Fired by Elon, Meta & Wendy’s, Now Raising Millions for Hello Patient
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this compelling episode of Sorcery, serial entrepreneur Alex Cohen shares his remarkable journey from being hilariously fired from eleven companies to building Hello Patient, an AI-powered conversational platform for healthcare practices. Cohen reveals how his viral Twitter presence (01:00) became his superpower in Silicon Valley, leading to a $22.5 million Series A round and partnerships with major healthcare providers. The conversation delves deep into the technical challenges of deploying AI agents in regulated industries, the evolving healthcare landscape, and Cohen's unconventional path to success through strategic shit-posting and authentic storytelling (14:07).
Speakers
Alex Cohen
Founder and CEO of Hello Patient, serial entrepreneur who raised $22.5M Series A from Scale Venture Partners. Previously VP of Product at Carbon Health, where he built patient engagement systems for healthcare clinics. Known for viral Twitter presence (230K followers) and satirical parody launch videos that generate massive engagement for company milestones.
Molly (Host)
Host of Sorcery podcast, conducting in-depth interviews with ambitious tech founders and industry leaders. Focuses on extracting insights from successful entrepreneurs about fundraising, company building, and navigating Silicon Valley's competitive landscape.
Key Takeaways
Turn Setbacks Into Strategic Assets
Alex Cohen was fired from 11 companies—not because he was incompetent, but because each firing became content gold. When CrowdStrike fired him for "taking down the Internet" by pulling the wrong server plugs, he turned that disaster into viral content that built his personal brand. (06:28) Every professional setback contains narrative potential that can differentiate you from sanitized corporate climbers.
Build Distribution Before You Build Product
With 230,000 Twitter followers generating 5,000-10,000 likes per "banger" post, Alex leveraged social presence into investor access and customer acquisition. His parody launch videos aren't just marketing—they're proof of storytelling ability that translates directly to fundraising and sales effectiveness. (19:02) Your professional network is only as strong as your ability to reach it at scale.
Dominate the Administrative Layer Before Clinical
Hello Patient exclusively targets patient-facing communications—phone calls, texts, appointment booking—rather than clinical decision-making. This strategy sidesteps regulatory complexity while capturing massive value in the 80% answer rate improvement space. (29:22) In regulated industries, own the workflow layer that doesn't require licenses but still creates measurable ROI.
Master the POC-to-Close Conversion
Their sales process: initial call → demo → custom-built proof of concept using scraped website data → 70% functional agent behind a phone number for immediate testing. The final 30% involves complex practice management integrations and triaging workflows. (24:45) Show, don't tell—but make your "show" so realistic that saying no becomes irrational.
Optimize Your Biological Operating System
TRT, peptides, and performance tracking aren't vanity—they're professional infrastructure. Alex credits testosterone optimization with finally seeing gym results after years of effort, while CJC-1295 and BPC-157 accelerate recovery and injury healing. (42:18) Your cognitive and physical performance ceiling directly impacts your career ceiling; treat your biology like mission-critical hardware.
Statistics & Facts
- ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users, expanding the comfort window for healthcare providers to experiment with AI patient interactions (09:12)
- A 30% missed call rate in healthcare clinics means practices are losing significant free patient volume coming to them (26:27)
- Alex built conversational AI for healthcare practices that now handle tens of thousands of conversations per day, with a goal to scale to millions (30:21)
