Two companies, one exit: what building in healthcare actually taught me

Co-founder of Pharm Doc. Two companies across SaaS and healthcare. The lesson was not about product. It was about how long trust takes.

I co-founded Pharm Doc, a telehealth SaaS business, and we sold it. Two companies across SaaS and healthcare, which is the fastest education available in what happens when a market will not let you move at software speed.

Consumer software lets you buy your way to a customer. Healthcare does not. There is a compliance layer, a clinical layer and a trust layer, and none of them respond to a bigger media budget. The channel that worked was the one nobody wanted to run: named relationships, built slowly, with people who could vouch for you to the next person.

The second lesson was about pricing. In a regulated market, the thing you charge for and the thing you are actually paid for drift apart very quickly. We were paid for reducing risk long before anyone would say that out loud on a call.

And the third: an exit is an operating event, not a finish line. The work that makes a company sellable is the same work that makes it good, done eighteen months earlier than feels necessary.

That experience is most of why I now run a fractional practice rather than an agency retainer machine. The interesting problems are upstream, in the room where the decisions get made.

← All writing