At the November Healthcare Entrepreneur Meetup hosted by Atlanta Ventures, A.T. Gimbel interviewed three fascinating founders: Ashish Advani, Founder of InpharmD; Rachel McCrickard, LMFT, Founder of Motivo; and Tee Faircloth, Founder of Coordinated Care Inc.
The morning was filled with lots of laughter and sharing lessons learned. These events are part of an ongoing series of talks about Healthcare in Atlanta, with the goal to make Atlanta the premier place to start and grow a HealthIT business.
The Meetup kicked off with A.T. asking how they each ended up in the healthcare space. Rachel had personally experienced how difficult it was to get licensed after school. Ashish was working as a pharmacist, noticed the problems, and couldn’t help but try to solve them. Tee’s friend was experiencing the problem and he saw a big opportunity in rural areas pertaining to healthcare, hence the creation of CCI.
“In healthcare you can affect people’s lives. Everyone in here has a chance to affect people’s lives.”— Tee Faircloth
Customer Discovery and Timing
One big challenge founders have always faced is taking their idea from “I’m going to solve this problem” to “I’m solving this problem.” A common denominator in the morning discussion was that it’s necessary to understand the complexities of the healthcare system while also deeply understanding your customer.
“I would have gone and interviewed ten times more people before I even wrote a single line of code.”— Ashish Advani
“Timing was just so good for us because of the legislation. We are just right there at the epicenter, and we are making this process way easier.”— Rachel McCrickard, LMFT
Funding
Navigating the funding process and making decisions on how to fund is something an entrepreneur wants clarity on. There are many different paths to reach success and not one right answer. Ashish received a grant, but had to show lots of research and evidence that their product would work before a check was cut.
“It was a six year overnight success!”— Ashish Advani
Rachel’s company, Motivo, had been growing exponentially. “Having never done this before, I had to learn how to tell the billion dollar story of Motivo. I had to ask, ‘How big can this market get and what lateral markets are there?'”
“It looks really tied together at the end, but the process is not easy.”— Rachel McCrickard, LMFT
Words of Advice
“The best time was 10 years ago, but the second best time is today! If anyone is sitting on ‘that idea’, put it out there!”— Ashish Advani
“How would you feel if anyone else created your idea? That’s a good indicator of whether or not you should go for it.”— Rachel McCrickard, LMFT
“If you want to figure out a way to make money really easily, don’t do healthcare, it’s really, really, really hard. But if you actually want to make a dent in the world and change people’s lives, you know it’s worth it every day.”— Tee Faircloth
