August Founders’ Lunch with Updox Podcast
For the second year in a row, Updox, a Rev1 portfolio company that is the industry leader for care coordination and healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for health care, was recognized at no. 571 on the 35th Inc. 5000 list.
Updox reported 686 percent growth, revenues of $5.2MM, and has about 50 employees. A young company doesn’t achieve a place in the top 10 percent of the fastest growing companies in America without doing many things right and learning from the things that weren’t.
Updox cofounder and CTO Mike Witting offered these tips (lightly edited) during the August 17 Founders’ Day Lunch at Rev1 Labs.
- Develop a channel strategy that includes direct sales as appropriate, and strong relationships with indirect channel partners.
“Updox has two very different sales channels. We have a direct sales model, selling usually to office administrators. This was our first channel, and we lived in that world for a couple of years.
There is a continuum from direct to indirect. Now we partner with approximately 70 electronic health record (EHR) vendors who sell Updox to their customers. We sought partners willing to take on risk, early adopters willing and interested in overcoming a challenge. Then we worked on clearly and cleanly demonstrating the value of what we were doing. As our partners began to hear from their customers how much they enjoyed using Updox, our relationships with EHR vendors took on a real partnership.”
- Really excellent people are hard to find. Pull out all the stops when it comes to asking your contacts for leads.
“We tapped our personal networks and found that a lot of our friends didn’t necessarily want to work for an unproven startup. But referrals from those folks, the second level out, helped us build our team. We value our local partners as much for who they bring as who they don’t bring.”
- Building a company is much different than building a job.
“Going from an idea to a marketable business, we have to think about everything. What are the market drivers? Our channels? How do we talk about our value proposition? What is our total market, serviceable market? And then there are the customers.
From the time I was in college, I always had this entrepreneurial idea in my head. I didn’t want to be beholding to anyone. Now, with the benefit of adulthood, I realize that you’re always beholding to someone. When you are an entrepreneur, it’s your customers. They hold your destiny.”
