Neko CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne was licking his wounds after "crash landing" a climate startup. Then he got a fateful DM from Spotify's Daniel Ek Together, @HjalmarNilsonne and @eldsjal co-founded @Neko, a $7B startup that calls itself "the most valuable hour you can spend on your health." After years operating in Europe, Neko recently launched in NYC, where it's quickly built a waitlist of 50,000 people, and started work on 3 more locations. Miami, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are next. “People sometimes think that there’s some machine, and you go in, and you get a kind of paper receipt telling you if you’re gonna die or not,” Hjalmar tells me. “In reality, it’s the exact opposite.” On The Upstarts Podcast, Nilsonne talks about the fateful Twitter DM from Ek that got Neko going; why the doctor visit hasn’t changed much in 100 years; and how to keep a startup team motivated while chasing a long-term “moonshot.” Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: a bet-the-company pivot driven by an internal memo he wrote, “Free Is Not Enough.” A big thanks to this season's sponsors @Atlassian and @chargebee for supporting unfiltered founder interviews like this 🫡 CHAPTERS: 00:00 Introduction 01:48 Mapping Your Body In One Hour 03:54 Why The Doctor’s Visit Hasn’t Changed In 100 Years 07:31 Building Four Businesses In One: Devices, Hardware, Software, Clinics 09:22 Breaking Down A Neko Visit First-Hand 12:58 Why Half of Neko’s U.K. Members Never Had A Health Check 16:59 ‘Brutally Efficient With Your Time’: Why Every Second Counts 19:04 Helping Human Doctors, Not Replacing Them 22:40 Delivering Outcomes For the 92% Of Members Not At Risk 26:47 A Climate ‘Crash Landing’ And A DM From Daniel Ek 33:12 Motivating A Team To Chase A Moonshot 37:42 Neko’s Upstart Moment: The ‘Free Is Not Enough’ Memo And Pivot 41:30 Pricing Neko Accessibly For The 99.9% 45:44 What The Tesla Roadster Can Teach Founders About Change 48:33 Space-Age Scan, Old-School Advice: Cut The Coffee Thanks for watching!

Neko Health is as good as advertised. I got to be the 4th person to preview the new NYC location yesterday. The whole experience, from the moment you enter and head down the stairs, was dialed in. It felt like the future. Beautiful combo of design, technology, and people. Got a bunch of scans, bloodwork, and blood pressure done in ~30 minutes and as soon as it was done, they took me into a room to explain the results, which were all ready that quickly because there’s a lab on site (I won’t spoil how the blood gets there, maybe the coolest part). Luckily, I’m basically healthy but need to get my fat ass in shape. It’s wild that it costs $499, and they’re going to keep squeezing more tests into that price. They were nice enough to give me this one on the house but I already paid for my next appointment in 12 months. 10/10 would recommend.