Transcript generated from the episode’s audio. Speaker names are identified from the context of the conversation rather than from recorded speaker data, and automatic transcription may misspell names and terminology. Please refer to the video for the authoritative version.

David Raubach: I want to thank you for joining us on today’s episode of the cancer project podcast. We are really privileged to be joined by Rahul Mahadevan who is the founder and CEO of a company called we are in this together or wit which is a software platform that is connecting cancer patients with donors who can help provide financial and emotional support to those patients as they’re going through treatment, and Rahul is a cancer survivor himself, and so we are going to hear his amazing story and learn a little bit more about this platform that he’s developed. So Rahul, thank you so much for joining us today. So tell us just to give us a little bit of a background on you. Where are you from? Where do you live now? Tell us what we should know about Rahul before we dive into your cancer journey.

Rahul Mahadevan: I was born in India but I lived in 12 different countries growing up.

David Raubach: Okay.

Rahul Mahadevan: Been in California since 1987. Been in healthcare since 2000. I got in healthcare after having a heart surgery and lung surgery in 2000. Loved the industry, wanted to be part of an industry that could help my mother, father, brother, sister-in-law kind of go through treatment, and so found a passion in making a difference to others. And then started this company after my own diagnosis in 21.

David Raubach: So let’s go ahead and dive in on that. So the diagnosis in 21, you’re out at in working for Stanford, I believe, at the time, or Varian at the time.

Rahul Mahadevan: That’s right.

David Raubach: And you have an interesting narrative about how that all occurred. I mean it was almost a little bit of luck that the cancer was even discovered. So just walk us through everything that happened leading up to that cancer diagnosis.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. So I was working for Varian since 2018. In 2020, right after COVID hit, I wanted to go get an annual physical. I never go and get a physical. So, I said, you know, with my heart condition and stuff I was dealing with, let me just go and get tested and make sure I’m okay. October went for my, went to my primary care doctor, got all the usual tests done. As I was walking out the door, I said, “Hey, should I be tested for prostate and colon cancer? I just turned 50.” And the response was, “No, you’re, you know, the new guidelines are 55. You’re okay.” And so I said, “Well, you know, what’s the test for prostate and colon?” She goes, “It’s a blood test.” I’m like, “Well, just let’s just go ahead and get a blood test done anyway.” Did the blood test, PSA came back at 12, was high. And then was told, you know, it may not be a big deal because people of Indian origin have an, you know, enlarged prostate, and so, okay, it may not be a big deal. I had no symptoms. Did a follow-up blood test at Stanford that came back high as well. Decided the only way to kind of determine if it was or wasn’t cancer was to do a biopsy.

David Raubach: Okay.

Rahul Mahadevan: Ended up doing a biopsy in December of 2020. And then January 4th, 21 was told I was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. Good thing is I worked for a cancer company and so I could leverage, you know, the team there to kind of guide me in the best treatment options that we needed. And I often say that if I hadn’t walked out and asked that question as I was leaving the hospital, the doctor’s office, saying, “Should I be tested?” I don’t know if I’d be here because, you know, I had no symptoms. I didn’t know what the impact was. The good thing is that, you know, but for the grace of God, I asked the right question.

David Raubach: Yeah. Right. And I just think about how many patients who see their physicians don’t ask that question and either too late or end up with negative outcomes because they don’t ask the question. So there’s a little bit of a lesson there in just taking ownership of your own health and being your own advocate, just initially with you asking the doctor, hey, could we go ahead and do this PSA check?

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. And that was only because I’ve been in healthcare for as long as I have and I was working for a cancer company. If I had not been in industry or if I had been in finance like I was before I joined in healthcare, I probably wouldn’t have known the question to ask. I’d have been like great. I wouldn’t even probably ask the question, should I be tested for prostate and colon?

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so I think it’s just sometimes just luck that you’re in the right place at the right time to ask the right questions.

David Raubach: So you get diagnosed, but you said it was stage four. It was serious?

Rahul Mahadevan: It was serious. Yeah, it was serious. It had breached and I was choosing between surgery and radiation and ended up not understanding the pros and cons until I talked to my team at Varian and decided I’d rather go through a longer treatment process with more predictable outcomes than a shorter one with unknown outcomes in the event something went wrong with surgery or whatever else. So, you know, it’s a personal decision that everybody has to make. I don’t think it’s the right or wrong answer. I’ve met patients who have picked surgery over radiation and vice versa. I think the hardest decision for me to make was to pick what I felt would give me the best quality of life and not the best outcomes. And I think for patients, and that was I think the hardest decision, discussion I had was with my mom, when I told her I’m going to pick the treatment course that is going to allow me to live the best life I can, right? Not the longest life I can.

David Raubach: Right. And telling your mom that was kind of like a not an easy conversation to have.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. But, you know, I think that’s a personal decision that everybody makes.

David Raubach: Well, and I think that brings up a good point, which is when you’re diagnosed with cancer, you’re often presented with very difficult decisions, and there isn’t always necessarily, well, this is the right decision, this is the wrong decision, and different patients will make different decisions, but the whole process is overwhelming.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. I mean, especially. Yeah. Right. I mean, you when you when you’re told that, hey, you have cancer and this is what you have to do, you’re not thinking about what’s my life going to be like. You’re thinking about what do I do. Yeah. What’s the next and what’s the next day going to look like? And you really start, you start being more true to yourself in terms of what’s the most important thing for you to do, and you’ve got to be a little selfish. And I learned through that process that there’s no right answer, right? Every single patient can have a different way of looking at it, and there’s no way for somebody to say that what you’re, what you decide, is right or wrong, right? Because it is a personal decision.

David Raubach: So talk a little bit about your mental state at that point. I think you said January 4th is when, 30 in the afternoon, January 4th, 2021. Just describe that scene and just what you’re thinking and what you’re going through at that moment.

Rahul Mahadevan: So I lost my dad when I was 12. So I’d gone through a period of time in my life where I realized life’s too short. Take every day as if it’s your, if as if it’s your last. And so when I was diagnosed, the first one was like the oh crap moment.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Okay, now what? But then I kind of looked at it saying, okay, you can’t change what you’ve been diagnosed with, right? You’ve dealt, you’ve been dealt these cards. You’re part of a club that you don’t want to be part of, right? But you are. Now you have to kind of practically put your hat on and say which is the best path going forward, right? And so I remember the doctor saying to me, I’ve told people that they’ve had this before and you’re the first ones that seems to be reacting with no emotion. And I’m like, well, I can’t change it.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: It’s not like I can take a drug tomorrow. It’s going to fix it, right? So now the plan is like, okay, now what do I do, right? And give me my options and let me figure out the best option to go forward. So I kind of processed that no moment. Yeah. Sorry. To really focus on how do I make the best decision forward for myself. Recognizing that I can’t change the diagnosis. If I had diabetes, great. You can, you know, stop eating sugar and do stuff, but with cancer, it’s like it is what it is and you’ve got to figure out how to deal with it. And so I try to be a little more practical about it. My wife ended up having a 2-hour shower cuz she needed to kind of de-stress and figure out what she was processing.

Rahul Mahadevan: But I told my family, I told my kids who were 15 and 17 at the time, I was like, “Listen, until I panic, you guys don’t panic, right?” Because what I don’t want to do is have you guys start treating me differently now that I’ve been diagnosed, because that’s going to like exacerbate my situation. So, you know, sun comes up every morning, sun sets every night. When I start feeling I’m not myself, then you guys start treating me differently. But until then, this is the cards we’ve been dealt, and let’s kind of go from there. So I try to be practical.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: But you know it now, even now, you know, four years later, when I get sick or when I feel I’m coming on to something, there’s always that back of your mind saying is it back or is it spread or is it gone somewhere else, that you just have to work with and you just have to process.

David Raubach: Yeah. There’s this concept that we talk about of cancer survivorship, which is really what it entails, is living with a cancer diagnosis. Cancer is one of those things that it does change you permanently.

Rahul Mahadevan: It does.

David Raubach: It changes your perspective on life. It change, a lot of times it just changes who you are as a person and how you see things.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah.

David Raubach: But there also is that reality of we have these follow-up visits, and we have, and I’ve had this diagnosis that came on unexpectedly when I didn’t have symptoms, and is it going to come back? Because the reality is for a lot of people cancer does come back and you have to go through treatment again. So talk a little bit about maybe how you yourself have tried to manage that survivorship period post treatment personally.

Rahul Mahadevan: I mean for me it’s one of those things where I can’t control it.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right. If it comes back, it comes back.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And I try not to dwell on the fact that there’s nothing I can eat. There’s nothing I can do.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: I can eat healthier. I can work out. I can do things that’ll keep me healthy, but there’s nothing I can do proactively to ensure that it doesn’t come back.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right. So, I’ve kind of assume, accepted the fact that it’s like, you know what? If I, if it, if the cards are dealt where it comes back somewhere else or it comes back, I’ll deal with it the same way I dealt it the first time, but I can’t continue to worry about it, right? Although at the back of your mind, it’s always there. It’s always there saying, you know, when you get sick, it’s like, okay, or when you have a bad cough or you go through a COVID spell, you know, it’s like, is it COVID? Is it something else? Do I need to get checked? So that it does weigh on you.

Rahul Mahadevan: But I think you just kind of process it and say, you know, you can’t guarantee it’s not going to come back, right?

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so don’t worry about it. And if it does come back, deal with it. And whatever happens, you kind of play the best game you can play when you’re di, if and when it ever happens.

David Raubach: So, walk us through the rest of the treatment journey. So, you said that you had brachytherapy, you had radiation, brachy.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. So, I had brachytherapy at UCSF. I had my all my other treatment done at Stanford. I used to work at Stanford so I knew the team at Stanford. Both great organizations, both great people. You know, staff was great. You got to meet a lot of patients. You meet patients with all types of cancers who are now part of your club.

David Raubach: Mhm.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right? And you start really looking out for each other and you start recognizing that we’re all dealing with the same thing in different ways. You know, from a clinical perspective, I was never concerned about getting the best clinical care, right? And I think that’s been something that I’ve always assumed is like most physicians, most organizations, most hospitals want to do the best for their patients.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: All of them are trying to do the best to give the patients the best outcomes.

David Raubach: Right. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: Patients have to make the decision as to what best path is for them in terms of quality of life versus longevity of life and deciding which treatment path makes the most sense for them. But you know I think the lucky thing for me is I worked in the industry, I was part of an oncology organization, I knew what questions to ask or I knew who to go to.

David Raubach: Mhm.

Rahul Mahadevan: What really struck out to me when I was going through treatment is that, you know, I was one of 10%, 5% that was in that category. Everybody else was dealing with this diagnosis not coming from the initial without that background.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so, you know, for them it was the not just the unknown of what my treatment going to be like, but the unknown of what my life going to be like and that combination. I was worried about the treatment piece. I was like, the treatment’s going to get taken care of. You know, and I was to the point where the machine I was treated at at Stanford was a machine that was built by Varian, and so I took the serial number. I, you know, I, when I went back to work, I had a conference call with all the engineers who built that machine to say thank you for you guys for saving my life on that machine, so you know I could give back to them as a patient now being treated on the machine that they built, whereas most patients who are going through treatment are concerned about the clinical stuff they’re receiving and then also how do I deal with life.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: So, I was one of the, I feel lucky that I had at least one of those things addressed. But yeah, I mean it’s it, from a mental perspective, I can’t imagine somebody who’s not been in healthcare.

David Raubach: Yeah. Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: To kind of hear the diagnosis and then have to deal with it, it’s a foreign language.

David Raubach: It is.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. Right. Unlike diabetes where, you know, we’ll give you insulin shots or don’t eat sugar or sweets, or blood pressure medic, or if you have high blood pressure, take your blood pressure medication. Like this is, there is no pill you can take that’s going to make it go away, right?

David Raubach: So you’ve talked about being familiar with the clinical side, the treatment side, but I think you’ve shared with me previously that there was aspects of the patient side that caught you off guard, a little bit, or things that you just learned were challenges going through treatment that maybe you would have never even imagined that would have been a challenge going through treatment.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah, I think, and again I think, you know, I met a lot of patients going through treatment who were voluntarily choosing to miss appointments or delay treatment because of life challenges, right? And when you go through treatment for 7, 8, 9 weeks in a row, every day you see the same people in the hospital every single day. And when you start not seeing someone who you expect to see, and then you ask them, hey, I didn’t see you yesterday, where were you? And you hear things like, you know, I take the bus from my house to the hospital and the bus didn’t show up and so I ended up missing my appointment. And then you ask the question, you know, why don’t you take an Uber?

David Raubach: Yeah. Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And you get the response, I can’t afford an Uber or I don’t have a debit or credit card to use. You start realizing that the privilege you live in

David Raubach: Mhm.

Rahul Mahadevan: is not what a majority of the patients who are going through, especially when you start thinking about rural populations and others who are struggling with just dealing with all these life challenges, right? And so for me, like I didn’t need financial support when I was going through treatment. I needed somebody to go for a walk with me and go to the gym with me.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: I mean, I would wear my sweats to the hospital to be treated. I would drive by from the hospital to the gym cuz I knew if I went home and changed, I wasn’t leaving the house. And 70% of the time I sat in my car, not because I didn’t want to go into the gym, but because I just didn’t have the energy to go in.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Now, I worked for a cancer company. I could have had 30, 40 people that have happily said, if I’d asked them, I’ll go with you. Didn’t ask a single person.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And it’s not because I didn’t need it, but because I don’t want to be a burden on David or anybody else. And I thought if I’m going through that, somebody who is privileged, somebody who has the resources, somebody who has friends in the industry, what are people who don’t have the resources? I have, for no fault at all, other than the fact that they were, they’re in the situation they’re in.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: How are they dealing with all these challenges, right?

David Raubach: Well, you talked about one little thing of just having somebody help you walk your dog would have been like, just not having the energy for this one little thing that’s a part of your life.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m a dog parent, right? And anybody who’s a dog parent knows that they’re angels on earth, and you want to give them the best you can. And so, you know, one of the things that I didn’t realize when I was going through treatment was that pet care was a big thing for people my age who are going through treatment, and, you know, I walk my dog every day. And you know, told the family, “Hey, can somebody walk him?” Cuz I can’t walk him cuz I need somebody to hold a leash and I didn’t have the energy to hold the leash.

Rahul Mahadevan: And when you hear the family saying, “Ah, you know, he’s a dog. It’s okay.”

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: You don’t say that to a dog parent. So if but if I had known that, I could have asked my neighbor’s kids to walk the dog or I could have asked somebody else to do it. So and I’ve met patients who are refusing treatment because they would have to go and spend a night at the hospital and they had a pet at home and they nobody to watch the pet. Right? You know, those are things that when you hear about it or when people hear about this, you know, why would somebody not do treatment because they don’t have somebody to watch their pet overnight? It happens more often than we realize, right? And those are the life challenges that to me are part of this cancer journey.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right. It’s not, it’s the clinical piece is only a component of it. It’s all the other stuff that patients deal with that are just as important as any patient goes through that the journey.

David Raubach: So there’s a specific story that you’ve told me that led to the formation of your company, and the really, the it was the impetus for the name of your company as well. So tell us about that story.

Rahul Mahadevan: I’ll give the credit to my daughter who turns 20 today.

David Raubach: Okay. Yeah. Happy birthday.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so Yeah, and I were talking about this patient at Stanford who was going through treatment and was refusing treatment because his family would be at a financial risk if he had spent 6 months in the hospital getting treated, and he asked for, you know, housing for the family, and you know the hospital couldn’t guarantee that they would give housing. And so he was struggling with should I accept treatment or not, because I don’t want to be in the hospital getting treated when my wife and my two young kids are going to be potentially evicted from our apartment.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And not have a place to stay. And so I was telling her the story and she was like, “Listen, if you’re so concerned about patients, why don’t you quit your job and start a company to help patients?” And you know, she was 15 at that time. I wasn’t sure if she was just being flipping teenager or if she was actually genius. And I’m going to, she’s actually smart.

Rahul Mahadevan: But it took me a while to really figure out what that meant. And we were driving home, and she said to me, she’s like, “Why don’t you call the company WID?” And I was like, “What’s, I thought it was WIT.” And, like, “What’s funny about oncology or cancer?” She goes, “No, WIT. We’re in this together.”

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And I realized that your cancer journey is a journey of not just you, right? It’s a journey of you and everyone around you who cares about you to help you get through that. And not just cancer, any chronic disease or any debilitating disease. And so that’s how the name of the company started. And I’ve always said I will take the company in any direction. I won’t change the name of the company because it is truly about the community supporting each other to get through what we’re trying to get through as patients. But you know if she hadn’t said why don’t you quit your job at Varian and start a company to help patients, and if I hadn’t gone through that journey myself where I was meeting patients who are like voluntarily missing appointments for reasons that you and I are never going to have to deal with, right, I don’t think I would have started the company on my own, right? And so I think, you know, I believe God gave me cancer for a reason, and so for me starting the company was a way to kind of say, okay, let’s take that experience and try and do something meaningful with it versus going back to what you know life was. Let’s take that journey, work with organizations that can help us make a difference to those that don’t have the resources we have. And if you do that, hopefully you can, you know, even if you can change 10% of people’s lives and make it a little better, you, you’ve done something meaningful with your life.

David Raubach: So, I want to make sure I capture the spirit of what you just described in this story that led to the founding of the company, because I think this is a reality for a lot of patients. You had this individual that you were aware of at this Stanford Hospital who was the bread winner for the family. There was, if he, he’s going through life and death, he needs to get treatment. If he does not get treatment, the prognosis is most likely fatal for his cancer. He’s literally having to make a decision of, if I choose to get treatment that will hopefully save my life, I can’t work. If I can’t work, I can’t pay rent. If I don’t pay rent, my wife and two children are going to potentially be homeless or end up in a shelter. He’s having to, he’s literally having to make that decision. And you’re aware of that, and your daughter’s aware of that.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And I don’t, I would say I don’t think I was aware of it.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Until she said, like, you know, until I realized we are never going to have to make that decision.

David Raubach: Right.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And, like, and I thought about it as he was talking, and I’m like, told my daughter, we’re never going to have to choose between food or can we put a roof over our head.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: You know, we have people we can stay with. We have a network, but there’s more people like him out there than there are like us out there, right? Just for pure luck, I was born where I was and I have the resources I have.

David Raubach: Right. And that, what you just said, where somebody has to choose home over health, yeah, is what bothered me.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. Right. In this day and age where we have all these resources available, the fact that most people going through any chronic disease, especially cancer, have to choose, do I do things for my family or do I take care of myself, right? And having to make that home versus health decision shouldn’t have to be something that any patient has to deal with.

David Raubach: Right.

David Raubach: Well, and it’s, I think it, part of what that speaks to is the fact that cancer doesn’t just impact the patient, it impacts their social circle. It impacts their friends. It impacts their family. So you and your daughter come up with this idea. The name of the company I’ll give her credit for. She comes up with, she, it turns out she is a genius. Take us through the next steps, because it’s one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to put that idea to work. So walk us, take us from that stage to where we are today with WIT.

Rahul Mahadevan: All the gray hairs was because of it. But so that was probably May, June of 21. So I thought about it for a couple of months. Then I just started talking to patients at the hospital, like what are the, what are you struggling with? And almost every single patient I talked to, so I probably talked to about 200 plus patients when I was going through treatment. And almost every single patient said to me, “I need help, but I don’t want to ask my friends and family to help me. I don’t want to be a b, I don’t want to put more on their plate and be a burden to them. I’ll suck it up and kind of figure it out myself.” Or I would hear like, you know, it’s not in my, it’s against my culture to ask for help. And so you, you’d hear cultural reasons. You’ll hear, you’d hear, I’m not comfortable asking. I don’t want to be a burden on somebody else. So you hear all these reasons why they would put the onus on them, not that they were dealing with the cancer journey, but they didn’t want to burden somebody else with their non-cancer issues.

David Raubach: Right. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so as I started talking to patients, I just started saying this is a real problem.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: I mean, I started thinking to myself, I got into healthcare in 2000 because I wanted to be part of an industry where the doctors, the nurses, the technology could keep your mother, father, brother, sister-in-law alive, right? That’s why I got into healthcare. But when I started talking to patients, when I went through my journey, I started realizing, well, what if your mother, father can’t even get to the hospital to be treated, right? None of that stuff, other stuff matters. And so everybody I was talking to was focused on solving the clinical side of care with the research and everything else.

Rahul Mahadevan: And I started saying, “Well, that’s all great, but if the patient can’t even make it to the hospital, you got an issue.”

David Raubach: Right. Right. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so, I hired a friend of mine who was a UX designer to say, I said, “Listen, I have this idea mockup. I’ll sit down with you.” So, every Saturday and Sunday for 4 months from 6:00 a.m. Pacific to about 12:00 p.m. Pacific, 12, 12:00 p.m., I would sit with his team and we would just like mock out stuff. And I was like in the middle of treatment. I was, my mind wasn’t working. But so we would like, we would just mock up designs, and we would think about what about this workflow? What about that workflow? And so we ended up by August having a mockup which I showed to a bunch of patients like what do you think?

Rahul Mahadevan: Feedback from them, September, October of 21, incorporated the company and said okay. And I realized if I’m, you can talk about an idea all you want, you know, at some point you got to, you know, put your money where your mouth is, and started. So I said, all right, let’s found a company, let’s raise some pre-seed capital with an idea. And I raised, you know, some money from friends and family, 2 million round from friends and family, to get the idea off the ground, build a prototype. Our first product designs, for the first couple of months we used to do Zoom calls with 30, 40 cancer patients and say here’s what we’re designing, what do you think, what’s your feedback. So I will say that the product we have today was designed by patients for patients.

David Raubach: That’s amazing.

Rahul Mahadevan: And we’d give them gift cards to be part of the, just kind of the feedback loop, and all these were cancer patients going through their own journey, and so they wanted to be able to give back to others, right? I think that’s the one thing, beauty about cancer patients, is a lot of us once we finish treatment want to be able to go back and help those who are now going through what we went through a while ago. And so launched the product in May of 22.

David Raubach: Okay.

Rahul Mahadevan: Initially it was going to be a B2C, like let’s all gives this directly to patients and let’s solve that problem. And then as we went through that go to market pilot testing period in 22, I realized the best way to have the biggest impact to the most amount of patients is not to build my own brand and go B2C, but to actually go to health systems. And make this their product for their patients, right? And the reason was, like, most hospitals have a brand that patients trust, right, or the community trusts. And if you can build a product for them that they can use to help support their patients, patients are more likely to use it because it’s coming from an organization they trust, the community is more likely to get involved because it’s coming from an organization they can trust. And, you know, I’m happy to sit in the background and just kind of be the intel inside behind what we do, because ultimately it’s about having the biggest impact to patients, right? And so we started commercially selling in 2023.

David Raubach: Okay.

Rahul Mahadevan: And we’ve been doing that for the last two and a half years. We’ve got about 10 health systems that are working with us now. We’ve helped about 2500 patients. We’ve organically helped, you know, raised about 750,000 for patients over the last two and a half years.

David Raubach: That’s amazing.

Rahul Mahadevan: And, you know, we’ve seen an impact, right? We’ve seen, you know, one of our sites has seen a 21% reduction in missed appointments.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: By giving patients an average of $400 per year, right? So, it was, we proved it wasn’t how much you give that was important. It was being able to identify the right need at the right time.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And helping the right patient address one issue so they could stay on treatment and stay on treatment course. So it’s been a, you know, I, you know, people, you know, as a solo founder, it’s a lot of sleepless nights. But when I get emails

David Raubach: Your job is 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

Rahul Mahadevan: 7 days a week. 36 hours a day.

David Raubach: 36.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. Exactly.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: But when you get emails from patients saying, you know, God bless you, you, I was able to feed my family for a week, or I took my drugs because I didn’t have to, you know, use the money I would have used from medication to pay for food.

Rahul Mahadevan: It makes you realize that you’re doing something impactful.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And for us now, with the team I have, and I’ve got an incredible team of people that work with us, it’s working. It’s now finding the right companies to work with that can really say, how do we make a difference to those, you know, build a local product for local patients in the local community so you have the biggest impact locally, right, versus, and then if you do that at each, in each location, you can have a big national impact, right?

David Raubach: I want to put the some of the numbers that you’ve described in perspective. So you talked about $400 making a difference, or raising $750,000. We have a foundation that’s a partner of Oklahoma Proton Center called the Proton Pals Foundation, and they specifically step in and help patients with costs outside of the direct cost of treatment. And one of the most frequent requests that they get is $50 to fill up somebody’s car with gas, or $75 to fill up somebody’s car with gas, because you get patients a lot of times that are having to drive 40, 50, 60 miles every single day for treatment. That can add up over the course of treatment. A lot of patients, I mean, there’s millions of people in the United States that are literally living paycheck to paycheck. They’re not planning for, and life is expensive already, and they’re certainly not planning for, well, now I have this diagnosis that’s going to add this additional cost burden. I might be out of work. It’s amazing how much of an impact just giving somebody $200 in gas gift cards can have for that person. And so when I think about $750,000 and how far that can go and how many people that that can help, it’s incredible. But it’s also, we have a tendency when we think about charities to think of these big dollars, big donors, you know, $100,000 or $500,000 or a million dollar donations, but you’ve talked about how you and I and so many other people can help a cancer patient with giving up a cup of coffee a month. So talk a little bit about that concept and just how you envision, certainly obviously the big checks out, but there’s also this micro donor concept, and bringing together people that have a need with people that want to help.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yep. So, like, you know, we have a saying in the company, like, no patient should ever miss an appointment for a $20 problem.

David Raubach: Yeah. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And that’s 90% of why patients miss appointments.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: Is like I need money to pay for child care for my kid, and or I need to have my dog watched while I go, or I need $25 Uber ride to get to the hospital. And I’m a big believer, the reason I wanted to build a local product for local patients, is people by nature want to help others, right? That’s just human nature. Problem is we don’t know who needs help and we don’t know what they need help with, right? On the one hand, on the flip side, patients are inherently uncomfortable asking. Culturally, male, men, you know, we’re guys, we don’t want to ask for help for whatever reason, right? So the whole thing was if you can break that stigma where you can get patients to say, “Hey, this is what I need help with,” whether it’s financial support or non-financial support, and share that with people in the community, right? Local church groups, people in the community that want to help. How do you then tap into these people that, yeah, I’ll give up a cup of coffee today, right? And instead of spending $8 on a venti cappuccino at Starbucks, let me go give it to a patient that needs an Uber ride from their house, or is not at this basketball game because they’re dealing with chemo.

David Raubach: Yeah. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And my whole belief is if you can rally a local community where 50,000 people in Oklahoma City, let’s say, give $10 a month to the foundation for Oklahoma Proton, right, for PALS, you can raise three, four, $5 million a year.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: To support patients in amounts that are not going to break anybody’s bank in giving, but you get enough people to do it. And, you know, that all that money is going to go directly to patients in need that live in your community, whose kids are going to the same schools as you are, who are buying coffee from the same shops you are, shopping at the same supermarkets you are, but are dealing with challenges that you’re not dealing with. You can actually fundamentally move the needle for those patients, right? So I’m a big believer that I don’t ever want to go after the big donors. They’ve got enough people hitting them for what they need, right? But I’ve met so many people who are more than happy to give $10 a month. Right? They want to know that that $10 is going towards somebody that really needs it.

David Raubach: Exactly.

Rahul Mahadevan: And if you can work with organizations where you say, like, our whole philosophy is 100% of what somebody gives to a patient goes to a patient, right? We don’t want to take any money off the top. We want to make sure that if somebody says, “I need $25 for an Uber ride,” don’t give them 20, right? Give them the 25 they need, right? If they need money for food, give them whatever, you give should go to them.

David Raubach: Right. Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so we’re very focused on making sure that whatever a donor gives goes directly to the person in need, and that 100% of it goes to the patient. And I think by doing that you build trust in the community and you can really get the community involved. Like, you know, my vision, you know, working with you in Oklahoma Proton Center and PALS is how do we get the city to get involved in helping these people, right? Because there are people that live 30, 40, 50 miles away, as you said, need money for gas. It’s not cheap, right? If you’re driving every day, 5 days a week for seven, for seven weeks, it adds up. And financial toxicity is a real issue for patients. You know, more people go through bankruptcy once they’ve gone through cancer diagnosis because of the not the clinical cost of care, right, but all these other costs that they weren’t planning for.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: And if you can rally the community to support them even in a small way, this makes their lives a little easier. Yeah. I think you can make a big difference to a lot of people.

David Raubach: Nearly half of patients that go through cancer treatment are in medical debt.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yep.

David Raubach: Once they get done with treatment.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yep.

David Raubach: And I, and specifically in Oklahoma, you talked about missing appointments. So in Oklahoma, we have some of the worst cancer mortality rates in the country. So our, the diagnosis rates are relatively comparable, about average in Oklahoma for most cancers, but we don’t do a great job dealing with the diagnosis in Oklahoma. Not because we don’t have good treatments here. We do, we have amazing facilities, Oklahoma Proton Center, multiple other cancer centers, but one of the big issues literally is patients getting to their appointments. And so we have so many patients that miss appointments for a variety of reasons, but financial being a big part of that. And so talking about the community coming together, we literally could tackle cancer mortality rates in Oklahoma in part by just having funding for patients to get to their appointments.

Rahul Mahadevan: Well, it’s that, but so there, so for me it’s like, there’s three steps that have to happen to make that successful, right? You need patients to be able to tell you what they want.

David Raubach: Yes.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right. And so to crack that, we said, think about a wedding register, birth registry. When you get married, you have kids. Nobody feels guilty about asking for stuff on their wedding registry because they’re not asking David or Rahul to buy them something. You’re saying it’s kind of list versus like I’m coming to you. I need this. So if you want to give me a gift, go to my registry, see what I need. So we said, what if you take that idea and apply it to patients? So let a patient create a support registry of whatever they want. Let’s combine that with the best of crowdsourcing. So let them share that with friends, family, work, colleagues, people in the community, whoever wants to help, so that people have visibility into not the macro needs of people but the micro needs of what patients need help with at the, you know, 25, 30, $40 level. And then let’s start issuing, we realize a lot of our patients are underserved, under-represented, marginalized patients who even if you give them money don’t have access to things like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, because they don’t have debit or credit. And so we actually said let’s start issuing debit cards to patients so that patients now who receive support can actually order, an override, can actually, you know, I’ve had patients who say I don’t want to go to CVS and buy incontinence pads because it’s I’m embarrassed, right? I can’t order from Amazon because I don’t have a debit card or credit card, right? And so now if you give them a vehicle to access services, you can now make their nonclinical needs and access to those services a lot easier, right? And this was a combination of a wedding registry, crowdsourcing, our debit cards, fintech together, really gives not just patients the comfort to ask for what they need help with, but gives people in the community visibility into what local patients need help with, right? And you bring the demand side and the supply side together, you can move the needle from an outcomes perspective for patients and help health systems actually make more money on the business side because now you have less missed appointments, you have more people showing up, everybody wins, right?

David Raubach: Well, and I think there’s also, there’s a practical element too to this structure that you’ve described, especially as it relates to working directly with the health system, is that, you know, GoFundMe is another mechanism where patients can say I have this need, I want to raise money. Unfortunately, is tends to happen, you have instances of fraud with GoFundMe where people have gotten on and said they have cancer and they don’t actually have cancer, and they raise money. And so you’ve set up a nice kind a check and balance, or a validation process, with this software where the health system actually goes in and says, a patient registers for the platform, they put their list out there of this is the needs that I have, and then the health system goes in and says, yes, we can validate that this is a patient, they’re coming to our facility. So that provides some protections for donors too, that they know that the money is going to somebody that actually does have a need.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yep.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. So we, you know, we’ve said if somebody wants to sign up and invite their friends and family to support them,

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: that’s great. I have no issues with if you want to fool your friends and family, that’s on you.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Right. But what I don’t want to do is have you fool people that don’t know you.

David Raubach: Right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And so for us, it’s really important to know that anyone who a donor sees on our, on the OKC, you know, website or site, any name they see is actually a real patient being treated. It gives the donors a level of comfort saying, “Okay, I’m actually giving it to somebody who is going through treatment, does have a need.”

David Raubach: All right.

Rahul Mahadevan: And we don’t, we tend not to worry about how much income is somebody making. Partly because I’ve had friends of mine who have made a lot of money.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Kids were diagnosed with terminal cancer, ends up passing. Parents ended up in two years, two years of financial cost they were. And so there’s all these reasons why people end up in financial debt, post treatment, doesn’t mean they’re any less needy than somebody who’s making x amount of money, right? So, I think you give people the ability to kind of help in a small way. And I think that’s the key for me, is it’s not about let’s give a big organization a big check, right? It’s let’s give the person that could be my neighbor a small amount that could go a long way to help them on their journey, right? And I think you get enough small amounts, you end up having a big impact.

David Raubach: So describe practically how everything works, maybe start to finish. So somebody’s listening to this and saying, and we can use the example with Oklahoma Proton Center because we’re about to launch the platform with you guys, and so we’re really excited about that, and it’s going to be called cancer, the Cancer Pals platform. So we’re white labeling what you’ve done with We’re In This Together, with our own local iteration called Cancer Pals. Pals standing for patients are loved and supported. So, we took your daughter’s idea, I guess, of having this acronym. And so we’re really excited to launch this Cancer Pals local version of WIT. But describe, so maybe for the patient, what they do, and then for donors, what they do. How does the process actually work?

Rahul Mahadevan: So, patients will be notified about Cancer Pals from somebody at Oklahoma Proton that this resource exists for them. There’s no cost for them to use it.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: They would sign up as part of the Oklahoma City Proton website, and answer, you know, I think there’s a five minute onboarding process where we capture some information from them on who they are and what the disease is, and so on and so forth, and then they go and create their own registries of what they need help with. And we really focus on both financial and non-financial, because every patient will have friends that have either money but doesn’t have time, or has time but doesn’t have money, right? So if asking for both financial and non-financial things, you actually allow your network or people in the community to really help you in the way that they can help you the best, right? And so they can sign up, put what they want. We will have a place within, again, OKC Proton’s website, where donors can go in and say, “Hey, I want to support a patient directly.” We’ve built the ability for them to go in and either support a patient directly, because you may have somebody in the community that says I was diagnosed with X and I want to support patients who have the same disease, or my mom was, dad was diagnosed, and I want to support, you know, a particular patient that’s registered on the platform. So you can do that and you can support them directly, or you can say, listen, I’d like to get, you know, I’d like to give money to the foundation and have them distribute my behalf, just general fund, in which case I can get a tax write off for giving that money, knowing that that money then goes to support patients on the platform. And so we allow donors to basically figure out, you know, if you want to give directly to a patient, these are all people that live in the community, you can search by zip code, by disease type, by, and patients are the ones who have said they want their profiles to be made public. So, they want people to see what they need help with. And so, we’re basically making the needs of patients on the platform visible to the community, right? And you know, you can support a patient with as little as $10.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Or the whole amount they ask for. And so, you don’t have to, if somebody says, you want, they want $50 for an Uber ride, you don’t have to give them $50. 10. And then what our product does is say if somebody’s given $10 to David and David’s asked for 50, then the next donor that comes in and sees David’s request only sees 40 now, because you’ve taken out whatever’s already been given. And so you’re never giving more than what the person’s asking for. And we always tell patients, the smaller amounts you ask for, the more easier it is for somebody to give. It’s easier for somebody to give you $25 for something, or $50, or $30 for something, than it is to give you $300 for something, right? So, the more you can like think about how you slice and dice what you need in bite-sized chunks that people can help you with, the better.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: But the nice thing about that is we then also then generate a lot of data on the back end that will then help Oklahoma Proton understand what are your patients really needing help with, because it’s not just what they ask for, but then you may decide and say there may be other organizations we can work with. If we know that people living in Norman, Oklahoma, have a need, you know, child care is a big issue for those patients that are coming from there, right, is there an opportunity now to kind of work with a local daycare center to support the patients that are coming from with help with their kids when they’re coming for treatment.

David Raubach: Yeah. Right. So, can you really tease out the needs of patients to really start getting the community more involved in the best support you can give, to remove this home versus health decision process?

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah.

David Raubach: Well, and you talked about there’s the money component, but there’s also the in-kind donation, the time donation. So, somebody may put on there, I need help walking my dog. You had your kids and your wife maybe to help walk your dog. That didn’t have happened.

Rahul Mahadevan: Yeah. Yeah. But not everybody has that and so somebody also could get on there and see that as a need.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: You could have a neighbor. I mean we don’t make the in-kind things visible to people that the patient doesn’t know.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Because one of the things really important to us is you don’t want some random person showing up and saying, “Hey, I’ll walk your dog.” And you have no idea who the person is. So we only make the in-kind needs visible to people that the patient selects are part of my network.

David Raubach: But you have people that, you know, want to support the patient, don’t have funds to support the patient, but have time. But that also goes to what you’ve described a couple of times, which is sometimes it’s just hard for a patient to ask for that help and say, and so just putting it out there generically and saying, I, this is a need, I feel comfortable at least putting it on a list. It’s hard for me to just go to a particular person and say, will you help me? Because you don’t know how, what that response is going to be.

Rahul Mahadevan: The one time I did that when I was going through treatment, I had a friend of mine who said to me, “Hey, I’m happy to whatever you need, happy to do it,” was a Wednesday. And I said, “I could use it right, tomorrow, Thursday, to the hospital, cuz I’m just exhausted and I don’t feel like driving.” And he looked at me, paused for a second, he looked at me and he said, “Ah, tomorrow’s bad, I take my daughter to the dentist tomorrow.” But I can do it Friday.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: Like I don’t need her on Friday, I need it tomorrow, right? And so you don’t ever want to put some, you don’t want to, I think when you start having those discussions in real time, you put the person that’s wanting to help you in a tough position. You say, how do I say no to someone, my friend who is going through this diagnosis, they want to help, and I want to help, but I can’t help in this particular way at this particular moment. So if you just put your needs out there, then you let them make the decision on when they can and cannot do something for you. And so you remove that awkward conversation between the patient and the people that want to support them. Most people want to help.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: They just want to do it on their terms and based on what they can do versus what the patient needs.

David Raubach: Yeah.

Rahul Mahadevan: So, and so we will have a link to Cancer Pals on our website so that the public or donors or anybody who wants to help patients can go on and see what the needs are. As you said, there’ll be a mechanism to give on that platform directly to the patient, or if they want to just give to the 501c3 foundation, the Proton Pals Foundation, which that 100% of those proceeds that are donated on that website would go to patients. And then we will also be working with patients to enable them to be able to get on and create a profile on the website. And so we’re doing this, and we’re also going to partner with American Cancer Society as well, with what I’ll describe as kind of this initial launch. And patients that are staying at the local Hope Lodge will also have the ability to, and not even necessarily getting treated at Oklahoma Proton Center. But they’ll have the ability to go on, create a profile. So that’ll be the initial cohort of patients, and the way to access the platform. But we’re really excited to make this a community resource and partner with the other health systems and the other cancer centers so that it really becomes the one place here locally that if you want to help a patient, not even necessarily at Oklahoma Proton Center, but just a cancer patient that’s getting treated anywhere, that a donor will be able to go on and do that. But then also again, this is this resource for cancer patients as well. So, we’re really excited about the potential for how this is going to help so many people here in Oklahoma City.

David Raubach: Yeah, we’re going to have a link on our website to PALS. And so if there’s people that are going to our website to see, and they’re like, “Oh, I’m from Oklahoma, but I live in Florida now,” or “I’m in Texas now.” You know, we can broaden that vision, because it’s like, it’s like you want to give back to your community you’re a part of as well. And so we want to make, we want to just make the needs as visible as we can to anybody that lives in the country who wants to support, and knowing that 100% of what they give to a patient goes to the patient, right?

Rahul Mahadevan: And so if we can move the needle, my hope is that I don’t want to waste my diagnosis, right? I want to work with organizations like you and people like you to say, how do we really make a difference? And if we do this right, and there’s a lot of ways we can continue to improve what we’re doing, if we do it right, you know, maybe this whole conversation around home versus health goes away at some point.

David Raubach: Yeah. Right. And it’s just about focus on your health. Well, I really appreciate your time today, Rahul. Thank you for having us. This is amazing. And I think it’s just incredible to hear a story of somebody who potentially was weeks away from having a diagnosis where it wouldn’t have even been treatable. I mean, you had an aggressive cancer and caught it just in time. And now here we are. We’re so grateful for what you’re doing, and what you’re doing to get back, but also enabling other people that want to give back to be able to do that as well. So, thank you for coming on and sharing.

Rahul Mahadevan: Thank you for being part of my friend.

David Raubach: Yes, sir.

Rahul Mahadevan: Appreciate it. Thank you.