Natalie Davis, MD, co-founded PreventScripts after watching metabolic disease accelerate in her home region of western Kentucky — and spent years learning those lessons in real time, according to an article published by the American Medical Association June 18.
The company’s digital platform, which supports primary care physicians in helping patients make lasting lifestyle changes, now has more than 50,000 patients under contract and $2 million in seed funding. Ahead of her presentation at the AMA’s Physician Entrepreneur Forum, Aug. 7-8 in Chicago, Dr. Davis outlined the three rules she wishes she’d known at the start.
1. Solve a real problem
The most successful digital health companies are built around a genuine pain point — and the more significant the problem, the larger the market, Dr. Davis said.
“It needs to be a problem that truly matters,” Dr. Davis said. “When I started PreventScripts, we picked the biggest problem there is: metabolic condition intervention from age 13 to 74. That’s the full monty.”
Her focus on family medicine was intentional. Primary care physicians are seeing metabolic disease patients early — before they reach Medicare age — which Dr. Davis sees as the critical intervention window.
2. Do the selling yourself
Hiring a sales team before founders fully understand their own sales cycle is one of the most costly mistakes early-stage companies make, Dr. Davis said. She and PreventScripts CEO Brandi Harless closed all of the company’s early deals themselves.
“Hiring for sales too early, when you don’t understand exactly how long your sales cycle is, is a terrible problem to create for yourself as an entrepreneur,” Dr. Davis said. “The founding team — you, your CEO, chief medical officer — those are going to be your best salespeople. They bring passion, credibility and firsthand knowledge, and those are assets in building trust, in closing deals.”
The early sales process also serves as a feedback loop. Dr. Davis, who has also joined Scrub Capital as a part-time limited partner, said she now looks for the same pattern when vetting pre-seed and seed-stage companies: founders who are still closing their first five to 10 deals themselves.
3. Know your stakeholders
Healthcare’s multistakeholder environment trips up many physician entrepreneurs who focus on clinical value without mapping every party their product touches, Dr. Davis said. She identified five major market segments in healthcare: consumers, pharmaceutical companies, employers, payers and physician practices and healthcare organizations — each with its own incentives and pain points.
“You really have to define an ideal customer profile — that is really critical — and you need to understand not only that, but who the users of your product are,” Dr. Davis said. “In our case, patients use our product; physicians and health professionals use our product; and the C-suite uses our product because we have a revenue-cycle piece. And you have to have a feedback system in play for each of those.”
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