From Burger King to MDLIVE: The Playbook for Scaling Healthcare

Mahmud Samad has spent 20 years scaling companies on both sides of the aisle: Johnson & Johnson, Burger King through its Bain Capital and TPG years, Wellpath, and MDLIVE during its highest growth period. Today he is Founder and Principal of Interconnext Consulting, where he works with founders, boards, and private equity teams as a strategic CFO and operator.

In this episode we get into why healthcare startups stall after their first three pilots, what a "repeatable process" actually means, and why he thinks domain expertise is the single most overrated thing in business. He also breaks down the difference between growth and scale, what he looks at first on a P&L, who to hire before your Series A, and when a company should not take VC money at all.

Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:45 J&J and Burger King: building the operating playbook 03:57 Why Interconnext Consulting started by accident 07:48 What a "repeatable process" really means 08:57 What breaks fastest in healthcare 11:46 What the cost curve looks like when you scale 14:44 The first things he looks at on a P&L 17:11 Inside MDLIVE: building the track while the train runs 21:13 The real operating bottlenecks in telehealth 26:12 What restaurants taught him that healthcare never did 29:41 What healthcare can steal from franchising 33:53 Product-market fit vs. a few enthusiastic customers 39:18 Growth vs. scale 41:12 Using AI to remove friction, not headcount 44:26 The first 90 days with a new founder 51:56 Who to hire first outside the founding team 54:14 Leading talent more experienced than you 59:50 Which companies should never raise VC money 1:03:37 Storytelling: the coffee that changed his career 1:08:00 Advising Andvaris 1:10:15 What he looks for in a founding team 1:14:08 Why he joined the board of Children's Harbor 1:16:31 Rapid fire

Connect with Mahmud & Learn more about Interconnect Consulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahmudsamad/ Interconnext Consulting Website: https://interconnextconsulting.com Interconnext on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/interconnext-consulting/

More on Vik & Care Shift LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sathvik-bilakanti-8b5344169/ Care Shift on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/care-shift/?viewAsMember=true Care Shift Website: https://careshift.vc/