Adrian is the Founder & CEO of Forward, a startup redesigning health care delivery with a tech-first approach and flat membership fee — forgoing insurance providers altogether. 

Investors include chairmen & founders at Alphabet, Uber, Salesforce, and Palantir. He has also founded Sidewalk Labs, an urban infrastructure company acquired by Google.

On his morning routine.

I get up super early, typically without an alarm. Whether I like it or not, my body’s waking me up between 5 and 6 AM, even on weekends. 

Some people take an hour or two to really wake up, but I’ve always felt the opposite: I wake up and, within half a second, it feels like my brain is firing on all cylinders. 

The first thing I do after that is spend 30​​–60 minutes just clearing out my inbox. I need to have my notifications at zero. My anxiety levels honestly go through the roof when it’s cluttered. 

Then I’m out of bed and working out. I’m a big cyclist. I live in San Francisco, near the Golden Gate Bridge, so most days, I bike up north into Marin and through the mountains. 

Once I’m back home, I clear my inbox of anything new that’s come in, I shower, and I head to the office and am in meetings by 9 AM or so.

On cycling as meditation.

I truly love my cycling routine. There are two main components to it. 

1. Clearing the Mental Inbox

When I'm biking, it's usually pretty early, and I obviously can't be on my phone. So I take that first hour of the ride to just think about everything. I call it clearing out my mental inbox. 

There’s always shit running through my head because I haven’t been able to fully process it yet. Cycling gives me the time and space to do that. The only things I have to do are bike and think. 

If I run out of things on my mental checklist, I'll proactively consider plans for the day, the week, the month, even the year. At some point, there's just nothing left to run through. 

As soon as I get there, I know I'm in my happy place. I've reached a Zen state because this is my personal version of meditation. I feel at peace with all of the ideas in my head. 

2. Connecting with Friends

After spending a few minutes in that Zen state, I’ll have my headphones on and start calling friends to chat as I bike. I have a close-knit network of folks I call all the time. 

Most of them are also founders or just people I've known for 20–30 years. Because of that, we can talk openly about anything going on in our lives, whether that's dating or product dev. 

There are probably four or five other founders in the industry who know everything going on at my company at all times — and I know the same about their companies. 

We’re all on the same page — co-founders scattered across different companies. 

And there’s never an agenda. I’ll just call someone randomly and we’ll shoot the shit for an hour.

On ideal qualities in friendships.

When it comes to building that type of close-knit network, I seek out three qualities in people. 

1. Long-Term Loyalty

The first and foremost characteristic I emphasize is loyalty. 

I have a friend whose startup was totally crushing it, and then it crashed overnight. It went from billions of dollars to zero. Sadly, it seemed like everybody walked away from him then. 

He’s picked everything back up and is now doing super well. But you don’t forget that letdown. 

If you think about the people you want in your life in short time frames — like the next month, year, etc. — you might optimize for aspects like raw IQ, skill sets, or connections. 

But if you think about the next 10, 20, or however many years, you want and need loyalty. You need someone who'll be there through the good and the bad. And you do the same for them. 

I can usually tell I've found someone like this if I'm never angling what I'm saying or worried about how they'll react. I can tell this person everything, and they'll still be there. 

2. Intellectual Curiosity

I like to say that you’re looking for a line, not a dot. By that I mean: 

If you’re growing steadily and you seek out someone who already has all the answers, you’ll look around in a few years and realize you’ve outgrown them. The relationship hits a dead end. 

But, if you optimize for intellectual curiosity, you’re likely to find someone who wants to grow and expand their knowledge alongside you — for every conversation for years to come. 

I don’t call people to say, “Give me the answers.” Instead it’s, “Let’s figure this out together.” 

3. A Shared Goal

Some people get out of bed in the mornings because they’re motivated to become famous or make a lot of money to buy a private jet or whatever. That’s fine but not why I got into this game. 

I started Forward because I want to leave this world a better place than I found it. I want to help billions of people receive health care. Those are my driving factors – every single day. Folks will have different motivations, but it’s much better if your close circle shares your goals. 

Optimizing for the same end result, you wind up with compatible world views and mental models. Many of my good friends are health founders because we all care about helping people.

On what makes a life well-lived.

I used to tell people the worst thing I've ever done for my health is start a health care company. 

Before Forward, I worked for less than ten hours per week. I’d bike down to work almost every day from SF to Mountain View. I was probably the fittest human you’d ever meet. 

My “commute” is maybe ten seconds, so I put on 30 pounds. I looked up and went, “How did this even happen? How did starting a health care company make me super unfit?” 

These days, I’m healthier and doing what I can to take care of my body — but, frankly, I still live a pretty high-stress lifestyle. I’m not entirely sure I live the happiest life. 

I choose to undergo the grueling nature of a startup because it fulfills me.

Like, if you asked my friends who are parents whether it’s fun to raise kids, they’d probably say: “I don’t get any sleep. I can’t go out on weekends. Kids sap up all my money and ruin my house. They’re not fun. But, man, I’m creating a human. And holy shit, isn’t that fulfilling?” 

Ultimately, it comes down to what you value and how you define a life well-lived.

On his nightly routine.

One thing I love is my alone time. It’s hard to find because people are often always pinging me with work questions. So I only really get peace and quiet in the early mornings and late nights. 

I’d like to go to bed earlier, but messages don’t stop until about 10 PM.

I’m probably in bed around midnight, but my brain is usually still running a mile a minute right up until I fall asleep.

If I want to lull myself to sleep, I might read super boring Wikipedia articles or listen to very, very loud music. Both of those sound incredibly odd, but they work. 

If I was at a concert with booming music, I could probably fall asleep. So I’ll put on bassy house music through some really good speakers. Play some RÜFÜS DU SOL and I’ll finally knock out.