And 24 hours in a day significantly limits the number of people an individual person can help. So he jumped off the doctor track and into tech for one big reason — it can scale. He then started working on Walnut.

A passion project that took up his nights and weekends while he worked a full-time day job, Walnut offers patients the ability to buy now, pay later — but for healthcare. “I never thought I’d start a company, it just seemed so far out there, so daunting. You need to have a lot figured out to be able to take that leap and I thought I’d never get there.” Turns out passion was enough, and after learning that most of the country’s 500,000 bankruptcies each year are fueled by medical debt, Patel had passion in spades.

“I chose the problem I’m working on because it’s such a big and daunting problem that affects so many people in this country, and when I was thinking of what I’m going to dedicate the next 10 plus years of my life to, I only felt strongly enough about the things that were this massive,” Patel says. He and his co-founder raised $110 million with help from Afore Capital and Gradient Ventures. Revenue is growing 50% each month and patients aren’t forced to choose between financial stability and their health.

Healthcare is a big problem to solve, but it’s also personal for Patel, who, unlike a lot of founders, takes good care of himself. He gets eight hours of sleep a night, works out every day, and pours himself into his favorite sport, tennis, in part because it’s such a mental game. “You have complete control over whether you win or lose,” he says. “You’re going to make a lot of mistakes and it’s how you recover that determines how well you play.” True of tennis, sure, but also of building something that matters.