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Regard cofounders Nate Wilson and Eli Ben-Joseph traveled together for months before starting the company. Wilson says the trip showed him how Ben-Joseph handled uncertainty and pressure—but they did not set out to make it a cofounder test. His takeaway is advice from personal experience, not proof that every founding team should travel together.

How Wilson and Ben-Joseph met—and why they traveled

According to a reproduced Fortune story, Wilson and Ben-Joseph met in Boston through a Craigslist sublet. Both had been considering medical careers: Wilson had prepared for medical school before moving into consulting and starting a data science firm, while Ben-Joseph was a bioengineer at MIT who was also preparing for medical school. As they considered what to do next, they decided to travel.

The Fortune headline calls it a ten-month trip. Its reproduced story describes months on the road, including stops in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, the Philippines, and Colombia, but does not provide a detailed chronology that independently establishes the exact duration. The account describes disrupted plans, bad trains, power outages, remote towns, limited money, and situations where there was no easy way out. Those details come from the story’s account, rather than a separately verified itinerary. Read the reproduced Fortune story.

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What Wilson says the trip revealed

Wilson later described the experience as a kind of cofounder “boot camp,” but the two had not planned it as a compatibility exercise. In hindsight, he valued seeing how Ben-Joseph responded when plans went wrong and how they handled pressure together.

Wilson’s advice is to spend substantial time with a prospective cofounder in circumstances that may not go smoothly, instead of relying only on résumés or credentials. He put it this way: “You got to really know this is the person.” He also said: “I would encourage every founder or would-be-co-founders to do exactly that—because it’s a blunt metaphor.” Both quotations preserve the conversational wording reported in the story.

That is Wilson’s recommendation, not a demonstrated rule for choosing cofounders. The story describes what he learned from one trip; it does not establish that long-distance travel is necessary or that it predicts whether a founder team will succeed. The practical idea is to notice how a potential partner communicates, adapts, and makes decisions when circumstances become difficult. A trip is one possible setting, not a universal requirement.

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What Regard does—and what the 2024 figures mean

Regard develops AI software for clinical insights and documentation. In a July 2024 announcement, the company said its platform analyzes available patient data and recommends diagnoses for clinicians to review; after clinician approval, it can generate standardized documentation. Regard also reported that clinicians at more than 150 hospitals were using the technology at that time. These are the company’s descriptions and a historical company-reported deployment figure, not an independent assessment of clinical effectiveness. Regard’s July 2024 funding announcement.

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Regard announced a $61 million Series B on July 11, 2024. TechCrunch reported that the company was valued at $350 million in connection with the round, attributing that valuation to a person familiar with the matter. That is a reported 2024 valuation—not a current valuation or public-market capitalization. TechCrunch’s report on the Series B.

The reproduced Fortune story also reports Wilson saying Regard had more than $150 million in revenue. That figure is attributed to Wilson in the story; the official funding announcement cited above does not verify it independently. Regard identifies Wilson as president and cofounder and Ben-Joseph as CEO and cofounder on its About page.

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