The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
In the distant year of 2007, the American ZocDoc came up with online booking for doctors. On the patient’s side, it was a website with filters, reviews, and booking the available time slots. On the doctor’s side, it is an online calendar and a simple CRM. The second part seemed more important to ZocDoc founders – ‘we do realize that people only choose doctors through friends’ recommendations, marketplaces are fake, and booking management is a valuable thing.’ Of course, nobody said so out loud, this is a simplified version, but the overall approach was like this. ZocDoc also charged doctors as a SaaS – a fixed monthly subscription price.
The startups started off with a bang and quickly gained popularity, but it soon reached a plateau and gained the reputation of ‘the slowest unicorn ever.’ Later, about recently, ZocDoc reimagined itself. No, we are an actual marketplace after all, we bring the patients, everybody is used to the internet, people choose doctors the same way they choose a hotel. The rates also changed – the subscription became next to symbolic, but now there was a commission for booking. However, the company still didn’t IPO.
Instead, ZocDoc got itself a competitor – NexHealth, the startup of the day. It also offers online booking but follows the SaaS path strictly. It doesn’t have anything remotely resembling its own marketplace, all records come through a Google widget, Facebook, and the doctor’s website. The startup claims that its CRM is even better developed than ZocDoc’s one, the latter seemingly couldn’t learn to do marketing emails and sms interaction with patients the right way in 15 years.
NexHealth brought in almost USD 150M of investment, the valuation reached a round billion in last round. It appears that ZocDoc still earns considerably more and costs several times more, but we’ll see what happens 3 years later.
#crm #megaround #unicorn #usa #healthcare
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
