Problem Solvers
Problem Solvers
Entrepreneur Media
Episodes
About
Reviews
Promote
The Forbidden Love Every Founder Feels
29 minutes Posted Sep 21, 2026 at 7:00 am.
– Intro: the "forbidden love" of founders and their original ideas
– Meet Raj Mehra, CEO & co-founder of Sage
– What Sage does today (senior care tech platform)
– The origin story: his grandmother's fall
– The original hypothesis — building a voice app (Alexa/Google Home era)
– Building the "expensive paperweight" before validating with users
– The co-founders join, and the decision to finally talk to users
– What they learned: hardware was outdated, but voice wasn't the answer
– Feeling relief, not defeat, when the original idea didn't hold up
– Finding the middle ground: off-the-shelf hardware + exceptional software
– Taking the product to market — first customer deployments
– Solving the hard technical and life-safety challenges
– Using design sprints to navigate every major crossroads
– Filtering ideas through the "North Star": does it improve care?
– Advice for early-stage founders navigating a new market
– Advice #2: knowing when the technology is actually ready
– Where to find Sage, and closing thoughts
0:00
29:03
Download MP3
Show notes
Raj Mehra had it all: a personal reason to build, a hot new technology, a sector ripe for disruption. Then he put his product in front of real users and watched them fail to use it. So he did the hard thing. He listened. What he learned wasn't just a fix. It was a completely different company. This is the story of Sage Healthcare, and it's also the story of what it takes to break up with your own idea.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast uses Megaphone for stats, tracking, and dynamic audio. Learn more on this podcast's About tab. Dynamic Audio may cause this episode's timestamps to be slightly off.
← See all 490 episodes of Problem Solvers
Podbay © 2026 Fancy Soups
About