Bee (Belinda) Murray: Hello and welcome to the B4Mus Flow-Driven CEO and VC podcast where we are reshaping life, leadership and business as well as investing from the inside out. Welcome to the show, Adam.
Adam Bauer: Hello, glad to be here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, nice to have you Adam. How is life in Dallas, Texas right now? It's Monday. I think you said Monday evening around 6pm. How did you have a nice weekend? How's the start of your week going?
Adam Bauer: Had a lovely weekend. It's Mother's Day or Mums Day. I don't know what you say down there yesterday. So a little celebration with the family and this is what I would call a marvelous Monday. know, nine hours of phone calls. Everything gets compressed at the front end of the week, but things are fun. I'm not traveling. I'm home for a couple of days, so that's nice. And it's getting to be up in the high 80s now. I'm not quite sure. I never figured out the Celsius conversion, but Getting to be warm here in Texas at this time of year, so everything is pretty good.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, you've got like, you've almost got the summer glow going on. We're moving into winter here. I love that you called it Marvelous Monday. And yes, we had Mother's Day yesterday. I call it Mums Day. So not yesterday on Sunday, I think pretty much everyone in the world had Mother's Day and it's a beautiful day.
Adam Bauer: Yeah. They should,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: It's a beautiful day to celebrate actually. So yeah, it's a very special day. So let's get on into it. I want to really dive into innovation change and what you're seeing specifically in healthcare as well. So you're the managing partner and I'm going to get this. I'm going let you, can you say you're the managing partner of Drumroll?
Adam Bauer: is something. Conducis Capital Partners.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Caduceus Capital Partners, because I nearly said it the other way. I was like, I'm just going to let you say it. And then once you say it, I'll remember it. Because I would have said it the other way that is not the right way. Caduceus Capital Partners as a managing partner. And you work at the intersection of healthcare, innovation, capital and access, focused on the challenge of moving meaningful technology into systems that are often slow to change. As managing partner at
Adam Bauer: Got it. Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Caduceus Capital Planners, your work focuses on identifying founders and companies capable of improving healthcare outcomes, particularly in areas where innovation has historically struggled to reach underserved communities and overlooked patient populations. Your perspective is grounded in a broader tension that exists across healthcare and venture alike.
Adam Bauer: Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: that breakthrough ideas alone are not enough. Real impact depends on whether systems, incentives and people are capable of supporting change once innovation leaves the lab and enters the real world. And I think that's something I really want to chat with you about in terms of the supporting change once innovation leaves the lab and enters the real world. Because I've heard there has been quite that at times disconnect and we will come back to that. Across fundraising, growth strategy and healthcare focused investment. Can you hear the background noise?
Adam Bauer: I'm not hearing any background noise or echo on my side.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: hearing some serious echo noise. I'm just going to check one thing. just yeah it's a bit going on so we'll just see if that changes things. Sorry audience and listeners out there and I should have said a big hi and hello that's better I think I had must have had a few things open.
Adam Bauer: things better.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Across fundraising, growth strategy and healthcare focused investment, your work reflects a belief that capital should not just accelerate technology, it should help remove the friction that prevents meaningful solutions from reaching the people who need them most. And when you booked in for the podcast and I asked you what's one unique insight when it comes to life, business and investing, you said helping bring the best of innovation to market faster, particularly for underserved segments of healthcare. I'm to hand it over to you to tell us a bit about your journey.
Adam Bauer: Well, thank you for the introduction. First of all, it's definitely an A tier intro. I'll have to steal parts of that maybe for future use myself, but.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'll send it through to you. It's a gift from me to you, Adam. I'm sharing my gift of writing people's identity because I think it's so important and to celebrate it.
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Well, I appreciate it and well done. thank you again. Well, my journey to get to this point was largely a health technology consulting career or entirely, I guess, for that matter. And much like a lot of my partners at Caduceus, we came out of the last 20 or 30 years of health technology transformation. I myself collected some common business cards, Deloitte, Ernst & Young. I worked for a company called Optum, which is very large, very large. health services provider here in the States, a little bit globally as well, big names in technology transformation and electronic health records, even paper to electronic, kind of the tail end of that conversion, earlier on in my career, front office, back office, kind of you name it. So across a lot of large global capability firms, like I named, across about 20 years in my case, just hauling a suitcase around the country from hospital to hospital, just, you know, acquired a little bit of a taste for everything in healthcare. And then my partners in a similar way, I'm actually kind of the junior person around the shop still in many ways. And my mentors actually had been my entry point to venture capital and getting into this world for the last several years and then now full time. But basically, you know, spent a couple of decades in health tech and learned everything I know from that and through some key relationships and folks that I really wanted to spend more time with got involved in Caduceus in around 2020 when that was started. And Caduceus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm. So we raise money, we raise funds, we invest those funds and we try to help those companies grow and produce a successful exit and return for our investors. We have a few other businesses as well under that Caduceus umbrella. One is called Caduzza's Launch, which is an accelerator program for very early, like pre-seed companies. We have a company called Caduzza's Talent, which is essentially an AI-powered recruiting and sourcing engine. And we use that internally. We also kind of sell that as a service externally. And then we have Caduzza's Advisory, which kind of my full-time responsibility. The managing partner title is just common across everybody, but we all have a role to play or kind of, know, stay in our lane, if you will. And advisory is where I mostly focus at this point in time. Advisory is essentially a matchmaker between innovation landscapes or startup companies and emerging technology and the healthcare provider world. And we help the providers essentially identify and put to use some of these emerging tools that are going to have an impact on their bottom line, know, cost reduction, revenue growth solutions, but heavily leveraging innovation and AI to do things in a different way than they've been done before. So all that put together is a pretty full plates and I've got a hand in everything I just talked about except talent, not quite so much. But yeah, we got here again through writing a consulting career into chapter two for me essentially at this point and doing it with some friends and colleagues that I really enjoy. And I think the last thing I'll say is that we're, I think a very unique group of investors and that we are all from a consulting or operating background.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: What's that to say?
Adam Bauer: So we understand the problems in healthcare really intimately. We understand what works, what doesn't work, what's been tried before, what actually is a novel effective solution. And so we can place our bets more effectively because we have that background. We can also work with our portfolio companies effectively, not really as a private equity, like take the wheel away from you style and tell you what to do and how to do it. But really more is like a hand on the wheel with you. So our founders, we want them to benefit from our experience, our network, our advice. I guess all predicated on having done this stuff in the market for 10 or 20 or 30 plus years in some cases. And so that we kind of bring that approach to our style as investors as well. It's very different from a, you know, just kind of a spreadsheet based spray and pray. You you write a hundred checks and hope that 10 of them do something for you. that's unique to us as well.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so it's like I got a number of questions. The first thing that's popping up for me though is intentional. It sounds like everything that you do and your partners is very intentional. It's not, you know, like you said, spray and play and it's there's almost like a conscious piece for me and I keep talking about this conscious capital piece. How important
Adam Bauer: It is my life. I'm assuming that I'm being looked at as something skeptical.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: intention as such like intention being so intentional in terms of what you guys are doing especially within the health care space you know underserved you know people you know also not just from a patient perspective also from a founder you know like it sounds like you do you even called out matchmaking you're a matchmaker everything's done almost with care
Adam Bauer: Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: and then you're within the healthcare sector, if that makes sense.
Adam Bauer: I mean, there is certainly a method to the madness, I guess, is a high level way to think about it. But yeah, you this is definitely not a there's a dichotomy where, you know, investing is risky, right? And you have to, you know, caveat everything like you could lose your money, you know, the returns are not guaranteed. And the way that we've tried to balance that is probably, you know, through very focused intentionality or
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thanks.
Adam Bauer: of structured choices that we make or decisions that we make. And really, it's all about mitigating that risk. So yes, we are investing in early stage companies. Many companies that get started fail, they just don't make it. And we want to do what we can to pick good ones. And that goes back to understanding the industry, the needs, and the solutions that cross our radar every day. We see a couple hundred deals a month and just even in cold outreach. let alone through our network or other ways that we get deal flow. So being really, really thoughtful and choosy in the investments we choose to consider even let alone make. And then also how we can work with those founders to guide them on the best path. And I guess I would say the intersection with underserved populations, patients in greatest need, that's just almost a really fortunate happenstance in that a lot of the real impact and real need in healthcare, at least in the US. We probably don't have time to get into the nationalized healthcare versus commercial model rabbit hole, but there is so much potential in rural communities and populations that haven't been reached historically or solutions for Medicaid, which is basically a government safety net payment program.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'm sorry.
Adam Bauer: and millions and millions, tens of millions of people and more, you know, all the time that can be served through new AI, innovative means of engaging with those people and getting them into the care continuum. And that's, it's great for all reasons, right? It's certainly great from a patient experience and care perspective. It's good for the system. And, you know, last but not least, it could be good financially too for investors. So I think we consider our our deal choices and where we choose to direct our attention and our capital across all those different factors. And again, I think that the getting folks that need the care that they're getting or the kind of the technology innovation the most are finally starting to get it. And it's just a really cool point in time that we can be at that intersection of emerging tech, greatest need, where are the dollars coming in, where are the dollars going out. and just find a way to thread that needle and do it really successfully for ourselves and our investors too.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, it's really fascinating because you talk around, you know, bringing the best of innovation to the market cluster. And then you're tapping into these rural, you've then called out the rural communities and the rural piece. Like, how do you make that faster given that generally rural communities, it isn't as fast to get to them and hence why they're underserved? What do you do? Like, what are you seeing or what's being done differently to ensure
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Thank you. Perfect.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: to make it faster because innovation is such, it is moving at such a pace right now. I mean, you talk around emerging tech.
Adam Bauer: Yeah, well, I would answer that specifically one way as Caduceus Advisory. So that's the matchmaking business or function that I talked about earlier. Our role is to get in front of a health care provider. So usually a hospital or a health system or could even be a rural. We have a concept called FQHC's federally qualified health centers in the US here, which are usually more rural focused or really located, not wealthy, not able to go out and acquire all kinds of new technology on their own and write big checks. They're really just gonna exist to be an option for everybody or for those that need it. And we interface with all of those types of providers. And our job again in the middle there is to be able to say, look, we know it's overwhelming and... You see you go to a big conference, you see 5000 booths. They all kind of look the same. You get all the same spam emails that we do. They all kind of sound the same and a lot of organizations in that situation will just freeze. I kind of do nothing right. I don't know what to do or which direction to go in, so I'm just going to stand still and hope that hope that things get better, but they will not get better right. And that's another macro conversation about just the economics and the sheer math of you they do US health care system at least and. heading toward a cliff that there is no off ramp for at least at this point in time. But your question be, we want to be able to work with providers and say, look, here is a short list, right? There's a shortcut to a few things that we think are going to be really effective. And that will, again, have an impact on cost reduction, impact on revenue enhancement, impact on patient service and how many patients you can serve and where you can serve those patients. And we can
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Hmm. and
Adam Bauer: very quickly get you to a point of understanding, yes, I see how I could use this virtual registration tool, for example, to continue to operate clinics all around a three county area where we just can't hire people to sit at those desks all day. Or we can use this remote primary care, primary care in a box solution to have people actually get a physical at home wherever they live within 45 minutes at the kitchen table. They haven't seen a doctor in five years. Now they're back into the care pathway and they probably need some follow up and they might need a prescription or two. And that wouldn't have happened if not for the stuff that we can help to bring to the table and put to work. So a lot of it is just like getting the users of this technology, the providers to move, right? To do something, say, here's a thing, that thing's valuable, we're going to implement it. And it sounds simple to say, but that process just, doesn't happen. fast or cleanly almost anywhere. And so that's one role that we can play is to again, accelerate, just take the friction and lead time out of that process. And with our individual portcos too, you we can help them. Hey, you've got a great idea, the virtual primary care solution I talked about, can we help to get you in front of a whole bunch of employers or a whole bunch of payers who are big customers of that, or individual providers that want to use it as their own white label solution within their region.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Hmm.
Adam Bauer: Yes to all of the above. So we try to do what we can to, again, reduce friction and reduce lead time and just put the stuff to work because innovation in a lab is not going to have the impact that we need it to have in many ways here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Do you find it's a really interesting conversation and again, a few questions have popped up for me. Do you find that many of the founders that you're partnering with or you're dealing with as such, do they come from a research background and then they don't understand the, understands the wrong word. Like there's almost like lab and then there's commercialization and there's a reality of the real world, right?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Thanks.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I've got a couple of questions. One is, is there clearly, there's a clearly a friction around that. I hear that a bit in Australia, you know, like there's just this gap, if you like, between quite often the idea what's being put in the lab or, you know, or, you know, in the innovation hub and then bringing it to life as much. And then the other question I have is, it's such an intimate.
Adam Bauer: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: face with regards to healthcare because at the end of the day, you know, the front line is the patient and generally, you know, there's, you know, the patient is what you're, of course, that's what you're aiming to serve and make their lives better, et cetera. How many of the founders that you work with have had like a lived experience that has then warranted them developing an emerging tech piece or something that is, you know, going to change or
Adam Bauer: Thank
Bee (Belinda) Murray: transcend the healthcare space as well.
Adam Bauer: Well, I love the question, but the answer is that it's so different. We work with founders, any imaginable background or combination of skills or experience, which is frankly a fun part of the job too, is that we just get to meet and get to know and work with so many different people with our large funds. So Caduceus Capital Partners Fund 1 and Fund 2 currently, which is about to close.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yes.
Adam Bauer: We typically invest in seed stage companies. And for us, that means you are in the market. We would love to see about a million dollars in annual recurring revenue. Not always the case, but at least you've got a number of clients under your belt. You've got some revenue traction and you're ready to grow. And that's a great entry point for us because we want most of our capital to go toward growth, right? Not really tinkering with an idea and experiments back in the laboratory, but kind of pouring rocket fuel on the pad, if you will, to get these companies not just to the next level, but way over the next level. And the founders at that point have usually kind of figured it out, right? Regardless of what their background is, they understand, how do I sell this thing? How do I champion the vision and the roadmap for this? How do I run payroll? There's a lot that goes into the life of a founder. And at that point, they've largely got their arms around it, I would say.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: No.
Adam Bauer: I've kind of given you that first blush answer because we have our launch program as well, which I mentioned a little earlier, pre-seat accelerator. That's like a little garden patch where we write much smaller checks to much earlier companies. And that's a place where we will definitely see a physician who's got a great idea but doesn't know a thing about business. Or a technologist like, hey, I saw my dad struggling with this health challenge or disease.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yes. Yeah.
Adam Bauer: I don't want to think about healthcare, but I wrote this app and I think it's pretty cool. So we see a lot more variation perhaps, or maybe the founders themselves are in one particular niche in their founder journey and we're going to help them broaden that experience through the launch program, which is a lot. mean, it's highly mentor driven, it's highly specific to the founder, but there is an element of like legal 101, cap table 101, marketing 101.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Okay.
Adam Bauer: MVP 101, everything you need to know. like, know, startup founder for dummies, the accelerator program version. So anyway, we see all the different types of backgrounds as part of what makes this work unique and exciting. We just see so much cool innovation maybe from folks you wouldn't expect it from in some cases even, which is awesome. And as far as lived experience, I think every founder that we work with is definitely very passionate.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: about what they're doing. And we would say we invest in great ideas led by great people. And so we've put a lot of emphasis on a founder and the founding team. We don't like to invest in anyone we haven't had dinner with. It's kind of a little unwritten rule, but we consider the founder a lot. And it's not just about their resume or book smarts in a certain area. It's really more of holistic picture.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Bauer: Some of them certainly do have a lived experience, like a family member who struggled with substance abuse or lived with a disability or had a particular health condition or couldn't get pregnant. mean, there are all kinds of cases like that where, if not the bounder themselves, they're very close to someone or have worked in that field and feel an affinity to that work. It's hard to get really emotional, excited about revenue cycle and labor automation, but
Bee (Belinda) Murray: .
Adam Bauer: I'd say all the founders in their own way and appropriate way have a real personal passion for what they're doing. We have to see that certainly if we're going to invest with them.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, he just called something out and I was thinking about it. It's so funny how the formless conversation happens and as you're talking, I'm thinking about something and then you actually talk about it. So this ESP piece that we have going on here. You mentioned emotional and you are working in a space that can be highly emotional. And then there's obviously the commercial side of things, the business side of things. How do you and your partners know when to be more, be like where you have like a hot on sleeve more emotional than when to be more commercial, more practical because you must encounter at times and it kind of comes back to the founders, you know, when they, it's like, they think they've got this idea and they're so passionate about it and they think it's going to go gangbusters and you can already see all these potential holes in it and it needs a pivot or it needs a place.
Adam Bauer: I think we just.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: and the founder is stuck on, no, we've got to do it this way. And again, because we're playing in the healthcare space.
Adam Bauer: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: How do you handle those situations?
Adam Bauer: Yeah. Well, I think I'm smiling to myself because our senior partner or one of the co-founders, Caduceus, I think is really masterful at relationships and human engagement and human dynamic. And I have learned and still have a lot to learn from him about how to do it as well as he does. But we do run into those kind of difficult situations where you've got to steer something in totally different direction or maybe rotate an executive team. or replace the CEO. these things do happen. And just putting the human first, I think, in that kind of context is always, I've seen the best outcomes come from that type of approach. And some of it even, you you can read books on negotiation and, you know, empathy is really important.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Bauer: You know, put yourself in their shoes and what do they want? What's a win for you in this? Don't have to listen to me. Like, what are you trying to get out of the situation? What would you consider to be a good outcome? Just letting people share what's important to them and sometimes even just get things off their chest, I think, is a great leveler or equalizer. I mean, certainly part of our role is to be adults in the room, so to speak, and that's not an age thing necessarily, but just someone might need to say, hey, the math's not adding up here, or this projection is not based in reality, or we need to redo the numbers, or hey, we don't think that you're the right person to lead this company. Maybe you'd be better as a chief growth officer, Mr. CEO. You're so passionate, you're great at talking about the product, but you're not the right person to build this team and lead this to the next round. So maybe there's a change to be had there. So obviously, infinite number of ways that you can handle
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: a situation like that or any difficult situation. But I certainly think, know, human first, people first, that is the mindset that we take. And if the facts are all true and you're speaking the truth, you you can't really go wrong there. But I think there's a lot you can do to help yourself and to help other people too. If you kind of put that emotional, personal aspect at the forefront of almost any interaction, but certainly a difficult or challenging one.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I love that you put human first, especially in emerging technology and obviously a lot of automation, a lot of AI. I just think you can't underestimate human intelligence and the human piece. And I just think we need more and more of that in this fast-paced world we're in and the ability to pause to be able to assess things like you're talking about. You might find this a bit of a random question. Where did the name produces?
Adam Bauer: You back. Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: apartment, yeah, where did that come from?
Adam Bauer: Well, I might get in a little trouble. I haven't socialized this too widely yet. So the caduceus is the staff of Hermes, like the Roman messenger god, I believe. Or maybe Mercury was the Greek version. I haven't had that backwards. So it's a staff with two snakes, a winged staff with two snakes around it. And it can be seen as a symbol of medicine. Actually, the true international symbol of medicine is the staff of Asclepius, I believe, which is just a rod with one snake. So that is like what the American Medical Association uses, I believe, but they're kind of interchangeable. know that I think the US Army initially started using the caduceus as a medical symbol, and I think Caduceus Capital Partners just sounds a lot better than Asclepius Capital Partners. We're going to stick with this at this point, but meant to be the symbol of medicine. Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I love that. I've got a couple of final questions for you. What are you seeing? You talked earlier around staring at a cliff or falling off a cliff or like a really important time in healthcare. Like what are you seeing as the biggest opportunities right now and the biggest challenges as well?
Adam Bauer: Thanks you Well, I biggest challenges at the macro level, and again, I'll say this from a US perspective at least, but we're spending more than we can afford on healthcare. And we have more people who are aging into government providers, so Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare being our senior insurance option, basically the payer for folks over a certain age in the US. There are millions of baby boomers flooding into that population, and they're all gonna need healthcare, most of them want to get their hips and knees replaced. I mean, if you look at the charts of annual expenditure increasing, we just, we can't afford it. It has been unaffordable for a long time, but it's only going in that direction. And eventually, there will be some form of the system collapsing under its own weight or certainly hopefully not, but if there's a major global conflict and defense spending starts to take priority, then that money. will only be able to come from healthcare. I there are not that many big buckets in the US federal budget that dollars can move around at that level, at the trillions of dollars level. healthcare has been teetering for a long time here just economically. It's only gonna get worse if nothing changes. But I think the opportunity in there, and certainly for us and as technology investors, we think technology really is the only answer. It's the only way to start to turn the tide there where We have tremendous labor costs. Labor is usually the largest line item on any healthcare provider hospital budget. And the potential of AI to help reduce that need for just manual labor, a lot of redundant processes, fingers on keyboards, things like that. That has to be an area where if we're going to start to move that cost curve in the other direction, it's going to come from labor. And AI is going to be really the long pole in the tent that can have an impact there. And then just other, keeping people healthier and away from expensive treatments. Hospital and home, better quality of life. And I mean, we don't really get into pharmaceuticals much at all, really. Molecules, biotech, just not our backgrounds and not where we play. But there's also potential there as well, through innovation and AI also helping with innovation in those spaces to just make people healthier longer. and need less really expensive care for a larger portion of their lives. So there is a huge potential here with this really kind of catastrophic, you know, what the future looks like if nothing changes. But then we also have these really unprecedented, marvelous opportunities through tech and AI largely to actually come at this problem in a way we never have been able to before and really
Bee (Belinda) Murray: situation.
Adam Bauer: you know, meaningfully impact what it costs to deliver health care and what good care looks like and what good quality of life looks like. So it's going to be a fun, you know, next decade or so one way or the other, but we're, we're going to be optimists in that sense.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I about to say, love it. I feel like you are such an optimist. You've got this constant smile. It's not toxic positivity. It's certainly just the ability to keep bouncing forward. Marvelous, you've used the word marvelous a couple of times. This is my final question to you. And you talked around at the beginning of the show about Marvelous Monday. And you said Marvelous Monday, and yet you said...
Adam Bauer: Okay. Thanks.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you'd had a back-to-back day of meetings. But it sounds like things you have a lot going on, you travel a lot, you're obviously travelling, being a partner, family, you match-make, you're an advisor, you work with all the different founders, you hone in on healthcare and innovation and tech, etc. I've always, last, I don't know, how many years it's been now, I was advisor to Like to start your week off just full of meetings and having back to back to back to work. It doesn't set you up for success very well in terms of for the week because you're almost, you know, starting your week exhausted and then by the end of the week. So, you know, it's kind of mastering your Monday and easing your way into Monday. I'd love your thoughts on that. And then lastly, how do you, how do you ensure that you
Adam Bauer: Thank Thank
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you enable yourself to get into flow state. And what I mean by that is where you have the ability to focus, get the fresh perspectives, know, feel and perform at your best. What do you do to ensure that in this, you know, obviously in the environment you're in, yeah, how do you create that space for you?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Yeah, well, I'll answer those in reverse. Certainly health is really important to me, and I think that's probably the central pillar of my routine or, you know, the flow state or whatever you want to call it. But typically if I'm home or even I'm traveling, but certainly if I'm home, you'll be in the gym every morning. And it's actually something I've gotten. I've dragged my wife with me in the last couple of years and now she's doing the weights with me. And it's actually kind of fun. It's been it's been a fun. development in our life together and a way for us to spend a little bit more time as well. But so I guess it's grounding in that sense too. I can start every day, get a workout in, will just little time with her, talk about things, get the kid out the door. And if I start the day that way, whether I have one meeting or 15 meetings, I'm gonna feel much better throughout and at the end. And if I felt lazy and skipped the gym or just had pancakes, and what a cake for breakfast instead of something healthy. I think I can't really articulate it. I haven't really thought this through enough. I think working in healthcare, just kind of walking the walk and trying to be a healthy person and take care of myself and my family, that's important as well. again, I'm not quite sure how to translate that, but I know it's there. And then I think the Marvelous Monday's a little tongue in cheek, obviously. Yeah, things just tend, you know, everyone is ready to go on Monday and there's always a lot of calls and meetings and a lot to do. And we have weekly kickoff calls and things and weekly PMOs and sinks and it's they're long days, but satisfying. And if I, I would call it miserable Monday if I felt miserable. So maybe I'm kind of self revealing my, my, my sarcasm there at the marvelous Monday, but yeah, it's just a really busy time. Every week is busy and I think if I step back, wouldn't want to have it any other way. I can take a breath or try not to, try to take some days off of my gin and tonics or whatnot. So Monday is usually a good day to do that as well. But I can put my feet up or whatever, take a deep breath at the end of a Monday and feel like, okay, that was great. I got through a whole lot of stuff today that I needed to get through. The rest of the week maybe is downhill. I think that's another way to think about it is like.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: Yes, front loading makes for a busy day, but it also kind of gives me a sense of accomplishment. And then, you know, the got through the hard part, I can make it through Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. So I don't know, it works for me. yeah, mean, Mondays are Mondays are pretty busy around here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That's interesting. I like it. Yeah. No, I like the, I like the front reading and the way you've said it, like, you know, makes it downhill from here. So that's, that's exciting. You know, it's a good way to think about it. Adam, thank you so much for your time. How do we find out more about Caduceus Capital Partners? How do we find out more about you?
Adam Bauer: Thank Our website is certainly the best single source of information is caducus.vc. So actually all of our companies that I talked about are listed there. There's a little bit of information on each, but otherwise we're pretty active on LinkedIn, myself included. I'm sure you've got my name attached to the pod here, but we try to keep up pretty well with what's happening in our portfolio with our launch companies, just things out in the market, conferences we're going to. So LinkedIn is probably a really good source to follow us corporately and folks are welcome to follow me as well out there.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, amazing listeners. And then I guess one final passing, I guess, thought that you might have when it comes to, you you talked a little bit about AI before and obviously AI is playing a big piece in everything we're doing. For anyone out there who is a little bit like, I guess, not resistant.
Adam Bauer: Thanks Thanks
Bee (Belinda) Murray: if they're just not necessarily engaging in as much AI as they could be and playing from the innovation sense, what would be one piece of advice you would give them just to get into it?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. I mean, I think just you got to try it. Yeah, I don't know that I've met or talked with anyone who has said, you know, I really I built the agents or I did the research and I'm just I'm more uncomfortable now than I was before. I'm not going to touch this stuff again. I think it's quite the opposite where once you actually see the impact, I mean, even as just as a very quick example, we have an exercise we do for Caduceus Advisory where if we're going to talk to a new client, we'll run a value projection for them. We'll be able to say before we ever even meet with you, we're gonna pull public information, bed count, net patient revenue, number of hospitals, whatever, just the basics, and we're gonna take our top 15 solutions in our vendor network, and we're gonna estimate what we think they might be able to do for you from a value creation standpoint. That takes a long time, manually. It takes about five seconds with AI. I mean, I've just been, even recently, I've been...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's wild.
Adam Bauer: blown away with how effectively we can take a task like that and make it fast, blazing fast and really accurate and it looks great. And that's just one limited consulting business development use case. I think just a comment on AI and healthcare and folks being hesitant about like, I don't want the robot to be reading my chart or cutting me open or I think it's gonna take time for
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That's it.
Adam Bauer: folks to accept that. But if you think about the end point there, it's gonna be a great world when the Tesla robot can do knee surgery for 50 cents on anybody in their kitchen perhaps one day. again, the labor cost implication, the access to care, if someone living on a farm can have the best brain surgeon, the best heart surgeon,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: my gosh.
Adam Bauer: the best cardiologist, whatever, sitting at their kitchen table, running on a little bit of electricity at marginal cost, that's gonna be a great world of healthcare. The only way we're gonna get there is to try this a little bit at a time, and there might be two steps forward, one step back. But I think largely the goal of the industry, at least as we see it and we participate in it, is that this is a function for good, and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Bye. Yeah.
Adam Bauer: It's gonna be great when we start to really achieve some of the impact and value that's promised through these tools and AI specifically. And new things are scary and that's to be expected. But I think if we are able to actually try a little bit at a time, see the outcome, try a little bit more, whatever the use case is, whatever the context is, I really believe that folks will not be able to go back. It's like going back to a buggy once you've driven a car.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: No, I agree.
Adam Bauer: I'm again, you know, remain optimistic that that's the path we're going down. But I mean, I really think that, you know, just being kind of afraid of this AI thing without actually, you know, getting your hands on it and then trying it even in a very exploratory sense. You know, folks have to get past that, right? I think they'll be really pleased if they try to.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes back to being like in a lab. Think about it like a lab, just experimenting. It's all about experimentation, right? Like I'm experimenting a lot myself at the moment and I'm surprising myself by the day on the daily just with what I'm capable of doing. And I think that the more we get into that is exciting. Thank you so much, Adam, for coming on the show. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. It's been super insightful, super educational. Wishing you all the best and thank you for coming on the show.
Adam Bauer: My pleasure. Thanks, Bea. Be well down there. Cheers.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you, you too.
Adam Bauer: Hello, glad to be here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, nice to have you Adam. How is life in Dallas, Texas right now? It's Monday. I think you said Monday evening around 6pm. How did you have a nice weekend? How's the start of your week going?
Adam Bauer: Had a lovely weekend. It's Mother's Day or Mums Day. I don't know what you say down there yesterday. So a little celebration with the family and this is what I would call a marvelous Monday. know, nine hours of phone calls. Everything gets compressed at the front end of the week, but things are fun. I'm not traveling. I'm home for a couple of days, so that's nice. And it's getting to be up in the high 80s now. I'm not quite sure. I never figured out the Celsius conversion, but Getting to be warm here in Texas at this time of year, so everything is pretty good.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, you've got like, you've almost got the summer glow going on. We're moving into winter here. I love that you called it Marvelous Monday. And yes, we had Mother's Day yesterday. I call it Mums Day. So not yesterday on Sunday, I think pretty much everyone in the world had Mother's Day and it's a beautiful day.
Adam Bauer: Yeah. They should,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: It's a beautiful day to celebrate actually. So yeah, it's a very special day. So let's get on into it. I want to really dive into innovation change and what you're seeing specifically in healthcare as well. So you're the managing partner and I'm going to get this. I'm going let you, can you say you're the managing partner of Drumroll?
Adam Bauer: is something. Conducis Capital Partners.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Caduceus Capital Partners, because I nearly said it the other way. I was like, I'm just going to let you say it. And then once you say it, I'll remember it. Because I would have said it the other way that is not the right way. Caduceus Capital Partners as a managing partner. And you work at the intersection of healthcare, innovation, capital and access, focused on the challenge of moving meaningful technology into systems that are often slow to change. As managing partner at
Adam Bauer: Got it. Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Caduceus Capital Planners, your work focuses on identifying founders and companies capable of improving healthcare outcomes, particularly in areas where innovation has historically struggled to reach underserved communities and overlooked patient populations. Your perspective is grounded in a broader tension that exists across healthcare and venture alike.
Adam Bauer: Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: that breakthrough ideas alone are not enough. Real impact depends on whether systems, incentives and people are capable of supporting change once innovation leaves the lab and enters the real world. And I think that's something I really want to chat with you about in terms of the supporting change once innovation leaves the lab and enters the real world. Because I've heard there has been quite that at times disconnect and we will come back to that. Across fundraising, growth strategy and healthcare focused investment. Can you hear the background noise?
Adam Bauer: I'm not hearing any background noise or echo on my side.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: hearing some serious echo noise. I'm just going to check one thing. just yeah it's a bit going on so we'll just see if that changes things. Sorry audience and listeners out there and I should have said a big hi and hello that's better I think I had must have had a few things open.
Adam Bauer: things better.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Across fundraising, growth strategy and healthcare focused investment, your work reflects a belief that capital should not just accelerate technology, it should help remove the friction that prevents meaningful solutions from reaching the people who need them most. And when you booked in for the podcast and I asked you what's one unique insight when it comes to life, business and investing, you said helping bring the best of innovation to market faster, particularly for underserved segments of healthcare. I'm to hand it over to you to tell us a bit about your journey.
Adam Bauer: Well, thank you for the introduction. First of all, it's definitely an A tier intro. I'll have to steal parts of that maybe for future use myself, but.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'll send it through to you. It's a gift from me to you, Adam. I'm sharing my gift of writing people's identity because I think it's so important and to celebrate it.
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Well, I appreciate it and well done. thank you again. Well, my journey to get to this point was largely a health technology consulting career or entirely, I guess, for that matter. And much like a lot of my partners at Caduceus, we came out of the last 20 or 30 years of health technology transformation. I myself collected some common business cards, Deloitte, Ernst & Young. I worked for a company called Optum, which is very large, very large. health services provider here in the States, a little bit globally as well, big names in technology transformation and electronic health records, even paper to electronic, kind of the tail end of that conversion, earlier on in my career, front office, back office, kind of you name it. So across a lot of large global capability firms, like I named, across about 20 years in my case, just hauling a suitcase around the country from hospital to hospital, just, you know, acquired a little bit of a taste for everything in healthcare. And then my partners in a similar way, I'm actually kind of the junior person around the shop still in many ways. And my mentors actually had been my entry point to venture capital and getting into this world for the last several years and then now full time. But basically, you know, spent a couple of decades in health tech and learned everything I know from that and through some key relationships and folks that I really wanted to spend more time with got involved in Caduceus in around 2020 when that was started. And Caduceus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm. So we raise money, we raise funds, we invest those funds and we try to help those companies grow and produce a successful exit and return for our investors. We have a few other businesses as well under that Caduceus umbrella. One is called Caduzza's Launch, which is an accelerator program for very early, like pre-seed companies. We have a company called Caduzza's Talent, which is essentially an AI-powered recruiting and sourcing engine. And we use that internally. We also kind of sell that as a service externally. And then we have Caduzza's Advisory, which kind of my full-time responsibility. The managing partner title is just common across everybody, but we all have a role to play or kind of, know, stay in our lane, if you will. And advisory is where I mostly focus at this point in time. Advisory is essentially a matchmaker between innovation landscapes or startup companies and emerging technology and the healthcare provider world. And we help the providers essentially identify and put to use some of these emerging tools that are going to have an impact on their bottom line, know, cost reduction, revenue growth solutions, but heavily leveraging innovation and AI to do things in a different way than they've been done before. So all that put together is a pretty full plates and I've got a hand in everything I just talked about except talent, not quite so much. But yeah, we got here again through writing a consulting career into chapter two for me essentially at this point and doing it with some friends and colleagues that I really enjoy. And I think the last thing I'll say is that we're, I think a very unique group of investors and that we are all from a consulting or operating background.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: What's that to say?
Adam Bauer: So we understand the problems in healthcare really intimately. We understand what works, what doesn't work, what's been tried before, what actually is a novel effective solution. And so we can place our bets more effectively because we have that background. We can also work with our portfolio companies effectively, not really as a private equity, like take the wheel away from you style and tell you what to do and how to do it. But really more is like a hand on the wheel with you. So our founders, we want them to benefit from our experience, our network, our advice. I guess all predicated on having done this stuff in the market for 10 or 20 or 30 plus years in some cases. And so that we kind of bring that approach to our style as investors as well. It's very different from a, you know, just kind of a spreadsheet based spray and pray. You you write a hundred checks and hope that 10 of them do something for you. that's unique to us as well.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so it's like I got a number of questions. The first thing that's popping up for me though is intentional. It sounds like everything that you do and your partners is very intentional. It's not, you know, like you said, spray and play and it's there's almost like a conscious piece for me and I keep talking about this conscious capital piece. How important
Adam Bauer: It is my life. I'm assuming that I'm being looked at as something skeptical.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: intention as such like intention being so intentional in terms of what you guys are doing especially within the health care space you know underserved you know people you know also not just from a patient perspective also from a founder you know like it sounds like you do you even called out matchmaking you're a matchmaker everything's done almost with care
Adam Bauer: Thank you.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: and then you're within the healthcare sector, if that makes sense.
Adam Bauer: I mean, there is certainly a method to the madness, I guess, is a high level way to think about it. But yeah, you this is definitely not a there's a dichotomy where, you know, investing is risky, right? And you have to, you know, caveat everything like you could lose your money, you know, the returns are not guaranteed. And the way that we've tried to balance that is probably, you know, through very focused intentionality or
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thanks.
Adam Bauer: of structured choices that we make or decisions that we make. And really, it's all about mitigating that risk. So yes, we are investing in early stage companies. Many companies that get started fail, they just don't make it. And we want to do what we can to pick good ones. And that goes back to understanding the industry, the needs, and the solutions that cross our radar every day. We see a couple hundred deals a month and just even in cold outreach. let alone through our network or other ways that we get deal flow. So being really, really thoughtful and choosy in the investments we choose to consider even let alone make. And then also how we can work with those founders to guide them on the best path. And I guess I would say the intersection with underserved populations, patients in greatest need, that's just almost a really fortunate happenstance in that a lot of the real impact and real need in healthcare, at least in the US. We probably don't have time to get into the nationalized healthcare versus commercial model rabbit hole, but there is so much potential in rural communities and populations that haven't been reached historically or solutions for Medicaid, which is basically a government safety net payment program.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I'm sorry.
Adam Bauer: and millions and millions, tens of millions of people and more, you know, all the time that can be served through new AI, innovative means of engaging with those people and getting them into the care continuum. And that's, it's great for all reasons, right? It's certainly great from a patient experience and care perspective. It's good for the system. And, you know, last but not least, it could be good financially too for investors. So I think we consider our our deal choices and where we choose to direct our attention and our capital across all those different factors. And again, I think that the getting folks that need the care that they're getting or the kind of the technology innovation the most are finally starting to get it. And it's just a really cool point in time that we can be at that intersection of emerging tech, greatest need, where are the dollars coming in, where are the dollars going out. and just find a way to thread that needle and do it really successfully for ourselves and our investors too.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, it's really fascinating because you talk around, you know, bringing the best of innovation to the market cluster. And then you're tapping into these rural, you've then called out the rural communities and the rural piece. Like, how do you make that faster given that generally rural communities, it isn't as fast to get to them and hence why they're underserved? What do you do? Like, what are you seeing or what's being done differently to ensure
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Thank you. Perfect.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: to make it faster because innovation is such, it is moving at such a pace right now. I mean, you talk around emerging tech.
Adam Bauer: Yeah, well, I would answer that specifically one way as Caduceus Advisory. So that's the matchmaking business or function that I talked about earlier. Our role is to get in front of a health care provider. So usually a hospital or a health system or could even be a rural. We have a concept called FQHC's federally qualified health centers in the US here, which are usually more rural focused or really located, not wealthy, not able to go out and acquire all kinds of new technology on their own and write big checks. They're really just gonna exist to be an option for everybody or for those that need it. And we interface with all of those types of providers. And our job again in the middle there is to be able to say, look, we know it's overwhelming and... You see you go to a big conference, you see 5000 booths. They all kind of look the same. You get all the same spam emails that we do. They all kind of sound the same and a lot of organizations in that situation will just freeze. I kind of do nothing right. I don't know what to do or which direction to go in, so I'm just going to stand still and hope that hope that things get better, but they will not get better right. And that's another macro conversation about just the economics and the sheer math of you they do US health care system at least and. heading toward a cliff that there is no off ramp for at least at this point in time. But your question be, we want to be able to work with providers and say, look, here is a short list, right? There's a shortcut to a few things that we think are going to be really effective. And that will, again, have an impact on cost reduction, impact on revenue enhancement, impact on patient service and how many patients you can serve and where you can serve those patients. And we can
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Hmm. and
Adam Bauer: very quickly get you to a point of understanding, yes, I see how I could use this virtual registration tool, for example, to continue to operate clinics all around a three county area where we just can't hire people to sit at those desks all day. Or we can use this remote primary care, primary care in a box solution to have people actually get a physical at home wherever they live within 45 minutes at the kitchen table. They haven't seen a doctor in five years. Now they're back into the care pathway and they probably need some follow up and they might need a prescription or two. And that wouldn't have happened if not for the stuff that we can help to bring to the table and put to work. So a lot of it is just like getting the users of this technology, the providers to move, right? To do something, say, here's a thing, that thing's valuable, we're going to implement it. And it sounds simple to say, but that process just, doesn't happen. fast or cleanly almost anywhere. And so that's one role that we can play is to again, accelerate, just take the friction and lead time out of that process. And with our individual portcos too, you we can help them. Hey, you've got a great idea, the virtual primary care solution I talked about, can we help to get you in front of a whole bunch of employers or a whole bunch of payers who are big customers of that, or individual providers that want to use it as their own white label solution within their region.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Hmm.
Adam Bauer: Yes to all of the above. So we try to do what we can to, again, reduce friction and reduce lead time and just put the stuff to work because innovation in a lab is not going to have the impact that we need it to have in many ways here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Do you find it's a really interesting conversation and again, a few questions have popped up for me. Do you find that many of the founders that you're partnering with or you're dealing with as such, do they come from a research background and then they don't understand the, understands the wrong word. Like there's almost like lab and then there's commercialization and there's a reality of the real world, right?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Thanks.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I've got a couple of questions. One is, is there clearly, there's a clearly a friction around that. I hear that a bit in Australia, you know, like there's just this gap, if you like, between quite often the idea what's being put in the lab or, you know, or, you know, in the innovation hub and then bringing it to life as much. And then the other question I have is, it's such an intimate.
Adam Bauer: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: face with regards to healthcare because at the end of the day, you know, the front line is the patient and generally, you know, there's, you know, the patient is what you're, of course, that's what you're aiming to serve and make their lives better, et cetera. How many of the founders that you work with have had like a lived experience that has then warranted them developing an emerging tech piece or something that is, you know, going to change or
Adam Bauer: Thank
Bee (Belinda) Murray: transcend the healthcare space as well.
Adam Bauer: Well, I love the question, but the answer is that it's so different. We work with founders, any imaginable background or combination of skills or experience, which is frankly a fun part of the job too, is that we just get to meet and get to know and work with so many different people with our large funds. So Caduceus Capital Partners Fund 1 and Fund 2 currently, which is about to close.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yes.
Adam Bauer: We typically invest in seed stage companies. And for us, that means you are in the market. We would love to see about a million dollars in annual recurring revenue. Not always the case, but at least you've got a number of clients under your belt. You've got some revenue traction and you're ready to grow. And that's a great entry point for us because we want most of our capital to go toward growth, right? Not really tinkering with an idea and experiments back in the laboratory, but kind of pouring rocket fuel on the pad, if you will, to get these companies not just to the next level, but way over the next level. And the founders at that point have usually kind of figured it out, right? Regardless of what their background is, they understand, how do I sell this thing? How do I champion the vision and the roadmap for this? How do I run payroll? There's a lot that goes into the life of a founder. And at that point, they've largely got their arms around it, I would say.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: No.
Adam Bauer: I've kind of given you that first blush answer because we have our launch program as well, which I mentioned a little earlier, pre-seat accelerator. That's like a little garden patch where we write much smaller checks to much earlier companies. And that's a place where we will definitely see a physician who's got a great idea but doesn't know a thing about business. Or a technologist like, hey, I saw my dad struggling with this health challenge or disease.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yes. Yeah.
Adam Bauer: I don't want to think about healthcare, but I wrote this app and I think it's pretty cool. So we see a lot more variation perhaps, or maybe the founders themselves are in one particular niche in their founder journey and we're going to help them broaden that experience through the launch program, which is a lot. mean, it's highly mentor driven, it's highly specific to the founder, but there is an element of like legal 101, cap table 101, marketing 101.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Okay.
Adam Bauer: MVP 101, everything you need to know. like, know, startup founder for dummies, the accelerator program version. So anyway, we see all the different types of backgrounds as part of what makes this work unique and exciting. We just see so much cool innovation maybe from folks you wouldn't expect it from in some cases even, which is awesome. And as far as lived experience, I think every founder that we work with is definitely very passionate.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: about what they're doing. And we would say we invest in great ideas led by great people. And so we've put a lot of emphasis on a founder and the founding team. We don't like to invest in anyone we haven't had dinner with. It's kind of a little unwritten rule, but we consider the founder a lot. And it's not just about their resume or book smarts in a certain area. It's really more of holistic picture.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Bauer: Some of them certainly do have a lived experience, like a family member who struggled with substance abuse or lived with a disability or had a particular health condition or couldn't get pregnant. mean, there are all kinds of cases like that where, if not the bounder themselves, they're very close to someone or have worked in that field and feel an affinity to that work. It's hard to get really emotional, excited about revenue cycle and labor automation, but
Bee (Belinda) Murray: .
Adam Bauer: I'd say all the founders in their own way and appropriate way have a real personal passion for what they're doing. We have to see that certainly if we're going to invest with them.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, he just called something out and I was thinking about it. It's so funny how the formless conversation happens and as you're talking, I'm thinking about something and then you actually talk about it. So this ESP piece that we have going on here. You mentioned emotional and you are working in a space that can be highly emotional. And then there's obviously the commercial side of things, the business side of things. How do you and your partners know when to be more, be like where you have like a hot on sleeve more emotional than when to be more commercial, more practical because you must encounter at times and it kind of comes back to the founders, you know, when they, it's like, they think they've got this idea and they're so passionate about it and they think it's going to go gangbusters and you can already see all these potential holes in it and it needs a pivot or it needs a place.
Adam Bauer: I think we just.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: and the founder is stuck on, no, we've got to do it this way. And again, because we're playing in the healthcare space.
Adam Bauer: Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: How do you handle those situations?
Adam Bauer: Yeah. Well, I think I'm smiling to myself because our senior partner or one of the co-founders, Caduceus, I think is really masterful at relationships and human engagement and human dynamic. And I have learned and still have a lot to learn from him about how to do it as well as he does. But we do run into those kind of difficult situations where you've got to steer something in totally different direction or maybe rotate an executive team. or replace the CEO. these things do happen. And just putting the human first, I think, in that kind of context is always, I've seen the best outcomes come from that type of approach. And some of it even, you you can read books on negotiation and, you know, empathy is really important.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah.
Adam Bauer: You know, put yourself in their shoes and what do they want? What's a win for you in this? Don't have to listen to me. Like, what are you trying to get out of the situation? What would you consider to be a good outcome? Just letting people share what's important to them and sometimes even just get things off their chest, I think, is a great leveler or equalizer. I mean, certainly part of our role is to be adults in the room, so to speak, and that's not an age thing necessarily, but just someone might need to say, hey, the math's not adding up here, or this projection is not based in reality, or we need to redo the numbers, or hey, we don't think that you're the right person to lead this company. Maybe you'd be better as a chief growth officer, Mr. CEO. You're so passionate, you're great at talking about the product, but you're not the right person to build this team and lead this to the next round. So maybe there's a change to be had there. So obviously, infinite number of ways that you can handle
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: a situation like that or any difficult situation. But I certainly think, know, human first, people first, that is the mindset that we take. And if the facts are all true and you're speaking the truth, you you can't really go wrong there. But I think there's a lot you can do to help yourself and to help other people too. If you kind of put that emotional, personal aspect at the forefront of almost any interaction, but certainly a difficult or challenging one.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I love that you put human first, especially in emerging technology and obviously a lot of automation, a lot of AI. I just think you can't underestimate human intelligence and the human piece. And I just think we need more and more of that in this fast-paced world we're in and the ability to pause to be able to assess things like you're talking about. You might find this a bit of a random question. Where did the name produces?
Adam Bauer: You back. Okay.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: apartment, yeah, where did that come from?
Adam Bauer: Well, I might get in a little trouble. I haven't socialized this too widely yet. So the caduceus is the staff of Hermes, like the Roman messenger god, I believe. Or maybe Mercury was the Greek version. I haven't had that backwards. So it's a staff with two snakes, a winged staff with two snakes around it. And it can be seen as a symbol of medicine. Actually, the true international symbol of medicine is the staff of Asclepius, I believe, which is just a rod with one snake. So that is like what the American Medical Association uses, I believe, but they're kind of interchangeable. know that I think the US Army initially started using the caduceus as a medical symbol, and I think Caduceus Capital Partners just sounds a lot better than Asclepius Capital Partners. We're going to stick with this at this point, but meant to be the symbol of medicine. Yeah.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, I love that. I've got a couple of final questions for you. What are you seeing? You talked earlier around staring at a cliff or falling off a cliff or like a really important time in healthcare. Like what are you seeing as the biggest opportunities right now and the biggest challenges as well?
Adam Bauer: Thanks you Well, I biggest challenges at the macro level, and again, I'll say this from a US perspective at least, but we're spending more than we can afford on healthcare. And we have more people who are aging into government providers, so Medicare and Medicaid, Medicare being our senior insurance option, basically the payer for folks over a certain age in the US. There are millions of baby boomers flooding into that population, and they're all gonna need healthcare, most of them want to get their hips and knees replaced. I mean, if you look at the charts of annual expenditure increasing, we just, we can't afford it. It has been unaffordable for a long time, but it's only going in that direction. And eventually, there will be some form of the system collapsing under its own weight or certainly hopefully not, but if there's a major global conflict and defense spending starts to take priority, then that money. will only be able to come from healthcare. I there are not that many big buckets in the US federal budget that dollars can move around at that level, at the trillions of dollars level. healthcare has been teetering for a long time here just economically. It's only gonna get worse if nothing changes. But I think the opportunity in there, and certainly for us and as technology investors, we think technology really is the only answer. It's the only way to start to turn the tide there where We have tremendous labor costs. Labor is usually the largest line item on any healthcare provider hospital budget. And the potential of AI to help reduce that need for just manual labor, a lot of redundant processes, fingers on keyboards, things like that. That has to be an area where if we're going to start to move that cost curve in the other direction, it's going to come from labor. And AI is going to be really the long pole in the tent that can have an impact there. And then just other, keeping people healthier and away from expensive treatments. Hospital and home, better quality of life. And I mean, we don't really get into pharmaceuticals much at all, really. Molecules, biotech, just not our backgrounds and not where we play. But there's also potential there as well, through innovation and AI also helping with innovation in those spaces to just make people healthier longer. and need less really expensive care for a larger portion of their lives. So there is a huge potential here with this really kind of catastrophic, you know, what the future looks like if nothing changes. But then we also have these really unprecedented, marvelous opportunities through tech and AI largely to actually come at this problem in a way we never have been able to before and really
Bee (Belinda) Murray: situation.
Adam Bauer: you know, meaningfully impact what it costs to deliver health care and what good care looks like and what good quality of life looks like. So it's going to be a fun, you know, next decade or so one way or the other, but we're, we're going to be optimists in that sense.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: I about to say, love it. I feel like you are such an optimist. You've got this constant smile. It's not toxic positivity. It's certainly just the ability to keep bouncing forward. Marvelous, you've used the word marvelous a couple of times. This is my final question to you. And you talked around at the beginning of the show about Marvelous Monday. And you said Marvelous Monday, and yet you said...
Adam Bauer: Okay. Thanks.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you'd had a back-to-back day of meetings. But it sounds like things you have a lot going on, you travel a lot, you're obviously travelling, being a partner, family, you match-make, you're an advisor, you work with all the different founders, you hone in on healthcare and innovation and tech, etc. I've always, last, I don't know, how many years it's been now, I was advisor to Like to start your week off just full of meetings and having back to back to back to work. It doesn't set you up for success very well in terms of for the week because you're almost, you know, starting your week exhausted and then by the end of the week. So, you know, it's kind of mastering your Monday and easing your way into Monday. I'd love your thoughts on that. And then lastly, how do you, how do you ensure that you
Adam Bauer: Thank Thank
Bee (Belinda) Murray: you enable yourself to get into flow state. And what I mean by that is where you have the ability to focus, get the fresh perspectives, know, feel and perform at your best. What do you do to ensure that in this, you know, obviously in the environment you're in, yeah, how do you create that space for you?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. Yeah, well, I'll answer those in reverse. Certainly health is really important to me, and I think that's probably the central pillar of my routine or, you know, the flow state or whatever you want to call it. But typically if I'm home or even I'm traveling, but certainly if I'm home, you'll be in the gym every morning. And it's actually something I've gotten. I've dragged my wife with me in the last couple of years and now she's doing the weights with me. And it's actually kind of fun. It's been it's been a fun. development in our life together and a way for us to spend a little bit more time as well. But so I guess it's grounding in that sense too. I can start every day, get a workout in, will just little time with her, talk about things, get the kid out the door. And if I start the day that way, whether I have one meeting or 15 meetings, I'm gonna feel much better throughout and at the end. And if I felt lazy and skipped the gym or just had pancakes, and what a cake for breakfast instead of something healthy. I think I can't really articulate it. I haven't really thought this through enough. I think working in healthcare, just kind of walking the walk and trying to be a healthy person and take care of myself and my family, that's important as well. again, I'm not quite sure how to translate that, but I know it's there. And then I think the Marvelous Monday's a little tongue in cheek, obviously. Yeah, things just tend, you know, everyone is ready to go on Monday and there's always a lot of calls and meetings and a lot to do. And we have weekly kickoff calls and things and weekly PMOs and sinks and it's they're long days, but satisfying. And if I, I would call it miserable Monday if I felt miserable. So maybe I'm kind of self revealing my, my, my sarcasm there at the marvelous Monday, but yeah, it's just a really busy time. Every week is busy and I think if I step back, wouldn't want to have it any other way. I can take a breath or try not to, try to take some days off of my gin and tonics or whatnot. So Monday is usually a good day to do that as well. But I can put my feet up or whatever, take a deep breath at the end of a Monday and feel like, okay, that was great. I got through a whole lot of stuff today that I needed to get through. The rest of the week maybe is downhill. I think that's another way to think about it is like.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Mm.
Adam Bauer: Yes, front loading makes for a busy day, but it also kind of gives me a sense of accomplishment. And then, you know, the got through the hard part, I can make it through Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. So I don't know, it works for me. yeah, mean, Mondays are Mondays are pretty busy around here.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That's interesting. I like it. Yeah. No, I like the, I like the front reading and the way you've said it, like, you know, makes it downhill from here. So that's, that's exciting. You know, it's a good way to think about it. Adam, thank you so much for your time. How do we find out more about Caduceus Capital Partners? How do we find out more about you?
Adam Bauer: Thank Our website is certainly the best single source of information is caducus.vc. So actually all of our companies that I talked about are listed there. There's a little bit of information on each, but otherwise we're pretty active on LinkedIn, myself included. I'm sure you've got my name attached to the pod here, but we try to keep up pretty well with what's happening in our portfolio with our launch companies, just things out in the market, conferences we're going to. So LinkedIn is probably a really good source to follow us corporately and folks are welcome to follow me as well out there.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, amazing listeners. And then I guess one final passing, I guess, thought that you might have when it comes to, you you talked a little bit about AI before and obviously AI is playing a big piece in everything we're doing. For anyone out there who is a little bit like, I guess, not resistant.
Adam Bauer: Thanks Thanks
Bee (Belinda) Murray: if they're just not necessarily engaging in as much AI as they could be and playing from the innovation sense, what would be one piece of advice you would give them just to get into it?
Adam Bauer: Thank you. I mean, I think just you got to try it. Yeah, I don't know that I've met or talked with anyone who has said, you know, I really I built the agents or I did the research and I'm just I'm more uncomfortable now than I was before. I'm not going to touch this stuff again. I think it's quite the opposite where once you actually see the impact, I mean, even as just as a very quick example, we have an exercise we do for Caduceus Advisory where if we're going to talk to a new client, we'll run a value projection for them. We'll be able to say before we ever even meet with you, we're gonna pull public information, bed count, net patient revenue, number of hospitals, whatever, just the basics, and we're gonna take our top 15 solutions in our vendor network, and we're gonna estimate what we think they might be able to do for you from a value creation standpoint. That takes a long time, manually. It takes about five seconds with AI. I mean, I've just been, even recently, I've been...
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's wild.
Adam Bauer: blown away with how effectively we can take a task like that and make it fast, blazing fast and really accurate and it looks great. And that's just one limited consulting business development use case. I think just a comment on AI and healthcare and folks being hesitant about like, I don't want the robot to be reading my chart or cutting me open or I think it's gonna take time for
Bee (Belinda) Murray: That's it.
Adam Bauer: folks to accept that. But if you think about the end point there, it's gonna be a great world when the Tesla robot can do knee surgery for 50 cents on anybody in their kitchen perhaps one day. again, the labor cost implication, the access to care, if someone living on a farm can have the best brain surgeon, the best heart surgeon,
Bee (Belinda) Murray: my gosh.
Adam Bauer: the best cardiologist, whatever, sitting at their kitchen table, running on a little bit of electricity at marginal cost, that's gonna be a great world of healthcare. The only way we're gonna get there is to try this a little bit at a time, and there might be two steps forward, one step back. But I think largely the goal of the industry, at least as we see it and we participate in it, is that this is a function for good, and
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Bye. Yeah.
Adam Bauer: It's gonna be great when we start to really achieve some of the impact and value that's promised through these tools and AI specifically. And new things are scary and that's to be expected. But I think if we are able to actually try a little bit at a time, see the outcome, try a little bit more, whatever the use case is, whatever the context is, I really believe that folks will not be able to go back. It's like going back to a buggy once you've driven a car.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: No, I agree.
Adam Bauer: I'm again, you know, remain optimistic that that's the path we're going down. But I mean, I really think that, you know, just being kind of afraid of this AI thing without actually, you know, getting your hands on it and then trying it even in a very exploratory sense. You know, folks have to get past that, right? I think they'll be really pleased if they try to.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes back to being like in a lab. Think about it like a lab, just experimenting. It's all about experimentation, right? Like I'm experimenting a lot myself at the moment and I'm surprising myself by the day on the daily just with what I'm capable of doing. And I think that the more we get into that is exciting. Thank you so much, Adam, for coming on the show. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. It's been super insightful, super educational. Wishing you all the best and thank you for coming on the show.
Adam Bauer: My pleasure. Thanks, Bea. Be well down there. Cheers.
Bee (Belinda) Murray: Thank you, you too.
