful, like there's enough new revenue generation from our country that it says, Hey, now that we have all this extra revenue and hopefully our debt hasn't skyrocketed, there's that whole conversation too.

But right like that it would say, Hey, now we're going to, the government's gonna create new jobs that employs people to do things. Because we wanna employ people like and Right. And those things would be community driven efforts, things like that, the arts, whatever, hopefully. Right. And obviously you could have other things too, but like, I'm just kind of spit balling, but like that's the hope is that these innovations help save and create enough revenue that it offsets.

Right. The job loss is somehow to create new, new opportunities for people to, to have a sense of purpose in their life. You know, that's the other thing too.

Nick Myers: It's like people

Jacob Miller: think about

Nick Myers: that. It's like, oh, well. Exactly, and, and I do ultimately believe that economic output is going to be driven upwards.

Substantially. You know? Be foolish of me to say that maybe like we were expecting another roaring twenties in the 2020s. That clearly didn't happen, but maybe that's in the 2030s, right? When the stuff hits an inflection point and it just goes gangbusters. But the double-edged coin of that is. If we're increasing GDP by like a factor of 10, because of AI tools making us 10 times more productive, if not more.

You know, our whole system of economics relies on infinite growth. Well, what if these tools get so good, like. How do you keep infinite growth if Yeah. People aren't working because the tools are doing everything you, you know what I mean? That, that, yeah. It's a weird question.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. It's, yeah. And, and

Nick Myers: we could have like 10 podcast episodes.

Podcast episodes on that alone. Yeah. And, but that's what keeps me up at night.

Jacob Miller: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do think though, like, you know, we think about, for example, like all the Google stuff lately with the video and like everyone talking about Hollywood lately. And music. And music and like. I do think that like there will always be a place for like real, like film people are still gonna Oh, absolutely.

People are gonna choose, like society will say, I don't want, like you were saying before, like I don't wanna see AI created productions. Like I wanna see something that like. The human race, like put together like hard blood, foot and tears, like that's what I wanna support and do. And in theater has been that like people wanna go see theater or go see orchestras because they want that experience and they wanna support the arts and stuff.

So absolutely. I do feel like. That'll kind of evolve as, as it should. Um, but like the other side of it of like what jobs look like and what the AI even looks like or 'cause I think part of it's, we think like, oh, it just replaces what we know today, but like the systems will that we'll have in 10 to 20 years will be completely different than the systems we have right now.

Sure. Absolutely. Like the way we do things and think about things will just be completely different. And so. We've never had that really before in history. No, we haven't. Like usually the change, the rate of change isn't so fast. It's a lot more, uh, you can kind of, when people hate change, but they kind of deal with it, this will be just different.

Nick Myers: Well, and it's, it's even more interesting right now because not only are we having this massive societal, civilization wide change with AI happening, but we're also at like the apex of. People having the most distrust in their institutions they've ever had. Yeah. And like that's not a good combo, you know?

No, no. Yeah. Like we, we need to have trust in institutions as this change happens. And I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful that in the next few years that pendulum swings back and we can start rebuilding some of that trust in our institutions against not just the US though. This is all over the world. Yeah. Um, but that's gonna be necessary for us to navigate.

This Renaissance, if you wanna call it, I mean, renaissance is probably not even the right word. This explosion of automation. Yeah. And intelligent technology that is staring at us right in the face.

Jacob Miller: Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that note, we'll wrap things up

Nick Myers: probably to expect it to go this. Did you,

Jacob Miller: um. It's like, you know, as we wrap things up though, it's like, it's one of those weird things where it's like, you wanna be really optimistic, but you're want, but you're also like, your brain's like, let's be realistic for a second.

Exactly. Think about what we're saying. So, um, yeah, so I think it's good to have like that sober perspective. Um, and just, but also I think, like you said, there needs to be more conversations and I think that's, that's really important. So I just wanna say thank you for being one of those people. Um, specifically.

Right. You know, in a state that we live in, which is really great. So,

Nick Myers: absolutely. I

Jacob Miller: I, I appreciate

Nick Myers: that and I am, like I said, I do this work because I care about it. I care about the people that it's going to affect, so. Mm-hmm. You know, small to small. A a as I made in the LinkedIn post, I think earlier this week, you know, small wins can have a big impact or a big outcome.

Yeah. So. Yep. Awesome.

Jacob Miller: Well, if anyone's like curious to learn more about what you're doing or to connect with you and maybe ask questions that they're curious about, things that you did with RedFox AI or, or anything like that, or maybe wanna be mentored by you, uh, how can they get ahold of you and what can that look like?

Nick Myers: Absolutely. I, I'd say LinkedIn is, is probably the best way. Um, I do tend to monitor, like connection requests and everything. I've gotten pretty good at sussing out, like who's, who's there to connect with me because they wanna connect versus sell me something. So, sure. I would say that's a good spot. My email is nick@recovery.com so feel free to always send me an email there.

You can still go to the RedFox AI website and see what we were working on. That is still up. Sure there is a nice banner at the top though, announcing the acquisition. Redirecting you over to the recovery.com site. But. You know, I'd also encourage you to go to recovery.com and take a look at what we're building and working on because it is having an impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people coming to search for treatment resources day in and day out.

So I really do encourage you to go take a look at what we're building and, and if you wanna be a part of that, please reach out to us.

Jacob Miller: Thanks for joining us on the Startup Wisconsin Podcast. Wanna support the show. Don't forget to subscribe and get updates. If you're feeling generous, you can share, rate and review our podcast to help others find us.

Alright folks. Until next time, let's keep moving Wisconsin forward.

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