Sramana: You said that Eliza achieved profitability in two years with a lean, bootstrapped operation. What year was that, and what is the story from that point until today? Alexandra Drane: That was in 2001, once we had the platform we started receiving information from people in real time. We had a speech recognition system
Sramana: Once you found the speach recognition technology that led to Eliza, what was your next step? Alexandra Drane: At that time I was 28 years old. I knew I was not yet ready to be a CEO, but I wanted to be involved and knew I had to get a team who could help
Sramana: What were some of the major lessons learned between the time you left Axon Group and joined Eliza? Alexandra Drane: I left CDI to start Axon which was a value capital company. One of the startups with Axon was NewMed which was a medical device company. At each company I have been involved with
Sramana: When you left Axon Group, what company did you create and what was the thesis behind that company? Alexandra Drane: We founded Tesseract with the idea that we would use Web-enabled functionality to help with injury tracking. During our consulting work we had noticed that many times when folks come in to do technology
Sramana: What path did you take from that upbringing? Alexandra Drane: Throughout high school and my early college years I would work in my dad’s startups. He invested in a lot of technology companies and startups in the local area. I was a complete slacker in high school, and I went primarily to have fun.
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Alexandra Drane is a serial entrepreneur who has launched four successful healthcare ventures over the past 15 years. Alexandra is currently president and co-founder of Eliza Corporation, a leading provider of integrated healthcare communication strategies. She is also the co-founder of two nonprofits, Engage with Grace,