Dreaming of Unicorns by Charlie Barlow Extract
In Dreaming of Unicorns, Charlie Barlow takes the reader on a journey from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, as he battles to build the business of his dreams: online medical consultation app Health at Hand.
It’s not a smooth journey, and this is an honest account with all the bumps in the road. There are regulatory minefields, cultural barriers, legal threats, demoralising setbacks and hard-won breakthroughs.
Charlie’s wit and self-reflection are refreshing as he describes the painful lessons he had to learn and the resilience needed to survive in the high-stakes startup world. This is the ultimate handbook for any entrepreneur or anyone thinking of becoming one. The warts and all account of one man’s attempt to snag that most elusive of beasts — the unicorn.
After 12 years working as a Private and Investment Banker for leading international banks – including Morgan Stanley, HSBC and the Bank of Singapore – Charlie Barlow established his own technology venture- capital business, Rockfirst Capital, in 2012 and subsequently founded the multi-award-winning telehealth company Health at Hand.
Health at Hand became the first licensed telehealth company to ever be established in the Middle East and the first to focus on transforming healthcare access to the under-served blue-collar population of the region.
Having scaled Health at Hand to over 4 million patients and 6 countries, Charlie sold the business in 2021 to Fortune 500 company Allianz. He now works within the fintech and health sectors, advising businesses on how to scale cross-border and to reach their full exit potential.
Extract
Here is an extract from the book:
‘Charlie Barlow. How the fuck did you get into my office?!’
‘And so it began – my journey as a first-time entrepreneur, having lied my way into the office of Dr Pat Basu, founder of the world’s most successful digital healthcare company. With a growing sense of both trepidation and excitement, I’d found myself in the heart of Doctor on Demand’s San Francisco headquarters, hoping to kickstart my copycat MedTech business for the under-served, low-income populations of emerging markets … But how on earth did this meeting even happen in the first place? I knew next to nothing about technology or healthcare when I began the journey of incubating Health at Hand, the digital healthcare business I would go on to sell some five years later.
‘I was on a night flight from Singapore to Dubai in early 2016 when the idea first came to me. A brainwave. Or so I thought. Smartphones were becoming more and more prevalent, and WIFI was beginning to reach even rural communities in much of the developing world. I’ve always had an active mind for scheming and brainstorming and, having spent the last ten years living in Asia and the Middle East, I was acutely aware that in many developing markets, the quality of healthcare available to the general population often fell short of the standards found in more developed regions. What if there was a mobile-enabled technology solution that allowed patients and doctors to communicate through video – and from their smartphones? I could alleviate one of the world’s great injustices, ensuring that access to quality primary healthcare was not only available to the privileged few, but to everyone. Build an app; download it on to an iPad; throw that iPad into a shanty town or refugee camp, and I’d be a world-beater.
‘It all sounded so easy.’
Extract courtesy of Grace Pilkington Publicity
For further information, interview requests or to see a book, please contact gracepilkingtonpublicity@gmail.com
About the Author
Charlie Barlow was founder and CEO of Health at Hand, an app-based doctor
video consultation platform launched in Dubai in 2017.
“What a remarkable story and one of great resilience and kindness, building a business to serve the low-income populations of the emerging markets”
Liz Earle MBE
