Building a Medication Management Startup Through Multiple Pivots: Medisafe Co-Founder and CTO Rotem Shor (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You went to a pharma company before you had a product?

Rotem Shor: We developed a concept. Then we developed the MVP. We launched it to users. We launched the product and saw that users were coming. We did a lot of guerilla marketing. We combined it all together. We gained traction. We got strong feedback from patients on what to do and how to improve. Today, we are rated 4.7 in the app stores with more than 450,000 reviews by patients.

Sramana Mitra: You started in a B2C mode.

Rotem Shor: Yes, validating with users. Then at the same time, gained traction with pharma companies.

Sramana Mitra: In that process, you decided on a split between you and your brother. He had a business background and you’re the technical person. Is that a traditional CEO/CTO split?

Rotem Shor: Right before we needed to sign the documents, we needed to split. We decided then that I was going to be the CTO simply because I was the one who knew how to code.

Sramana Mitra: What you’re describing is a very common situation where developers are turning into entrepreneurs. Developers’ comfort zone is building software.

Rotem Shor: For me, writing code is the tool to build and create. I can think of an idea and build it with code.

Sramana Mitra: To your point of the split between the technology person versus the one who has to sell it. In an early startup journey, you need two skills. You need to build the product and you need to sell the product. You don’t need anything else.

Sometimes, you get both of those skill sets in the same person. Sometimes, you don’t. Sometimes, it’s a team that has those skill sets. You do need those two skills.

Rotem Shor: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: People with a good understanding of technology can be taught the business side. The other side is not always necessarily true.

Rotem Shor: I agree. One is dependent on learning and the other is more common sense.

Sramana Mitra: The software startup entrepreneurship world is new. A lot of methodologies have come together. You can learn that. Let’s come back to this transition where you have B2C users, but you have to monetize by selling to pharma companies. How did you find the first pharma companies?

Rotem Shor: I don’t remember to be honest. I was so focused on building the product.

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn from the pharma companies? What did they want?

Rotem Shor: We got a very large global pharma company as our client. We launched the product in Peru and Chile. We launched the product. We got some patients coming in. Then you start calculating the ROI for that. How many patients do you need to get? What level of promotion do you need to do to get patients on this drug that has a 2% market share?

You say, “I need to focus on other types of medication where I can provide better support and engage the patients.” Then you switch to a different model. It’s based on the same product, but the offering is a bit different.

Sramana Mitra: This company is not your first client right?

Rotem Shor: It’s the second.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for the first client?

Rotem Shor: We developed a fully white-labeled solution. They used that for several years. A full platform for white-labeling is not scalable. You need to go and replicate it. Today, the Medisafe platform can generate these types of apps without a developer involved. Everything is like drag-and-drop.

Sramana Mitra: So you learned a lot about the features they were looking for.

Rotem Shor: We had the features but we didn’t have the users.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Building a Medication Management Startup Through Multiple Pivots: Medisafe Co-Founder and CTO Rotem Shor
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