Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: These two competitors that are heavily venture funded, what are their names? What is the situation right now? Are they comparable in revenue numbers? What metrics are you tracking for them?

Steve Liu: Good question. I don’t know their revenue numbers. It’s an interesting time in this market right now. One of them is PatientKeeper, which was recently acquired by a healthcare system. I don’t know where they stand but I do know that when it comes to what we do, we would always win the deal only because that was our focus. They were doing many different things on top of what we do. I don’t think they’ve had as much customer growth over the past years. We just didn’t see as many press releases. I’m not sure there’s as much adoption of the product when they rolled out. The other one is a company called MedAptus. These two are great companies but for some reason, we just do a slightly better job.

Sramana Mitra: You executed better and you were focused. It’s a wonderful story. What do you want to do next? Is money a lever that you can push to accelerate growth? Do you want to push that lever? What is your game plan?

Steve Liu: You’re catching us at a really interesting transition point. About two weeks ago, we went through a majority recap through North Bridge Growth Equity. Since about two years, healthcare has been changing. I’m sure you’re aware of all the healthcare reforms. I knew that we could do what we currently are doing but that there was a lot of change going on. We needed to transform in a way if we wanted to do really well in the future. We actually made a pretty big leap. We released a transformational product that leveraged adjacent markets and helped us to fit what the future is going to be even more so than what we currently do. It was a risky thing because no one else was doing this stuff. We released it earlier this year. It’s done really well. It’s all about cutting cost in healthcare. That’s what this is about. It’s not just about physicians. It’s all those people in the hospital that they work with. That gave us a second bite of the apple.

Sramana Mitra: You’re selling into your install base where you already have relationships.

Steve Liu: Absolutely. It’s a really interesting time because it’s taken off and the market’s responded to it. In a way, one of my focus these days is on where do we go next. It’s almost like we’ve opened up this new world. Which path do you take? There are about 50,000 ways you can take a product that everyone says is a good idea. You never know. One of the things that kept us safe was, we had a very laser-focused product. That’s why we built an awesome product. Now, we have all these directions we can take this product. My challenge is, of those things, some of them will be dead end. Some wont’. It takes a lot of time and effort to figure that stuff out.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a good problem to have.

Steve Liu: It’s a great problem to have, exactly. That’s one milestone. Then recently, we did a majority recap. The goal for that was to grow the company and disseminate this to the rest of the nation. There’s a lot of opportunity to innovate and provide a lot more value.

Sramana Mitra: How much have you raised?

Steve Liu: I can’t say. I’m really pleased by the company that we’re merging with. They have such experience in the direction that we’re going.

Sramana Mitra: This is a merger. I thought you got investment from another company.

Steve Liu: It’s an investment. It was a majority recap.

Sramana Mitra: As part of that deal, did you guys take some of your ownership off the table? Did you take some liquidity?

Steve Liu: There were some. I’ll just say that we’re also vested in the success of this new company as well. It was a great situation where you get a little bit of risk after doing this for so many years. Also, we’re strong believers of where this company can be five years from now. We can just keep going and growing it.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic! I’m so thrilled to hear your story.

Steve Liu: It’s crazy. You never know where life takes you.

Sramana Mitra: These are the kinds of stories that we love to capture and learn from. Good luck with everything going forward!

This segment is part 7 in the series : Bootstrapping With A Paycheck From Atlanta: Ingenious Med Founder Steve Liu
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