Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 1)

Continuing on our theme of ‘Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later’, here’s William King’s story of building a robust company in the healthcare industry, now funded by Kleiner Perkins.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

William King: I was born in Princeton, New Jersey. I lived in Princeton until I was 18. I’m the oldest of six children. That’s a little bit unique in that we had a lot of action in the house. The age span was actually a difference of 10 years, which was pretty interesting and pretty heroic, now that I’m a parent myself. As a child, part of my experience in growing up was leading my siblings and helping them to participate. Kids look up to their older brothers and sisters. A lot of what was instilled in me at a very young age is this notion of making good choices, collaboration, and the idea that people are paying attention to the things that you’re doing. >>>

Disinfecting Hospitals, Impacting Healthcare: Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex (Part 1)

Morris Miller was an original investor in RackSpace, and ended up running the company for almost seven years. Following RackSpace, he is now building a super interesting company in disinfecting hospitals and saving lives. Read on. Exciting stuff!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were your born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Morris Miller: I was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. My father is a physician. My uncle is a physician and there was every expectation from the family and me that I would become a physician. I went to public school all the way through school. Then, as a sophomore, I decided to go to Felis Exeter Academy up in New Hampshire. I was the only one to go to boarding school.

Sramana Mitra: You returned to Texas though for your college or did you stay back in New England?
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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Torben Nielsen, Co-Founder of HealthSparq (Part 1)

The consumerization of healthcare, moving into the 21st century, a Web 3.0 world — let’s discuss these with Torben Nielsen.

Sramana Mitra: Please introduce us to HealthSparq and yourself.

Torben Nielsen: I’m the Co-Founder and the SVP of Products and Strategy here at HealthSparq. HealthSparq is a leading provider of cloud-based healthcare transparency solutions. In essence, it means that we’re trying to change something in an industry that has been very slow at changing. I think healthcare is one of the few, if not the only one, where you don’t really know what it’s going to cost until after the treatment. You go see your doctor and have a treatment done and you have no idea whether that doctor is the right doctor for you. You don’t know the quality of the doctor. You don’t know what it’s going to cost you until maybe 30 days after, you get something in the mail that says, “This is not a bill. This is an explanation of benefit.”

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Building an Exciting Healthcare IT Company From Chicago: LaunchPoint CEO Terry Ryan (Part 1)

At the cusp of three major trends, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Healthcare IT, Terry Ryan is building a very interesting company from Chicago. The company is profitable, already of substantial scale, and at a very exciting juncture.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journeys. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Give us some back story.

Terry Ryan: I was born and raised in the Midwest in the suburbs of Chicago. I spent most of my time in the Midwest, but I’ve also lived around the world including Europe. I’ve done business across most of the continents, but Chicago is home.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for college? What’s your educational background?
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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Abraham Gutman, CEO of AG Mednet (Part 1)

Clinical trials are hugely expensive for pharmaceutical companies to administer. Abraham Gutman has created a solution to make the process substantially more efficient and offers insights on new entrepreneurial opportunities in the field.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the company.

Abraham Gutman: I’m the founder and CEO of AG Mednet. I’m a computer scientist by training. This is my second entrepreneurial company. I started the first company in 1998 in the area of telecommunications where we were building software to do provisioning of large carrier-based optical networks. We sold that company to AT&T. In 2005, I started AG Mednet. Perhaps it may be interesting to entrepreneurs that what I set out to build and what I’m doing right now are somewhat different.

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Bootstrapping Using Services: Robin Wiener, CEO of Get Real Health (Part 1)

Robin has built an excellent company with large, international clients in the healthcare domain and has used the bootstrapping using services technique that we espouse in 1M/1M.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances?

Robin Wiener: I’m from Connecticut. I was born in Bristol, the home of ESPN. I went to the University of Connecticut for college. Early on, I had a major speech problem. I couldn’t really pronounce things. Along with that, I had a major learning disability. I had two sisters and a brother. The teachers told my parents that I just wasn’t as smart as my brothers and sisters. Maybe I could get married and that would be a good thing for me to do. >>>

Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler (Part 1)

Spun out from university research, Reach Health is an interesting case study in building a company around concepts like Telemedicine and remote healthcare.

Sramana Mitra: Steve and Grant, I would love to have your back stories. Where were you born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances? What paths did you follow in terms of college and so forth? How did your paths intersect?

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Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks (Part 1)

Girish Navani has built a $300M+ private company in Healthcare IT that would be valued at over $3B if he were to take it public. We first covered the company in our Entrepreneur Journeys series [Built To Enjoy] in 2010. We continue the discussion here.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s pick up from where we left off about four years ago. Of course, you’re one of the key players in the healthcare IT ecosystem and started way before most of players in the current landscape. Catch me up on what’s going on and how you’ve progressed. I want to set the context of what I love about your philosophy of building the company. You’ve kept it private. When we talked in 2010, you already had thousands and thousands of customers and had substantial revenue. >>>