The Look
You know the look. It's the one you get from classmates when you mention you're building a company on the side. A mix of curiosity and concern, like you just told them you've taken up BASE jumping as a stress-relief hobby.
I got that look a lot. During my four years at VCOM, I co-founded Ravana Solutions (a digital agency), co-founded EZ Inn, and helped launch HOLO Labs — the first student-led research laboratory at VCOM to adopt a research brokership model. I also maintained a 3.84 GPA, published 11 papers, and matched into neurosurgery.
I'm not writing this to brag. I'm writing it because nobody told me how to do this, and I wish someone had.
Why Bother?
The honest answer: I couldn't sit still.
Medical school has a rhythm. Lectures, study, exams, clinicals, repeat. It's demanding, but it's also structured. And between the structure, there are gaps — evenings, weekends, the occasional light rotation. I needed something to fill those gaps that wasn't just more Anki cards.
But there's a practical reason too. Medicine is changing. The physicians who will thrive in the next decade won't just be clinically excellent — they'll understand technology, business, and systems thinking. Building companies taught me skills that no lecture ever could:
- Project management — Shipping a product has hard deadlines that don't care about your exam schedule
- Team leadership — Managing developers and designers when you're also studying pathology
- Financial literacy — Understanding revenue, burn rate, and margins
- Resilience — Dealing with failed launches, lost clients, and code that breaks at 2 AM
The Actual Schedule
Here's what a typical week looked like during my M2 year:
| Time | Monday-Friday | Weekend |
|---|---|---|
| 6-8 AM | Study / Anki | Sleep in (sometimes) |
| 8 AM - 3 PM | Classes / Clinical | Ravana client work |
| 3-6 PM | Study groups | HOLO Labs meetings |
| 7-10 PM | Ravana dev work | Personal projects |
| 10-11 PM | Review, plan tomorrow | Catch up on lectures |
Was it sustainable? Barely. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
The Hard Parts Nobody Talks About
Context Switching Will Break You
The hardest thing isn't the hours. It's the mental transitions. Going from memorizing cranial nerve pathways to debugging a React component to reviewing a business proposal — all in the same evening. Your brain fights it. You feel like you're doing everything at 70%.
The fix that worked for me: time blocking with hard boundaries. When I was studying, Slack notifications were off. When I was coding, First Aid was closed. No multitasking. Deep focus on one thing at a time, even if the blocks were short.
Your Classmates Won't Understand
Most medical students are focused on one thing: becoming a doctor. That's the right priority. But it means your entrepreneurial side projects will feel alien to most of your peers. Find your people outside of medicine — startup communities, developer meetups, online forums. You need a tribe that gets it.
You Will Drop Balls
I missed a client deadline during boards studying. I submitted a research paper late because a product launch went sideways. I forgot to eat on multiple occasions (not recommended).
Perfection is impossible. The skill is knowing which balls are glass (patient care, exams, board scores) and which are rubber (that feature request can wait, that email can be answered tomorrow).
What Actually Worked
1. Build Things That Compound
Ravana Solutions wasn't just a side hustle — it was a portfolio. Every client project made the next one easier. Every website we shipped was proof that we could deliver. By graduation, we had a track record that spoke for itself.
2. Partner with People Who Complement You
I'm a builder. I want to write code and design systems. My co-founders handled the parts I was bad at — sales, operations, client management. Find partners whose strengths cover your weaknesses.
3. Use Medical School as a Feature, Not a Bug
Being a medical student building tech products is a differentiator. Clients trusted us with healthcare-adjacent projects because we understood the domain. HOLO Labs succeeded because we knew what research infrastructure medical students actually needed.
4. Protect Your Non-Negotiables
Board scores. Clinical rotations. Patient interactions. These are sacred. No startup is worth a failed shelf exam or a patient safety issue. I had a rule: if medicine and business conflicted, medicine won. Every time, no exceptions.
Would I Do It Again?
Without hesitation. Not because it was easy or because everything worked out perfectly — but because the person who graduates from medical school having also built companies is fundamentally different from the one who didn't.
You learn to operate under pressure. You learn that failure is data, not an identity. You learn that the world is full of problems worth solving, and you develop the tools to actually solve them.
If you're a medical student reading this and thinking about starting something — do it. Start small. Start messy. But start.
Currently building at the intersection of neurosurgery and technology. If you're a med student with a startup idea, let's talk.