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Call Prep — Saltair Operator Meeting

Call Prep — Saltair Operator Meeting

For: Ed Counterparty: PE operating partner @ Saltair Management · former CEO Formula Wellness (5→20 locations, MSO build, exited Oct 2025) Our read: Highest-leverage person we've talked to. He ran our exact ICP at scale. Treat as strategic discovery, not a pitch.

Goals:

  • Honest pressure-test of our thesis from someone who's lived it
  • Concrete sense of how he wants to be involved
  • At least 3 warm-intro names for the prescriber side

Call shape (45 min)

  • 0:00 — Intro (2 min)
  • 0:02 — What we're building (1 min)
  • 0:03 — Hand him the brief, let him scan (2 min)
  • 0:05 — Discovery, four blocks (35 min)
  • 0:40 — Forced choice on involvement (3 min)
  • 0:43 — Concrete next step + close (2 min)

The math: <5 min of us talking, ~35 min of him talking. Flip that ratio and we've burned the meeting.

Block 0 — Intro (2 min)

  • Quick warm intros — Alton + Ed
  • Frame the meeting: we want honest reaction from someone who ran this organism
  • Set expectation that we'll mostly listen
  • Don't recite his LinkedIn back to him

Block 1 — What we're building (60 sec hard cap)

Three sentence pitch:

  • Peptide Portal is the front door for the peptide category
  • The old front door — RUO sites, Healthline aggregators — collapsed in the last 18 months
  • We're building the three-sided network that replaces it: consumer trust layer, prescriber rail to 1–3 location medspa/TRT clinics, supply anchored on Vesalius
  • 9–12 month window before Hims gets here, talking to people who can compress that window

Then:

  • Hand him the brief
  • Two minutes of silence while he reads — don't fill the silence
  • Transition into discovery

Block 2 — General space + opportunity (10 min)

Q1 — Pain at the clinic level

  • When acquiring clinics at Formula, what were 1–3 location operators actually struggling with that you fixed post-close?
  • Listening for: the real pain in his words, validated by someone who paid to acquire 15 of them

Q2 — Saltair's posture on peptides

  • How does Saltair think about peptides — investable, too early, regulatory risk, or already there?
  • Critical, ask early. Evasive answer = flag.

Q3 — Conflicts check

  • His current Platform (Sept 2025–present) — adjacent to peptides or completely different?
  • Need to know in first 15 min. If it's TRT/wellness rollup, we're talking to a competitor.

Q4 — Stretch / thesis question

  • What's the category nobody's talking about that should be?
  • Lets him show off. Tells us what he's bullish on = what he'd back.

Block 3 — His personal experience (10 min)

Q5 — The buying trigger

  • What would have made a peptide platform like ours an obvious yes for the clinic owner — and what would have been the dealbreaker?

Q6 — KPI dashboard at Formula

  • Walk us through what your dashboard looked like — what numbers did the clinic owner actually care about?
  • He mentioned consolidated dashboards in his bio. Steal the metric framework.

Q7 — Whitespace

  • What did you wish existed when you were running the integration playbook?

Q8 — Provider trust

  • How did you get providers to trust a corporate layer telling them what to prescribe?
  • We'll face this exact problem.

Block 4 — Pressure-test our thesis (10 min)

Q9 — Break the model

  • Three-sided network, prescriber wedge first, private label as upside. What's the first thing that breaks for you?
  • Don't defend — ask follow-ups.

Q10 — Window check

  • 9–12 month Hims window — match what you're seeing, or tighter?

Q11 — Outbound script

  • If you were running Formula today and we walked in cold — would you take a meeting? What gets you to lean in in the first 30 seconds?

Q12 — Unit economics

  • Clinic keeps 200,pharmacygets200, pharmacy gets 50, we net $30–50 per script. Does that hold up vs. what you saw at Formula?

Block 5 — Get him involved (5 min)

Q13 — Open the deal shape

  • Highest-value thing someone in your seat could do for a company at our stage — and what would you actually want in return?
  • Don't propose. Listen.

Q14 — Warm intros

  • Who in the Formula alumni network would be a "definitely take this meeting" — and would you make the intro?
  • Even if nothing else comes from this, 3 intros = 6 weeks of outbound compressed.

Q15 — Forced choice

  • Three ways this could go: (a) 5 intros + monthly check-in, (b) active advisor for equity, (c) Saltair looks at the seed
  • Which fits your seat right now?

Block 6 — Close (2 min)

  • Recap whatever he picked in Q15
  • Lock the specific next step + deliverable + date
  • Final open door: anything else we should be thinking about?

Ed's three jobs during the call

  • Take notes verbatim — especially quotable lines, specific numbers, names. We build the Wave Index entry tonight, quotes matter more than summaries.
  • Watch his face — when does he lean in, when does energy drop, which thesis pillars make him nod vs. tilt? Tell us in debrief.
  • One follow-up per block — sharper question to make him go one layer deeper. Pattern: "you said X — say more about that."

If he asks you something direct, answer short and bounce back to him. Don't pitch, don't defend, don't add caveats.

Listen for (tag in your head)

  • [ALUMNI] — every name → future warm intros
  • [ECON] — clinic-level numbers in passing → validates/breaks our model
  • [OBJECTION] — "the problem with that is..." / "I tried that..."
  • [PLAYBOOK] — operational moves at Formula → free IP
  • [POSTURE] — Saltair's appetite (hot/warm/cold/conflicted)
  • [CONFLICT] — signals he or Saltair is in/near peptides today
  • [TRIGGER] — what would make him personally lean in
  • [QUOTE] — quotable lines worth stealing

What we are NOT doing

  • Not pitching the deck — brief in hand, 3 sentences, then questions
  • Not asking for money unless he opens that door himself
  • Not promising equity, board seats, or advisor packages in the room — anything offered today becomes negotiation floor
  • Not naming the competitor (Jack's client) — frame urgency as market shape, not panic
  • Not overselling traction — we have no live customers yet, PE operators smell it instantly

Post-call debrief template (60 min after)

  • One-line summary of where his head is
  • Top 3 things he gave us, ranked by value
  • Best read on what he actually wants
  • Every alumni name + context
  • Objections to our thesis in his words
  • Playbook moves worth stealing
  • Deal shape hinted at (if any)
  • Conflict flags
  • Concrete next action: owner + date
  • Blueprint delta — what changed about our thesis

Reminder: The flex is asking better questions than he expects and shutting up when he answers. Walk in curious, walk out with a next step.

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