How to Build a Defensible AI Startup – With Dr. Thomas Kelly from Heidi Health

How to Build a Defensible AI Startup – With Dr. Thomas Kelly from Heidi Health

How to Build a Defensible AI Startup – With Dr. Thomas Kelly from Heidi Health

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Dr. Tom Kelly, founder of Heidi Health, is building one of Australia’s fastest-growing AI startups, and he’s doing it differently. In this episode, Tom reveals how Heidi Health transforms messy doctor-patient conversations into medical-grade notes in seconds, why batch transcription beats live, and why trust and time, not flashy features, are the future of healthcare AI.

Georgie and Tom unpack why most B2B SaaS startups may not survive, what not to do as a non-technical founder in AI, and how to build trust in high-stakes industries. They also explore personal branding, attention hacking, agents, and AI's limits in life-or-death decision-making.

Plus, Tom shares a killer AI travel hack and plays Late Stage Startup Bingo, guessing the hottest Aussie AI companies, from Relevance AI to Leonardo.

Chapters

03:20 – What is Heidi Health and how does it work?

07:30 – Doctors spend half their time on documentation

10:45 – How many Australians have unknowingly used Heidi

12:15 – Does every AI founder need a personal brand?

14:20 – Attention hacking vs. building real trust

18:00 – AI Hack of the Week: voice agents as personal tour guides

20:00 – Gemini’s financial report guessing game

23:00 – Late Stage Startup Bingo: Aussie AI edition

28:30 – The batch processing decision that made Heidi better

31:10 – Why 2% better quality led to 40% more adoption

35:45 – How non-technical founders can get AI-literate fast

40:30 – Should you fine-tune models early on?

44:30 – RAG vs. unlimited context: what comes next

49:10 – The dream of lifelong medical memory

50:50 – Rapid Fire: B2B SaaS, AI agents & Aussie gov support

Resources

🌐 Heidi Health: https://heidihealth.com

🔗 Dr. Tom Kelly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkeykong/

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