# Shawn Shivdat

> Shawn Shivdat is the co-founder and CEO of Penciled (YC W24), a San Francisco startup that builds an AI front office assistant for physical therapy clinics. Raised around a mother's private practice and trained in computational neuroscience at Harvard, he went from writing patient-outcome software at Massachusetts General Hospital to launching a company that fills canceled appointments and completes plans of care automatically. Penciled now serves 200+ providers across 50+ clinics and has raised over $2.6M.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Penciled
- **Organizations:** Penciled, Massachusetts General Hospital (prior), CaribEd (nonprofit founder)
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Computational Neuroscience, Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Penciled (YC W24), an AI front office assistant for physical therapy., Grew Penciled to 200+ providers across 50+ clinics., Raised over $2.6M from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and healthcare founders including Derek Lo and George Hadjigeorgiou.

## Career timeline

- **Harvard** — Studied Computational Neuroscience and built patient-outcome prediction software at Massachusetts General Hospital.
- **Pre-Penciled** — Built and launched a jobs board product at a health tech startup; founded a global education nonprofit (CaribEd).
- **2022** — Founded Penciled to automate the front office of physical therapy clinics.
- **2024** — Went through Y Combinator's Winter 2024 (W24) batch.
- **2025** — Penciled scaled to 200+ providers across 50+ clinics; published operations writing including 'Operating without metrics is setting your money on fire.'

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Penciled (YC W24), an AI front office assistant for physical therapy.
- Grew Penciled to 200+ providers across 50+ clinics.
- Raised over $2.6M from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and healthcare founders including Derek Lo and George Hadjigeorgiou.
- Built patient-outcome prediction software at Massachusetts General Hospital.
- Founded a global education nonprofit supporting Caribbean students facing secondary-school entrance exams.
- Delivered documented client results including 35X ROI on cancellation automation and 90+ hours saved monthly per location.

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Published 'Operating without metrics is setting your money on fire' on the Penciled blog.
- **2025-09** — Shared reflections on completing Penciled's Y Combinator W24 batch on LinkedIn.

## Links

- Website: https://penciled.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-shivdat/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/shawnshivdat
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPx6uUTtJ9PgyPj3ZK1ap4A

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/shawn-shivdat
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-31