A couple of years ago an opportunity landed in my lap that I felt compelled to take up; starting a business with a colleague, the nature of which was completely outside of my clinical work, specifically a company offering software and professional services focused on compliance.
Looking back now, having bought out my co-founder and then taken the company through an acquisition and divested myself of it, I have lots of reflections and useful learning should I take on a similar challenge in the future.
Clinicians have many transferable skills that work well in entrepreneurial positions (the ‘Doctorpreneur’!) including our ability to manage uncertainty and risk, and make decisions nevertheless. However, like every other human inhabiting the Earth, we can’t be great at everything, and that leads nicely on to my first recommendation:
Surround yourself with experts of a different type
We have a tendency to work and socialise with people who are similar to ourselves both in terms of thinking but also in ways of working. Whilst it is ideal to work with someone with similar values, it is also ideal to work with people who do things very differently and are naturally skilled and knowledgeable in areas that we are lacking; the business needs all-round expertise with keen eyes on all of the business functions. It is that old mantra of only being as good as your weakest link.
Do not underestimate the time and financial investment required
I’d recommend some careful thought very early on about whether the financial investment required for your organisation to grow is going to be injected personally (or with loans personally guaranteed) or sought from investment. There are pros and cons to both options. I personally opted for control but this did come with considerable financial pressure, that was pretty much a daily feature in my life, and frankly one I was glad to see the back of.
Consideration also needs to be given to the time involved and how this is going to be managed. How much will be outsourced versus how much will be done by yourself? Again, there is no right nor wrong answer here, but factoring in how much of your free time you are willing to forgo and having a sense of what value – monetary and otherwise – you want to place on your time, will help these decisions to emerge. If I had to guess as to the level amount of time I committed to the business I co-founded, I would estimate that it was at least three days a week and that was sustained right through until acquisition.
Have a plan, derived from a purpose
This sounds simple, but a start-up will need a plan, and that plan will very regularly need to be reviewed in light of progress or otherwise and unforeseen circumstances. A plan with clear, measurable goals, or KPIs will be looked upon favourably by investors, buyers and team members. The plan will be influenced by the purpose of the company to you as the founder, and that is sometimes not always well thought through at the beginning. Is this a company you are looking to sell in five years and retire from the proceeds of? Or is this going to be a company that gives you lifelong income and stability? Both will result in very different plans immediately from the outset.
Data is your friend
In order to demonstrate that you are achieving your plan, you will need to have some data. I would recommend measuring everything you possibly can, looking for patterns and trends after every new decision is implemented, and changing your direction based on what the data tells you. Data will drive solid decisions; opinion may not. It will also drive changes, sometimes U-turns, because it will also be telling you what isn’t working…
Don’t be afraid of mistakes
Success isn’t easy, and no one gets it right first time. When something goes well, it is because it has not gone so well the time before and a decision was made to do something differently based on the learning from that. It can feel like a personal failure to have made a ‘wrong’ decision and sometimes there is a tendency to keep going with the same plan hoping that next time might be different to ‘save face’, but in my opinion the failure lies in ignoring the evidence and pressing on without any learning.
Prepare for intense scrutiny
Having gone through the ‘due diligence’ of an acquisition, I can share that every single decision that you make as founder will be questioned. The best answers will be backed up with data. For example ‘We set these prices based on these calculations’ or ‘This is our main method of marketing and it is based on some early market testing that we did, the results of which are here’ goes down very well. Justification of your moves is the level of understanding that an investor requires.
In order to have robust data, all business decisions need to be well documented, and as much data as possible should be monitored. Decent software makes this easy and therefore more likely to be done, so I would highly recommend having a solid ‘tech stack’ that makes data collection and interpretation as easy as possible; gone are the days of mail merges for email marketing with zero visibility after send, and spreadsheets for sales pipelines.
Network, network, network
Many answers are out there, from the thousands of other people who are or have been in similar positions to yourself, who are usually more than happy to impart some knowledge. Good old social media, particularly LinkedIn is a great place to start (I have made lifelong friends on it and met many peers and colleagues whose insights I have been grateful for), but as are the face to face events. This requires a degree of extroversion of course, but that’s something that can be worked upon and will be improved with practice (I am a Myers-Briggs introvert myself!).
In summary, there is a lot to consider before taking the plunge into founding a business, and there is no guaranteed recipe for success, but I believe the above ingredients at least give a recipe for an outcome to be proud of, one that can be stood behind with a sense of achievement. That is ultimately what my experience was – it did not make me a millionaire, but it enriched my life and career and brought a whole heap of learning that will no doubt come in handy in the future.
I would love to connect with past, present and future Doctorpreneurs (and not just in the tech sector!) and share our learning for the benefit of all – do reach out!
