A Physician’s Path to Becoming a Healthcare Investor
Interview with Dr. Anish Kaushal from Canada.
You can do it. It’s possible. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it isn’t, especially those closest to you. You may not have anyone in your immediate circle who’s done it but just know that it’s possible. It will be hard. It will be different. It will be challenging but that’s the point.
Quick facts about Dr. Anish:
🌎 Country: Canada
🎓 Degree: Bachelor of Medicine, MBChB
💼 Current Job Role: Associate (Healthcare Investor)
🎨 Hobbies: Tennis, Golf, Basketball, Reading, Writing, Working Out, Traveling.
📗 Favourite Books: Creative Act, Think and Grow Rich, Tuesdays with Morrie, The Choice, The Almanack of Naval, Awareness, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
🎬 Favourite Movies: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Parasite, Across the Spiderverse, About Time, Amadeus.
Hello! Could you introduce yourself and describe your current professional role?
My name is Anish and I’m an ex-doctor turned healthcare venture capitalist/writer. I grew up in Toronto but ended up getting my medical degree in the UK. Spent 3 years in St. Andrews getting my bachelor of medicine (and played a bit of golf including getting a sub 80 round on the old course) then went to Edinburgh for 3 years for my clinical degree (also spending a few months doing clinical electives in Edmonton). After graduating medicine, I decided it wasn’t for me so I left the field and was lucky enough to find a role at a healthcare venture capital firm in Amsterdam.
I started my investing career at M Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund of Merck, one of the largest pharma companies in the world. Spent 6 months there doing an internship and was committed to the field so wanted to stick around. Was lucky enough to speak to my current boss about a new healthcare venture fund starting in Canada and decided to join them as an early employee. 5 years later and I’m still around, originally starting in Montreal and most recently being in Toronto.
In my spare time, when I left medicine I decided to start implementing 3 habits every day - reading, writing and meditating. Almost 6 years later and I’m at day 2034 in my journal. I have written 2 books, read almost 300 non-fiction books and have meditated almost every day since then. I'm a big sports fan and love watching football, soccer, and basketball while playing golf, basketball and tennis.
What inspired you to shift away from traditional clinical practice to your current role?
I ended up getting really lucky to get into my current job and didn’t know I wanted to end up here.
Just knew when I graduated medicine that I was ready to leave but wasn’t sure what was next.
Some of the biggest reasons for me were the admin tasks, amount of research, being narrow minded and just not enjoying the job.
I find medicine is much more administrative than I anticipated with more time spent doing notes and calling people than actually taking care of patients. Also did a ton of research (had 5 first author papers by the time I graduated) and although it was a super helpful skill for my current job, I didn’t like that I had to continue it to be successful in medicine. I find doctors to be very one-track focused and there’s not much flexibility in your path until you become a full consultant/specialist. Lastly, I just didn’t like going to a hospital. Never once was I excited to go to work when I was in medicine and it just felt like a job to me.
Which skills did you need to acquire to succeed in your current role?
Lots of skills were super helpful for me that I learned in medicine and transferred over.
Being able to talk to patients and people from all walks of life was super helpful, especially because a lot of my job is built on building relationships.
Being able to learn new concepts quickly was also super vital for my job as I learned very quickly in VC that you won’t know all the answers, but if you can find the answers quickly, you can do really well in this career. Being able to communicate succinctly and effectively was also helpful, especially talking to people in different divisions who have different backgrounds.
All these skills were acquired during medical school and learning on the job. Also do a lot of personal education outside of work including reading a variety of non-fiction books, including a bunch in psychology, leadership and personal development. There’s tons of great free resources out there that can teach you all you need to know. Youtube is also super helpful, lots of great teachers and insights there.
Which resources did you find most helpful for developing these skills and during your transition?
Books were always super helpful to me. Some of my favourites are ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ (must read for everyone), Letters from a Stoic (great for philosophy and understanding people), and Poor Charlie’s Almanack (insights from Charlie Munger, one of the greatest investors of the last 50 years). These are more to understand people and how to build relationships.
For Venture capital, some resources I loved were the John Gannon Blog and Venture Deals (book on everything you need to know in VC).
These were helpful to understand how the industry works and what some of the terminology is. As someone who had no previous background in this industry, getting up to speed on the language was super important at the beginning of my career. The books above were more for general purposes to better understand people and psychology which I think helps you in any industry you’re in.
Can you describe a typical day in your current role?
My day to day is pretty varied, depending on the day and types of meetings. At the time of writing this, I can give you my schedule today.
Woke up for a meeting at 7 am PT at 6:30 am PT. Had a tea, then right into a meeting with a founder. Had another meeting with a different company after that. Finished then came into our Vancouver office. Had a team meeting where we discussed our portfolio and what’s going on at the firm. Having lunch then I have 4 hours of back to back meetings, some with companies, some with lawyers and some with internal folks. Then I will finish the day doing some reporting work and have dinner with some of our team members in Vancouver. Emails I usually do in between and a lot of my job is coordinating, using Excel and making powerpoints. Do a decent amount of travel with work and given everyone is remote, you’re expected to get your work done when you can. Love the flexibility this job gives you but you definitely have to hold up your end of the work. I work at a small company (12 people total across 3 cities) so each person has a lot of responsibility.
What were some of the challenges you faced during your transition, and how did you address them?
Biggest challenge moving was the emotional burden of telling my parents I was leaving medicine. Those were the hardest conversations of my life as they were not originally supportive of me making this change. Friends were the same but enough of them knew who I was so I don’t think they were that worried.
Financially was definitely one, especially considering how much I knew I was going to make near term once I was done residency, but I made a bet on myself. I believe my skills and career trajectory is going to make me way more money long term so I was willing to take the initial hit.
In terms of resources, I was mostly stuck on my own. No one else I knew made a transition at the stage I did (right after medical school) so I was pretty lonely. Nonetheless I knew when I made the decision I was super happy with it and was going to do anything I could to make it successful. IMO there was no plan B and glad it worked out like that.
I wrote a book called From Here to There about my story and exactly how I left my career so I could give it to people in my shoes. It was a resource I created for my younger self to help that person on his journey. I’d recommend checking that out and has all the insights I would tell people when they’re changing careers, whether you’re a clinician or not.
Do you apply any of your clinical skills in your current position? If not, do you keep your clinical knowledge up-to-date?
No, not really. Clinical knowledge for sure but no clinical skills. I’ve been away from the clinic since 2018 and have no plans of ever going back. In terms of keeping up to date with knowledge, it’s really only related to my job so it’s just reading daily the news and talking to a lot of smart folks.
For someone interested in pursuing a path similar to yours, what steps would you recommend they take?
I wrote an entire book on this as referenced above so I’d start with that.
High level, start doing some research, do some self reflection, get on LinkedIn, reach out to people, have lots of conversations, be thoughtful and open and learn how to interview well.
Most of this comes down to research and conversations as that’s where you’ll separate yourself. You need to show how different you are and have a clear answer as to why you’re making this change. I had hundreds of conversations and even more messages to people that went nowhere so you also have to get used to rejection.
I’d make sure not to take anything personally and just keep showing up. Remember, all you need is one person to take a chance on you.
What are your long-term career plans?
The short answer is I don’t know. As I’ve learned from my journey, life happens in mysterious ways and opportunities show up when you least expect it. I’ve been at my current role for 5 years and still see good plans for growth so I’m happy here for now. However, my grand vision is to eventually run my own media company. I want it to be the largest solo media company in the world and have been working on that idea since 2018. The goal is to take all my writing, reading and knowledge and give that to people in writing, audio and video. Then do it across languages. I’ve written 950+ blog posts since 2021, 2 books (with a third in the works) and read/taken notes on 300 non-fiction books since 2018 so if I can share those insights with people, I think that would be great.
In the meantime, I’m gonna keep having fun at my current job. Do love the fact I get paid to learn and invest in new companies that change the future of healthcare. Till I stop loving that, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.
What advice would you give to someone considering leaving traditional clinical practice to pursue an alternative career path?
You can do it. It’s possible. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it isn’t, especially those closest to you. You may not have anyone in your immediate circle who’s done it but just know that it’s possible. It will be hard. It will be different. It will be challenging but that’s the point.
You have to expect rejection, many messages and emails that go nowhere and a lot of hard work, but eventually you’ll see the payoff in ways you couldn’t imagine.
You are so much more capable than you think so always remember that. You’re smart as shit (I mean you got through medicine) so you just have to learn how to translate those skills elsewhere. Get on LinkedIn. Do a lot of research. Have lots of conversations. Don’t boast about yourself. Ask people about themselves and don’t lead with the conversation about a job. Use the next little while to learn about what you want. Never stop learning, no matter where you end up. Build your network, especially outside medicine. Be someone that people want to work with.
Good luck. You got this.
And shameless plug, check out my book that LITERALLY talks about all these problems and how I got through them.
Where can people find you?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anichexperience
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anish-kaushal-md/
Website: https://www.anichexperience.com/
