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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Abraham Gutman, CEO of AG Mednet (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Moving big images is no big deal.

Abraham Gutman: I said, “I won’t compress images. Who cares about compressing? There’s a lot of capacity in the ground already. Tell me how big a pipe I need and I’ll just make or lease a pipe. I can move truck loads of images very fast and efficiently.” Now I had a solution for the problem but I was wondering if the problem that he had suggested was a real problem. So I got in my car and started going to little hospitals in the New England area. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m with you that you set that up as a separate entity, ran by a full-time manager, and you focused on oil and gas contract software development. That’s where we are, right?

Jory Lamb: We focused on oil and gas commercial software products that would sit on top of SAP. We got out of contract work and we made a decision that we would write commercial software package for the oil and gas industry that managed the day-to-day operations of a field service company.

Sramana Mitra: Where did that idea come from?

Jory Lamb: In 2003, one of the challenges of running this web software company was that we were living from project to project. Some years we’d be written into the budget and some years out of the budget. We made a conscious decision that we would go find a solution because >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 6)

Robin Wiener: US is also starting to think about that a little bit. The other place where we’ve launched is Australia. It’s the same model of telehealth. We’ve partnered with Telstra Health, which is the largest telecommunications company in Australia. We’re rolling out our first application there. A new region that is very interesting is the Middle East. The population is getting sick. They’re very interested in trying to work with their population to keep them healthy. Since we can do the product in Arabic, they’re very interested in what we can do. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the go-to-market? Was it the same? You identified some influencers, sold to influencers, and then leveraged them to sell to the rest of the market, is that right?

Jory Lamb: It was a little bit different, but we started that way. We went into an area of influencers. We worked with consulting veterinarians. On the heels of that, we bought out a green screen legacy system and assumed their clients as well. In a span of about a year and a half of acquiring our own and then through negotiating and purchasing this legacy system and assuming all their clients, we went from 40 to 280. I spun out that revenue stream off into its own business. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 5)

Robin Wiener: The next phase, which is very exciting, is to push that patient information back into the hospital so that they can get better care. We have an alert system. Let’s say your blood sugar gets out of whack, an alert is sent out to let the doctor know what’s going on with you. If your blood pressure is slowly creeping up, they can see that and can get you a doctor’s appointment versus bringing you into the emergency room at an acute time. We’re in the right place and the right time in the United States.

One of my first large clients is the province of Alberta, Canada, which had 3.2 million people. They’re rolling out because their social medicine is totally different from the US. They want to pull down the cost of healthcare. How do you do that? It’s by engaging those patients and making sure those patients know what’s going on with their healthcare and making sure they’re taking their medication. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Ajay Patel, CEO of HighQ (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What else is interesting that I should have asked you about?

Ajay Patel: One thing I think is very important for every SaaS business like ours is profitability. The market is soon going to not accept that a lot of SaaS businesses aren’t profitable. The argument is always that the customer acquisition cost is the same as if it was enterprise sales, but you only make a little bit of money. That’s why you’ve got losses in the early years. I think what’s been important with HighQ and where we’re different is we’re profitable. We do and have, for the last four years, maintained our EBITDA margins between 30% – 35%. I think that’s important. I’m a Chartered Accountant. You have to make money in a business.

Sramana Mitra: I agree on that. I don’t believe in spending so much money and acquiring free customers who never monetize. >>>

Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Canada: Jory Lamb, CEO of VistaVu (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me see if we’ve got what you’re trying to say here. You got it off by providing training to farmers in Canada. That was the primary revenue-generating business that went on in the beginning. At some point in that time frame, you were offered to do a custom software development work by a client. You did that and you were able to preserve the IP. You packaged it into another product and managed to sell that product to a whole bunch of different customers. This is the summary of what you’ve said so far, correct?

Jory Lamb: Yes. What’s key in all that is we went from basically zero to dominating an entire market.

Sramana Mitra: That’s exactly the kind of detail that I want to get into. You started in 1996. At what point in your cycle did this client who gave you the contract software project come about?

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Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like the business you built is this flexible toolkit with which you can put together health applications. What kind of clients did you go after with that basic concept?

Robin Wiener: We’re small and we have some big partners. We do the personal health records. We work with the patient. The patient needs to get that information, so we need to integrate into larger EMR systems of hospitals. We can actually put our platform on top of any data source. Otherwise, it wouldn’t mean much for the patient. You want to know if your doctor has your records or if your pharmacy has your record. You want to have your complete checkup.

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