Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What’s the next milestone? How far did you go with the angel financing?

Steve Liu: We grew and then there was a point where we needed more formal funding from an institutional investor. That’s when we brought in Buckhead Investment. They came in about nine years ago. The initial round was a couple of hundred thousand.

Sramana Mitra: How did you meet them and why did you go with them?

Steve Liu: One of the smart things we did early on was hiring a retired advertising executive as a marketing director. It was that classic awesome market where you’ve got folks who were C suite of their own companies but they’ve retired and want to stay in the mix of things. This guy had his own firm. He just wanted to keep his feet wet. I’m not sure how we met him but we hired him as our advertising executive. He would work for us and we got great advice from an experienced guy. When we got to the point where we needed money, he made the introduction. It was really a nice match in heaven. They were a great partner.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of numbers are we tracking at this point in terms of revenue numbers?

Steve Liu: It was about six years ago when I handed the reigns over to Hart Williford, my current CEO. Our annual revenue was about $2 million at that time. Before then, I think annual revenues were probably less than a million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: Were all the co-founders still doing this as a side project?

Steve Liu: No. There was a point where it definitely transitioned to being something real. I would say at that point, I had transitioned. I was a director of my group.

Sramana Mitra: You made the company your full-time job and became a part-time physician?

Steve Liu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: Did all the others do the same?

Steve Liu: They didn’t. Part of it was because as you grow, you have to make a life decision. For them, being a physician was their main thing. As a result, they did IM on the side and slowly ramped down their involvement even though some of them are still somewhat involved. Other folks who formerly were employees began to be replaced.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like the next major milestone is that you did a CEO change?

Steve Liu: Yes, that was six years ago. At that time, we had 15 employees. We were in a great and scary position at that time. We had really grown to a couple of thousand clients. We had about $2 million in annual revenues and a good market share. We were definitely the dominant player in hospital medicine and we had awesome renewal rates. That’s when we were having 97% renewal rates. We still have that.

I also know it was starting to get unmanageable. The company was a lot more stable but also, we needed to start scaling. We were starting to get into enterprise business. Before, it was just private groups. We started getting bigger fishes, but we were still small. At that time, I remember saying, “I either sell it now or we go for this.” I couldn’t do it myself because it would just take us a lot of time. I think a lot of people were surprised by this but the decision to put a CEO in place was actually mine. I wasn’t pushed by my investors. I actually wanted to do it for the good of the company

Also, from a personal note, companies are sort of your girlfriend for a lot of time, and I actually met a person. I actually met someone who I was going to marry. I knew that I would have to move to San Diego where she lived. There was no way I could run the company remotely.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu
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