Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about where exactly in the chronology of the industry you were coming out of college? What did you do at that point?

William King: I finished school in 2002. It’s an international business degree.

Sramana Mitra: Where were you geographically at that point?

William King: I was in Denver, Colorado. When I was in school, there were a couple of things that were really formative. One was studying abroad and two were internships. I have worked my whole life even as a young fellow in the summers. In school, I remember I was working for an irrigation company. Because my dad was in construction, I had many construction jobs over the years. I remember I was digging the irrigation and it was really hot. I remember having this moment when I thought, “I’m in college. We have this wonderful career center and I have never even walked through the front door. I should probably walk in there and introduce myself.”

Construction is very interesting to me, but I also saw an opportunity in other categories and other spaces. I had done an internship while I was at school. It was early days of the web. The Web 1.0 was all about everybody getting online. I worked at a company and their offering was to bring physicians online. It was a Yellow Pages of different doctors. It was a tremendous experience and I learned a lot. It was a startup and it was all the things that one would expect from a startup. It was chaotic and I wore a lot of different hats. I was doing data entry one day and selling the next day. It was just a fantastic experience.

Everything I had learned in school went out the window when I came to this work environment. I was very keen to understand, more formally, what it took to run a business. I chatted with my dad about that. He suggested General Electric and J&J. For a variety of reasons, but most especially because my youngest sister was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 10 years of age, I really felt strongly about health. Obviously, J&J is a great healthcare company. I decided that I would take a job with them. That moved me from Denver to California for the first time.

Sramana Mitra: What was the role in California?

William King: I went to J&J as a sales rep. As a young person, the transition from school to career is pretty big. You go from having every hour scheduled in classes. I went with the idea that maybe I’d stay a year or two to learn a little bit about the business. What I quickly learned at J&J was the value of the infrastructure that exists there and in particular, the different training programs that they have. I had the chance to do a number of different functions largely on the commercial side like sales, marketing, and some training. Ultimately, I ended up taking a role in their International Development Program, which is a pretty distinguished international program that allows you to go outside US and learn about global business problems. Obviously, as an international business major, that was a big focus for me.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health
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