Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: All these entities were equity partners as part of the licensing deal?

Grant Kohler: That is correct.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of getting the company off the ground, was there any funding involved? Did you bootstrap the business?

Grant Kohler: We bootstrapped the business to get things started. The first thing that we tried to do was go for a small business grant. We applied for, what is known as an SPIR grant through different research organizations to get some seed money to try and

start the company. Unfortunately, we did not get the SPIR grant so we took part in the Georgia Research Alliance & Technology Association of Georgia (GRA/TAG) Business Launch competition. They put on an annual event in 2006 forstartup technology companies in the state of Georgia that were trying to get some seed money and services to launch their product. We ended up winning the competition. We won $100,000 in seed money and we got $50,000 in services from outside companies that were going to provide us legal counsel or other things that you may need to get a company started.

We bootstrapped the company on that money. About six to eight months after we got that money, the hospital provided us with the second set of seed money to help us build a development team and get some of the technology in place that we would eventually need to launch the company commercially. We were, more or less, self-funded, if you will, by the hospital and founders for the first year and a half.

Sramana Mitra: What years were those?

Grant Kohler: The company was founded in March of 2006. It was early 2008 when we started going after some venture capital type of money.

Sramana Mitra: So 2006 to mid-2007, you were kind of bootstrapping and there were all these grant monies coming in. That’s how you got the company off the ground.

Grant Kohler: Yes. By late 2006, we had our first two customers up. We were getting a little bit of revenue from those customers that were helping us continue to feed the company. Everything that we got in was being reinvested right back into the company so we could continue to grow it. We wanted to grow it organically for as long as we could. We knew that at some point, we were probably going to need more money to really ramp the company up to the next level.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler
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