Behind Her Empire: How Dr. Iman Abuzeid Went From Doctor to Founder

On April 21, 2021, DotLA posted their week's episode of Behind Her Empire, hear from Dr. Iman Abuzeid, the co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a digital platform designed to streamline the hiring and recruitment process for nurses.

Abuzeid's career is marked by her knack for adaptability. Her father and brothers are surgeons, and she also graduated medical school before working at McKinsey. She realized patient care wasn't for her, and attended the Wharton School to get her MBA. Inspired by her grandfathers — both entrepreneurs in Sudan — she left for Silicon Valley, looking to gain some experience with health care startups.

After her first venture went belly-up, she changed direction. From her failure, she said she learned how important it is for founder to "invest heavily in ideation before execution."

"It's like a ship leaving a harbor," she said. "You want to make sure the ship is pointed in the right direction before you depart."

Abuzeid thinks risk and dealing with rejection are some of the most important experiences of being an entrepreneur. After founding Incredible Health in 2017, she was able to raise $17.2 million over two years in two rounds from firms including Andreessen Horowitz — but not without rejection.

"Rejection is something that every entrepreneur needs to get very accustomed to," she said, "because the journey is not just about investor rejections. You will get customer rejections. You even get employee rejections."

Listen to this episode to hear more about Abuzeid's journey to founding Incredible Health, her perspective on attending business school, startup culture, funding and her dream of entrepreneurship.

"I think what this all boils down to is getting really crystal clear on what you want to do with your career. And I find it easier to determine what I want to do five years out or ten years out then as opposed to what I want to do next. So I'll go through an example of that. So I knew at age twenty four coming out of medical school, by the time I'm thirty, I want to start my own company. And then let's work backwards from there. What are the different steps to get the. It was easier for me to determine that goal five or 10 years out and then work backwards than it was to be like, OK, what should I do next?"

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