Ali Goudarzi
I started my first real business, which was a medical semi-intelligent software company, in the year 2000—something that these days is called AI. At the time, I had a PhD in healthcare and medicine, and to be prepared for the company, I studied computer science and got a BS in computer science and some programming to be highly qualified and trained for such a bold move. In those days, computers were still pretty new, and artificial intelligence was like a fictional story.
The reason I started such a huge project was to solve the problem that doctors and healthcare providers were faced with tons of information that was available for the first time on the internet and online. Those days, for the first time in human history, everybody almost had access to a huge load of scientific and nonscientific information without needing to go to libraries and read books or magazines. Doctors and healthcare providers were overwhelmed, and the mission of the company was to have computers to fix the same issue they made: tons of information and data.
I gathered a team of doctors, programmers, and other professionals and started the business, but the business didn’t do well.
From my perspective, as the mastermind of the business, everything looked good, but clearly, something was missing. Later on, I realized that the business mindset in me as the founder and day-to-day runner of the business was missing. I had all the technical knowledge and was highly technically and scientifically I was highly qualified but that was not enough. I needed to know business, which I didn’t know at the time. That part was missing, which caused me and the business a lot of headaches and frustration. To run a business, you don’t necessarily need technical knowledge of what you do; to some extent, it could help, but overall, knowing a business and how to run a business is something totally different from knowing the technical side of what you do. By technical, I mean, for example, knowing skin, hair, and skincare, being a doctor, a beauty professional, or knowing how to treat diseases.
After so much struggle and loss of money and other resources, I switched my focus from technical and science to business knowledge. I read every single book I could get my hands on, participated in countless seminars, took several courses over the years, and immersed myself in the world of business.
To be honest, I found the world of business extremely exciting and rewarding.
That medical software business eventually took off after numerous setbacks and troubles, but I suffered a lot from my lack of business knowledge.
Since then, I have started several businesses, some successful and a couple not very successful. In the past 10 years, I have been teaching business, doing business consulting and mentorship, and writing about business.