Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the target customer base?

Mike Carter: Our target customer base is what we call the commercial mid-market. That would be organizations between 500 to 5,000 users. They typically fall into regional healthcare providers and financial service organizations – certainly not the large global organizations but regional and national groups. >>>

Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s anchor this on some dates. What year were you noodling with this idea?

Mike Carter: I graduated from college in 1992. I immediately went to work for this tech startup called The Computer Group. That company was acquired in 1996 by IKON Office Solutions. It’s part of the overall document workflow type of technology and automation offering. In 1999, I departed what was then IKON and started eGroup. I’ve been with eGroup since 1999. We’re on our 15^th year of bootstrapped company using credit cards and youthful ambition.

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Bootstrapping to $20 Million in Charleston, South Carolina: eGroup CEO Mike Carter (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.

Continuing our coverage of entrepreneurship far away from Silicon Valley, we bring you a conversation with Mike Carter, CEO of eGroup in Charleston, South Carolina. Typically, these environments have bred bootstrapped companies, and bootstrapping using services continues to be a popular method. Of late, incubators and accelerators are also cropping up, and building a more sophisticated ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: Mike, let’s start with the beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances leads up to the entrepreneurial story? >>>

Castlight Health Vaults with a High Value IPO

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, healthcare spending in the US is projected to be worth $3.1 trillion this year, of which $620 billion is paid by US employers. Despite this significant expenditure, the healthcare industry in the country is plagued with inefficiencies and extreme variations in price and quality of health care. A major factor for these inefficiencies is the inadequate availability of information, especially with respect to the price and quality of health care, which makes it difficult for employees and health care providers to make wise health care choices.

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2014: H2S, Chicago, IL

H2S Inc. is a start-up software technology company that offers PatientDox, a document exchange SaaS platform for the health care sector. It allows health agencies and their referring physicians to send, receive, track, and e-sign time sensitive patient documents so that providers can be reimbursed for services on time. Incorporated in January 2013, the company is in pre-revenue stage looking at closing five pilot projects over the next month in Illinois and California.

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Athenahealth Counting on Product Launches

According to a recent report, US EMR Market Outlook to 2017, the electronic medical records (EMR) market is project to grow 15% annually over 2013-2017. Growth will be driven by both private and public players as they continue to invest in services such as the need to adhere to the Meaningful Use Stage 2 (MU2). EMR hardware accounts for 51% of the market, and EMR services and software account for the remaining share. EMR leader athenahealth recently reported healthy quarterly results although guidance was less rosy. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Your point is well taken. From what I know from bringing products to market, anything that requires too much work on the part of the consumer basically fails. As long as the products that come onto the market have self-learning capabilities, that would be fine.

Rich Mahoney: At the end of the day, these robots will be products. They will have to meet customer demands and have some value for the price people are paying for them. That is a phase that has to happen. There is a lot of attention to robotics right now. Even the smallest bits get a lot of attention at the moment. That is just the nature of the technology. But if you compare it with any other consumer product or any other area, the overall activity is extremely low. It is still very early. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I don’t see this happening in the food preparation domain as much as I see it happening in cleaning services. Lawn mowing is a good example, because it is a repetitive and physically exerting function. Those are good application areas. If I were thinking about consumer applications, what other applications would I be looking at in terms of launching a product to market that could be remotely as successful as Roomba? >>>