The Other 364 Days: How Seth Merritt Is Rebuilding Chronic Care from the Outside In

Most chronic disease patients see their doctor for 15 minutes, once or twice a year. Seth Merritt, co-founder and CEO of Welby Health, thinks that's absurd. And he's building the infrastructure to fill the other 364 days.

In this episode of No Operating Manual, Erin O'Brien sits down with Seth to talk about a truly unlikely origin story: college dropout, aspiring rock musician, healthcare executive, and now startup founder trying to fix part of the American healthcare system.

Seth shares how a $50 Facebook ad campaign became proof of concept, why founders should never hand off sales too early, and what he had to unlearn after years inside large health plans before he could build something new. He walks us through the Welby model, a "clinical operating layer" that embeds virtual care teams directly inside physician practices, and explains why the biggest bottleneck in chronic care isn't technology. It's people.

You'll also hear Seth's candid take on the hard lessons of hiring for startups (hint: corporate success doesn't always translate), why he believes the healthcare system can't fix itself from the inside.

In this episode:

• Why value-based care often just "shuffles money around" without fixing anything
• How Seth validated his idea with $50 in ads before writing a business plan
• The "pod" model that makes Welby feel like part of the practice
• Why AI triage is about getting the right patient to the right human at the right time
• What Seth's boss told him that changed the trajectory of his career