Hi, everyone. Ian here now. I love it when I get to hear stories that I didn't know too much about. I'd heard of Harrison I before, but I didn't know a huge amount about it. It's a pretty amazing story. On the show today, we have the CEO and one of the founders, Angus Tran, who along with his brother Dmitri, started Harrison AI a few years ago. I thought he might have been Scottish being called Angus, but he's actually originally from or they are both originally from Vietnam. Look,
and it's an amazing story. They've gone on to raise $121 Million from investors such as Skip Blackbird Horizons and a few other fairly specialist medical companies. And it's pretty amazing what they're doing. They're using AI not in the what we've all been playing with and hearing about and the generative AI census. It's using computer vision and AI to help look at images and help the medical professionals make better diagnoses. And it's seems to be doing really well.
I mean, they're they have a podcast. It's called Millions because their ambition is to to impact the lives of millions of patients every day. So it's a great story. Really loved meeting Angus's is a remarkable guy. And yeah, let's jump over and hear my interview with Angus Tran. Welcome, everyone. I am sitting here with Dr. Angus Tran, who is from Harrison. I came to the middle of Haymarket, and this is the first for me because he actually has
his own podcast studio. So I was all set to unpack my sort of slightly dodgy backpack with my my own studio and in I walk and he's got the full broadcaster and a couple of microphones. So yeah, I was pretty happy to see this. Angus So thank you. Welcome. Look, it's a remarkable story. I knew a little bit about Harrison before we agreed to do the podcast. Why don't we start with the basics? Why didn't you tell us a little bit about what Harrison does and then we'll
go into the the Origin story a bit. So over to you.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for coming in and talk to us today. So Harrison really started with the problem Statement of healthcare capacity. So when we look around the world, one of the biggest problem of our time is how do we look after such a huge population with increased health needs? Most economies are spending a huge amount of their GDP on health,
and this is actually going up over time. And one particular problem in health is very difficult to solve is the human capacity being trained as a doctors from University of New South. Well, I know to take a long time to train physicians and unfortunately, human way doesn't scale very well. So where does this off led us is
around the world. There's a huge capacity shortage across specialities domain like radiology and pathology And what it mean to the everyday Australian and global citizens is that, you know, when you go and get a chest X-ray done, it's just taking much longer for those scan to be interpreted. And when they do get interpret more mistake crops in
because people are working faster than they ever have. So for Harrison, what we're looking to do is to scale global capacity of healthcare by building automation with AI systems and provide clinicians with a superpowers of scale. And I believe that of all the things we're doing in healthcare, scale is going to be one of the key solution to improve quality of care globally.
So essentially computer vision that we're talking about here.
Yeah, that's right. So when most of the work are we doing now at Harrison and and Franklin are center around medical imaging analysis. But it's not really not limited to that. It's really within the realms of using AI and processing model to do what would have taken a trained physician a lot of time and effort to be able to conduct. And of course that scale much better being a software technology.
And I've seen there were others playing in this space that sort of computer vision to analyze medical imaging. What's the competitive space like and why are you different?
Yeah, I think it's a really good question. You know, when we started the journey close to four years ago now, one of the things that we were looking around and observing is that there was a lot of companies around that was focusing on computer vision and medical imaging. But one of the striking observation that we made is that everyone was being very narrow. So rather than building tools that are comprehensive and broad, they would only build tool
that detect 1 or 2 findings. For example, in a chest X-ray, they would look at lung cancer in CT brain, they would look at brain bleeds. But for us, you know, we really believe because we are clinician, that we know that for it to be a useful tool, it need to actually be comprehensive and cover all the breadth of
findings in that imaging modality. Imagine building a spellchecker, but you're to only check for word starting with letter A. Where people really want an A to Z. Spellchecker So that is the major tenet that we sort of went after at Harrison and analyzed. And that's the key differentiation for us, is building a broad set of AI that can cover the entire imaging modality rather than point solution.
Yeah. All right. Let's maybe jump back to the origin story and you a little bit more. So when I first saw your name, I thought, Angus, the guy must be Scottish, but you don't say in Scottish. And it spelt slightly different. So I mean, where does your name come from and where are you from?
Yeah. So my story, the two co-founder of the Harrison business, myself and my brother Demetri Tran, we both grew up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It's a lovely place. I came to Australia for year nine. I was studying in high school in Australia and then eventually going on to study medicine and now finding the business.
And your parents moved here with you, is that right? Or did they send.
You know, they they at the time they were still living and working in Hochman City. Okay. So Dimitri went over first, being the first son that went to Australia, and then I came over just after. So we were international student and, and growing up in, in Vietnam, we have, of course, Vietnamese name, but it's very long and I'm not sure if you have many friends who are Vietnamese. There's multiple syllables, right? And the pronunciation is always often butcher.
So we always thought, okay, we're going to Australia, let's find an Anglo sounding name. And a lot of people don't know this, but when I was growing up in Vietnam, I really enjoyed rapping. And, you know, I have a stage name called Angus, which is sort of like a re-arrange of word of my actual Vietnamese name and sound quite similar. My Vietnamese name is NG so. Ang Yeah. So I thought, well, let's, let's go with it. So when I land in Australia, just having this English name called Angus.
Tran, but it's n g us, So did you throw the extra in and how.
Come? Well, I mean, not only not until I landed in Australia, I realised that the spelling without an E is much more common. But this is just something that went up and look up online and it just happened to be the first thing to show up.
So I guess it's I love it. It's unique. I don't think there's any challenge with it. And there's plenty of famous Angus like Angus Young from AC DC best Scottish Australian band ever did. You know they were half Scottish?
I don't know this.
Yeah, all right. Anyway.
But the good news is, every time I sign up for anything, Angus Tran is always available.
I can. I can believe it. Yeah. So and maybe a little bit more on your, your background story. So you came here year nine. What was your English like?
You know, was terrible. We did some basic English courses in Vietnam as part of just the curriculum, but took a little while. I remember first class that I attended in Australia was a was an Aussie teacher trying to teach me about Shakespeare. And it was like, this is this is not going to go well for me, you know, And but I was quite fortunate. So the school I went to didn't have many Vietnamese international students. So naturally the only way to communicate is English or was forced
to pick it up quite quickly. And yeah, eventually it really felt like Sydney is home like now. I felt very connected to Sydney and Australia. I recently became Australian citizen.
Congrats.
Well done.
So the mayor of wherever it was serve you VB and give you a lamington. That's why I got.
I didn't get if I got a flack. Oh, there you go. Recently I also.
Got a tree that I killed within a week, so that was accidental. But yeah, it's pretty cool with ceremony though. So well done. That's awesome. Um, yeah. So you're obviously smart and motivated, which helped you with, I guess that that, you know, getting over that cultural indoctrination and the English stuff and you went on to, to uni, you did medicine. Did you always want to be a doctor? So tell them, tell us about that journey.
Yeah. So I, I always knew that I enjoy tinkering. I like building things. That's been true since I was a little boy. And I always thought I was going to be an engineer. My my mother recently reminded me that she was very surprised. I end up studying medicine, but roughly around when I was in year 12 and was doing my my HSC, that's when I met Mr. Paul Ramsay, who was from Ramsay Health Care. Ramsay Yeah,
And Paul was very kind. He was very nice to me in Dimitri and, and he's the one that sort of introduced me into medicine.
And he always mean Ramsay Health care. For those that don't know, it's a massive Aussie. It's also global.
It's a massive private health, private hospital organization. And Paul is asked me, Hey, Angus, you like engineering, You like to build stuff, but what is it? You can actually build. Yeah. Building thing is in a career, you know, it's what problem you're looking to solve. And he said, you know, medicine is really worthwhile and big problem for you to sink your teeth in. But unfortunately, you can learn about programming in a book online courses. But medicine is an experience.
Medicine is an apprenticeships. So say why don't you go and study medicine and then maybe you can apply your technology and your tinkering, natural curiosity and tinkering capabilities into medicine. So I thought, you know, graduate from year 12, apply for medicine and, and, and the rest was was history. Yeah.
And look for those out there. I think that, you know, having a random connection with Paul Ramsay of the world like how did that connection come around Because that's obviously been instrumental.
Yeah. So Dimitri was working for Ramsey Healthcare at the time at Head of Strategy, looking after Paul investment and other things. So Paul is very personable. So, you know, he always asked about all the people that work for him, their family, and he wanted to be connected to, to the people that work for him. So, you know, occasionally you have an opportunity to go along with Dimitri to meet Paul during social events and things. And he over time, he always take an interest in in what I was
doing at school and my interest in technology. So that's a couple of opportunities where where I got to be inspired about health care and led me down to the path that I am today, doing it in a dramatic scale.
Yeah, I don't want to lose the, the, the, the timeline that we've got here, but Ramsay Healthcare as an investor in the business. So it's obviously worked out pretty well. That's right. So let's come back to that. So I want to understand how you went from being or graduating in medicine. I mean, did you work as a doctor? I mean, how did you move from being a doctor or a wannabe doctor to being a founder?
So why was going through medicine? You know, one of the things that I slowly noticing as I progressed through was how how much of medicine was missing that scare element. Being a technologist, I was seduced by the notions that you can have a great idea and then you can deploy that behind a massive autoscale cluster and that great idea scale infinitely medicine as I knew it when I was practicing it and it was going through training was
a complete opposite of that, right? You show up to work, you see ten patients on your shift and that is the extent that you could really impact the the the people that are in need. So constantly throwing medicine, I was looking at ways to apply technology into this. In fact, I was so seduced by that. Even starting out a startup in in ticketing apps that we ultimately no longer working in. But I was very interested in that all along.
Medicine and during the final years of training, I got involved in in a in a research project initially called IVF II, where we was building I was doing technology along with vertex health to select human embryos. Oh, yeah. So this is the final year of my training, and that really opened my eye into the capabilities of AI system and how it can scale a very good idea
in medicine. So ultimately, after I graduated, rather than going on and practicing medicine like everyone else would have, I decided, Hey, that's a very different way of practicing medicine that involve building great technology, being clinician led. But, you know, rather than practicing medicine, you can build tools, enable others to practice at scale. So that's when I take the plunge to to start Harrison and me and Dimitri, my my brother, we co-founded a business around 2018, 2019.
So that's pretty much as soon as you came out. That's right.
So I never went on to actually practicing medicine in, in hospital here in Sydney. Yeah, but I consider myself doing medicine now.
No, I didn't write this in my notes, but when I was looking at your LinkedIn profile last night, I saw vision bites on there. Is that right? Was that you?
Yeah, I did an internship there. Yeah.
So. But you were you were coding compression algorithms or something along those lines, which sounded to me when I read because I actually knew vision breaks because I used to run a video streaming business and we used to come up against them competitively. So when I saw it, I was like, Hang on, this guy's a doctor and running a medical startup. How were you doing compression algorithms at the same time?
Yeah. So when I was going through training, I like I said, I was very curious about technology and vision. It was one of Pole's investment at the time.
That's right. Yeah.
Remember that? Yeah. And then I. I went on to do an internship there where I went in with the team and spend I think I can't remember how long, but quite a decent amount of time there with, with the guys to, to learn about, you know, production software development And it was a great experience for me.
All right. So you started Harrison, you said 2018, so it's actually not that long. So five years. That's about the time I left. So you've done a lot more with your life in those five years than I feel I've done with mine. So it's pretty amazing journey. So why don't we start with where you're at and then we'll work our way back. So what can you tell us about Harrison? Because you've got some different products. You've raised quite a lot of money. I mean, how big
is the team? You know, tell us what you like about where it is at now.
Yeah, I mean, talk about a couple of dimensions, right? So, you know, we talk about the product I mentioned. So we we have two business. One is in radiology and the other one is in pathology. The business in radiology is co analyst. So it's it's a company that focus specifically on medical imaging and radiology. So X-ray and CT and on Franklin. That's the business, the focusing on pathology. So biopsies are prostate breast biopsy and other kind. So
we have two product that is currently in market. So the first one is our comprehensive chest X-ray algorithms, and the second one is the CT brain algorithm. Each comprehensive so can detect hundreds of clinical features in this radiology modality. So that allows patients to get very rapid diagnosis automatically with AI. And then the clinicians is doing the validate validation and checking on Franklin. Sy, You know, that started
a little bit later. So we are currently in product development for our first algorithm in pathology for prostate AI. So it's a tool that will allow pathologists to automate a lot of their tedious work in prostate biopsy. So those are the, the current product development that we have. Um.
And can you talk about a number of customers or a number of patients that you're impacting?
Yeah, absolutely. So in, in the field of radiology, we now regulatory clear in 38 different countries, including FDA clearance in Australia. We are now being used by.
So I'll just pause there. I mean 38 countries with full regulatory clearance. I mean that I mean, I'm not a medtech expert, but that sounds like it was a lot of work to do that.
I mean, it's a it's a massive lift. So, you know, we started out in Australia to in New Zealand and then going on to get CMA, which is the clearance for the European countries. We also have clearing in the UK to distribute our product as well as FDA is it's own separate efforts. It's slightly different for the rest of the world, but those are the clearance that we currently possessing from a usage perspective. We have customer now in the UK, customer in Australia and New Zealand and
also in Asia and in Australia alone. Last year we did over a million live touch throughout technology. And you know, today 1 in 4 Australian radiologists is using our technology for the scans that they read every single day. So it was really remarkable. Adoptions for MedTech, that.
Is say that again, 1 in 4 radiologists use your take for the scans. They do. That's right. I mean, that's massive.
I mean the chance is if you go down to a radiology clinic in a community today, which likely going to be a private one and get a chest X-ray done or you go to a hospital near you and have a CT brain done in wonderful chance is probably going to be interpreted by our system that we put in there.
So you sell to the hospitals and the you know, the sort of, you know, what they call the the the roll ups. That's the wrong word. But the.
Yeah, the culprit.
Yes.
So so ultimately, our customers are service delivery organization. Right? So that could be the public sector. So a lot of health around the world are funded by the public sector. They procure technology that enable better and faster delivery of service. And then the other group are the private group who who grow up the clinics and and supply that as a private service. Ultimately, the product that we're selling to them is capacity. Even though the company is called Harrison.
I ultimately what we're doing is to sell them ability to interpret scan at the time and place that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. And we're doing that just so happen with AI at the moment. You know, for example, if you live in a rural region and middle of the night, you show up to an Ed department, there won't be any radiologists there. And luckily a very a
clinician that is less skilled in interpreting those image. We need to make an assessment of the life and that assessment about the treatment path that you're likely to receive. The what do we want to live in is where those clinicians are supported with an always on AI system that can comprehensively interpret those images, just like Star Trek, where you walked in the eye, look at it and say there's a brain bleeds or there's lung nodules and it's like magic. They have access to the capacity of
radiology that otherwise wouldn't be there. So that's the world that we are trying to build here at Harrison.
Yeah, that's amazing. Now, AI is hot right now. I mean, we've talked about this in the on the show over the last few months, but it's not all about generative AI And you were doing AI before generative AI came along. So do you want to give us your impression on AI and whether or not this heat in the market is good or not? Because it's yeah, it's not generative AI that you're doing.
Yeah, I mean, actually, I like to answer this with maybe a question for you. I mean, because this is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently with generative AI and other things. If you go and have a chest X-ray today at the radiology, like near you and the radiologist just asked ChatGPT or the last language model, write me an x ray report for you. And how would you feel about that?
Yeah, probably not great.
But but I'm curious why why, Why is it not great?
Well, look, it depends if if it's based on data and it's just rewriting a couple of bullet points, that's probably not so bad because it's not making shit up as some people see in their benefits. If it is just going off rogue and making up data, then it would be a bit different. So if it's if it's a report based on actual data, I think it'll be fine. Yeah. If it's a report that is not based on data, it's not. Yeah.
Yeah. You you really hit the nail on this head there. And it's this piece that I'm thinking about, which is language is not knowledge, right? So there's sun domain where the whole business is about generating really good language. For instance, you know, if you want to rewrite an email or you want to produce some creative content and explore different possibility, and the idea there is that the content is provided and it's really about some creative exploration. Then generator is
going to make a massive impact. But in in health specifically, we are in a pursuit of truth, in the pursuit of knowledge. We want to know what truly is wrong with the patient. So what we want out of these systems are validate validated facts that are very accurate in the 99.99% accuracy. That's what we want because the stake
is incredibly high. So I think that for this sort of generative AI piece in healthcare specifically, it won't be the kind of technology that you imagine where the AI just write a report, but be more, you know, the kind of approach that we're taking where we're predicting individual findings and doing that at incredible accuracy and validating that and taking that to regulatory clearance so that we know that it's safe and effective and that that is the
direction that we are currently taking through.
I know. That's cool. I mean, look, I think it's completely valid. I mean, there's there's plenty of companies out there that are having a real impact. And I think to your point, is it really the best founders in this space? Think about scale and using AI to help them scale. Yeah, and I love your I think it's pretty clear in your website and as I walk through the office here, it's on the walls. I mean, what's your mission statement is to impact a million. Like don't let me.
Now North Star is to touch a million patients, live through a day, actually through the collective reach of all of the product that we built. Yeah, we're only single digit percentage in this very ambitious mission. But when we do that, it will dramatically change how health care is deliver.
Yeah, I mean, so that's. Yeah, I'm looking behind your head. There's a neon sign that says Millions, which is the name of your podcast, I believe. So Is that where it's derived from?
Yeah, that's, that's the reference to that. And it really come down to, to this piece on how do we benchmark our performance, How do we know how to prioritize against what we do? And having a very clear North Star that you know, very well understood and articulated among the team here at Harrison, give us guidance in terms of what problem is too small to to and what
problem is big. And ultimately for us here, we wake up every day and inspired by the notions that we can build great technology and that will improve quality of care. But we can do that at scale. Yeah, and that's that's the whole fundamental purpose behind Harrison mission.
Let's maybe jump back to the the commercials behind the business. So I mean, you obviously make money by selling to the hospitals and health providers. Like how do you charge like what's what's the model.
Yeah. So at the moment the way we're thinking through this is we really selling the, the offset in capacity right at the moment. If you have a chest x ray done, the radiologist will get paid. The Medicare reimbursement would be like say $45 for a chest x ray. And you know, a significant proportion of that would be for Labor, for radiologists, interpret it if radiologist was available. Yeah. So analyze technology for example in radiology is about providing
capacity where there's none. So that could be in a radiology department at night in rural region or perhaps, you know, in places where radiologists is less trained, like more junior radiologists, we provide a capacity lift. So it's based on post scan model. So a lot of the the customer in public and private sector will give us a volume. We would quote them a contract for that volume typically over multiple years and like product is tend to be a
longer contract, longer sale cycle as well. But that is how we think through this. The nice thing is even though it's a medical device technology, the sort of profile is very similar to SAS product because of the of the development investment is upfront and the cost of delivery is very close to to SaaS like product. And what that means for us ultimately scale, right? Because you know, it doesn't cost us another radiologist to do another million scans. Yeah.
And is it purely just talking about the infrastructure and the tech stack? Is it all cloud based?
So we have a mixture model. You know, the the health system unfortunately still have a bit of a split in terms of cloud option versus more, you know, on prem lockdown. So we have a hybrid stack that allow our technology to deploy in both. Interestingly, we also have an edge device model where we have a technology called Analytics Edge, which is a technology that can embed the
AI directly on X-ray machine itself. Okay. So in places where there's no Internet service or no infrastructure, we can deploy the AI into a chest X-ray machine and turn it into a self-driving X-ray machine and would mean that a clinician will have the X-ray, can get the service right at the bedside.
Another challenges with keeping that tech stack updated, I mean, like being pure cloud is great for most people, but I get the challenges. You've got firewalls and shitty connections and all the rest of it, but yeah, how are you updating the the tick when, when you do a product release?
Yeah. I mean, so for the cloud deployment we can do pretty simple deployment through that because we have control of that. But for, for on premise, we need to have a customer success team and the professional service team that go and actually do this. The slight difference about what we do in traditional tech is that, you know, the every time we we have a regressions, patients might be affected. Right? One of our major value is that
great opportunities is great responsibility. So we have this great potential to impact life, possibly at scale. But what it ultimately means is that, you know, everything we do is more rigorous. So most of the engineers at Harrison come from medical device background or defense background. Because ultimately we're not shipping code every day. You know, we have to ship us location in that because it regulatory clear clearance
is required. But that means that we have sort of a more methodical and more deliberate process of validating our stuff before we ship it. Yeah.
We should talk about funding because, I mean, I know the punchline here. I think others might as well. But when you hear about 38 countries with regulatory approval, a fairly complex tech stack sailing with customer support, people across the board, you're going to have a lot of staff. And in order to do that, you've obviously needed to raise some money. So tell us about the funding and what you've done and who is it from and what you've used it for if you could?
Yeah. So for when we first started the journey, we knew right away that there was no such thing as MVP in medicine. True? You know, No. Nobody wanted to buy an MVP. Penicillin? No. With some some features missing. So we knew that it's always going to be a big push to build full product that are well developed and well clear, and that required a commensurate level of investment for that because the opportunity is is worth it. Right.
We're talking about one of the biggest health industry in the world, which is health care, which acute shortage opportunities large. So we go for it. So at the start, we're really looking for investors who understand the deep tech space, understand the medical device space being well aligned to that. So we have investors coming from sort of two different pool.
The first one is a venture capital investor. So we have Horizon Ventures, so backers of DeepMind and Horizon, you know well, most seasoned investors who's on our cap table. We have Blackbird here in Australia supporting us from the very beginning and and skip capital. So from the Kim and Scott family office. Um, and then on the other side, which is equally important for us, are the corporate investors. So these are strategic investors. So the other people on
the cap table are sonic healthcare. I met radiology and like you said, Ramsay as well. So these are people who deeply understand healthcare, who, you know, sort of stand behind us to back the technology in the problem statement that we are trying to solve. And among that, you know, we've raised capital over the last few years across Syria and Syria be today close to $129 million raised so far to to build the radiology and pathology solutions.
So that was Australia. Australian Australian, Yeah. I think Crunchbase it said 130 mil.
Yeah. So 129 to 129.
Normally crunchbase is US dollars, isn't it?
I think US is like 100 now.
Okay. Anyway, look, the point is, I mean, it's significant. I mean, that's you're definitely one of the better funded startups out there and I think a little under the radar. And maybe it's because you're in med tech and you don't need to wave your arms and turn up all the startup events and and think you're going to be the next Atlassian because it's a slightly different model. But I mean, what's the scale of your ambition? That's kind of the the backup to that. So where are you going?
Yeah. So it is, first of all, a global problem that we're solving. So every year there's a billion chest X-ray get done globally and that is really our addressable market. The majority of that would be digitized. Second biggest modality from chest X-ray is CT brain, you know, over 3 to 400 million CT brain tons a year globally. So the scale of the problem is there. In fact, from a supply perspective, the radiology capacity around the world is
actually going down. So in the UK, in, for example, the backlog of unread scan is increasing every year and AI is now at a tipping point where it's really going to be a big solution for that, even locally
in Australia. Just on Saturday there was a front page article in Sydney Morning Herald that talk about local health district here in Sydney, in Concord, where there's such acute shortage of radiologists, that physician is now fearing for the safety of patients because they have a big backlog of cases that unread, which could contain live trending findings unless they do something about it. So the problem is acute
is a growing problem and the scale is there. So that's what we're looking to go after by building a
technology that can automate many of this part. And we're not looking to replace radiologists or physician, but what we're looking to do is fill capacity gap and moving those clinicians to practicing more closer to the top of the degree and doing higher level cognitive problem solving rather than the mundane pixel analysis task, which we believe I would do much better and will be able to do that at a much bigger scale.
Some thoughts I want to ask you about the current market. I mean, we're probably a year into I'd say a year into what is a bit of a tech downturn. And these things normally last a year or two years, year and a half, two years. And it's hard know. So if you're a late stage company, then raising money right now, it's not impossible, but you just have had to hit all of your metrics and ticking along quite nicely. And you're seeing examples of companies struggling different, you know,
had to go into administration last last week. And I suspect it's the start of a few others. And I won't ask specifically about Harrison unless you want to touch on that. But broadly speaking, like what's your observation of that late stage funding market and when's it going to turn?
I mean, for for us, we are quite fortunate because we raise our last round in 2019. We still have a significant portion of the funding that we've raised and perhaps we were there at the right time. So, so far, you know, we still continue to have very strong runway, continue to develop the product and growing the team. So perhaps those trend is something that, you know, we sort
of avoided based on our timing. But more broadly, I think, you know, the market has shifted dramatically toward prioritizing different metrics than it has in the past and for different sectors as well. So, you know, I think people are really focusing on profitability, but also understanding the moat as well. So of this growth and sustainable growth, but also growth
with defendable moat is very important at the moment. And what that ultimately means is if you look across the board, there are business that are very well positioned for long term growth with defendable position is still doing quite well at this, at least at this early stage, sorry, the latest stage. So for instance, in medical device, you know, and health, you know, the health tech space has experienced less of some of that trend comparing to the other sector.
But likewise, if you if you look at AI, it's really been a big theme because there's suddenly an element of that is, is is hype. And element of that is just people seeing the headline. But fundamentally, if you peel that back, there's also a technology, real technology breakthrough
that enable new application, new use case. So we still see growth in that and still very strong interest for a story like what we're doing, where we applying great technology like AI and trying to scale very big problem like health care. Yeah.
I want to jump back to to you, Angus, and just about your skills. I mean, I love meeting young founders like you who've done what you've done so far. How how do you think about upscaling your skills as, as you've grown the business because you came out of uni, you started this business and within five years you're backed by Skip and Blackbird and Horizon and everything else. It's an amazing story. How have you upskilled yourself?
Yeah, it's a continuous growth journey. You know, like many other founders, I spend quite deliberate time during my week in growth because I, you know, very quickly in the early days of Harrison realized that the company just happened to stall at the same level of growth that me
and Dimitri was was at any given point in time. So, you know, from the first day I was engineer number one, very quickly become a tech leader, one of a handful into multiple AI team working on multiple product and then stepping up now leading the the multiple teams across two different very different domains like radiology and pathology. So it's a constant transformation. You know, every year is a new year. And my role and what the business need me to
be is different. So therefore, you know, we spend a huge amount of time on on personal development and growth at the moment. I think the key piece for me is that leadership piece and how to to lead the organization through, you know, big choices like, you know, product roadmap and priorities go to market priorities and which country
we prioritize. And that requires huge amount of learning, which, you know, we've been very lucky in Australia and ecosystem and startup being able to tap into great people like, you know, Kim and Scott, But also the Alaskan team has always been very helpful as well and offering a lot of advice and support along the way. So certainly a lot of help here in Australia.
You've definitely got the right people in your cap table. You know, like Scott and Mike are, you know, the classic example we started in their in their garage or the basement or the bedroom or whatever it was. And now they're running a multi multibillion dollar Nasdaq listed company that's global, you know, so if you've got speed dial. Who to stop whenever you need that advice. That's probably pretty helpful, isn't it? Yeah.
Well, I mean, Kim is. Kim is on our board here in Harrison, and so we. She's great.
Too. We got a lot on the board with Kim.
Oh, yeah, you are. So we. We're very lucky to. To have a lot of that support and help across Horizon and also Blackbird as well. So that that is the council that we continue to listen to. But yeah, you're right. You know this the founders tend to tend to be the the bottleneck of their companies. And, you know, I'm doing everything I can to try and empower the team to to do more, but also to remove myself from the critical path.
Let me ask an impossible question then. How do you know when it's beyond, you know, either for you or for anyone that's listening? Because I've seen it as an investor. And even when I was a founder, at a certain point it becomes too much. You don't want to do it. You're not capable. You can't learn. I mean, how what are the signs?
I mean, I like to think that I still have quite a quite a lot left in the tank.
I think you're okay. I don't necessarily mean you.
But just kind of clarify. How do you mean? If you could phrase a question? I'm not quite.
Understanding. Yeah. So it's at a certain so some founders don't have what it takes to become Scott and or Mike or Mel or Cliff or any of the the big companies that have gone from, you know, tinkering in the garage to running a multi-billion dollar listed business. Yeah. You know, because there's multiple steps along the way and, you know, you've got to become experts and every domain as you go. And at a certain point, some people just don't want to do it. They're not capable. Um,
but it's a really difficult question. And like, no one really wants to be told that they can't do it and no one wants to admit that they can't do it. So how Yeah, how does this yeah, what are the signs if maybe you don't reflect in this, but do you think there's signs for any founder out there that's listening or any investor that's got a problem? Child in their portfolio? Like how do you know when the founders beyond it.
I think just take a step back. And I think, you know, for me, I have a lot of admiration for for great founders around here in Australia, but also oversea. But my aspiration isn't to become them or beat them, but really to solve the fundamental problem that Harrison set out to do. So Harrison problem is to scale capacity
of health care. And you know, the question I asked myself every year and recommitted myself to to the company in the organization is what is the most impactful thing that I can be for Harrison to best let us to achieving that. So early days, you know, it meant proving out a technology. So, you know, that's what we have to do. But you go to beyond certain stage where, you know, the most scalable thing you can be is to lead the company and to lead the the team through.
All of a sudden with that and I would say, you know, people get, you know, people the sign would be when you start stop falling in love with the problem and and that don't compel you enough to to go through those those challenges anymore. And I think that's that's when to call it quit. But I think you know when you sort of work backward from what ultimately the business is looking to solve, which in my my mind is inspiring, worthwhile cause that, you know, should be
enough for a lifetime for many people. You know, that that should guide you to to do a lot like almost anything.
You've won the or you've been in the 30 under 30 list. Like what did that mean you still qualify.
I think I have another year left.
There you go.
So that's.
Amazing. I love.
That story. I think can no longer say that I'm a young founder in couple.
I'd say you.
Are. Oh, I'm not sure what the average age of of founders.
It's probably older than you. Okay yeah. Especially look for ones that have done what you've done. You are an outlier. I mean, there's you and the Ferguson brothers are immutable. I mean, there's a few incredible founders out there, but I mean, that 30 under 30 is quite an illustrious list. I mean, what does it mean? Did it actually mean anything or was it just something you put in your LinkedIn profile?
Now, this this is something that, you know, a great recognition was very humbled by that. When we first started out, you know, we were just looking to to to build great technology and make impacts. And to be recognized at that at that forum was was very good to see. But for me, it's also validation for the team as well.
Sometimes as a company solve this kind of problem is tend to look inward, but sometimes those external validation is good for the prospective team members who who are looking to join Harrison, but also is a win for everybody at home also who worked very hard for multiple months. For me to be able to make claims like, Hey, we have this product in 38 different countries, clear it. Is A11 liner, but there's a lot of work from
the team here at Harrison and analysts. So that's what it meant to me is a recognition that we are on a worthwhile path and is a recognition from an external party.
All right. Let's let's do a couple more questions and then we'll jump to the quickfire round. So one is the one I always love asking great founders like culture. I mean, culture is so important in terms of building your business and energizing the team and hiring and performance management and all the rest of it. Like, tell us about culture at Harrison.
I yeah, we, you know, there's this tenet that I can't remember who told me, but I it's been a good guiding light, which is everybody want to be a valued team, members of a winning team pursuing an inspiring missions. Um and whenever it is you know there's challenges in the team I always come back to that and say what's missing? Is it not inspiring? Do people don't feel value or perhaps, you know, they don't feel like we are winning, we don't celebrate enough. And those are the
things that I kind of focus on. Of course, you know, we have great sets of values that we blast over to the office and a lot of people are the living embodiment of many of that. But for me at least, you know, as to to lead the company, that's one of the things that I constantly ask myself is do people feel that way about the company in the business? The other thing about culture for us is just this
deep investment in people. Um, because being a deep tech companies other than the four walls, a lot of what we do are incredible people doing their life best work solving very difficult problems. So we only as successful as the talents that we bring in through the door. So we have a lot of programs that really speak to that. So we have a great become apparent program is really Australian first. It has a great sort of component to that. We speak to the origin story of of Harrison, but
also many other pieces around equity. So gender equity and and other and other things that is important to us as a social mission. And I think that that ultimately led to people feeling like they they're part of something bigger. And that's that's my my role and part of executive role here at Harrison to make sure people feel and truly live that.
Yeah because I mean I was struck the start by your vision of scale. And one of the hardest things to scale is culture. I mean, what mechanisms have you got in place to ensure that this culture scales, You know, because I'm sure you're not involved in every single interview for the new hires anymore. Yeah. Am I right? No.
That's no longer true. Unfortunately for me, it's the it's the team that is immediately, you know, that that is immediate to every individual at Harrison. So I don't interview everybody. I don't work with everybody directly, but I do work with my team directly and, you know, constantly we're trying to lift those values and this and be the embodiment of that culture to the immediate team. And I have trust and and have a lot of trust that the team would then scale that beyond me and beyond that
immediate team. We also have a sort of remote first team. So the company is really start scaling from a number of headcount perspective roughly around. Tom Yeah, I guess so, yeah. I mean, we so most of the team that are here now at Harrison and Allison Franklin joined remotely. Yeah. So we have this remote first culture, meaning that, you know the how do you scale culture beyond is sort
of built in when we first start scaling. Yeah. So there's elements to make sure people feel inclusive and the way that the office is designed and the way that all of our process and system design is meant to be sort of remote first and that, that that was quite helpful for us, you know, as we we grow during that time.
And how big is the team now? Did you talk about numbers.
Yeah. So the total headcount across Harrison Franklin and Ali so it's closer to 100 people now. So that is big spread across clinical R&;D, but also now much more so. And commercial organization. The commercial organization is a global one, so it's spanned across Europe, Asia and Australia and then some present in the US.
And physical offices. So you've obviously got this fancy office in Haymarket, but where else have you got an office?
So we only have this main office here in Sydney. We have other offices in Hochman City, Vietnam. So one big part of what we do is data annotation with medical experts. So we have an office in Ho Chi Minh City in Hanoi where our clinicians is doing data refinement work. And that's a big part of building the system is to have data annotation at scale.
Yeah. All right. Last question. What's next? I mean, you've done all this. You're not even 30. I mean, if you extrapolate for the next ten, 20 years. Like what? Where's Harrison? Where are you? Yeah.
So for us, what we've shown so far in the last few years of sign company is that we are capable of building world leading comprehensive AI system and truly take that to market and make it something that is truly use. The next step for us is to scale both in terms of the breadth, i.e. more modality into other domain, but also increase the level of automation beyond just detections and triage into more further level of of automation that will deliver even more efficiency for clinicians. And
that's what we're very focused to do. It's also the, the growing, the growing the the revenue base across the radiology and then pathology business to start funding, self-funding some of these development, which can be timely and costly for us, is the thing that we we are very focusing on at the moment.
Yeah. All right. Let's maybe leave the the main part of the interview there. So, Angus, thank you. Amazing story. Love what you've done. You know, I think it's very mission and purpose driven, which I love, and it's also highly commercial. So I think you're going to build a great business. All right. Let's jump to the quickfire round. Do you have a recommended book?
Yeah, there's a book I really like on prediction machines. It's actually talk about AI, but from a perspective of economists, okay, I highly recommend it for founders. Who's curious about AI and how it's applied to their business model?
Is that quite a new book? I haven't heard of that one.
It's a it's a couple of years old. As I remember when we were Sub20 hit, we bought a big box of it and everyone who joined have to read the book. So yeah, I highly recommend that.
Love it. Do you listen to podcasts? If so, which ones?
Um, Lex Fridman on YouTube is interview a lot of thought leaders on AI, so I highly recommend that to listen. It's quite a technical talk, but also very entertaining.
Yeah, I'll give you a prompt. So you forgot to see millions. Yeah, that's all right. Yeah. So that's your podcast. So it's called Millions and you should tune in, is that right? I haven't actually done that, but I will.
Check it out. It's on a various platform and where we interview great engineers in in AI, but also in health. It's worth listening to check it out.
News source like how do you stay up to date.
I read medium Go summaries.
You're the first person that said to Medium. Oh really? Yeah. It's kind of come off the boil a little bit medium. It was pretty big a few years ago and now it's not quite as big.
Yeah, it's still, it's still quite big for the community. Um, and obviously it's been a number of topics, so I read on some mainstream news channel as well, but for sure stay up to date and what's, what's going on in I, I tend to check it out. Yeah.
Now I'll roll this question in with kind of the what did you do outside of work but what's your favorite app and then tell us what you do at so to work.
Um my favorite app is VS code so it's I still I still get to do some programming to this day so it's one probably use the most.
Yeah. And then when you're not working.
Well, not working recently I'm getting to this app called rice which is attractive sleep and, and trying to coach you into sleeping at the right time and sleep debt and managing energy level throughout the day. Yeah, it's been quite good.
You know, I asked this question of Cliff Ulbricht a few years ago at a dinner. I said, What do you do outside of work? And he looked kind of dazed and a little confused. And he's like, well, I just work. I mean, I can't pick up. I do have hobbies outside of work. Or are you pretty committed? I mean, I know you're committed, but is it to the exclusion of all else?
I was going to give some good answer, but then I thought it would be honest because on Saturday and Sunday, I was I was working so, um, I like to do exercise. You know, I think it's, it's one of the things for longevity, but also clarity as well. Found doing good cardiovascular exercise, help with thoughts, clarity in general. So, you know, at least that's how I trick myself into doing exercise. This is still working, but.
And do you walk to work? Do you cycle? What do you do?
Yeah I I'm big in efficiency, so I have a stationary bike. So every morning I wake up at 530, I get on the bike and I spend an hour and a half doing emails, check up on messages, doing catch up on readings on a bike. So after that, I've done all the calories I need for the days, but also fully up to date in terms of.
So this isn't some intense peloton workout where you sweat buckets all over the floor.
I mean, I sweat buckets, right? But, you know, probably not not not at the pace where I can't think anymore. So it's for like zone two. Yeah.
That's pretty good for you. Yeah. Occasionally you should be going. You should be doing the occasional really intense interval. That's also part of that longevity. Longevity? Longevity piece, isn't it?
Yeah, that's probably like we can go a bit more intense. But one thing is for me it's about like doing multiple things at once and wanted tasking.
I productivity tool. What what do you recommend to stay efficient?
I'm not big on this, so I just use very basic reminders app on apples and keeping note. Yeah yeah I'm not I should get into that but I know there's some really good tools out there.
And what about communications tools internally? Are you a slack house?
Yeah, we are Slack house. We had a very painful transition from team to Slack. Right. Okay. What that taught me is never denying the teams of the tools they want to use. I was very unpopular holding on to to teams, but now we are a slack shop.
I could own you. Um, tricky question, but who's your favorite CEO?
Um, this one might be controversial, but I like Mark. Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, yeah. You know, he's. He's. He's not very popular these days on online. And the news is not giving him a lot of credit. But, you know, his company is alive. Yeah. How many founders can say, I'm going to completely change what my business fundamentally do because I believe that's what's right for the missions. And I can rename the entire company to show that not a lot of CEO can do that these days.
Yeah, no, it was pretty amazing. I mean, he does have full control over the board and through his shares and but it's like it doesn't matter. I mean, he's he has built a genuine, lasting, sustainable, impactful business.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's a very good chance he may not succeed in that. But, you know, if you if you bet on agility and you bet on ability to pivot to market signal and and adapt, like I'm not sure if there's not a CEO who's as agile. Yeah. At that level of scale. Right.
Um, linked to that question, are you going to buy tickets to the the Musk Zuckerberg fight. Yeah.
I mean I'm, I'm not sure if this is actually going to happen. I heard. Is that serious?
I can't believe it's going to happen, to be honest. I mean, like Zuckerberg would wallop.
I'm not sure if I can afford a ticket, you know, if it's actually happening.
Well, if it's at the Vegas Octagon, which I think we talked about, there's quite a few tickets and I suspect it'd be streamed, but it would be a terrible fight. And I think from what I understand, I mean, Zuckerberg's had this full time jujitsu coach for the last few years, and he's younger and healthier than than.
Ellen Elon Musk sit on my you know, my my.
End the fight. Yeah. I don't know if you're good at jiu jitsu. It doesn't really matter for your opponents.
Because you want to be on your feet. You don't want to you don't want to get on the ground.
Yeah, you can use their weight against them. So anyway, that's true. Poor old Elon will get walloped if that happens and I'm not going to watch it. I think it's going to be a terrible TV show. Do you watch TV and if so, what do you watch?
Um, I mean, I recently rewatched the shows that got me into medicine is called House. Yeah, I'm not sure a lot of people knows that, but it's yeah, it's a like Sherlock Holmes with medical. Medical. Yeah. Yeah.
I had two Laurie in it.
I don't know the older English. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right. Interesting. He have to give an American accent for that show, but it was quite effectively. But yeah, I mean, it is great. I mean it, it's what medicine. That's what I thought medicine was when I joined medicine. And that's what I discovered. Medicine isn't after I left medicine. And
it's a good reminder to watch is it's fun. It's talk about medical mystery and people running around doing all sorts of cool stuff that you don't actually get to do in real life. As a doctor.
It's house to medicine. What Suits says to law.
Yes. Yes. Because.
Yeah. I mean, I've watched some of suits and it was just ridiculous. I mean, it was just these poncy New York lawyers dressing up and thinking it was cool. Yeah. The reality is, is not that cool. I mean, again, no offense to the lawyers out there, but Suits is not representative. All right. Well, anyway, got you into medicine and you're here now, so who cares? That's awesome. Last question. If you got asked to do a Ted talk, what would you talk about?
I'll talk about the, the equality um, the the health equality that is possible through the scalability of AI. So at Harrison, you know, one of the things that we're very proud of is some of the impact work that we do where fundamentally we have to build sustainable enterprise that sell products and make a good profit and good
return on investment for for investors and all involved. But the legacy that we want to leave behind is the fact that somebody in Goma, um, that we recently do work with, will have access to a digital radiologist that can provide them with medical analysis that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. And unless somebody is such a hard problem that unless someone spent energy, it would just never
naturally happen because of economy. Yeah, you know, the capitalism won't see people in Goma have access to good medical diagnosis, but through AI can bring the economic economy value of that into a level where it is now possible. So if I do have a Ted talk, I'd love to to share that perspective on how even though we work, we're talking about Deep Tech and AI, which is meant
to be futuristic and advanced. But really the deep meaning behind that is actually accessibility and equality, which, you know, really why I get up every day and I'm sure everyone here at Harrison is also the same.
That's great. All right. Any call outs to the audience later if you go, Are you hiring AI? What if someone wants to find out more? Like what should they do?
Yeah. So we we continue to hire in the AI team. So anyone who's interested in being part of the journey, we have a list of team members that we're looking to bring on board across a number of domain like technology, but also in the commercial team. You know, the other the other thing. Yeah, reach out to us if you're curious about the usage of the tool. If you run health organizations and looking to understand how AI will play a role in that and how our product can be
a part of that. We'd love to to reach out and have a talk. Yeah.
So Harrison.
Harrison.
Actually just before we sign off like Harrison, Analyze Franklin. Where do the names come from?
Yeah. So right behind me is the is the book called Harrison Principle of Internal Medicine. It was like my pillow in in Mexico. So that's the origin story about behind Harrison. And we like to name our technology after people.
I had this vision that one day is like Dr. Harrison Dr. Analyze Dr. Franklin I think about it like the world's most scalable, um, hospital department and collectively will cover all the different aspects of medicine, creating a series of very scalable, affordable and accurate algorithms that people will just get access to. Awesome. Right.
Thanks. Tran Thank you so much. It was great to chat to you and congrats on the journey so far and best of luck with the future.
Thank you so much. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.