Bootstrapping To $19 Million: Office Ally CEO Brian O’Neill (Part 1)

Brian O’Neill founded Office Ally in 2000 after observing poor business practices in the healthcare industry. Office Ally (covered in Deal Radar early this year) is a health information network connecting patients, providers, and payers. It offers a free practice management system, a free clearinghouse, a low-cost electronic health record ($29.95/month/provider) as well as a patient portal that enables e-visits and the creation of  personal health records (PHRs) and e-prescribing. The company earns revenue by charging insurance companies for the streamlined claims process its technologies enable.

SM: Brian, let’s begin by examining the roots of your entrepreneurial journey. Where does your story begin?

BO: I grew up in Ohio and I earned a degree in computer science before moving to California when I was twenty. >>>

Can You Do It All? BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker (Part 7)

SM: Your message is that you need to prioritize and that your priorities can change over time. Is that correct?

TT: Yes, but you need to keep your family first.

SM: That is not always possible. If your company is going through a crisis you have to put it first.

TT: For stretches, yes. >>>

Can You Do It All? BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker (Part 6)

SM: When you were going through the financially stressful period, what happened with your family? One of your children would have been entering the teenage years at that point.

TT: I have the best kids in the whole world. My son goes to UCLA and works at the company during the summer. I was single when I was starting the company, and he went to a middle school that was thirty minutes away from home. Every morning I would talk about the company as we drove to school. >>>

1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For E-Commerce Entrepreneurs On September 23

Especially for entrepreneurs interested in e-commerce, we will be co-hosting the next FREE online 1M/1M strategy roundtable with Volusion on Thursday, September 23, 2010, starting at: 11 a.m. EDT/8 a.m. PDT/8:30 p.m. IST.  We hope you will join us and let other entrepreneurs know. You can find more details and register here.

Can You Do It All? BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker (Part 5)

SM: What happened in 2004 when your competitor started out and you were running out of cash?

TT: I wanted to quit a thousand times. I would wake up at 1 a.m. just worrying about the money and payroll. We cut people but still had a $50,000 payroll. I would call my friends from SunGard and ask for $30,000 loans. >>>

Roundtable Recap: September 16 – 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs

At today’s roundtable, I started with a presentation on Blue Sky opportunities in Cloud Computing based on our Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing (TLCC) research. I took the audience through five cloud-based business ideas, and discussed why they are relevant, and pointed them to the sources I derived those ideas from.

For you, readers, here they are:

1. Cloud-based collaboration among bio-medical researchers around large volumes of data:

Dr. Marcos Athanasoulis, CTO of Harvard Medical School discussed this idea with me recently. There is a tremendous amount of data sitting at various pockets that bio-medical researchers are trying to collaborate around. The data needs modeling, processing, visualization, etc. – all activities in the domain of computer science, not bio-medical sciences. There is also need for researchers at various institutes to collaborate around this data and models, all problems that point towards a cloud based solution. An entrepreneur should pick this one up ASAP. From cancer research to genomics, wide arrays of research areas are looking forward to your innovation.
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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2010: Hospitality Star

By guest author Praveen Kumar

Hospitality Star offers end-to-end solutions based on a SaaS model for the hospitality industry (hotels, casinos, food and beverage, and educational institutes) in the areas of learning, knowledge management, procurement, and business process and reporting solutions. >>>

Can You Do It All? BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker (Part 4)

SM: Tell me about the origins of BlackLine. What was it and how did you get it started?

TT: Officially I started it in 2001, but it really got going in 2002. I started it as a wealth management software company, and I used the money I made from SunGard to fund it. >>>