Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was the company based in Washington?

Steve Liu: In Atlanta, actually. The hospital medicine job that I got was in Atlanta.

Sramana Mitra: I see. You recruited a CEO who would run the company in Atlanta?

Steve Liu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: How did you find this person? What was the criteria and process of finding this person?

Steve Liu: That’s a really good question. We began interviewing CEOs. I ended up interviewing four or five of them. The current CEO, HartWilliford, came from a connection of my investors. It’s just one of those things where you get so nervous about handing your baby over to someone. His pedigree was incredible and so was his business experience. I couldn’t believe that a guy like this might actually be considering us. We hit it off and I could tell that he had the same core values. I remember the very first day that he got up in front of the 15 people and started talking, I just knew I was in great shape. I think he thought we were a catch too in a way. It was a lucky series of events where we found the CEO.

Sramana Mitra: You were going to move to San Diego at this point?

Steve Liu: We hired Hart and I introduced him to the company over six years ago. One week later, I flew off to get married.

Sramana Mitra: But you stayed involved in the company?

Steve Liu: Absolutely. Even to this day, I’m remote, but I’m heavily involved.

Sramana Mitra: What was the role that you were going to take on at this point as part of the switch?

Steve Liu: One of the reasons for the transition was that there was so many things going on. As an entrepreneur, you have all these hats. I remember saying, “I don’t have enough time to focus on strategy and development of product. I’m dealing with all these logistics and I need a guy who can take on all of that and scale a company. I can do all these things, but it takes time and I don’t have the experience to do it. Why not get a guy so I can free myself up for strategic direction of the company? I’m the only guy who can do that. That’s a better use of my resources.” That’s a big part of what drove my decision.

I was still heavily involved in everything. All entrepreneurs are pretty deeply involved in all parts of it. It did free me up to not have to deal with the basic logistics and maturing the processes. At that point, I was focused on product development, direction, and thinking two to three years out so we can end up dominating way bigger than just this hospital niche. Our goal for the next six years was to dominate the whole healthcare space.

Sramana Mitra: As part of this transition, was there a funding round involved?

Steve Liu: There was another funding round from the current investor. It was a small round. The total that we’ve had is less than $8 million. There was another funding round about three to four years ago with Council Capital. That was more of a strategic funding round than a need-based funding round. They are a well-known company in Nashville where a huge amount of healthcare companies reside. That was a strategic decision to get them on board since we were going enterprise. We wanted to get in front of all these big healthcare systems.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu
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