Healthcare Entrepreneur Meetup with TransPharMed

On Wednesday May 11th, HealthIT folks joined us virtually for a conversation between A.T. Gimbel, Partner at Atlanta Ventures, and Kirk Barnes of TransPharMed. Kirk, a true healthcare startup professional, shared many insights about engaging customers in the healthcare industry, growing a startup in the industry, and much more. Below are some of the highlights from the event.

These Meetups are part of an ongoing series of talks about Healthcare in Atlanta, with an objective of making Atlanta the premier place to start and grow a HealthIT business. The goal of these meetups is to facilitate connections, hear from industry professionals, and truly dig deeper into Healthcare problems that Atlanta entrepreneurs can help solve.

About the Event

Kirk got into the healthcare industry right out of college through an incredible job offer. With incredible benefits being offered from what would eventually become Pfizer, Kirk was able to bring his passion for sales to the healthcare scene. After working in the consumer division at Pfizer, he transitioned to the biotech division at Johnson & Johnson. Following his time at these healthcare powerhouse companies, Kirk took his talent to a startup called Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Kirk was employee 120 of what has now grown to 18,000 workers. Kirk has had some incredible other experiences such as joining ATDC and launching the healthcare program, working for other startups, and much more.

Sales Tips

In the chat, Kirk gave a lot of helpful tips on how to sell and how not to sell in the healthcare industry. Below are some of the impactful one-liners:

• Listen to the customer
• Be curious about what your customer needs
• Don’t think of it as selling
• Develop trust
• Once a customer, always a customer
• Once the deal is signed, then the hard work begins
• One person has the power to connect you to others

The greatest point Kirk emphasized was to not pepper your customers with statistics. Do it because you can really be the one that brings life changing products in the hands of customers. Don’t show-up and throw-up. Listen for their problems and solve them.

How To: Customer Discovery

Nobody cares how smart you are. People care about: Do you understand me? Do you understand my problem?— Kirk Barnes

If you can understand what makes people tick, and if you can understand their needs, then customers will be more likely to listen to you. No matter the product or service, you shouldn’t rush the process. Talk to people and develop an idea that they actually need. Then practice the Lean Startup Methodology. Your MVP should be heavily tested before serious investments are made.

As you talk to people through the customer discovery process, sometimes you'll find you've missed the mark and it's ok. Pivot, and keep moving. Sometimes you'll find you’re spot on. Celebrate, then move forward. Surround yourself with the right people, who will give honest feedback, and be coachable!

How To: Go-to-Market for Healthcare Startups

Kirk boiled it down to three main things: Know who’s going to pay for it. Know how it’s going to be paid for. Know how it’s going to be used.

It’s extremely important to understand the patient demographic for any startup, however, even more so in the healthcare industry. With its great complexities and number of stakeholders, it’s critical to understand who is going to be the one buying your product. Develop an understanding of the decision makers, and know how it will get delivered to customers. If you can think ahead of everyone involved, and how adding a certain product will impact them, you set yourself up a lot better in the long run.

Why Atlanta?

Kirk expressed that Atlanta is a unique place where the ecosystem and support reflects a diverse patient population that reflects the entire nation. With such a diverse population, Atlanta is a perfect testing ground for seeing whether there is a real opportunity to grow or not. Being able to have a diverse population to test how a product works, and how it must be integrated is of the ultimate importance, and provides a real competitive advantage to many other cities.