North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast.

Let's get to it. Today, I'm really happy to be joined by Terry Myerson. Terry is CEO of Truveta, a healthcare data platform that provides EHR data for scientific research, drawing from a growing collective of more than 30 health systems.

Terry, welcome to the show.

Terry Myerson

Thanks for having me.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's really good to have you. To start us off, what is the most energizing part of your job that others would never guess from the outside?

Terry Myerson

I don't have a good answer for that. I think I have an answer that people would guess.

Lindsay Pedersen

What would they guess?

Terry Myerson

I mean, I think the most energizing parts of the job are collaborating with the team to build something customers love, and then working with customers to have them adopt it and get value from it. I mean, it's that sort of two-sided that it's the building of a team, the building of the product, the working with customers so that they're successful with what we've been building. And that's where the energy comes from.

I don't know. There's nothing more creative than that.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's like creative at the most basic sense of the word creative. You're actually creating, building something from scratch.

Terry Myerson

I mean, you need to build something customers, you got to meet the needs of the customer and you got to build something that hopefully surprises them in delightful ways. And it's incredible to see your customers enjoying what you've built together. And it's incredibly part of a team that's building together.

And it's pretty simple. So rewarding.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. I know that Truveta just celebrated its fifth birthday. So tell us about the beginning of Truveta during the pandemic and how you brought these health systems together remotely during that moment.

Terry Myerson

Well, the idea for Truveta came from Providence. And I sometimes even credit our chairman, Rod Hockman, for the idea of Truveta. And I became exposed to the idea through the chief information officer of Providence, BJ Moore, who I'd worked with at Microsoft.

And it was a great idea, but taking an idea and turning it into a company and turning it into a product, you know, the pandemic certainly provided plenty of inspiration and shape to that 2020 adventure, starting really in March 2020 through launching the company in September. So it was a kind of a transformation from idea to company over six months. And, you know, and then once you're a company, you need to start building a team and product and in this world of cloud early services.

I guess we started working with Pfizer in 2022. They were our first customer. And Boston Scientific was our second customer in that same time frame.

And it's just kind of one foot in front of the other. You build before you have customers. And once you have customers, you start getting feedbacks.

You're always composing together your vision of what you want to build, what you think you should build, and the thing the customer's asking for. And you keep going.

Lindsay Pedersen

I mean, March 2020, was it literally March of 2020? Like, so that was such a raw moment for us human beings. Like, it was such a disorienting time.

And so I wonder what was it like to pull this into a company during a time when your teammates, like your customers, your investors, everybody who's a human being is just feeling so vulnerable and out of sorts. What was that like?

Terry Myerson

You know, the amazing work that Pfizer was doing to build, I guess that's kind of, that's not popular to say on anymore. But the work Pfizer was doing on vaccine, I can't help with that. The work that all the caregivers at Providence or all the other health systems were doing at that time, I couldn't help with that.

But it was clear we didn't have the data that answered the most basic questions. I still remember this one particular CNN show one day where the announcer was saying infections are way up, deaths are way down. We think it's because young people are infected, but we don't really have the data to confirm that.

And I'm like, why don't we have the data to confirm that? And so you just start like wondering, why don't we have the data to confirm that? Why doesn't CNN have the data?

Why don't I have the data as a consumer? Why doesn't anyone who wants the data access that data? And it's just, you've learned a lot about regulatory constraints on the data, privacy, the fragmentation of the data, how the data is structured and stored.

And you say, oh gosh, these are hard, hard problems, but they're problems that are solvable. And so, all right, let's build a company to do it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, that's it. And so for people who don't know Truvada, it's a collective of more than 30 health systems. Now it's more than 30 health systems anyway.

But you were rallying employees and people from various organizations. Like, what was that like to kind of align people from different places around a singular mission?

Terry Myerson

Well, I mean, that early days you're recruiting a team. You know, I think the Jay Nanduri, co-founder, CTO, he was the first person I talked to about this and, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about how this could be built and what would be required to build it. And, you know, he had done quite a bit of work on financial consortiums in his previous work.

And so he had a lot of insights on the structure of a consortium. And so, yeah, you've got to recruit your team. And then in parallel, you're recruiting customers and investors.

And, you know, in terms of our health system members, we talked to them about the first and foremost, the mission of saving lives with data and how this is good for getting more intelligence about how we can take care of patients will be good for everything we do and take care of the communities. And then, you know, we had to have an economic model that would incent participation. And so we spent some time designing that.

And that was the summer of 2020 when we were all locked in our houses and couldn't go outside.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so wild.

Terry Myerson

Supposed to wear a mask at a grocery store and you're confused about should you open your Amazon boxes or not? You know, while my wife was working on all those issues and our kids were home, I couldn't get a haircut. And all those crazy days, you know, we were building a team and trying to build a consortium of health.

You know, we started with four health systems. Things need to be simple to build momentum. And so it was really, we had the saving lives with data mission and, you know, we had a hard technical problem.

I think the idea resonated with a lot of people, given what they were seeing on television and experiencing with their family. And no, we were able to build an incredible team.

Lindsay Pedersen

Tell me about saving lives with data. How did that come to be the mission?

Terry Myerson

Gosh, that's a good question. I was not part of this conversation, but our founding chief marketing officer and Jay were talking and together they came up with it, you know, and I remember running it by some people and they're like, should it be improving lives with data? Saving lives with data?

Too bold. But it really kind of stuck. And, you know, I've shared this on other forums, but, you know, the Simon Sinek podcast of Start With Why, it's something that's always, you know, on my career at Microsoft, it always pained me that he was always using Apple as the example of the company that got it right.

Lindsay Pedersen

I know, me too.

Terry Myerson

And, you know, so at Truveta, I was thinking a lot about how do we get that right? How do we get that clear answer to why we're doing what we're doing? And then we had a lot of work to do to explore what we were building and how we were going to deliver it.

But getting the why right, you know, it was great.

Lindsay Pedersen

Say more about like how the why, the mission and its utility in rallying everybody, its utility in kind of coalescing this group, recruiting the right people, getting it off the ground. And I love how you said like the simplicity at the beginning is really useful. How did the mission do that?

Like what was its role?

Terry Myerson

I don't have a clear answer to that. I think you do need to answer all three of those questions. Why, how, and what?

What are you selling? How do you achieve that? And why do you exist?

And, you know, where does it all go? I think it'd be incomplete to say that just saying, oh, we got a company whose mission is saving lives with data. You're like, okay, I'm in.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, yeah.

Terry Myerson

People want to know, okay, great. But what are we selling to who? And how is this going to become a great lasting company?

Lindsay Pedersen

What's the business model? Who's the audience?

Terry Myerson

You have to find what. And then once you say, oh, I'm going to have all this de-identified data available for research, then you need to answer, well, how the heck are you guys not going to work? How are you going to get that data?

And so I really think the clarity on why, how, and what, it certainly wasn't there at the beginning, but you get this progressive rendering of it, this increasing clarity over time. And, you know, the early teams on that journey with you, and you're just being inclusive and transparent on all the thinking as you go along. And there's change.

And every time you have change and you sort of tack a little to the left, a little to the right, you get feedback, oh, there's change and it's uncomfortable. But I mean, you just got to keep going.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's interesting because you mentioned the Simon Sinek, start with why, start with that overarching motive, which it's like kind of hard to argue with that. There's something inherently, that's what a why is. It is motivating.

And at the same time, the what and the how does matter too. So far be it for me to disagree with Simon Sinek, but I resonate a lot with a little bit closer to the ground of what you just said of, yeah, but what are we building? And what's the thing that enables that why to happen?

That's a little more concrete.

Terry Myerson

You need all three. I've been part of teams and organizations that have a lot of clarity on what's being sold and it may even be very profitable to sell it, but why do the next version? Why do more?

Why not just rest on our laurels? Is the mission complete? And I think you just got to really pursue clarity in all three of these things to have a great company, a great plan to know what next step to take.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. I love that it's all three because there could be a tendency to be too much in the what or too much in the how without the why. And it sort of keeps you honest to know that there's three.

Terry Myerson

I mean, you can see being an AI company, I'm making this up as hypothetical, but you're not exactly sure what you're delivering. You may have an amazing algorithm, an amazing process to do something, but you need to go create something that customers value and meet their needs. And then over time, I think you really need to understand why you're doing all this.

Why are you making these sacrifices today to achieve something tomorrow? So I don't know, Simon's a smart guy. I think he's got a good framework there.

Lindsay Pedersen

Now that you're five years in, what's it like at Truveta? What is the culture like? How do people talk about what it's like to be part of Truveta?

Terry Myerson

I think it's a better question for other people inside the company. I mean, for me, I, we certainly have not achieved our potential. And I, the thing that I, you know, really think a lot about is how do we achieve that potential?

I mean, I think we've built a good company together. It's definitely a work in progress on many fronts, all fronts. But even in the places where we could say, oh, we've been successful or we've done something really good here, we definitely haven't even scratched the surface of our potential.

And, you know, it's a little daunting to say, oh, we're five years in and we haven't even scratched the surface. So what, we got 10 years to go? I mean, this is a large number of years.

You know, when you start a company, I don't think you know, I don't think you completely have thought through how many years you're thinking about. But, you know, it does not feel half done.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. Wow. And I know you were not in healthcare before this.

So what's it like kind of this deep into your career to start in a new realm like Truveta coming from Microsoft, for example?

Terry Myerson

It's interesting. I mean, I'm learning every day. It definitely is a deep, deep area.

I mean, it's just endless learning on the medicine and or the science. And fortunately, I've just got great colleagues that are experts in some of these subject areas. But I find it fascinating and I have so much to learn.

Lindsay Pedersen

What's it been like being on a learning curve when you probably weren't on a learning curve of this nature anyway in your previous roles?

Terry Myerson

Well, there were times in my career I've been on steep learning curves. And, you know, I think perhaps looking back when I did transition out of Microsoft, I was off of one of those learning curves. But really that was inside my head because Microsoft was going through an insane learning curve about the cloud and everything else.

And it was just, I was focused on the clients and that was me, not the organization. And so I think so many of these, the opportunity to learn, I think is amongst all of us every day, but our various individual headspaces can get us into various outlooks and positions. But I certainly, I look back at my career, several times in my career, I had very steep learning curves.

Which I've loved and enjoyed. And then there's times where that curve has flattened out. And, you know, what causes your little game inside your head to tilt back into the right outlook and the right mindset and the right position?

You know, being a father, you know, you're coaching your kids. It's the same thing. How do you get into the right phase, the right position, take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of you?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Yeah, it's rewarding. Okay, so you're five years in, Truveta is no longer a startup.

I don't know at what point you say it's not a startup anymore, but it's like, this is happening. What's a tension that you're learning to embrace rather than resolve? Like what, now that you're leading a company that is way off the ground, like what do you let go of?

What do you decide? Either we're not going to do that or I'm going to embrace that whole.

Terry Myerson

I think you're always focused on your team, your immediate team, your extended team. Do you have the right culture, broadly speaking, everything from compensation, benefits, office, no office, meeting, off sites. Oh gosh.

I mean, I, you know, how we, you know, I think the behaviors that reinforce our values, am I living them or are others living them? How do we hold each other accountable? You spend time on that, whether you're leading a 10,000 person team or a white person team.

I think the product that we sell, what it is, and then how we make it better in the short-term and long-term. I think your focus on that, whether you're 20 people or 10,000 people, honestly, you're focused on your investors, whether you got four or 30. It's surprising how similar it is from being a startup of a few or a startup of a few hundred or a division of Microsoft.

There's a lot more in common than you get.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. Like there's not a dichotomy here. Like you're leading a team, you're leading an organization.

It could be a small one. It could be a big one. It could be inside a corporation that's publicly traded.

It could be a venture backed. But in all of these cases, you're leading a set of human beings and trying to create a product for a set of human beings.

Terry Myerson

You got people and you got product, you got customers and everyone has needs. And how do you try and fulfill everyone's needs? Balancing your fixed resource pool.

And that's the fun and the challenge of building a business.

Lindsay Pedersen

What are you having the most fun with right now? Like right in this season when we're talking and slightly toward the end of 2025, what are you saying?

Terry Myerson

I'm going to be sorry, I'm going to be redundant. I mean, honestly, it's there's all kinds of little things in our offering that, you know, improve our data, improve our analytics, improve the insights. That's, you know, it's so amazing to enable.

It's so amazing to see customers adopt them, you know, whether that be in cancer or GLP-1s or medical devices. You know, we just had a big announcement of a bunch of stuff we're doing in the medical device space. It's all very, you know, rewarding in the sense that I love the craftsmanship that team puts into the product and the marketing we released.

I love hearing customers say, this is great, but I wish it did three other things. And, you know, I have fun. That's what I have fun with.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Well, and I hear like a really deep value around curiosity and learning, like it's just if you're learning and you're growing and that it's inherently exciting and gratifying.

Terry Myerson

I think so. For me, though, it's learning through immersing myself in it. You know, it's not learning by taking a course or learning by a book.

At least for me, it's immersing by, OK, let's go do that. And then you learn a lot of stuff you don't know how to do. There's a lot of stuff you don't know how to do.

And then you you just find teammates that know how to do each piece and you compose together a team and then you put together something and then you get feedback on it and you just keep going.

Lindsay Pedersen

It happens in the doing and the immersion, not just in your cerebral cortex, like it's happening with your whole self.

Terry Myerson

I think everyone learns differently, but at least the, you know, I get recommended a lot of books that I read the first few chapters of. And then it kind of like I have a Kindle library of unfinished books that probably at top beats anybody.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Yeah. Because you want to be in there with your hands crafting.

And a really great book.

Terry Myerson

I'm in. I'm in. But, you know, I think a certain amount of time of the day and I just love the building process.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Anything I should have asked you about Truveta that hasn't come up yet that you wanted to talk about that I should have prompted?

Terry Myerson

No, I mean, I'm here for your audience. And so what questions your audience would have for me, I guess I would say, I mean, we're trying to build a really unprecedented data set that's never existed before. That's complete, up to date to the day.

You know, it's all de-identified, but think about yourself in the next pandemic. Any question you would have about anything going on across the United States, being able to immediately get a, you know, fact-based data driven answer. That's what we're inspired by and still a work in progress, but we're getting there.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. Well, thank you. I, I have like five or so rapid fire questions to end us with.

Are you game?

Terry Myerson

Sure. Why not?

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay.

Terry Myerson

I guess it all depends what they are, but I'll go for the ride.

Lindsay Pedersen

You could, yeah, you could always opt to skip. What is your favorite place to travel?

Terry Myerson

Oh gosh. Hawaii's beautiful. The mountains are beautiful.

And I think I would just, those are the two, you know, I think Seattle's beautiful when summer, Seattle's not so beautiful in October and we're kind of getting into that October in Seattle, but the mountains and the ocean are both beautiful and it's hard for me to pick one of them.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Well, you could maybe, I mean, Hawaii has both.

Terry Myerson

That's true.

Lindsay Pedersen

Maybe that's why you picked Hawaii.

Terry Myerson

I think about Hawaii being closer to the shore more so than the North.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Depending. Okay.

What is your favorite kind of ice cream?

Terry Myerson

Shop at peanut butter.

Lindsay Pedersen

Ooh, any particular brand?

Terry Myerson

Baskin Robbins is coming to mind, but I haven't been to Baskin Robbins in a long time, but Baskin Robbins had a really good chunk of peanut butter last time I was there.

Lindsay Pedersen

We got to bring, we got to bring that back. Used to be ubiquitous. Okay.

Your favorite way to spend the Monday of a three-day weekend?

Terry Myerson

Well, I just became an empty nester a week ago, so I don't know the answer to that anymore. I mean, it was kind of when the kids were younger, there was an answer that.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. You're about to fight.

Terry Myerson

Now the kids are all gone. I don't know the right answer. I don't know what's.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. It's like a, it's the very beginning of a new chapter. You'll learn.

Terry Myerson

It's definitely the very beginning of something, maybe a new chapter, but it is a, that's a quieter house.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Your favorite life hack or productivity hack?

Terry Myerson

You know, the thought that comes to mind, that's not a straightforward answer is this whole work from home thing is very interesting. I don't think it's going anywhere. And it does create challenges though.

How do you create team when people don't have that, you know, in-person connection? So I don't know if that's a life hack, but, or in the context of this, I feel like. I think it kind of is.

I'm at home. I think you're at home. Yeah.

And, you know, we're having this five years ago, we would have driven somewhere into a, you know, room that was dedicated to broadcast or something. And so I think being able to work from home is a big life hack, but at the same time, having sufficient social interaction and having sufficient for your own mental health and the team's integrity, the sense of team. I don't think we've solved that.

I don't know what the right ratio is and not the right amount to invest in that is, but there's definitely a life hack in there.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's an unlock. It presents new things that need to be wrestled with as well. Okay.

And last of my rapid fire questions is a memorable splurge purchase that you've made.

Terry Myerson

I'll give you the thing that comes to mind. I was downtown Seattle last week and I just drove straight into a parking garage and I paid for the parking. And back in the day, I used to drive around for an hour to find a free parking spot.

Oh my God. I tell you, every time I pay for parking now and the parking's not cheap, I'm like, that was a luxury item I just paid for.

Lindsay Pedersen

I so feel that.

Terry Myerson

Yeah. I was 21 or I was driving around the block for 45 minutes asking myself, gosh, if I park here pseudo illegally, am I going to get away with it? And now I just drive in there, pay the 20 bucks and pay for parking and park my car.

So that feels like a splurge, a recent splurge where.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love it. You bought yourself time. You bought yourself leisure time.

Awesome. Well, this has been great. Where can people learn more about you online and Truveta as well?

Terry Myerson

I mean, really Truveta.com and the team does a great job of maintaining a LinkedIn page for Truveta that I think has great content on the insights we're finding from the data and the data itself and the company and the culture we're trying to create at the company. And yeah, so Truveta.com or Truveta on LinkedIn would be the two places I would recommend. And we'd love to hear from everybody.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. We'll send people there. Okay.

Thanks so much, Terry. Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com. Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter. I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.