An Interview with Jessica Somauroo

What has been your journey towards creating a startup?
It was an unexpected journey as I never planned to be an entrepreneur and have an entirely salaried career. I studied Sports Therapy at University but didn’t love it and decided it wasn’t the right career for me. Through that process, I found I loved writing and being creative. This was the first hint that I wanted to pursue a career in communications and, since then, I have worked for lots of different organisations including the police and several charities - I was convinced for a while that I was going to shoot for Head of Communications at the Metropolitan Police! The reason I ended up working in health was because I was keen to move to London and it was a healthcare organisation that was the first to offer me a job! From there, I was very intentional about saying yes to opportunities and trying different experiences. My co-founder James has a natural entrepreneurial spirit, spotting the gap in the market and identifying that we were uniquely positioned to serve that gap. So far, it has worked out pretty well!

Tell us more about what you do at SomX?
Our expertise is in knowing and understanding healthcare, and then being able to translate that to different communications activities from design and branding, to social media, or press and PR - it’s fun because it is always so varied. Just today I have been writing a newsletter, I have been writing a production schedule for a video interview with a GP practice that is using a new technology, and talking to someone else about an event we are hosting. Some people on the team specialise in specific communications disciplines but we all really love working with amazing companies doing impactful things in healthcare.
An industry like healthcare is super complex when you consider communications because there are many different regulations and sensitivities that need to be taken into consideration. For example, in the UK you are unable to advertise prescribed medicines and the language that can be used for over-the-counter medicines is heavily regulated. It is very different to the communications you might do in other industries like beauty or food. In some ways, it can feel more constrained because you have these regulatory parameters, but that often forces you to be more creative.

Do you enjoy having a cofounder?
I don’t have experience of being a solo founder, but being a cofounder is tough and I cannot imagine doing it on my own. Entrepreneurship takes an amazing amount of resilience and can be very lonely so it is nice to have someone to share the journey with. I find the support and motivation that comes from having a cofounder really help keep you moving forward. Of course, it does have its downsides as well and you do need to define your roles early on otherwise you risk a breakdown of communication.

You’ve spoken a lot about your role in the communications sector. But ‘communications’ can feel like quite a broad and vague term to someone who isn’t working in the industry. So, tell us, what is communications?
Communication underpins everything that we do. As a company, you need to have something to sell, you need to have the talent to create the things you are going to sell, and you need to have investment to fund the people who are going to create the things you are going to sell. You also obviously need people to sell the product to so you can make more money! All of those things require communicating with people.
For example, you need to communicate the benefits of working in your company to attract talent. You need to be able to communicate with investors to convince them that you will be successful in your endeavours and that you are the best people to solve this issue and, in order to secure their investment. To communicate with buyers of your product, otherwise known as customers, you need to show that you understand the problems they face and how your product solves them.
There is high-level communication which is about defining the words that we will use to talk about a company and the problems the products solves. This trickles down into lots of different forms of communication including press and PR, content creation, leaflets, and so many other different things! I think that the breadth of communication is only going to expand as new technologies like the Metaverse come to the fore. This breadth means there are so many opportunities to build a career in the communications industry and I really like the fact it is so multifaceted and there are so many different ways to solve a problem using communications.

You have some other ventures that you’re involved with alongside SomX. Tell us more about one of these: Healthtech Pigeon!
Everyone’s inboxes get filled up with lots of newsletters that we never read, which are very long, not super useful, and often just get deleted. We decided to have a go at doing something a bit different to cut through the noise. Healthtech Pigeon is a newsletter that distils healthtech news into a short, sharp weekly update using humour. It is often quite satirical and we try to keep it light without oversimplifying the information and this balance seems to have really captured people’s imagination! We have also created a podcast which goes alongside it in where we, alongside a panel of experts, talk about and debate the topics in the newsletter.

An inspiration to you…
I think it is such a privilege to be working in the space that I am in; I am surrounded by people doing amazing things that are genuinely changing people’s lives and the future of healthcare. It is working in such a purpose-driven sector and that gets me up in the morning - seeing how everyone pulls together keeps me motivated.
I constantly feel so inspired by my brilliant team who are accomplishing such incredible things! I feel so lucky to be in a space where I am inspired every day by people I consider to be my friends.

News

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Thanks for reading! See you in the next issue - Erin McGurk