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KJ Dhaliwal sold his last company for $50 million. Most founders would take that and coast. He did the opposite - he went looking for the single hardest problem he could find, and landed on US primary healthcare.
That instinct runs through his whole story. As a kid, he translated doctor's visits for his immigrant parents and watched them fight the American health insurance maze. At 18, a sports injury left him bedridden for a month, carrying a physical binder of his own medical records from specialist to specialist. The seed was planted then: there has to be a way to put all of this in one place and give a person real agency over their health.
Years later - after building Dil Mil, the mobile-first dating app for the South Asian diaspora that helped millions find love, scaling the parent company past $500M in revenue, and prepping an IPO that Covid ultimately killed - he started Lotus AI: a free, AI-powered primary care experience that keeps a real doctor in the loop, aggregates the health data trapped in hospital silos, and aligns its incentives entirely with the patient.
KJ sits down with Ravi Ravulaparthi and Brendan Marshall for a wide-ranging conversation on building across two very different industries, why "you only get 2 or 3 big swings in life," and the counterintuitive economics of giving a healthcare product away for free.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) The $50M exit and the hardest problem
(01:11) Access for the excluded
(01:42) Translating doctor visits as a kid
(03:27) Why he picked the hardest problem
(05:40) You only get 2 or 3 big swings
(06:18) Punjabi roots and naming Dil Mil
(08:12) I was never employable
(09:04) From selling gum to eBay power seller
(11:36) Dil Mil: team, capital, moving to SF
(14:01) Why timing makes or breaks a company
(16:19) Starting vs selling a business
(17:56) A cold LinkedIn message, then an exit
(21:05) Building Lotus AI: what carries over
(23:35) A $5T market bigger than India's GDP
(25:32) The three-party problem in healthcare
(27:28) Pitching a free product to investors
(31:37) Keeping the doctor in the loop
(33:06) Uber today, Waymo tomorrow
(35:55) Patient agency and health data
(40:12) Choosing Kleiner Perkins and CRV
(44:20) Don't pick the wrong investor
(46:57) Building an AI-native team
(49:52) Why code is no longer the hard part
(52:47) Aligning doctors and engineers
(54:58) From fear of failure to fear of success
(57:00) Why he walked away from coasting
ABOUT THE GUEST
KJ Dhaliwal is Founder and CEO of Lotus AI, building free, world-class primary care powered by AI and real clinicians. Born in Punjab and raised in New York, he previously founded and sold Dil Mil, the leading dating app for the South Asian diaspora. He is a Y Combinator alum. Lotus AI is backed by Kleiner Perkins and CRV.
X: https://x.com/kjdhaliwal
Lotus AI: https://lotus.ai
ABOUT THE CATAPULT CODE
A podcast for builders navigating the turbulence between current traction and the next orbit. From the Indus Valley to Silicon Valley - founders and operators who have built enduring companies in India and the US.
Hosted by Ravi Ravulaparthi (Co-founder & CEO, Qapita) and Brendan Marshall (serial founder, investor and operator in Silicon Valley).
ABOUT QAPITA
Qapita is a global private markets platform for equity management, fund administration and liquidity - from cap tables and ESOPs to valuations, all on one audit-ready platform.
Learn more at https://www.qapita.com
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