A Medical Tourism Business

In 2019, a family health crisis pulled me away from tech and into an industry I knew nothing about: medical tourism.

It's a $300 billion market hiding in plain sight. Most people never think about it until they need it. Yet there are thousands of Americans and Canadians crossing the border for medical and dental procedures they can't afford at home.

As a product manager, I couldn't help but see the gaps. Patients were managing serious medical procedures far from home, navigating language barriers, recovering without their support systems. The existing solutions weren't terrible but they weren't good enough either. Most of the medical staff taking care of patients in pain relied on Google Translate to communicate. Imagine being in pain and trying to explain your pain level through an app. There was also a gap in terms of technology. Most recovery homes there had little, if any internet presence. I saw an immediate product-market fit, with the opportunity to provide a better user experience in an environment tailored to patients’ needs.

So I started Recovery Casa, a beachside recovery facility in Rosarito, Mexico, with bilingual medical staff providing 24/7 post-operative care. 

What I learned

Product-market fit works the same whether you're building software or services. I was still solving user problems, just in the physical world instead of through code. Instead of user stories and sprint planning, I was designing experiences for people in vulnerable situations. The principles were identical: understand needs, remove friction, create value.

I also learned what it's like to operate a business where your platform decisions affect real outcomes. When scheduling systems failed or communication broke down, I felt it immediately. That operator perspective changed how I think about building products. For example, I now understand what it's like to depend on infrastructure at 2am when things break.

Then COVID hit. Borders closed. All non-essential medical procedures were suspended indefinitely. There couldnt have been a worse time to start the business.  

But hey, the experience wasn't wasted. I learned what it means to start something from zero, to operate under extreme constraints, and to see product problems from the customer side. That's perspective most PMs never get.

After that, I moved to San Francisco, got my Harvard Master's in Information Systems Management, and started another business. Now I'm ready to get back to building products, but with a perspective I didn't have before.