Sievert Weiss is the co-founder of AMBOSS, a “lifelong medical platform” that has rapidly become a must-have tool for physicians. Sievert trained as a doctor himself and after growing frustrated with traditional textbooks, he became determined to revolutionize the way medical knowledge was shared. It eventually led him to pivot to ed-tech, launching AMBOSS in 2012. The platform is now used by 95% of student doctors in Germany, and half of the resident doctors in the US. It recently closed $240m in Series C.

In the latest episode of The Further, Faster Podcast, Sievert talks to Antler Partner Cristoph Klink about the rollercoaster journey so far – from his early struggles in launching a startup to the future of AI in medical training. Having started his career in medicine, Sievert entered the world of tech with a totally unique mindset, making this episode a must-listen for those seeking fresh perspectives on innovation, impact and entrepreneurship. 

Sievert opens up about how naive he and his team were about what the project would entail from the start, and how they ultimately had to choose between entrepreneurship and a career in medicine. “We had no idea what an angel investor is…” says Sievert. “I think what we had at the time was like this early conviction that there could be a better product…All our parents were asking, like, ‘okay so when are you going to be a real doctor?’”

The biggest hurdle was building the content .”It's an essential part of what AMBOSS is and that was an enormous workload,” says Sievert. “We worked for over a year just on the content base with 20 to 40 people…There were physicians between jobs that we asked them to come by for a month and work with us. We had one attic that we could use for free and we made them come there. It almost felt like a movement.”

Now AMBOSS is making new leaps with AI. The ascent of LLMs has given the company new opportunities. One, Sievert says, is that it can rapidly localize knowledge not just to regions, but to a specific hospital – integrating its own training protocols. It also has a new “AI Mode” which allows physicians to ask complex questions and get answers generated on the entire AMBOSS knowledge base. 

Working in a high stakes field such as medicine means the typical “move fast and break things” approach isn’t always appropriate. “There’s a lot of quality assurance needed,” says Seivert but flipping from a physician mindset to a business one meant learning how to be bolder – and take big steps without prior knowledge.  “When you are a physician you're used to having a lot of knowledge about things and then applying that.” says Sievert. “When you start a company for many of those things you don't have the knowledge…and you still have to do it.”

To learn more about Siever’s journey with AMBOSS, and how the company rapidly achieved deep market penetration in a specialist field, listen to the full episode here.

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