Nikhil asks for help this holiday!

Hello everyone! I hope you’re having a splendid holiday. 

One thing I find difficult is asking people for help when I need it. Something something toxic masculinity, desire to succeed on my own merit alone, etc.

This holiday season most people are giving things to you out of generosity. I am quite contrarian, and instead I’d like to ask you to give things to me. I’m in my grinch era.

As we plan for 2026 and beyond, it’s clear that we’re going to need some help. Out-Of-Pocket only works because people basically are willing to do me favors because they think we’re doing good work and want to support it. People on this newsletter have been so kind and helpful in the past, that I figured I’d make some asks!

First big ask - tell people to sign up for the newsletter

The war on attention has never been greater. Accounts focusing on BREAKING news to make people feel FOMO, aggregating other people’s hard work and reposting it to get followers, focusing on drama about companies or people. I’ll be honest, it’s sucked me in too.

This was bad but AI tools have made this entire landscape way worse. I genuinely think I am now reading more misinformation on the internet than actually useful information. Content is going viral that is actively incorrect and will lead people down the wrong paths in healthcare. 

The most basic, repetitive takes keep getting rehashed. Everyone knows that 1) pilots suck 2) there’s a ton of admin  3) Clinicians are burnt out 4) Payers do some bad things 5) patients are an afterthought. We don’t need to talk about this every time. If I hear “patients need a seat at the table” one more time, I’ll flip that fucking table.

I try really hard to get people interested in new IDEAS about healthcare and talk through some of the nuances that exist in them. But if we’re being honest, that’s not exactly something that makes the rounds. And yet at the same time, word of mouth is by far still the highest trust way for people to sign up for anything.

‍So my ask today is that if you’ve enjoyed the newsletter, to tell people at your companies that they should sign up. I’m proud of the content and ideas I’ve put into the world, and they take a long time to do. Plus the newsletter is our distribution channel for all the other awesome stuff we do like events, courses, coworking, and more. 

So in order for us to do a good job in improving healthcare, we need some help in getting the word out. 

(Obvi this is especially true in senior leadership in healthcare and people that work in F500 where we have less reach. I know beggars can’t be choosers here, but if you know one of those people…).  

Also follow us on instagram where we basically only do the fun brainless stuff, or watch me shitpost like an invasive species in the LinkedIn ecosystem.

Our big push into healthcare hardware

We are planning to put our stake in the ground around hardware in healthcare. I think this area is extremely interesting for lots of reasons that I”m happy to talk about over a beer, but at a high level:

1. Labor spend in healthcare is very high + scarce, this can help solve it
2. Hardware provides ground truth data (e.g. wearables) that is going to become very valuable
3. New developments in robotics are opening up use cases (navigating random environments, fine motor control, lower latency tele-operating, etc.)

We are doing two events in this theme and I can use your help on it.

Hardware hackathon in SF in April. We are doing a hardware hackathon in SF. Think wearables, smart glasses, necklaces that record ambiently, etc. that have software developer kits to build on top of. 

My asks for help here:

1. Do you have a space that can fit 150-200 people for both hacking and a demo day? 
2. If you know a company that makes hardware and is pushing into healthcare, please email sales@outofpocket.health. We have a lot of great sponsorship opportunities, people will build cool things, create awesome video content around it, and more
3. Sign up to get notified when it opens in a couple weeks

‍Med Machina: A healthcare hardware + robotics conference. We are doing a larger conference focused on hardware use cases in healthcare. Think portable diagnostics, hospital/home robots, wearables, exoskeletons, cloud labs, and more. 

We are shaping up the agenda for a conference in Q 1 2027. I know this seems far out but THAT’S SHOWBIZZZZ and larger conferences need that lead.

My asks for help:

1. We’re looking for an event space in Boston that can fit 300–500 people seated for main programming, with room to also eat, mingle, and host hardware demos/exhibits. I know there are cool event spaces out there!
2. If you know of cool companies or projects in the hardware/robotics space, let me know. Hospital robots, drones, wearables, exoskeleton, you name it

There’s more but I don’t wanna be greedy. You get the gist of what we’re trying to do, and would love your help in finding the people that will make this event successful.

Healthcare 101 Learning Summit

Weeeeee are doing our healthcare 101 learning summit in NY 1/29 - 1/30. In general it’s our test in whether IRL classroom style learning is something we want to do more of.

In 1.5 days I’ll teach you how US healthcare works. You’ll leave with:

• An understanding of how all payers, hospitals, pharma etc. make money and what they care about.
• Case studies and examples in the real-world that will solidify your understanding
• Diagrams, memes, and jargon explainers of all the stuff people will say but never explain
• My phone number if you have an emergency request to understand what a company does cause the website doesn’t actually tell you

You’ll meet people working in healthcare, hear from guest lecturers actually building companies, and learn how all the pieces fit together.

We have a limited number of seats left. You can sign up here or email sales@outofpocket.health for group rates.

My ask: 

• If you know someone who’s new to healthcare and is trying to learn how it all works, send this to them
• If you know someone whose team is growing, send this to them because they most likely need it
• If you know a company that’s selling INTO healthcare (e.g. agencies, consulting firms, AI companies, dev shops) send this to them. They really benefit the most so they don’t look dumb when they’re talking to healthcare clients.

We’re looking for some part-time/contracting help

We got a bunch of cool stuff planned for 2026 but we need some part-time help to do everything we hope. We’re looking for help in the following:

1. Part-time analyst to help me with the newsletter. If you like reading/writing about different parts of healthcare in your free time, you’ll like this.
2. Contract designer - everything from bringing a theme to life for our events to redesigning sales assets, we need someone who can capture our “playful yet serious” vibe.
3. Performance marketer - we’ve never really spent any money on marketing before and…don’t really know what we’re doing. Pls help.

Email alex@outofpocket.health if you think you’d be a good fit for any of the above.

Our new sponsorship packet

The mad lads here at OOP labs have been building the perfect media kit to help explain who our audience is, what we have coming up in 2026, and how potential partners/sponsors can get involved. Banners, content, podcasts, feet pics(?), dinners, happy hours, and so much more!

My sales guys says I need to tell you about how excited I am to do sponsored content in 2026.  But already about 1/2 of all the content slots are booked. If you want to do content, dinners, events, etc. with us we should chat ASAP.

Email sales@outofpocket.health or fill out this form. We do a limited number of everything because, well, I’m tired.

My ask:

• Your money

Reminder: free interoperability course!

HHS just released some interesting new stuff around interoperability and AI in their new HTI-5 proposed rule. Good thing we have our FREE course on interoperability with Metriport on 1/20 - 1/22!

We’re going to talk about the current state of interoperability and show how pulling data actually works (with some real-life examples). If you’re confused on what interoperability is or want to know the current state of getting healthcare data, you should sign up. 

Our healthcare coworking spaces + expansion?

We have a bunch of healthcare coworking spaces we’ve been running in New York, Chicago, Boston, and SF. If you’re interested in any of them, you should sign up here.

Running these spaces has shown me that the best way to make friends is sitting next to other people for long enough. I forgot what it’s like to just learn by osmosis. Plus we've had a lot of really interesting lunch and learns where to help each other out and learn about different parts of the industry. We even had holiday parties too!

IMO work should be social - healthcare is fun because it attracts good people. We’re trying to make that happen, come through.

My ask:

• We have a 100+ person waitlist for our New York coworking space and are looking for a space we could expand into. If you know anyone that IS NOT using their space in Manhattan, is shutting down the company, etc. and has like a 30-40 desk space, let me know and maybe we can take over the lease.

Have a good holiday, wishing you a good 2026

Looking down the barrel of 2026 is really fun, exciting, and scary. The stakes are higher, we’re trying to do more ambitious things, and frankly we’re taking the hard way by keeping the quality bar high and doing more stuff in-person.

But we have a lot of good people in our corner, so I’m feeling optimistic. Appreciate all of you, and thanks for the help.

Thinkboi out,

Nikhil aka. Saint Nikhilas

P.S. I’ll be at JPM in San Francisco this year, where are the dinners where the DEALS are getting done?? I’m trying to be in one of those cartoonish cigar smoke filled rooms where they’re making offers you can’t refuse.

Twitter: ​@nikillinit​

IG: ​@outofpockethealth​

Other posts: ​outofpocket.health/posts​

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‎If you’re enjoying the newsletter, do me a solid and shoot this over to a friend or healthcare slack channel and tell them to sign up. The line between unemployment and founder of a startup is traction and whether your parents believe you have a job.