Creating Sketchy, A Major Medical Education Platform | Saud Siddiqui M.D & Andrew Berg M.D

Transcript

Taylor Brana:  So guys, thank you so much for being on today.

[00:00:29]Andrew Berg: Of course, glad to be here. Thank you for having us.  

[00:00:32] Saud Siddiqui: Thanks, we’re really happy to be here. 

[00:00:33]Taylor Brana:  it’s great to have you. And I’m like, I’m super pumped right now because it’s one thing for me to use a resource. And study, but it’s something else to speak to the people who actually created the thing.

[00:00:46] So let’s go to the beginning for a second. I understand that you’re not the only two co-founders, there’s two more as well from my understanding. And you guys came together and created this awesome resource. So before we get to the story, maybe let’s just define, I’m sure you’ve pitched this hundreds of times.

[00:01:03] So what is Sketchy and why is it important and useful? 

[00:01:07]Saud Siddiqui: Sketchy is a online visual learning platform that enables students to, and today primarily medical students to learn using what’s called the method of Loci or the memory palace technique, which is a really powerful technique to not only learn information, but recall it  really effectively. 

[00:01:25] And it’s based around assigning information to objects in a space. And that, that’s the big picture of it and we can go into more detail. But that’s that is The way that we teach.  And we started in medical school really out of problems that, that we had ourselves.

[00:01:42] We were trying to memorize, tons and tons of information as  in a short amount of time. And the traditional study methods just didn’t work. And so this was something that we started to do ourselves and really stumbled upon just out of, almost desperation to, to get through medical school.

[00:01:59]And we found that it worked so well and one of the shared with others and that was the beginning of the whole idea of Sketchy and where it started. 

[00:02:07]Taylor Brana: Andrew, any additional thoughts on that? 

[00:02:09]Andrew Berg: Yeah, no, I think Saud nailed it. It really was born out of us, just struggling to remember all of the bacteria we needed to remember. Micro was the first course we created.

[00:02:19] And part of that was because that’s where we were most acutely wanting a different way to learn.  Now, we studied together in the basement of the UC Irvine library and. We eventually just started weaving these bacteria in to pretty crazy stories and we found that it stuck . 

[00:02:36] And Saud  is super humble about this and doesn’t talk about it, but he was actually a relatively famous music instructor on YouTube.  He knew how to build webssites. And it was a great partnership, right from the beginning. It allowed us to do a lot of that, that first upfront work ourselves and not have to hire out. 

[00:02:55]Taylor Brana: Wow. That’s awesome. And I appreciate you guys going through it. And to paint the picture for the listeners and people watching. You’re basically getting a display, an art piece. And each of these different sections of that art piece are associated with a fact or something you need to know.

[00:03:11] So when I started, it was for Sketchy micro, and I remember like different diagrams and pictures, but sometimes there’s a medicine that you might need to remember or a certain microorganism, you need to remember and you need to know the characteristics of it. And there’s different images that pop up.

[00:03:27] And there’s someone also explaining the image as you go, so you can remember the facts. And again I’m a little bit out from that, but it was something that, when I was taking the exam and I was nervous. I was stressed taking the boards. I could just see the image in my mind. So it works on a very, almost fundamental level that I think people don’t really appreciate.

[00:03:47] So for you guys, obviously when you create something, when you go through this, it’s tough, right? As an entrepreneur to build out a business, this is years of work and you guys are eight years, I think, three months out from starting this thing, which is incredible. And. When you did this, right? You had to have a tremendous amount of pain. A challenge that like was really causing so much mental disturbance.

[00:04:10] You’re like we have to do this thing.  What was that gut feeling for you?

[00:04:13]Saud Siddiqui: Yeah, Andrew, you can jump in here too. Cause we’ve talked about this and it was I know both of us have this urge to, to do things better when we know that it can be done better. And in medical school , we felt like there was definitely a better way to learn than what we were given.

[00:04:31]And Sketchy was something that we, the method was something we stumbled upon, but when we realized that the power of it and then being able to do that in a form that could be shared globally it was just too good of an idea where we didn’t want to just keep it to ourselves.

[00:04:49]And we wanted to recreate that experience for people around the world. And really, part of it also was medical school is, was tough. I think for most people it’s tough for me. It was pretty hard to figure out and doing this was when it clicked for me.

[00:05:02] And I was like, okay, I finally, I cracked the code here. In med school for myself. And I think helping others do that too , was a powerful driving factor in pushing us to do this while we were still in school. 

[00:05:15]Andrew Berg: Yeah, I would just add, I think when we started teaching our friends the way we were learning it and, they got it, but it was with us, prefacing it saying, Hey, trust us.  This actually works. Try to remember this a week later, you’ll see that it actually works. 

[00:05:29] And so when we first created our first video was salmonella, we threw it up on YouTube. And we had really no idea what to expect. And at the time we, we had a logo, but we weren’t necessarily sure we wanted to create a business. We were just trying to see if people would like the learning style. 

[00:05:44] And it sure enough it did catch on, which was pretty mind blowing. We didn’t introduce the concept of visual learning. We just did it. And like really, if it wasn’t for Reddit, our medical school that.

[00:05:56] That it circulated around. That’s probably how it got into so many schools right off the bat. if it wasn’t for that community, we probably wouldn’t exist. And it just blows my mind that students even today can sign on, watch a video. And it’s about cartoons that apparently don’t seem to be too related to the science but that it sticks and that they feel like they should use it.

[00:06:17]And so that’s awesome. And I think part of that is medical students are just like always trying to find ways to improve their studying.  And they’re willing to try it, willing to try it. Now, of course we have, word of mouth, a majority of med students are using Sketchy. So that helps.

[00:06:34] But back in the day, when that wasn’t the case, it was pretty amazing to see it just catch on. 

[00:06:38]Taylor Brana: Yeah. I think it’s, again, like you have an idea. And then you start doing it. By the way who started the drawings? Who was the artist and the group. 

[00:06:46]Andrew Berg: Yeah. So that was Brian Lemieux. We have two Lemieux’s at Sketchy. Brian and Aaron , they’re twin brothers.

[00:06:52]Brian went to UC Irvine with us. It’s a funny story .  Saud and I, neither of us know how to draw. I make one little drawing cameo and bacillus anthracis and I think everybody would be glad that I’m not the artist. But we were planning on doing it just us two and having not a talented artist.

[00:07:10] And we were sitting at Starbucks and there’s an empty seat next to Brian. And as we were talking about it, we looked over and saw Brian was, had these like amazing drawings in his first aid margins. And so at that point, we were like, Wait, you study with these like visual mnemonics too. Like why would you be interested at all in teaming up?

[00:07:28] And so that, that was the moment where we all decided the three of us to do it. And Brian’s art on salmonella was just like mind blowing to us is so much better than we had anticipated. Since then, he did a few drawings, but since then we’ve obviously hired a big team of artists which has helped a lot too.

[00:07:46] And really your listeners won’t be able to see the screen behind me, but. That the artists are a big part of who Sketchy is now and in what we’ve become. 

[00:07:54] Taylor Brana: Yeah. And I think it’s really interesting too, because we often in science we’re not the most artistic people. We memorize lots of information.

[00:08:01] It’s a ridiculous amount of we talk about the fire hydrant of information, but to have that sort of different way of looking at things. And of course the talent there, you guys just had the magic combination in that moment to go for it, which I think is again, a lot of luck, but then you guys still had to put it out.

[00:08:21]And I think to what you were saying earlier was Saud, like you already had –  you had already produced something with your you’re mentioned, I believe as music. And putting something out there to the world. So I think again, you just had the combination of the right parts and then going for it, which is amazing.

[00:08:36]And so from my understanding, you guys put out a few YouTube videos, and it went pretty viral. Is that correct? 

[00:08:42]Andrew Berg: Yeah, exactly. Started with YouTube again, probably bounced around Reddit a few times and made its way to a number of schools. And then it was, it’s pretty funny. Like during our beginning of our third year of medical school, we just started getting bombarded with emails and there were some memes going around, like demanding a full course of Sketchy.

[00:09:02] And we were still in medical school ourselves and trying to ramp up production to meet, to meet those demands. And so that was a pretty stressful, but extremely fun time in our lives.  Going on clinical rotations and then coming home and recording and really basically not sleeping. And, dealing with website outages while we’re on rotation and just, all of the issues that most startups, I think face we were dealing with them while we were in third year of medical school, which is just an entirely daunting task by itself.  

[00:09:35] But interestingly, I think it, it was a good balance for us. I think it, what we did on Sketchy kind of fueled our passion for being in medicine and made that easier. And so they actually complim- complimented each other rather than really competed. 

[00:09:50]Taylor Brana: It’s. It’s interesting too, because while you’re actively building out this company and building out this content stream, You’re also actively studying and you’re actively using that information and you needed that information for your boards or shelf exams or whatever.

[00:10:04] So it was, it’s it’s interesting that you could kill so many birds with one stone, which I think is like just being extremely efficient and effective. That must’ve been tough though, right? To like, and either of you can comment on this, like that must’ve been pretty grueling and intense, or maybe it could have in some ways reduce your burnout or exhaustion cause you had a project to work on.

[00:10:26]What do you think? Do you think it was like more fun to crank this out while you’re actively trying to get through clinical rotations or did it just add to your stress level? 

[00:10:34] Saud Siddiqui: I’d say, personally, it’s one of those things that is obviously, it takes a lot of time and obviously takes a lot of work, but it’s like you said, like a project that you can really get deeply into and work on.

[00:10:50] And that you see the fruits of it as you’re putting it out.  Was it hard? Definitely. But it was also it was fun. It wasn’t like something that I would dread doing. It was something that I was waiting to get home so I can work on even if it took me all night, I wanted to do it.

[00:11:03]Taylor Brana: Andrew. Anything else on that? 

[00:11:04]Andrew Berg: Yeah, I just, we have so many stories, I think now from that time in our lives that to shave years off of our lives probably, but also was just, we’re just like, so yeah they, we, I look back at them just it was such like.

[00:11:18] Fondness. Like, I think there was the time. I mean, I could go into a lot of stories. Yeah. 

[00:11:26] Saud Siddiqui: Cause like we were just the four of us and then we get some help from like contractors to draw a picture or something, but like everything stopped with us. If tomorrow something didn’t work, it’s oh, God, I gotta figure this out. 

[00:11:39]Andrew Berg: We were like, I was basically the one doing all the customer service,  at the, during that time responding to emails, which honestly I think really helped us. We were med students, but it also helps us really understand what our students really cared about.

[00:11:53]Saud was like, our CTO at the time, he did all everything tech and learned a lot doing it. Like we were really such a hodgepodge of  founders and and just made it work, which was like, there are multiple times where we thought, Oh no, like the site’s going down, we’re going to lose all our data.

[00:12:11]Yeah, we never did. Everything ended up working out, but yeah, it was a wild ride early on. 

[00:12:17]Taylor Brana: So in the inception of the idea, did you guys imagine this to be a big company cause none of you are really entrepreneurs maybe Saud, you started already developing that a bit, but.

[00:12:28] And again, correct me if I’m wrong, but what did you, anyone have an MBA? Anyone build other companies like, did, did you have this set of, and I only know this now after starting my own type of stuff, like there’s a lot of skills you have to like. A lot of people call it entrepreneurship, like jumping out of an airplane and you’re like without a parachute.

[00:12:47] And you’re trying to assemble your parachute as they’re falling to try to like glide to safety, was that kind of the experience you had to like, just figure it out as you go. 

[00:12:54]Saud Siddiqui: I think a hundred percent is just, we didn’t really know where this was going to go. It’s not like we planned that eight years from now.

[00:13:03] We’d be here. It was really we were figuring it out as we were going really at every stop. But we were really lucky that so early on we had people that loved it and engaged with it. So that was able to carry us.  And so having that as that I think that’s what allowed us to figure it out also, just like the support from the students and people wanting to use it.

[00:13:25] And that kept us going too, and gave us a drive to figure out the solutions to all these different problems we faced. 

[00:13:32]  Taylor Brana: what were some early problems that like were coming up that were pretty tough to troubleshoot and like, how did you, how’d you get through that?

[00:13:39] Saud Siddiqui: When we went to the bank and tried to open a bank account, they asked us what Sketchy group was and didn’t let us open an account. , So  that’s one story.  But actually there were just I think a good example was at one point we actually ran out of money.

[00:13:55]And so we, we used to put in a little bit of, student loan disbursement money to start this thing. And at one point we ran out of money and we didn’t know what to do. You know, I did a rotation the next day. But we had so many users that were, ready to use the product and they didn’t care that it wasn’t all done.

[00:14:12] And so we just, we had to figure out what to do and we just decided, Hey, we’re going to figure out how to do a presale with like what we have and just start selling that and then continue to give them access as they, as we release stuff. And, we didn’t know if it was going to work and we did it and it worked.

[00:14:27]And from then on that kind of funded the rest of our, our journey. And I’d say another good example is, things that you would never think of where our payment.  We did a launch for, I think it was viruses that people were anticipating. And  we did it, we pushed the button and.

[00:14:44] I think I had a night shift that, that day, and, overnight people are  joining the next morning, we get a call from PayPal. They’re like, Hey, like we’ve frozen everything on your account. You can’t take money out, you can’t pay. Like we need to figure out what’s going on. And they thought we were doing fraud because.

[00:15:02] All of a sudden we launched this thing and all these people are joining our our website and paying through PayPal that they freaked out. And like we had people to pay who like set up the launch for us and coded it and whatever. And we couldn’t pay them because all of her money was PayPal.

[00:15:17] So just like things like that, where it’s I would’ve never thought of this. But it happened and I just got off a night shift and I got to figure it out. So it’s things like that where it’s would just happen and then,  you figure it out and you keep moving. 

[00:15:29] Taylor Brana: It sounds like a good problem to have.

[00:15:31]Andrew Berg: Yeah. Yeah. I remember to, to build on that, I remember the day after we launched micro, our first. We had to set up so that PayPal would ding us any time somebody signed up and paid for an account. Like we would just get this ding in a buzz on our phone. And I remember thinking like, Oh, it’d be awesome if we got like a ding today.

[00:15:49] And so we launched. I left Saud and I left my house. And then all of it, like as soon as we stepped out the door, I started getting dings. And then it was like every minute, a new ding. And it was just like it was truly just like mind blowing, like where, like how we didn’t know, we had so many users ready to buy and that at that point we were like, okay we can start hiring more people, like getting more artists on board and really doing this well.

[00:16:13]

[00:16:13] Taylor Brana: Was that the moment you guys realized this was going somewhere? 

[00:16:18]Andrew Berg: Yeah, I think,  it’s a big difference to have free users signing up for your stuff. And then saying they would pay then to having them actually, putting their credit card in and paying for it. And so that was, we had a guess that would happen.

[00:16:31]And then when it actually did happen, it was it definitely exceeded our expectations which was nice. 

[00:16:36] Taylor Brana:  That’s great. And again, this just goes to show that sometimes you have an idea. Now, not every idea is going to work, but if you feel like you’re onto something and you get that community acceptance and that it’s moving somewhere may be, maybe you can take this to the next direction. 

[00:16:51] I want to fast forward a little bit. So we I’m hearing the, the startup phase picture here. I think we’re in a different segment of the lifeline, so to speak of this company and the group you guys have developed a lot. So again, like when I started, it was Sketchy micro, and it was still pretty early when I was using this.

[00:17:08] And now you changed the name changed? I see that there’s like Sketchy Law and. So this whole thing has really expanded. So what, how has your vision developed and like what, where are you guys looking to go?

[00:17:23]Andrew Berg: Yeah.  As you said, we started with micro and pharm made some more effort in the preclinical, medical education front with path. We have a couple of courses coming in the preclinical medicine front, and we also have Step II, our clinical videos including internal medicine OB GYN, pediatric surgery we’re exploring a number of other verticals.

[00:17:49] We, we did create a demo of Sketchy law and tried to see what that would look like. And so we know that this method works like we it’s. It’s not just, our own intuition. There’s a lot of data behind visual learning. And we don’t really see a reason why it can’t be applied to any other vertical or any other topic we we feel like aside from just videos we really want to give our users more interactivity build out our platform really.

[00:18:17]We think that our platform really could be a huge boon to solidifying, especially like the encoding phase and then the remembering phase and like really building through Bloom’s taxonomy.  To give a more rounded education. And so we’re excited to implement a lot of these platform changes that we’re working on this year.

[00:18:36]But yeah, we, we really feel like the sky’s the limit for visual learning flashcards and adaptive learning has made a splash recently. And. We, we love adaptive learning and we think that’s all great. But we do think that visual learning it needs a voice there too.

[00:18:53]It’s just too effective to not for us to not have a space there. So yeah, Saud, I don’t know if you want to add anything else. 

[00:19:01]Saud Siddiqui: Yeah. I think we, we spent a lot of time in medicine and I think it took us a while to get out some of the content. But really I think it gave us a chance to really understand how to do it and how to do it well.

[00:19:14] And now we want to take what we’ve done in medicine and also get that to people from other disciplines. And. And like Andrew said,  visual learning method of Losi, that whole pedagogy is a method of learning. It’s a way of learning that we were tapping into.

[00:19:31]And that you can really, the sky’s the limit. Anything that you need to learn or memorize can be done this way. And so we’re, we want to do it. 

[00:19:38] Taylor Brana: I mean, I mean, That’s great. And again, like you guys have now been doing this for eight years. And you’re, I’m curious again, like I kind of preface this in the question you were once in startup phase, where do you think you are in this like life cycle of Sketchy?

[00:19:53] Do you think you’re still like a teenager? You think you’re like still very early into this? Or like, where do you think you’re at? 

[00:19:59]Andrew Berg: Yeah. Sketchy has definitely evolved. It is  way beyond Saud or right now it is a whole community, a big team, and it’s become way better than, Saud, myself, Brian or Aaron could have done it alone. 

[00:20:15] So Sketchy is becoming something way bigger than us which we’re really excited about. But I do think it’s still very early. I think that there, like I said, there are just so many opportunities for education to be enhanced by these visual learning techniques. That extend way beyond just medicine.

[00:20:31]So hopefully in five years we’ll look back and say, man, like we were a tiny company back then or at least maybe not tiny, but we had not yet reached a lot of potential. But we’re optimistic for the next five years.  

[00:20:43] Taylor Brana: I’m curious. So, you know, Originally you guys started, it was four of you, how many people are in this team now?

[00:20:48]Saud Siddiqui: So we, this year we’ve hired a lot of people. And so when you say, Hey what part of the phase are we in? It’s definitely the growth phase where it was more steady for many years, and now it’s like, Everything in terms of what we’re doing, how we’re growing our team.

[00:21:06]So we were around 30, we’re closer to 40, 40 people now on our team. And traditionally we’re focused more on content and starting to bring a little bit more variety really starting to focus a bit more on, product and building out more features and things like that.

[00:21:23] Yeah still learning, still growing. But definitely moving much quicker than we have before. 

[00:21:27] Taylor Brana: Couple of Couple of follow-up questions. So one of the things, I think obviously from the content side of things, very specific to what you guys are doing, which I think is tough, is creative. And it’s like specifically the creative artwork.

[00:21:40] It’s the explanations. It’s the content you guys have to do. How do you, like, how does your team, do you have any fun xxideas or how do they develop those ideas to do the associations and the images? Cause that’s a lot of, I’m just thinking about especially with also all the verticals you guys want to go towards and the different subject areas how do you keep it fresh?

[00:22:00] How do you keep it fun? Have you guys found like some methods of really making the content, something that,  keeps it interesting throughout the process? 

[00:22:09]Andrew Berg: Yeah, so we’re constantly evolving. I would say in, in eight years of doing it we have gotten pretty well honed at coming up with a lot of this creative story relatively quickly where we’re really shifting is taking more of a group approach to coming up with these creative sketches.

[00:22:27]Really like we. We believe that like at Sketchy, everybody should live and breathe creativity and be surrounded by that. That is who we are. It’s just, we’re a company of creatives and we want to keep it that way.  And really,  really emphasize that, that aspect.

[00:22:42] Yeah, I think. Yeah, that is an in terms of content, that is who we are and why we have a competitive advantage. And so we really care about it and want to protect creativity. Have to put a plug in here for a book. It’s a, it’s about Pixar. It’s called Creativity, Inc. And I think that’s, most of our employees have read that book.

[00:23:03] I think we really found it exceptionally helpful and that’s, those teachings we really try to live by, at at Sketchy.

[00:23:11]Taylor Brana:  It’s so funny. You were, you said that. Cause my, I was literally going to say when I was 12 or 13 years old, I used to live in the Bay area. And we did a field trip to Pixar and I was going to, I was going to say one of the really cool things at Pixar is they have a room literally where they have the critique room or something, and everyone sits and they watched just like a 10, second clip of their latest animation.

[00:23:32] And everyone is just either a grilling it or coming up with ideas. And it’s this big sort of like conglomeration of ideas. And so I love that you brought that up. I was just wondering, do you guys have a similar method? 

[00:23:43]Andrew Berg: Yeah, exactly. We call them mind melds . where we get a group into a room and don’t emerge until the story is all the way done or at least most of the way done.

[00:23:53]And it really, that collaborative approach I think has really helped accelerate us.  And, I think we have created a whole new language of recurring symbols and . We have these historians, like Aaron who has been there since day one and has lived in that world basically for eight years and is like a Sage in, in training other people how to do it.

[00:24:16]But yeah, I think we are in, but we’re not really satisfied. I think we, we also just want to keep pushing it and trying new things. I think, we have an MCAT product coming out.  And we’re trying new things for MCAT that we’ve never tried for medical and it, and if they work for MCAT, then we’ll start rolling them out for medical.

[00:24:33]And I think there is a, there’s a lot of different ways visual learning could be done. And I think we’re constantly going to try to keep elevating the way we do it. 

[00:24:43] Taylor Brana: I mean that, that’s great. And again, I think that’s one of the fun parts of a company building. Obviously there’s a wise process to building things structurally and functionally and systematically, but the creative part’s always really interesting and fun and you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I think that’s really great that you guys have that sort of a team orientedness and coming up with a different link.

[00:25:05] I think it’s really interesting. And it would be really cool. I imagine it’d be really cool just to sit in one of those rooms and see how It actually happens in real time. 

[00:25:13] One of the things I saw online is you guys recently got additional funding. It looks like it was the I think the Chernin Group.

[00:25:21]Which it looks like that’s a really big deal for you guys. There’s someone externally that’s putting more funding in. so I kind of want to ask a bigger picture question. Number one is it tough to hand over the reins of your baby over to all these different groups of people?

[00:25:37] And then a followup question is at the same time, is it really exciting to see all of these kind of people come together to believe in you and to put money behind it? 

[00:25:45]Saud Siddiqui: Yeah I wouldn’t frame it as handing over the reigns because one of the reasons that we picked the Chernin Group, TCG , is that they look for companies exactly like ours, founder led with a, a fan base like Sketchy’s we’re where we have just focused on the user and built something.

[00:26:00]And so what they’ve done is, they’ve invested but they have. They wouldn’t have invested if we weren’t running the company. So really what it is support to do more, and to do many of the things that we’ve always wanted to do as a company and now have not only that financial support but also more expertise, more of a network, more experience.

[00:26:24]We’re able to, we’re able to grow and we’re able to grow in the right way. And with that investment in some of the things that we want to do . so one is going to be expanding to these additional subjects. Like Andrew mentioned, we’re doing a MCAT. We’re doing it differently.

[00:26:38] We’re trying new things. We want to get into pharmacy education as well. So really starting to think about where other places we could get into and then building out our team as well.  And really bringing on some folks that have done this before that have scaled successfully to help us really in the things that, that we may not know because, we have a medical background not necessarily business background.  

[00:27:01] And then finally on the product side, feature side , really the whole experience that a student is having thinking about how we could innovate there and do that much better. we’re pretty excited. It’s like we’ve got we’ve got a lot to work with now and we’re gonna build some good things.

[00:27:16]Taylor Brana: That’s great, Andrew, and yeah. Any other thoughts on that?

[00:27:18]Andrew Berg:   The Chernin Group has  been amazing. They, I think they are filling in and helping us in all the ways we really needed that help. And it’s more.  Like they, they are yeah, I don’t know, basically.

[00:27:33]They’re just, we know they’re there to support us. And they have really just allowed us to flourish, I think and really help us hone in on what our strategy should be.  Trying to make sure that we have a cohesive next few years of strategy because We had ideas about where to go, but without having that formal background in business, I think it, it makes it a little bit harder.

[00:27:55]So they’ve been a huge help. We also have had to say we raised money from Reach Capital as well, who does a lot of education ventures and they’ve been phenomenal. I think we just really lucked out. It’s been such a positive experience for us and really. I don’t think we could get to where we’re going to be going without them.

[00:28:12] Taylor Brana: Yeah, and I was reading just from the company as well. They funded other really successful companies. So this is not like their first rodeo in terms of looking at,  the base, the company base and seeing where it’s going and the fact that, you’re getting backed and there’s belief behind the expansion of it.

[00:28:30] And to be honest, I think it all, at least for me, when I think about it, it comes back to the, that user experience. Like I’m, again, I’m like years out from using Sketchy, right? Like I haven’t used it recently, but I still remember. In the moment of pain, I used it and it solved the problem. What else can you say about it?

[00:28:48]And so I just, I do believe that you guys have developed a really great product. And also there’s that concept again, if you’re just listening to watching a PowerPoint or something, you’re only activating one or two areas of your brain, but when you have the visual, you have the audio.

[00:29:03] You have, you have the entire sensory experience, you’re just hitting so many parts of your brain. You’re able to remember more and that’s what makes it effective. So I really want to appreciate you guys talking about the business side of things. And I think you guys have a great product.

[00:29:16] The other part of it, I just wanted to touch briefly on is, doing all this stuff, going in the entrepreneurial experience, doing this whole thing. For anyone listening, I hope you’re inspired by the conversation too, because I’m a big believer of encouraging other people to empower them, to create their ideas, too.

[00:29:33] What do you think are maybe some mentors or some books, or did you guys have any, anyone who inspired you through the process or given you great ideas so that you can develop further?

[00:29:45]Andrew Berg: Yeah. I think we were fortunate because what we ended up doing had very few barriers to entry. Like we, we got to err on the side of just having some, going into action and not thinking about it too much. Like the day after we decided we wanted to create Sketchy. Or it, that same day we got the domain name, and like the day after we registered an LLC, we just did it.

[00:30:08] And I think part of it was like Saud would do it one day and then I would advance the next day. And so we were like constantly just trying to keep up with each other. And because we never had this analysis paralysis, it just happened. And if we came into a problem, then we would address it and, try to find ways around it or but we didn’t let that derail us too much.

[00:30:30]I think Saud and I both had plenty of other terrible ideas in the past, but I think. Beyond just being bad ideas, I think for the most part,  same with most people is you just you forget about your ideas and you don’t try vetting them or acting on them. And it’s just, I like, I’d say my biggest words of encouragement is just  try it, if it means building a whole website, like think of ways not to build a website and still test the idea and.

[00:30:54] Or I’ll sit, just, you know, you’ll get a million different perspectives and and you might decide, it’s not worth pursuing. It really would have been something that would’ve been great. I do think though at the same time, never be protective of your idea and tell everybody about it.

[00:31:08]Because the idea itself has,  marginal value. It’s all how you execute on it. And. And I think being open and sharing the idea early helps you refine it and helps you plan your approach. But yeah, I think early action is the way to do it. 

[00:31:24]Saud Siddiqui: Yeah, I agree. And it’s going to be those repeat tries.

[00:31:28]Because every time you try something, you’re going to learn something. Whether that’s a skill or a lesson. And all of us had different backgrounds. All of us came into it with different skills and experiences. And really, it was the combination of that, that I think led to our success.

[00:31:42]I would have never known that I was going to use. What I learned in, the music creation stuff and those tutorials that I’d teach and, I’ve done like design work and it was just like, I dunno, I was just exploring, curious, learning stuff, but I happened to end up using all of that when we started the company.

[00:32:00] And because I knew it all, I could just, we could just do it, and just if it didn’t work, it didn’t work, whatever I lost the weekend. So it’s just like continuously just doing and trying and putting it out there. Like Andrew said, I think is the way to do it. And then yeah, for me Doing this, I actually didn’t have like mentors who had done this before.

[00:32:20]And that’s okay. You can figure it out like we did. It’s nice to have people. I think now we have a lot of people we can turn to and we’ve hired a lot of smart people that would have saved us a lot of time, a long time ago, but that’s okay.  And we figured it out. 

[00:32:35] I think there’s a lot you can pick up by reading not just in terms of figuring out how to do something. If I have a problem I’ll try to read it from many different angles or whatever. I can find if, figure out the answer to the problem. But also just from reading other people’s experiences and, understanding that most people that start companies go through this and go through problems and are on the brink of never existing again.

[00:33:02] And. They keep going and they make it. And so the, those stories would be inspiring where it’s like, you just you just keep pushing and you’ll find a way or you’ll figure it out. And yeah, that, that’s what we did. 

[00:33:13]Taylor Brana: So it sounds to me like for you guys, a couple of things, again, like you guys had that magical combination where each different talent or person in your team had failed or try different things. But then with that combination because of those previous failures or because of those previous trials, so to speak, you now have that the set of skills that could get you through that breaking point to do this thing. And then, and now it sounds to me like you’ve.

[00:33:39] You’ve naturally over time, been able to evolve with your product and as challenges have come up or little questions or issues you’ve been able to troubleshoot through the process. And not that it’s a problem per se, but now you have a new adventure in your step where you have funding and now you have to you’re creating new content, all those things.

[00:33:58] So you have a whole new set of “problems” to solve or work through, which I think is the most exciting. Exciting type of issue, so to speak as a, what do we create next? So I think it’s a really exciting time for you guys, as it seems like this entire process has probably been really creatively very interesting for you guys.  

[00:34:18] Andrew Berg: So, Saud and I went on, it continued on through residency. And so it’s just this past year that we’ve been able to rejoin the company and it’s just, it has been very like meaningful and incredibly fun.

[00:34:31]Yeah, totally. I think we’re very fortunate to have it and get to live in kind of SketchyLand. Live and work  in SketchyLand has been pretty exciting for us. 

[00:34:40]Taylor Brana: Yeah, that’s great. So to close this off for today first I want to really appreciate your guys’ time. Number two, was there anything that you guys wanted to say in regards to, the conversation with ha anything I’ve missed, any questions, anything that you guys wanted to leave our listeners with today?

[00:34:56] Saud Siddiqui: Yeah, I think we’ve covered a lot. I think some of the things I hope that folks take away is that we. We started this as, regular people were med students. We had a problem. And we found a solution and wanted to share it. And I think people out there that are thinking about, that you have an idea you want to try it out.

[00:35:16]Go for it.  We didn’t have this master plan of like where we would be or what we were making. We just we kept figuring out along the way. And for students and residents and, physicians, like you can. It’s okay to do both, you don’t have to give up what you’re doing.

[00:35:32] We, we were doing both for a while.  And I think for,  the Sketchy fans out there who are, looking forward to what’s coming we have a lot in store like Andrew mentioned, we got back about a year ago from residency and now we’re in that phase where we’re going to innovate and  really improve upon our method, really improve upon, what you’re going to be able to experience.

[00:35:54]So there, there is a lot that we’re working on every day and stay tuned for some of that to come out.

[00:36:00]Taylor Brana:  Andrew, anything you want to leave with our listeners today? 

[00:36:03]Andrew Berg: Yeah.  To echo what Saud said it, it just takes a lot of trial and error but like definitely, really encourage your listeners to take that first step. If this is what they would want to be doing is having, whether it be just something like on the side or a complete switch in career path totally encouraged trying it.

[00:36:23]And you never know where it’s going to take you. 

[00:36:24] Taylor Brana: Awesome. Well, I want to thank you guys so much for being on today. How do people find out about you? What’s the best way to reach you guys, or look you up.

[00:36:32]Andrew Berg: Yeah, we could check us out at Sketchy.com. We also have social media and Instagram and Twitter accounts, @SketchyMedical. So yeah, follow us, check us out at Sketchy.com. 

[00:36:43] Taylor Brana: Amazing. And look, that was an awesome conversation. You guys have developed an idea into something that has. Literally breached into almost, I can’t imagine a medical student that hasn’t at least heard of Sketchy at this point.

[00:36:57] You’re going to different verticals, like you said, you’re going to MCAT, you’ve got the law. You have so many things working. I’m really excited to see the future. And I sincerely appreciate your time on The Happy Doc and the MedFlashGo podcast.  thanks for being on guys.

[00:37:11]Andrew Berg: Yeah. Thank you for having us. It’s been great. 

[00:37:13] Saud Siddiqui: Thank you.