Todd Park: Life is Short, Work on Things that Matter – athenahealth MDP

After Jonathan Bush’s keynote address, Todd Park jumped up (yes, he jumped. More than once) and began his guest keynote.

Here are my takeaways from Todd Park’s high energy speech:

• Todd Park’s criteria for evaluating startups:
• 1. Does the startup solve an important problem?
  2. Does the product enable the customer to make more money? Don’t forget, time is money.
  3. Does the product have a network effect at its core?
• “It’s absolutely true, despite the cliche, the team is everything.”
• Find, grow and retain people. Is that the thing you spend the most time on?
• “How diverse is your team?”
• “Diverse teams beat non-diverse teams at everything.”
• Building diverse teams is really hard. It takes 2×3 more effort to recruit diverse teams.
• “Pick a mission that you can’t to work on every second of your day.”
• Your ability to recruit people is going to he higher if you’re working on something that excites them.
• “Jonathan Bush is the best in healthcare about not giving up.”
• “Life is short. Work on things that matter.”
• “The future of the American healthcare system is in your hands. It’s in this mother f-*$ing room.”
• “I’m a born again Christian who happens to swear a lot.”
• VC’s are biased in ways they don’t even understand.
• Not a fan of the B Corp.
• Re: his new startup: “We are a paragon of hyper compliance.”

About Todd Park

At the age of 24, Todd Park co-founded athenahealth with Jonathan Bush in 1997.

Later in 2008, he co-founded Castlight Health, which was named by the Wall Street Journal as the #1 venture-backed company in America for 2011.

Todd has also served as the Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2009).

In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to be United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President.

Todd also played an instrumental role in developing the initial version of HealthCare.gov, which was built in only 90 days. Todd shared a story with us that during those days, they had a sign in their office that read:

“No one is coming. It’s on us.”

I believe Todd is a national living treasure.

About MDP

The athenahealth More Disruption Please (MDP) conference brings together entrepreneurs, investors, clinicians and industry experts who share the company’s vision of disrupting the status quo in healthcare.

MDP provides easy access to the world’s most innovative thinking and offers solutions to help healthcare professionals thrive in the face of industry change and pressure.

It’s held at the Point Lookout in Northport, Maine.