Leaving Big Tech to Solve a Bigger Problem: Tim Edgar's Founder Philosophy on Data, Purpose, and Validation

How do you spot the problems worth solving? Tim Edgar, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Venteur, reveals the mindset that took him from big tech engineer to serial entrepreneur.

Venteur's Mission: Revolutionizing Healthcare with Employee Choice

Tim Edgar's current venture, Venteur, operates in the health benefit space and focuses on putting employees at the center of decision-making [00:53].

• The Solution: Venteur helps employers provide tax-free money to employees, who then use it to choose their own personalized insurance plans and qualified medical expenses [00:53].
• The Problem it Solves: This model replaces the traditional "one-size-fits-no-one group plan" and is described as a "win-win" that saves employers money and has bipartisan support in healthcare [01:06].
• The Scale: The problem is massive: employers spend $1.6 trillion on health insurance, yet the decision-making is often disconnected from the employees [04:24]. The frequent disruption of care networks (e.g., switching from Kaiser to Blue Shield) harms people's long-term health, which Venteur aims to fix by promoting stability and continuity [04:41].

The Blueprint for Finding a Problem Worth Solving

Edgar notes that his successful startups have always been rooted in two factors: a personal emotional connection and a massive, quantifiable problem [02:06].

1. Find the Deeply Personal Observation: The initial inspiration must be an emotional one—a human behavior or observation that provides a deep "sense of purpose" necessary to push through the inevitable tough times of a startup [02:13].
2. Validate with Quantitative Data: This emotional spark must be backed by data that confirms it is a truly massive problem [02:22]. For his first startup, Leafly, the data point was realizing the average household takes 200 actions annually to offset energy consumption, highlighting a significant but hidden pain point [02:50].

The Master of the Craft: A Non-Traditional Approach to Validation

When validating a problem with potential customers, Edgar advises against trying to validate a hypothesis. Instead, he suggests a strategy centered on genuine curiosity [07:32]:

• Look for Emotional Triggers: The key signal to listen for in conversations is an "emotional connection"—something that triggers a deeper, visceral response [06:34].
• Become the Apprentice: Treat the person you are speaking to as "the master of the craft" [07:47]. Ask questions like, "Why do you do this?" and "Can you teach me these things?" This unbiased approach uncovers what they truly believe and gets to the fundamental why of their behavior and feedback [07:57].

Leveraging Big Tech Experience for Startup Success

Edgar’s time at Microsoft, particularly working on Bing, provided him with valuable, transferable skills [09:21]:

• Entrepreneurship Roots: He credits the environment fostered by Satya Nadella, who was his Vice President at Microsoft, for encouraging every employee to act as an entrepreneur and pitch concepts, a philosophy he now employs at Venteur [09:14].
• The Power of Data at Scale: The most impactful tool gained from Big Tech was the ability to deal with large volumes of data, slice it, and use behavioral signals to learn [11:41]. In a startup context, this means constantly striving to disprove your own thesis and maintaining a rigorous data-gathering mentality, regardless of resource limitations [13:10].
• Mentorship: The primary advantage of Big Tech is the built-in mentorship network. He advises all founders to proactively build this network themselves to ensure they have the guidance to grow with the business [19:24].

Co-Founding with Complementary Skills

Tim's co-founder at Venteur is his older sister, Stacy, whose background in the public sector—working for the federal government in highly regulated sectors is highly complementary to his Big Tech background [13:56].

• A Healthy Dynamic: Her expertise lies in market development and creating markets where infrastructure is sparse, which is a fitting approach for innovating in the complex U.S. healthcare market [15:43].
• The Sibling Superpower: Co-founding with his sister provides "extremely high bandwidth communication" because they know each other's "tells" [16:58]. This deep, professional respect and ability to finish each other's sentences speeds up communication and strengthens the company through healthy debate [17:22].

The Founder's End Goal

Tim's philosophy for growth: Well, It is vital to know the ultimate North Star—the $1.6 trillion vision of consumerizing healthcare—but he does not focus on a rigid five-year plan [22:28]. Instead, he maintains a laser focus on what the immediate "next step" is to work toward that goal [23:04]. Ultimately, the end goal is simply solving the problem, with the scale and size of the company being a natural byproduct of that mission [23:32].

Watch the Full Interview Here: