A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the Deloitte 500 event at the Atlanta Tech Village. At the event, the local winners were revealed and recognized. Incredibly, the fastest-growing tech company in the United States based on three-year revenue growth is a local Atlanta company called Impiricus.

Impiricus offers a text-messaging chatbot for healthcare professionals, allowing them to opt in to receive messages from pharmaceutical companies and to text questions directly to get information from pharma companies. After the event, the co-founder of the company, Dr. Hashmi, came up to me, introduced himself, and shared his excitement about the recognition. Naturally, I had to ask him about the company and about the honor of being named the fastest-growing tech company in the country by Deloitte.

I had heard of previous startups in the space focused on connecting pharmaceutical companies and doctors, and while those turned out fine, I was curious about the “aha moment” for Impiricus. How did they make it work so well that the vast majority of doctors in the United States opted into their text-messaging service?

The answer was simple yet profound: Impiricus was the first service to explicitly put the doctor in control and to focus on providing value first, not marketing first. In fact, many doctors receive only one or two marketing text messages per year. Doctors opt into the service through Impiricus, and Impiricus acts as a trusted middle layer that ensures pharmaceutical companies do not overwhelm them with promotions. At the same time, Impiricus ensures doctors can ask questions and get all the information they need related to drugs and treatments without receiving a barrage of marketing messages.

In earlier attempts by others, doctors would quickly become overwhelmed by too many messages and would opt out. By flipping the model and leading with value, simplicity, and respect for physicians’ time, Impiricus created a completely different relationship. Doctors get the ability to text questions into an AI chatbot and receive answers quickly, in exchange for receiving a very limited number of marketing messages. The value to the doctor comes first, and everything else is secondary.

For entrepreneurs, this is a powerful reminder: in industries where relationships or incentives are traditionally one-sided, there is often an opportunity to flip the dynamic by putting the customer first. Lead with value before trying to extract value.

Congratulations to Dr. Hashmi and his Atlanta team on winning this incredible award as the Deloitte 500 fastest-growing company in the United States.