The Beastwood Files: September 2024

Happy fall from a divided household, where my wife prefers pumpkin spice and I’m all about apple. (Warm apple cider doughnuts are one of the best things on this planet of ours.) Kiddo also likes apples, mostly because they offer a reason to use the apple peeler/corer/slicer, which coincidentally is also one of the best things on this planet of ours. (Or at least one of the most convenient.)

This was a bit of an odd month. I worked a lot but don’t necessarily have a lot to “show” for it, as much of it was custom.

Things I Wrote

• Custom content for companies in digital health, health insurance, cybersecurity, enterprise tech, and healthcare payer tech
• Bylines coming next month! (Kids, this is what we in the industry call a “Teaser.”)

Tabs I Kept Open

• Matthew Holt wrote a post for The Health Care Blog suggesting 2024 looks like a lot like 2021 for digital health, and not in a good way. Lots of companies are getting funding, sure, but he figures there are only 11 true digital health unicorns at this point – and only one of them is actually profitable. All signs point to a rough road for anyone looking for an exit.
• If you’re into that sort of thing, Fierce Healthcare published a list of key healthcare conferences for the next few months. I have little interest in business travel these days, but there’s a part of me glad to see events coming back. I’ll probably start to think about it when I see people’s pictures and get FOMO. Right now, I’m not.
• I grew up watching sports, and I still do, but my interest has waned as I’ve gotten older. I consider myself fortunate that happened at the exact moment sports betting became so ubiquitous. This piece in The Atlantic describing how sports betting hits people’s savings accounts and hurts their families is sad.

Adventures in Fatherhood

• I do my best not to disappoint my son. That said, he routinely calls me out for scraggly facial hair and deadpans, “Daddy, you need to shave.” In the moment, I tell him, “You’re right, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Then, more often than not, I do not in fact do it tomorrow.
• As fall began, I noticed my son was the only kid in the preschool class wearing shorts. As a first-time parent, I naturally wondered if this meant I was in some way being neglectful. Then I looked down and realized I, too, was wearing shorts.
• I cooked the right kind of chicken nuggets last night! Let’s see if we get through the entire bag before we declare once again that we no longer like chicken nuggets. Good times.

Happy October, all. May your children stick to their Halloween costume choices and not change their minds at 4:32 p.m. on the 31st. May you acquire the appropriate amount of candy for your household given the weather, neighborhood trick-or-treating patterns, and innumerable factors you won’t think to consider until 4:32 p.m. on the 31st. May you remember to rake the leaves before the first snowfall of the season – and may that snowfall not come, unannounced, at 4:32 p.m. on the 31st.