Meeting Title: Forecasting Sync with Henry and Sezim Date: 2025-12-18 Meeting participants: Henry Zhao, Sezim Zhenishbekova
WEBVTT
1 00:01:58.710 ⇒ 00:01:59.989 Sezim Zhenishbekova: I think you’re muted.
2 00:02:01.290 ⇒ 00:02:03.090 Henry Zhao: Hey, Shazam, how are you?
3 00:02:03.310 ⇒ 00:02:06.560 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Good, good. How have you been? Welcome to New York!
4 00:02:06.560 ⇒ 00:02:07.709 Henry Zhao: Thank you.
5 00:02:08.060 ⇒ 00:02:08.610 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah.
6 00:02:08.610 ⇒ 00:02:10.099 Henry Zhao: I’m glad it’s not that cold anymore.
7 00:02:10.650 ⇒ 00:02:15.079 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, not at all, like, if you would come last week, it would be minus 10 Celsius.
8 00:02:15.160 ⇒ 00:02:16.950 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I heard.
9 00:02:17.920 ⇒ 00:02:19.100 Henry Zhao: No, we survived.
10 00:02:19.380 ⇒ 00:02:22.109 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, and for how long are you gonna be here?
11 00:02:22.110 ⇒ 00:02:23.880 Henry Zhao: 10 days, so quite a bit.
12 00:02:23.880 ⇒ 00:02:29.550 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, perfect. Yeah, until 8th of January, basically, right? 28.
13 00:02:30.040 ⇒ 00:02:31.819 Henry Zhao: Yeah, December 28th, yeah.
14 00:02:32.430 ⇒ 00:02:37.330 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Nice. So… I had,
15 00:02:38.470 ⇒ 00:02:43.240 Sezim Zhenishbekova: So basically, I went through the files, and I’m asking Dimulata to give me more…
16 00:02:43.540 ⇒ 00:03:01.479 Sezim Zhenishbekova: There, but meantime, I just wanted to not miss anything. Yeah. And then, like, just, can you, briefly tell me how did the call go with Mitesh? I see him online on my file right now. I think he’s, like, looking through it.
17 00:03:02.890 ⇒ 00:03:14.599 Sezim Zhenishbekova: just, like, tell me how did the call go, and then explain, like, what you’re thinking now, and where you want to go right now. I built… I was able to recreate the Tableau table right now.
18 00:03:14.600 ⇒ 00:03:15.340 Henry Zhao: Okay.
19 00:03:16.480 ⇒ 00:03:18.849 Henry Zhao: Do you want to share your screen? We can talk about it together?
20 00:03:19.260 ⇒ 00:03:21.449 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yes, no?
21 00:03:23.140 ⇒ 00:03:29.789 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so right… so basically he’s expecting, like, the overall forecast number, but he’s expecting a different number.
22 00:03:31.050 ⇒ 00:03:36.560 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so he wants to get an estimate of the sum of returning orders for January.
23 00:03:38.140 ⇒ 00:03:40.270 Henry Zhao: Does that make sense? So…
24 00:03:40.270 ⇒ 00:03:46.759 Sezim Zhenishbekova: orders for January, which is basically… but we can’t really rely on this, right? Because it’s…
25 00:03:46.760 ⇒ 00:04:03.419 Henry Zhao: Well, you would make a forecast, right? So, it looks like February will probably end at around $24,000, just… I’m just looking at the previous curves. Like, there’s some seasonality to it. And then January, I’m guessing it will probably be even higher, so it’ll be, like, 24 to 25,000.
26 00:04:03.420 ⇒ 00:04:15.980 Henry Zhao: So somewhere around there. But you can probably look at it by product. I’m sure, like, NAD Plus and something like that would be a very straight linear curve, whereas, I don’t know, GLP-1 might be, like, a rollercoaster curve.
27 00:04:16.480 ⇒ 00:04:27.549 Henry Zhao: Where it kind of dips in November and then goes up in January, so I would just extrapolate it, see kind of what number you get by drug, and see if it overall adds up to a reasonable number.
28 00:04:28.130 ⇒ 00:04:35.880 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Oh, okay, so, like, basically I did this by months, now I’m taking it and making it more detailed by dividing it by product.
29 00:04:35.880 ⇒ 00:04:36.250 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
30 00:04:36.250 ⇒ 00:04:44.100 Sezim Zhenishbekova: knowing what’s the return like, and then, do you want me to, like, how do you usually calculate retention rate? .
31 00:04:44.800 ⇒ 00:04:47.420 Henry Zhao: You can just use the curve that’s already there in the…
32 00:04:48.310 ⇒ 00:04:49.600 Henry Zhao: Retention dashboard.
33 00:04:50.490 ⇒ 00:04:51.620 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Here?
34 00:04:51.620 ⇒ 00:04:52.290 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
35 00:04:52.730 ⇒ 00:05:11.850 Henry Zhao: So if you go down, yeah, so here, by product, it already gives you the retention rate, so I would maybe not worry about the small ones, just the big ones. So, like, injectable sema, terzepatide, and just kind of maybe do an average of retention by month since first order, right? And then just kind of, extrapolate that.
36 00:05:11.990 ⇒ 00:05:14.910 Sezim Zhenishbekova: So, 1, 2, this means by months, right?
37 00:05:14.910 ⇒ 00:05:15.380 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
38 00:05:15.380 ⇒ 00:05:17.400 Sezim Zhenishbekova: First month, second month, third month, and how…
39 00:05:17.400 ⇒ 00:05:25.010 Henry Zhao: I would do, like, month one would be 70%, and then month 2, 55%, month three, 40%, right? And then just kind of build out that curve.
40 00:05:30.160 ⇒ 00:05:32.360 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, so,
41 00:05:32.540 ⇒ 00:05:46.150 Sezim Zhenishbekova: I divide by the product, and then calculate the rates based on the… so if the melata gives me specific statuses of the order, so I know, like, it’s the first order, what medicine, then I apply those rates to.
42 00:05:46.150 ⇒ 00:05:59.199 Henry Zhao: I don’t think you need anything from Demolati right now. I think you can just already take this by drug and just look at what the retention is per month, and then apply that to the new orders each month. Does that make sense? To figure out what you would get in January.
43 00:05:59.630 ⇒ 00:06:05.210 Henry Zhao: So, like, you… so I gave it to you by product, so you can, like, go back to the other spreadsheet.
44 00:06:05.370 ⇒ 00:06:08.240 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yes, so here… oh, wait.
45 00:06:08.240 ⇒ 00:06:14.260 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so if I, like, December of December, whatever the new orders is for…
46 00:06:15.180 ⇒ 00:06:19.749 Henry Zhao: injectable semi, you can just say, like, 70% of those will come back in January.
47 00:06:20.560 ⇒ 00:06:23.219 Henry Zhao: And then 50% of November will come back, etc.
48 00:06:23.510 ⇒ 00:06:26.130 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Based on the January numbers.
49 00:06:26.130 ⇒ 00:06:26.700 Henry Zhao: Exactly.
50 00:06:26.700 ⇒ 00:06:33.259 Sezim Zhenishbekova: For example, here we have… July, August, January retention rate of…
51 00:06:34.500 ⇒ 00:06:41.519 Henry Zhao: No, no, so what I’m saying is I would just take, like, an average month since for… average retention by months since the first order.
52 00:06:41.990 ⇒ 00:06:44.540 Sezim Zhenishbekova: The second one, right? Yeah.
53 00:06:44.540 ⇒ 00:06:49.829 Henry Zhao: Or you can just look at it by your eyes, right? You can just say, like, January looks like… first month looks like it’s about 70%.
54 00:06:49.830 ⇒ 00:06:50.750 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah.
55 00:06:50.750 ⇒ 00:06:57.469 Henry Zhao: Because, like, April looks like an outlier, right? So I would just say, like, overall, it looks like 70% of the first month gets retained.
56 00:06:57.720 ⇒ 00:07:03.859 Henry Zhao: I don’t know, 50% of the second month gets retained, 40% of the third month gets retained.
57 00:07:04.710 ⇒ 00:07:05.949 Henry Zhao: Let’s just apply it to the…
58 00:07:06.260 ⇒ 00:07:08.070 Henry Zhao: Like, back and back and back.
59 00:07:08.900 ⇒ 00:07:09.620 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay.
60 00:07:10.140 ⇒ 00:07:19.150 Henry Zhao: Right? So then for injectable semi, I would say December, 70% of those will come back in January. And then October, like, 50% will come back in January.
61 00:07:19.250 ⇒ 00:07:34.860 Henry Zhao: So I’m not looking at December here, I’m just saying, monthly source order is 70% on average retained after a month, and the 50% is retained after the second month. So, to predict January, right, I would say December 2025, 70% of those are gonna get refilled in January.
62 00:07:37.330 ⇒ 00:07:37.960 Henry Zhao: Right?
63 00:07:38.770 ⇒ 00:07:41.800 Henry Zhao: So you’re clicking January right now, but I’m not talking about this, I’m saying…
64 00:07:42.060 ⇒ 00:07:43.240 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah.
65 00:07:43.240 ⇒ 00:07:52.770 Henry Zhao: downward, right? So, yeah. So you highlight one, so go to the upper right. This one? Yeah, so right now we’re estimating how many refills are there going to be in January of 2026, right?
66 00:07:52.770 ⇒ 00:07:53.410 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Well, great.
67 00:07:53.410 ⇒ 00:08:04.429 Henry Zhao: So I would take the new orders in December 2025, and say 70% of those are going to get retained in month 1, so that means in January 2026, you’re going to get 70% of the new orders in December back.
68 00:08:05.860 ⇒ 00:08:10.959 Henry Zhao: in November 2025 and say, in month 2, so go to now 2, column 2.
69 00:08:11.860 ⇒ 00:08:14.630 Henry Zhao: About 50%, so 50% of those new orders are gonna come back.
70 00:08:15.770 ⇒ 00:08:18.749 Henry Zhao: That’s how you end up getting the return orders in January.
71 00:08:19.190 ⇒ 00:08:20.500 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay,
72 00:08:20.500 ⇒ 00:08:26.840 Henry Zhao: You’re, like, going backwards and saying, these are the retention curves, and this is by drug how many they’re going to be, and see what number you get.
73 00:08:28.040 ⇒ 00:08:28.560 Sezim Zhenishbekova: We’re good.
74 00:08:28.560 ⇒ 00:08:29.250 Henry Zhao: Makes sense.
75 00:08:29.450 ⇒ 00:08:33.409 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, yeah, I think it does occur, it does kind of make sense, yes.
76 00:08:34.070 ⇒ 00:08:36.129 Henry Zhao: Yeah, that’s… that’s all I’m trying to say.
77 00:08:36.130 ⇒ 00:08:42.470 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, so, okay, so for now, I just… okay, I will, I will do it now.
78 00:08:42.820 ⇒ 00:08:44.550 Sezim Zhenishbekova: And I’ll send you…
79 00:08:44.550 ⇒ 00:09:01.210 Henry Zhao: the stuff that I have. And I was wondering if I should touch this data that you provided me before? For example, I prepared… No, you can just ignore this stuff now, because this… this one I will work on to just get the… the percentages before this month.
80 00:09:01.250 ⇒ 00:09:05.679 Henry Zhao: So I’ll just look at, the doctor error, the payment error.
81 00:09:05.730 ⇒ 00:09:10.139 Henry Zhao: By month before this month, to see if it kind of matches the percentages you are seeing.
82 00:09:10.920 ⇒ 00:09:13.409 Sezim Zhenishbekova: So, based on the projections, right?
83 00:09:13.800 ⇒ 00:09:17.899 Henry Zhao: No, no, no, not… just historically. Just to see if it matched, yeah.
84 00:09:18.380 ⇒ 00:09:25.119 Henry Zhao: So then Mitesh can know that it’s always kind of that breakdown. So now you can ignore this sheet and just look at the new sheet that I gave you.
85 00:09:25.450 ⇒ 00:09:27.700 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, got completely ignored this.
86 00:09:28.030 ⇒ 00:09:32.900 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Right, I have this view, then bit by product, and then calculate the retention.
87 00:09:32.900 ⇒ 00:09:43.580 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I would just take the big products, I wouldn’t, like, worry. Because if you look at the big products, the other retentions would probably be roughly the same. Yeah, because I don’t want you to spend… have to spend too much time on this, unless you have the time, right?
88 00:09:44.050 ⇒ 00:09:49.350 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, I can do it too, like, I don’t mind, like, I just wanna do, like, good job.
89 00:09:50.330 ⇒ 00:09:53.439 Sezim Zhenishbekova: better breakdown, so that Mitesh can take…
90 00:09:53.610 ⇒ 00:09:56.370 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Make good decisions if you want, so yeah.
91 00:09:58.060 ⇒ 00:10:00.160 Henry Zhao: Yeah, let me… let me maybe share my screen.
92 00:10:00.290 ⇒ 00:10:02.599 Henry Zhao: I’ll give you our request access.
93 00:10:05.730 ⇒ 00:10:07.020 Henry Zhao: Alright.
94 00:10:10.550 ⇒ 00:10:11.290 Henry Zhao: Hmm.
95 00:10:15.390 ⇒ 00:10:17.190 Henry Zhao: So, like, here’s how I would do it.
96 00:10:20.740 ⇒ 00:10:22.630 Henry Zhao: So I would say, like, drug…
97 00:10:23.850 ⇒ 00:10:31.730 Henry Zhao: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… and the 6 onward is probably going to be all the same percentage, right? So… I would go starting from the biggest one.
98 00:10:34.400 ⇒ 00:10:38.080 Henry Zhao: And it’s, like, roughly 70% gets retained.
99 00:10:38.650 ⇒ 00:10:45.980 Henry Zhao: Like, I literally just go to the tableau and just look at it by eye, and kind of just have a number that makes sense. So to do an average, it’s gonna probably be just as good.
100 00:10:47.300 ⇒ 00:10:53.720 Henry Zhao: Right? And then 6 onwards, probably all 10%. And then let’s say the next biggest is, like, Terzepatide.
101 00:10:54.110 ⇒ 00:10:57.150 Henry Zhao: And it’s, like, 11, 2, I don’t know, 48…
102 00:10:59.050 ⇒ 00:11:02.970 Henry Zhao: 4… 2… I don’t know, right? Maybe something like this.
103 00:11:04.060 ⇒ 00:11:09.109 Henry Zhao: And then if you do, like, 3 or more drugs, and they’re all, like, kind of around the same.
104 00:11:09.650 ⇒ 00:11:12.519 Henry Zhao: Apply this… I would just kind of apply this to all of them.
105 00:11:13.310 ⇒ 00:11:15.120 Henry Zhao: And then I would look at, like.
106 00:11:15.870 ⇒ 00:11:18.039 Henry Zhao: the new orders in that spreadsheet I gave you.
107 00:11:20.570 ⇒ 00:11:27.960 Henry Zhao: And then, like, so month one would be December 2025 gets retained, month two would be just November 2025 gets retained.
108 00:11:28.130 ⇒ 00:11:30.930 Henry Zhao: Right? Because we’re predicting January 2026.
109 00:11:43.930 ⇒ 00:11:49.169 Henry Zhao: And then 6 onward, it would all get applied the same ratio, because it kind of just evens out. Maybe, right?
110 00:11:50.200 ⇒ 00:11:53.359 Henry Zhao: So, what did I call the other shit I gave you?
111 00:11:54.610 ⇒ 00:11:56.720 Henry Zhao: No, it’s not this one.
112 00:11:57.250 ⇒ 00:11:58.590 Henry Zhao: It was the…
113 00:12:01.270 ⇒ 00:12:02.109 Henry Zhao: This one, right?
114 00:12:03.550 ⇒ 00:12:04.230 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah.
115 00:12:05.170 ⇒ 00:12:10.989 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so… I’ll go to Injectable Semma…
116 00:12:14.310 ⇒ 00:12:16.900 Henry Zhao: Let’s pretend that this is sorted, which it should have been.
117 00:12:22.320 ⇒ 00:12:29.649 Henry Zhao: Whatever. So 2025, December… I would maybe just extrapolate this purely, 1342.
118 00:12:31.930 ⇒ 00:12:36.529 Henry Zhao: I don’t know how you want to do this, but right, just maybe you want to divide this by 17 31sts.
119 00:12:37.610 ⇒ 00:12:39.870 Henry Zhao: Okay, 24448. Okay.
120 00:12:40.210 ⇒ 00:12:46.520 Henry Zhao: And then this, you would multiply by .7 to say that there’s gonna be this many retained in January, right?
121 00:12:50.800 ⇒ 00:12:57.870 Henry Zhao: Make sense? Because, like, this is how many new orders were in December, and 70% of them get retained after one month. So this many are gonna get refilled in January.
122 00:12:58.830 ⇒ 00:13:02.910 Henry Zhao: Right? And then November, you have 33, 61 new orders.
123 00:13:03.960 ⇒ 00:13:07.829 Henry Zhao: So, this many are gonna get refilled in month 2.
124 00:13:08.380 ⇒ 00:13:11.730 Sezim Zhenishbekova: And then just drop it based on the… okay.
125 00:13:11.730 ⇒ 00:13:13.419 Henry Zhao: Yeah, and then when you add this up.
126 00:13:13.720 ⇒ 00:13:17.669 Henry Zhao: And then you add all the drugs up together, you should hopefully get $26,000-ish.
127 00:13:17.670 ⇒ 00:13:19.239 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Good total of…
128 00:13:19.240 ⇒ 00:13:19.720 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
129 00:13:19.720 ⇒ 00:13:22.020 Sezim Zhenishbekova: the orders that we have received. Okay.
130 00:13:23.200 ⇒ 00:13:32.190 Henry Zhao: If you get, like, 30,000, that’s probably good, right? So you could say, like, oh, we expect there to actually be higher. If it’s less than 24,000, I might add a little bit, just because…
131 00:13:32.490 ⇒ 00:13:39.889 Henry Zhao: I don’t know, maybe you ended at, like, December? I don’t know, right? You know what I mean? Like, I would then add your assumptions.
132 00:13:44.130 ⇒ 00:13:46.550 Henry Zhao: Right? And so, yeah, just add this all up.
133 00:13:47.850 ⇒ 00:13:48.490 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay.
134 00:13:48.980 ⇒ 00:13:51.030 Henry Zhao: That’s how I would do it, to be pretty fast.
135 00:13:51.300 ⇒ 00:13:56.249 Henry Zhao: Okay. And for Zepatide, I do the same thing with this row, and then third drug, fourth drug.
136 00:13:56.640 ⇒ 00:13:58.529 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, sounds good.
137 00:13:59.590 ⇒ 00:14:00.350 Henry Zhao: Okay.
138 00:14:00.350 ⇒ 00:14:02.039 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, thank you so much, Henry.
139 00:14:02.040 ⇒ 00:14:04.660 Henry Zhao: Yeah, thank you! I really, really appreciate you jumping on this.
140 00:14:04.660 ⇒ 00:14:12.129 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Yeah, thank you. Have a good rest of the evening, and then I will message you about working together on maybe on Monday, if you have time.
141 00:14:12.310 ⇒ 00:14:14.009 Henry Zhao: Yeah, sounds good. Monday I’m pretty free.
142 00:14:14.260 ⇒ 00:14:16.040 Sezim Zhenishbekova: Okay, awesome. Okay.
143 00:14:16.040 ⇒ 00:14:18.059 Henry Zhao: Talk to you later. Talk to you later. Bye.