Top 5 Reasons Physicians Should Embrace Tech Hustles

Before we dive into how to leverage your medical expertise in tech, let’s ask: why should you?

You’ve built a top-tier career—financial stability, the reward of helping patients, and using your training to its fullest.

So why change anything?

Because clinical work, for all its rewards, has limits. Burnout creeps in, reimbursement rates fall, and work-life balance suffers. Worse, non-physicians are making the decisions.

There’s a cost to doing nothing.

Investor Marc Andreessen famously said, "Software is eating the world,” referring to how tech is taking over all industries. Healthcare has been slow to adapt, but that’s changing fast in recent years.

The future of medicine is being built right now, and there’s a seat at the table for you. And if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

Here are 5 reasons to consider Tech for your next hustle:

1. Impact
How do you go from a challenging non-profit to a $520 million startup helping 100,000 low-income people? I didn’t know that was possible until I met fellow Y Combinator founder Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins.

Growing up on welfare, she felt a calling to help her community. After attempts to make an impact through the labor movement and then an anti-poverty non-profit, she turned to tech at 42 years old.

Phaedra founded Promise, which helps low-income people avoid harsh penalties, even jail-time, for unpaid bills by offering flexible and interest-free payment plans. Cities pay for it because they see significantly improved collections, from 13% to as high as 90%, while struggling individuals get much-needed relief.

It’s a win-win for everyone, to the tune of a startup expected to hit a billion dollar valuation soon for Phaedra. At least that’s what Forbes thinks in a profile they wrote on her in their latest issue. It’s a great lesson that aligning incentives within the system can create massive impact.

2. Live Life on Your Terms
Most doctors are tied to someone else’s schedule. A side hustle or tech startup gives you flexibility. You can break free of the rigid structures and reliance on administrators.

It doesn’t mean endless free time, but it means control over your time—whether to work on something meaningful or spend time with loved ones.

I’ve had the freedom to drop everything when it mattered, like being by my parents’ side across the world when they got sick.

3. Money
Tech dominates the richest companies and individuals lists for a reason, a huge shift over the past 2 decades, and one that will continue to grow.

I will be sharing many stories of doctors who have made tens and hundreds of millions in tech in future emails, but here’s a great non-medical story.

Brian Acton applied for stable engineering roles at Twitter and Facebook. They both rejected him. Yet, he remained cheerful and optimistic.

He and a friend hired a freelancer to build an app for private, seamless communication on the new iPhone platform—WhatsApp. Brian sold it to Facebook for $19 billion just 4 years after they rejected him for a 6-figure job! Meta’s rising stock price since then has made the deal now worth $92 billion.

In a further impressive twist, Brian publicly quit Facebook and left the bulk of that payment on the table before his contract finished because of concerns that they were abusing the privacy of WhatsApp users. So he helped create Signal, an alternative messaging app that would remain private and free forever, donating $105 million to keep it from needing to sell out. He also donated $1 billion to support healthcare and early childhood development in impoverished areas in the USA.

4. Use Your Skills
Many side hustles pull you away from your expertise. But in tech, you can leverage your medical knowledge. Doctors have an unfair advantage to the many non-physician tech founders who are trying to build things in an industry they don’t understand.

My former senior resident, Jeff Chang, saw the potential of AI in Radiology. While most non-physicians were eagerly trying to replace Radiologists, Jeff realized he could use AI to improve the practice of Radiology today and built Rad AI. It’s now worth over $200 million, while most of the overhyped and misguided competitors have since shut down.

5. Creativity
Clinical work often stifles creativity with rigid protocols. In contrast, tech allows you to innovate freely. My friend and former co-worker, Alex Oshmyansky, saw a chance to make healthcare more affordable.

Patients were being priced out of generic drugs through gouging tactics by Pharmacy Benefit Managers. So Alex founded Cost Plus Drug Company to cut out the middlemen and sell directly to consumers. His journey led him to becoming partners with Mark Cuban and working out of the the Dallas Mavericks training facility.

In just one year, they’ve helped 2 million customers get cheaper medications! Alex was recently listed on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare in 2024.

I’m not telling you to change careers or ditch medicine. I’m saying you have the chance to enhance your current one—to become a Super Doc.

You control how much effort you put in. Whether you want to invest in top startups passively, take on a more active gig with advising and consulting, or fully commit by starting your own startup or online business, the choice is yours.

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Until next time,
Mohammed