# Transcript — Augmented Wellness 001 (Martin Varsavsky)

> ⚠️ Working draft. Auto-generated (Whisper) and lightly corrected; **pending
> editorial review**. Proper nouns and timestamps may be imperfect. Not medical
> advice. For the canonical record, use the published episode audio/video.

---

Hi, welcome to Augmented Wellness.
This is a podcast about how AI, health data and human innovation are changing the way we
manage our health, improve our wellness and make everyday life better.
Today, I'm joined here by Martin Varsavsky, a dear friend, a mentor, zero founder, investor,
father of seven, avid cyclist, a most recently founder of Certuma, a company building at the
center of AI and healthcare.
For our first episode, I couldn't think of a better person or a better guest to have.
Martin has built across countries, industries and technological waves.
And today, I want to understand both sides of that story.
How he builds the future and how he lives a full active, curious life while doing all of
it.
Welcome, Martin.
And thank you for being here with us.
Great.
So, yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself, I mean, your origin story in Argentina.
I mean, obviously, I know almost 20 years of your stories, and I love to tell them.
But I love, I love sort of the origin story in Argentina, New York, and how that impact
of your life.
Well, I guess when I was a child, there was nothing that really showed that I was going
to become an entrepreneur, that I was going to build six unicorns over 35 years, that I
was going to have seven children, that I was going to have a quite happy life, but with
a lot of difficulty at the beginning, because when I look at the beginning of my life, it
was actually a very difficult life.
It was not what happened later, but people know me about sort of doing well and prospering
because I grew up in Argentina during a civil war, a civil war between the guerrilla movement
and the military.
It was people like to portray that guerrero sushi or civil war as something where there
were good people on one side and bad people on the other side.
I just think there were bad people on all sides.
My dad was kidnapped by the left, my cousin was murdered by the right.
It was a very difficult upbringing in the middle of death and fear.
If anything, it trained me for risk later in life because after being close to bombs
and exploding, not far from where I was, and all the things I saw, risk took another dimension
because risk is relative when you grew up facing death.
My cousin did get killed at 17 and so it was a different time, certainly, and then I arrived
at New York City of the late 70s, which was the taxi driver New York City.
It was also quite dangerous.
I got mugged two times.
I went from Buenos Aires where the danger was this war to a New York where the danger was
just walking around.
I mean, my car got broken into, my apartment got broken into, and I was at NYU studying
premed, but it was still dangerous.
People don't realize how difficult life was in the 80s in New York compared to now.
And so, yeah, I would say up to age 25, my life was hard, my parents divorced, but then
my dad died when I was 22.
I had no money.
I had to support my mom and my grandmother.
So all these happy Martin Varsavski stories are the rest of my life, but certainly not
the first 25 years.
And yeah, one of the stories that I remember that you told me from that time, which I think
is, for me, it's the sort of, it marks a lot of, you know, also the way I approach sometimes
entrepreneurship, which is you take, you know, you sort of create the opportunities, is
the story of when you, you went to ask for a job at a bank and also a loan, yeah, it's
true.
The same bank, Midland Bank rejected me for a job and gave me a 9 million dollar loan
that was my first breakthrough in life for a love building that I was developing while
I was a student and I mean, it kind of made sense.
I was so defiant and difficult.
I think the interviewers could see that I was talented, intelligent, but they would
say, how do you see yourself in five years, typical interview question?
And I would answer, well, at least as your boss.
And that didn't take me far.
But the same attitude with the loan, it was different than with the equity that I raised
because that raised debt and equity.
So yeah, so what, I mean, a lot of people don't know that you started in real estate.
Yes.
How was, I mean, how, how did you, you know, create that, that, that, that situation?
Because that's, that's an interesting, yeah, I think it's interesting because real estate
is what got me started, what I made my first million with real estate and nobody knows
that you're right because I'm a tech entrepreneur and I was, but I, I was broke and I thought,
what is the lowest hanging fruit to make money?
And my dad had died, we had no money and I, and I took an entrepreneurship class that
taught me the most important thing I ever learned at university, which, which is pre-money
valuations, the concept of pre-money valuations.
And I said, this is insane, this is like printing money, right?
And I, I certainly accompanied me the rest of my life.
And so I created this company called Urban Capital Corporation.
And Urban Capital was developing lofts.
And by the age of 25, between 19 and 25, I developed half a million square feet of lofts
in Manhattan, which is a lot.
And, but that, those, there was like a transition into a loft type of units.
I mean, what, what, what happened is my friends, I had sort of these friends downtown who were
radical and different and, and they were squatters, right, many of them squatters.
And I would go into their, their places, I mean, it's hard to describe now how downtown
New York was at that time because now it's, you go to Tribeca, it's one of the most expensive
neighborhoods in the world, right?
And all the buildings I properly renovated and everything looks great.
This was the New York of, you know, Grandmaster Flash, Broken Glass everywhere.
And there was Broken Glass everywhere.
I mean, it was just very, very different from what you see now.
And so my friends were squatters and I started looking at that and I tried to understand
why were these squatters and the, it wasn't just because they were broke.
It was because the laws of Manhattan and New York were insane that they, they had zoned
all these buildings industrial because they didn't want to lose manufacturing in Manhattan,
which is now inconceivable that you would manufacture something in Manhattan.
And, and so I decided to hire, hire, I mean, I had no money, but I gave equity of my company
to a man called Leonard Khan and he used to work and he was a commissioner for leasing
for the city of New York.
And we'd learn, we started like a movement to legalize the illegal squatting lofts.
And so we, we were able to obtain a rezoning, like a change of zoning, zoning exception at
the 11 Beach Street in Tribeca, to make a, to make a real office or residential, but
not industrial, not manufacturing.
And that was, it turned out to be incredibly lucrative because when the building was re-zoned,
then the value went up like five times.
I mean, we bought, we bought this building, for example, the 11 Beach for like six million.
And we sold it, we ended up selling for 62 million.
It was, it was just a crazy time where you could do these things.
But I personally didn't like real estate, I loved tech and I love science and I've
turned in science into tech and tech into company.
So as soon as I made that money with a real estate, I gave up on real estate and I went
into biotech and tech because I was just fascinated by tech.
My dad was a physicist PhD from Harvard, I had grown up with science, I started pre-med,
but then I quit when my dad died and I just went to work, but I, I didn't want to do real
estate as an activity, but it only gave me my first money to do anything else.
I could have retired at 25 and I could have lived the rest of my life with a very good income.
Yeah, so let's talk about life, right?
So I think you are, if I think of someone that has a full life, I think of you.
And I have the honor privilege to be by your side, see how you're a great father and family
member, but I want to talk a little bit now about real estate because you have real estate
or lower the place and how you chose that real estate because obviously you didn't do
it for business, but you definitely, you never stopped and I say you have a modest touch
for real estate because I remember Miami when you bought right at the best, in the worst
moment, but the best, but how do you, so talk to me a little bit about how you divide
your life in all these places and how that makes your life fuller because I know everywhere
you are, it's meaningful to you, when I work on Madrid, Miami, yeah, no, it's interesting.
Yeah, that's another expression of real estate, let's say I stopped developing huge buildings
and I started buying homes in different places like Miami.
Yeah, and how did I choose that?
The answer is, it wasn't a plan, it wasn't like when I was working in real estate and I had
a plan and I had a business plan and a plan.
This was more of a random activity that I had more to do with emotions than with rational
thinking emotions, meaning when I came to Miami, no, nine and they were giving apartments
away. I mean, the price of real estate was probably 80% lower than today.
And I saw the city and I said, well, this is still, has a bright future.
I bought in Jose Ignacio in Uruguay when it was worth about a farm for 14,000, that's
not worth two million.
I thought it was beautiful and because I thought Punta de Leste was like too developed and
Jose Ignacio 40 kilometers away was beautiful by the ocean.
So Menorca, I bought in 2000, Sagaponaq in the Hamptons, everybody loved South Hampton,
but I thought Sagaponaq with its fields and rural feeling, I bought a farm from the
1800s with silos, a historical farm.
Every property that I bought and I think we have around 12 with my wife and kids, these
12 homes, I bought them just because I thought they were beautiful, not because I was thinking
no, I'm going to make money with this thing.
I mean, I did buy a hotel into Lume in 2016, that was more of a business thing, but all
the others were not a business thing, it was more like, oh, this is a beautiful place.
And then in our life, now we have seven children and three living with us still, nine, age
is nine, 13, 14, and we traveled with them, they go to school in Madrid, but then we
come a lot to the States, it was my work, it's all here, and I have an arrangement with
the family that when they have vacation, we all come here.
And it's, yeah, it's an unusual life, but it works for me.
I love the living in Spain, but I hate the political system there now with Pedro Sanchez,
he's made it very difficult to build companies there.
In the past, I built three unicorns in Spain and it was very good, but now it isn't.
When America is so successful, always more successful, regardless of who runs the country,
I mean, it's more, yeah, there's some differences, but America has a spirit that is just unique
in the world.
So I like to live here, but when I'm, I'm sorry to work here, but when I'm not, when
I'm not working, there's something exhausting about America that tires me out, and then
I prefer it to be in Europe or in Argentina or Uruguay.
Yeah.
So let's talk about, so we're both Argentine, and I know for many years, you sort of didn't
want to step in there for, you know, obviously a lot of the things, but now, you know, obviously
you're working a lot to bring Argentina back.
You work a lot with President Millay and helping him.
So tell, you know, tell us a little about that and also the land that you also now, you
know, what do you see in Argentina, I mean, as opportunity and, and, you know, specifically
also that, you know, that part of Argentina that now you're focused on.
Well, I've been saying since Millay won that Argentina had incredible opportunities to
invest.
I hadn't invested there before, when though I am Argentine, and then when he won, I bought
Argentine stocks, Argentine bonds, and I bought this land, these 32,000 hectares, whether
with five friends, and I bought it because I thought Millay was going to change Argentina
for the better, something that Macri tried to do, and unfortunately couldn't, and I still
believe that.
And yes, I became an informal advisor, friends with President Millay, because I helped
him get into Silicon Valley, meeting Cook, Sundar Pichai, Marc Andreessen, and other people
on his first trip to Silicon Valley, and then another trip to Sund Valley at the Alan and
company conference that I've been going for many years, and he was grateful, and I thought
he was an amazing person I had never seen, I mean, I had been on the board of the Clinton
Foundation, and Bill Clinton was a very special politician, and he's a very special politician
in many ways, and America had budget surplus, and a lot of unique, great moments in the
1990s with Clinton, but Millay is more what I like, a libertarian, and I feel, I empathize
with him.
Now I also think Argentina has a unique competitive advantage, which is that Argentina and the Southern
hemisphere are not part of geopolitics, like nobody's thinking, okay, I'm going to
nuke, I want to send nuclear bombs to Argentina, like it's not part of the debate, and not
being part of the debate when you're talking about war is a great thing, so my parents
who are still alive, they were children in World War II, they were Jewish children, and
my wife is German, and her parents, non-Jews in Germany, had a worse time that my parents
Jewish in Argentina, because my wife's parents were starving, and I mean, Germany was
starving, and Germany was so devastated after a war that they themselves caused, that
there was rubble in Germany between the 40s and the 70s, they ended up cleaning the
rubble from World War II in the 70s.
Argentina never had anything in Argentina, well there was the Holocaust, well there was
Hiroshima Nagasaki, well there was nuclear war, World War II was nuclear, nothing happened
in Argentina, right, so I think it was a booming time, right?
Yes, it was a booming time, yeah, it was if anything good, and so I think that now we
have a World War III going on, I hope it doesn't become nuclear, but we clearly have Ukraine
and Russia, we have Iran and Israel, and we have the elements of a World War, because
in both wars and areas you have Russia, Iran, China, North Korea and one side, and you
have the democracies on the other side, which is what you had in World War II, except Russia
but Russia and World War II was an ally of Germany and then Germany betrayed it, but World
II was also kind of a democracies versus tyrannies situation, and so I think that, I mean you
don't need to be wealthy and buy a ton of land in Argentina to protect yourself, my land
is not a bunker, like the press writes the bunker of Martin Varsavsky, it's not a bunker,
it's just a land, a ranch with a house, in fact I invited journalists to come over to clear
that idea because it was so absurd, it's like we hadn't built a bunker, we built a self-sustaining
ranch, but if you have an income of $2,000 a month, which most people do, at least $2,000,
anyone can move to Argentina, so when I say that Argentina is a safe haven for World War III,
I don't mean for, you know, billionaires, I mean for anybody.
No, and we have a lot of land, for sure, so let's talk a little bit, you know, start moving to
health, aging, you know, I know we talk a lot about GLP-1s, you're a fan of it,
but I want to, you know, so tell me a little bit what you think about, you know,
what's going on today with, you know, with peptides, you know, GLP-1, you know,
this, this, this, well, GLP-1 is a peptide, yeah.
No, I think that there's science and there's pseudoscience, and I think the science of GLP-1,
especially Mungaro, which I've been taking for two years, even though my way is the same,
like most of why do you take it? But I take it because I believe it has effects beyond weight,
right? And I used to also work so hard to keep my way. I wait the same now as when I was 20,
but it used to be a lot of effort, like I used to be on the scale every day and measure what I
eat and all that. And now with Mungaro, which is GLP and GIP, I weigh the same without effort,
so that's also good. And I don't have the food noise, and I don't have to think about food
as I used to, but I enjoy food, but not in a, not in a craving, anxious way.
How is the situation in Europe versus the US in that regard? Is it similar?
Well, Europe had less obesity than the United States, so people are adopting it more slowly,
in America, it's been an incredible revolution, but also I do take Mungaro not as simply because
it's not the same. Mungaro is GLP-1 and GIP, and GLP-1 regulates the relationship between
your pancreas and your gut and your brain, so it signals, say, satiation, so you eat less, but
that's GLP, but then GIP, it deals with your gut and your liver and your brain, but it deals with
a conversion of glucose into fat. And so Mungaro has then that double effect, less hunger, less
conversion to fat, but you have to be careful if you take it and you're not overweight,
that it doesn't eat in your muscles, so I also take creatine, but I basically work out a lot,
and I cycle maybe 14 hours a week, and that is what the whole package is, the good thing,
it's not the Mungaro alone. With other peptides, I haven't done anything because I don't think the
science is there, but I'm open to things that are proven. I don't like to experiment myself in
things that I don't understand or that are highly speculative as to what they may do to you.
Yeah, so talk about cycling, we're going to get geeky now. So I've been playing, you know,
I prepared and I looked at your, you know, your Strava data. You know, I want to talk about a
little bit about that. I mean, you know, you're, you're, you have been an inspiration in many ways,
but one of them is cycling. I remember, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, I tried to cycle with you,
I couldn't even leave the farm. Today I keep up a little bit, but when I was looking at your Strava,
I mean, with all the stuff you do is insane how many hours, you know, I mean, I think it's like
60 a month, yeah, like 15 a week. You know, talk to me about that. I mean, why, why did you do cycling?
And, you know, how do you fit time for it? Because I mean, I make excuses, everybody makes excuses.
How do you, yeah, no, it's interesting because one of the reasons I can cycle so much is because I
live in Spain and, and work in America. So when I go cycling every morning, people are asleep in
the States. And that, so that gives me, it's as if if I lived in the States and I woke up at four in
the morning to go cycling. And so, yeah, so that gives me an advantage. Then of course, I have to
work late, but I do it. But it's such a routine in my life, like I wake up and I, I have to do it.
And I got so used to it. I don't even think about it. It is interesting because
other people say that, like the effort, the effort, the effort of going every day,
it's also a remarkable that at 66, I don't have any pains or aches or injuries because a lot
of the reasons why people stop doing this is injuries, right? And it's not that I haven't had
accidents because I had maybe four accidents in my life. But I never broke anything, which
probably helps a lot. I had maybe 120 stitches. And, but not, not fractures. And I, so one,
that's one thing that I tried to do to not to avoid accidents, to go in places where there are very
few cars. I also do mountain and road and gravel. I, I alternate. But I love it. I love it.
And I go alone. I go with friends. I also listen to podcasts or listen to audiobooks sometimes.
Although I do notice that I cycle significantly more slowly if I'm listening to a podcast or an
audiobook. And if I'm listening to music, I don't know exactly how that works. But if your brain is
working, somehow it sucks up the energy or something because I cycle more slowly. Yeah, yeah.
No, it happens to me. I mean, I try to listen to audiobooks and I realize that, you know,
it doesn't have the same effect. So let's talk about that. I mean, how do you, I mean, obviously,
I know you're very data driven. You know, you have an aura. How do you, how do you deal with
data? You know, like, like, what is your relationship with data? How does it help you? Or
well, for example, in cycling, I coded and up myself that instead of
Strava is called Stravar because of Varsavski, which helps me with the type of data I need that
Strava doesn't give me. I still use Strava also to keep record of my cycling since 2010 because
I used to do use another app in the world. I put it into Strava, but Stravar. So what does Stravar,
which is a private app I haven't put it in the app store, maybe I should, but what does it have
that Strava doesn't have? Well, there's some key metrics that I love that Strava doesn't give me.
For example, the climbing mountains with a bike, the meters per hour, the rate that which I'm
climbing could be feet or or meters, if you're thinking imperial or metric, but it's the same
concept is the concept of your momentum while you're climbing. I find that very useful. Then the
watts, I get watts with sensors on the bike. That's not something that you get from Strava, Strava
can guess the watts, but you don't get the watts. And then the other thing that I find very important
is this feature that I coded that's called U versus U. And so when I'm going up any mountain,
sometimes I've gone up the same mountain, like the one you had on the screen, I went up that
mountain, maybe 200 times in my life or something like that. I mean, many times. So what I did is I coded
the my performance on every climb. And I can see my climbing better than my average way better than
my average, worse than my average. That's the U versus U because in the end, I only care about
so I've been keeping my since 2010 until now, I'm keeping my the same ability. I mean, I haven't gone
down the rate at which I climb these mountains. I'm sure one day I will go down, but it hasn't come
and it's great. And so the U versus U gives me a sense of where I'm ranking against myself since 2010.
Yeah. So, you know, obviously Strava, you know, does some of those things, right? They call
the segments and then it compares you how you do with, you know, your own yourself. I was looking,
I didn't even know they had one when we compare and, you know, it's embarrassing to compare myself
with you here. You know, the amount of rights that you do. So how do you see this?
Going for actually, I don't know if you know this, but Strava, last week, they actually announced
that they have an MCP now. You know, so you could actually start playing with their data.
You know, they're still very, you know, very restrictive and sort of legally what you could do with
your data, especially if you're a company. But, you know, how do you see your, I mean, this
app that you have, has it changed? I mean, did you build it now in sort of in the new sort of
vibe coding or it was from before? No, no, I built it. Well, I built it when, let's say, vibe coding
was not called vibe coding, but I started building it with AI on Xcode and Swift.
But I wanted to design the app that had everything that was meaningful to me. But I do agree that
Strava has a lot of good information, but it doesn't have this sort of instant feedback
so Strava also tells you, gives you medals, right? So the, but if you cycle since 2010 until now for
most people, they wouldn't win medals anymore at the same spots because probably 16 years ago,
they were doing better than now, not all not everyone. But what I'm saying is, is you only get a
medal if you beat. So when you go to the same place 200 times, it's very difficult to get a
medal. So the app, you actually use it while you're writing. Yeah. So it's real time. Oh, okay.
Yeah. So I'm writing and I have, I coded a screen that other than what everyone has, which is
their speed, their average speed, their max speed, their altitude, whatever. I have these indications.
And it makes me work harder. Like, even here in Miami that I really go on roads yesterday,
it was my peloton. And there was a race. There were 160 people in the peloton at that time.
And without bragging, I came up first. And I, but there was this other guy who was so close to me.
And it made me go like crazy. And then then I ended up 70, number 72 out of 2007,
1000 people who had done that, that, that, that and Dora, a writing and Dora.
Well, that kind of motivation that this other guy gave me, it's, it's, it's this virtual sense
of competitiveness that we all have, which is wonderful because I work so much harder. So I have
a technology fixed bike and a peloton fixed bike. And the technology is a better quality bike.
But it doesn't have the competitiveness. And I end up using the peloton when I'm here just so I can,
I work out harder. Yeah, no, that does exactly the point here where, you know, I wanted to,
to see your perspective on this, because, you know, some, you know, some aspect people say,
oh, you know, all these data is sort of overwhelming me. But for me, also, I love to see Strava
and see, you know, how compare my heart rate, how compare different things. Because also allows me
also to understand cardiovascular, how, how am I doing, right? And I make changes. I mean,
if you don't have that comparison, it's really hard because you're only looking at yourself.
Do you look at that? Yeah, because I used to use the Apple watch. And now I use this Garmin
Venue 3. Why? Because it broadcasts my heart rate. And this broadcasting of the heart rate
is very useful because the Apple tries to keep you in the Apple ecosystem. And it, it doesn't allow
other apps to obtain some data. Others, it could you can obtain. But Garmin broadcasts into
my own app, the one I coded. It also broadcasts into Strava. But it just keeps you more flexibility.
So I look at the watts. I look at the heart rate. I look at the meters per hour that I'm climbing.
I look at the universe as you to try to beat myself when I'm in the mountain. And all these metrics
keep me motivated. I mean, there is somewhat of a danger of always of going up looking at a screen.
So I also coded audio signals that that helped me know if I'm beating or not beating myself.
Well, you, you get it. You get a, well, I give you another example of audio signals that I coded
that are easy to understand against danger, which is
cars coming, right? So I use a varia radar. And the varia radar, I coded in my app. I coded simulations
of cars coming that I obtained from the varia radar. But I coded sounds. So if I'm not looking at
the screen and there's a car coming in here, but there's also you can, you can code sounds for when
you're beating, you're a, you're a beat your record, you pass your record, right? So sometimes I work
with sounds just not to be looking at a screen all the time. Yeah. No, interesting. So this
is perfect because my next section is Stagaba Cloud. You know, so we were in Argentina together
in the year and you told me the story about how you raised the money for, for Sir Tuma
using Cloud. And that also, you know, opened up my eyes to, I mean, as you know, I've been doing AI
for a long time, but I was using GPT almost exclusively. I mean, I think exclusively. And,
and obviously that changed a lot my life as well. You know, obviously a lot has changed there
with the models and all that. But tell, you know, let's talk about that story a little bit of,
I mean, I know the Sir Tuma, right? So what does Sir Tuma do? Sir Tuma, I had the idea here in Miami
to build Sir Tuma because I had a dermatological problem, let's say, and I had a very well diagnosed
by the, by an AI GPT in this case. And then I needed a medication that it turned out you need
a prescription for. And I asked for the prescription and, and GPT says, but I'm not a doctor. I'm not
a doctor. I'm clothed. I'm not a doctor. I'm groxed. I'm not a doctor. Gemini, I said, I'm not a
doctor. I'm like, what is this? They behave like doctors. And then when you want the prescription,
they say, I'm not a doctor. And I kind of reminding me of the time of the torrent. And when
people were downloading movies and TV series and, and songs illegally, right? It was like an illegal
thing. It's kind of like, I am a doctor, but I'm not a doctor. Here's the episode. But if you get
caught, this, this world of illegality. And I said, this is crazy. I have to build an AI that is
legal that really gives you a prescription. And AI that passes the FDA. So I became obsessed with
this thought of building an AI that passes the FDA that goes through clinical trials because my
other companies that I built in the last 20 years have all gone through the FDA with different
things. And I, even though the FDA is so hard because it is so hard, but it's probably so hard
because it has a wrong mandate. The mandate of the FDA is not to cure people. The mandate of
the FDA is that nothing that you ever use to help people medically ever harms anybody. And I think
Congress, you change that. But the way it is now, it is just very difficult. But having said this,
I still think it's the only way to have something legal, right? So I thought of this. And then
I started working with AI and trying to understand how could I build an AI that passes the FDA? And I
started getting a lot of answers about how I could possibly do these and regulate ourselves
where in Argentina and Europe in other countries. I mean, that's also incredible about AI. That's just
it's in Google you have to search and with AI you find. And you, of course, you have to check it
against other AI's or against other things to make sure it works. But what was unusual as Sir Tumai
is I ended up raising the 10 million seed at a 50 million pre without any employees. It was
just the AI and I and I got some of the best AI founders to invest and one of the best VCs in the
world, the ADC with Joe Longstale and Sebastian Calirian. And the whole company was the AI
and myself at that point. And then of course, I hired a great team and now I have a great team.
But it was it was it had never happened to me that I was able to have a pre-money valuation fund
raised without employees in your first meeting. Yes. And that also happened in the first meeting
was advised by the AI like I asked the AI which is the VC that will most likely to understand the
pitch of I want to build a medical AI that passes the FDA and it says 8 VC in Austin. So I flew
to Austin to see them. So how obviously you have a lot of relationship. But how did you get
well what was the path to get to them? Well I wrote no they had never invested with me. I knew
I knew Joe Longstale somewhat socially but I but I wrote to them and I said I have these
ideas and AI that passes the FDA like I don't know why open evidence and everyone else
took chronic and the others why are and why do they go to market without passing the FDA and
and they said we believe we believe in these come and see us and then I went to see them and
I had a list of 20 other VCs to see and but this was my first meeting and I said we take the
whole round and then and I I said look we need a two million for for AI founders and they said
no problem and I got Russell Kaplan who started cognition and Guillermo Rouch that started
for sale and and Zachary Frankel who's involved with ramp and other companies and so smart
and John Herring who's a key at XAI and I got a lot of founders who understand these and I'm not
an expert in AI but I'm certainly quite an expert I would say with the FDA and I understand the AI
you know off and I I thought I could build these and and now I'm having a great time being CEO
again because I I always I'm always CEO then chairman and then I sell my companies and every four
five years I started new one and and I'm but for the last four years I had only been chairman
and it's exciting to be CEO again. Yeah so let's talk a little bit about I have here this
Surtuma link you told me a little bit yesterday about it so this this wasn't sort of in the first
business plan but obviously you know this evolves so what what what do you see now the opportunities
or how is it evolving? Yeah the Surtuma link is a product on the way to getting an AI that's
approved by the FDA but it has doctors in the loop it's actually a product for doctors and it's
a product for doctors Surtuma link in which it deals with a problem that doctors have as you
probably seen doctors never want to give away their phone number because they don't want to be
cold and texted all the time and and people get anxious and they have but at the at the same time
to completely deny access to the doctor is also not a great thing because it doesn't make
your great doctor and it doesn't great get you great reviews on the help which they need to
build their practices so I wanted to fix that problem the problem of being able to give out your
your phone number and so I I came up with this concept of an agentic doctor that is the
the same doctor but in agentic form and and so Surtuma link is the the doctor let's say doctor
Joe Smith in agentic form but supervised by Dr. Joe Smith in real life and so you start
chatting with the agentic form of Dr. Joe Smith and you explain what's wrong with you and maybe
fall you need his ibuprofen and a night rest then the agentic version will deal with this but if
you need anything that according to the criteria of Dr. Joe Smith like a prescription or like an
intervention by him of any kind then he intervenes the real doctor so this allows doctors to have
many more patients but the Surtuma link doesn't happen in their own phone it happens at Surtuma so the
doctor goes to Surtuma the patient goes to Surtuma and and there's a privacy there because
the doctor still has his phone for his friends and his family and and and that still remains private
and so yeah so then you have Surtuma link and also you know you also have fast doctor which is
more the sort of you know original concept of being able to access telemedicine
which division is if you know if the FDA approves a full telemedicine or a full prescription
to be done autonomously so how do you see that you know what what what time from do you see on
that how do you see that well we have Surtuma link dot com which is geared towards doctors and then we
have fast doctor which is geared towards patients and fast doctor has the same AI but then when
what happens is when the patients want to interact with a real doctor to get a prescription then
a real doctor shows up in fast doctor and they get a prescription or they get an order for
lab work or they get an x-ray or they get whatever they need right prescribe by a human doctor by a
real doctor so fast doctor is sort of the equivalent of telehealth but with a i and
Surtuma link is a i plus your real doctor so it's not really the same because when you go to
telehealth you don't know which doctor is going to answer it's like you want to reach the medical
profession you want to you don't you're not getting exactly doctor Joe Smith but in Surtuma link
it's your doctor that is so it's not the same product but they but there's a lot of commonality
which is an AI that escalates to a human and so the AI will escalate to the human until the AI
can take care of the problem itself and so we need to do the trials with the FDA illness by illness
condition by condition this will be probably hundreds will probably cost hundreds of millions of
dollars and we'll take maybe five years but we will get to a point where a lot of things will be
handled by the AI including the prescription and I think eventually we'll get to a point in which
all the doctors that exist today will still have work but maybe 70 maybe what's happening now in
America and in many countries is that there's a shortage of doctors like and especially in rural
America and then there's the language problem that many people don't speak English which sounds
unusual but there's a lot of people in in America whose English is not great and the performance
their performance of the Hispanics or the Chinese in medical systems is much worse they die
more in hospitals because they can't tell what's wrong with them it's it's sad but it's true
so we want to fix that we don't want to displace real doctors we want to make patients happy
yeah yeah so that you know I want to go a little bit deeper on sort of the you know how do you
see AI especially you know AI and the sort of agentic world of AI right so I want to talk to
a little about Pedro so Pedro I have here your Twitter you know your Twitter feed which
you know you're you're very active especially in Spain but tell a little bit about what's going on
in the feed and some of the things you shared last night that I was surprised it's it's what I did
because I'm so busy like you said how you do all these things what I did is I program an
agentic version of myself for social media and it took me a long time I did it with open
claw and with claw terminal but I also used Devin the the cognition product which is pretty it's
very good I also use codex but all in open claw and so what I ended up doing is programming an
agentic version of myself in social media that is it took me maybe two months to do with many
mistakes like many times the autonomous post in a Pedro because Pedro is my agent and it's
Pedro because of Peter yeah because of Peter's timer and the creator of open claw so I called him
Pedro and I and I and I had a lot of things go wrong and I had to erase a lot of polls but
but I also created many layers there's many layers like now I have two LLMs there has to be an
agreement of two different LLMs that's a croc on GPT or they in order to post something
and so now maybe 70% of what you see of my ex is autonomous and 30% so there's many more posts
and reply that they're used to be maybe I was able to do the 30% now I can do three times more
yeah and so my my life in social media is and it's a it's a mixture but I want to say something
about authorship because a lot of people say yeah that's fake that's not you that's not you
and I don't think that's true I truly think that is not true but I can understand what people
may disagree with me but I think that after you train your AI like I train my AI over with maybe
four years of my activity on ex before called Twitter I I do think it's me I mean it's me to the
point that my wife Nina who's very active on ex too can many times not tell if I posted on
or Pedro posted and you can say oh Pedro what a great impersonator or you can say that
I am an impersonator to myself I mean this is not a secret I've disclosed it but I don't think
it's like cheating in the sense that I I do think AI can find your voice and and that's and
there's an authenticity there that if you put a lot of work because at the beginning it just
didn't sound like me Pedro didn't sound like me it really was like a fake me but if you find
unit and find unit it gets to a point that it it is like you and it's only thanks to memory that I
can say I posted these are not because of my memory that I remember that I posted you are not but
not because of the content and the style of writing it resembles so much my style so I'm very
happy with the product and that's why I believe in agentic medicine expanding doctors because I
think if a doctor does what I did on ex in their practice they will get an agentic version of
themselves which is authentic well the one of the points of their mental wellness podcasts is
we want to leave people with something actionable so maybe if you don't mind maybe we could like
some of the learnings that you have we could post in our GitHub so people you know maybe some of
the LLM strategies or whatever so people could try to replicate it so I want to you know talk
about your voice I want to end with a little bit of a surprise I put for you I created a little
Varsavsky agent here locally trained on you I think it's trained on some of your podcasts I did
a couple weeks ago and now I revived it let's hopefully it works because it's my local but let's
see what we could talk to martin hello martin are you there this is what always happens in
life demos let's let's give them a fact let's give it one more time let's see there
martin that's I
well martin is now there so since we're not going to leave everybody waiting let's call Betty I
mean hopefully Betty's here hey Betty
feeling great and you
well I'm here with martin varsavsky who I think we talked a little bit as I was preparing
and yeah I just wanted to actually what I wanted to do is talk to you in a little bit in Spanish to
end this because you have a we're talking about your your Argentine accent so we can
sound in spanish and as argentina
no nothing more than a demo of how do I say the spanish you know I'm so good
so those that don't know but those are no it's like we're like who trained this mod this is
actually open a eyes a voice model and it has to have been training our gentina because it's just
an incredible accent but with that we're gonna wrap it up so martin I'll send you the agent so
you could try it I don't know why it didn't work but you know happens we're in technology thank
you so much I think this was amazing and it's an honor to have you as our first guest and as I
said we're gonna be leaving in our show notes some links so people could actually do something
actionable with all this information and hopefully we see you in the next episode thank you