Our investment in TimeDoc
We first met the TimeDoc team in 2018, a few years after their initial launch in the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge. What stuck out to us initially was the remarkable strength of the founders — a doctor and an ex-consultant who were both young, smart, and hungry. Although we had some initial concerns about their ability to navigate the highly regulated healthcare industry led by executives 30 years senior, they wasted no time proving us wrong with their impressively deep industry knowledge and unmatched level of commitment. In the end, their intense focus, attention to detail, and coachability won us over, and Grand Ventures became an early investor.
We knew they had struck gold with their choice of market. Chronic care management (CCM) is a massive issue in the US today — over 133 million Americans currently suffer from a chronic disease. The process of treating chronic illness isn’t simple, and typically requires providers to extend their reach beyond traditional in-office appointments. Providers need to contact their chronic care patients periodically to check their health status and adherence to care plans. Frequent touch points are crucial for preventing hospitalization and improving treatment outcomes.
The concept of billing for chronic care management, however, was relatively new at TimeDoc’s inception. The first related insurance reimbursement code was only written in 2015. Status quo dictated that chronic care providers were either forced to begin the tedious, manual process of tracking their time spent with patients outside of appointments or forego reimbursement for that time altogether. It was clear that this was an industry ripe for disruption. TimeDoc’s platform helps providers receive quick reimbursement for the CCM services they already provide.
One of my primary considerations was the company’s business model. TimeDoc is a tech enabled service, not pure SaaS, and thus had lower margins and higher associated risk. TimeDoc employs a small and super-talented group of care managers who act as supplemental resources to nurses in practices with low resource capacity for CCM. We wrestled with the tradeoffs of backing a pure SaaS business with higher margins vs. a hybrid tech-enabled service model. Ultimately, customer calls and sales metrics made the decision clear. Health centers desperately wanted to provide better CCM services and relied heavily on supplemental care managers in order to do so. Listening to customers served both the fund and the company well.
We took a big bet on TimeDoc’s team and market, and ultimately opted to lead the company’s seed round. Since our seed investment, TimeDoc has proven product-market fit, expanded beyond chronic care management to new markets like behavioral health, and grown all key KPIs by 5–10x. The team turned out to be one of the strongest founding teams I’ve ever worked with. It’s truly amazing how far the company has come in such a short period of time, and we remain as optimistic about TimeDoc as ever.
Investment aside, TimeDoc is a perfect example of a win-win-win; it is a win for founders, a win for investors, and a win for the community. TimeDoc is scaling rapidly as they save lives and jobs. The company’s response to COVID is a perfect example of the platform’s broad range of use cases. Since adopting TimeDoc, many providers were able to avoid nursing staff lay-offs and can now remotely provide key services that enable patients to navigate their health and wellness during the pandemic.
Keep it up Will, Chris, John, Curt, and all the TimeDoctors! Welcome to the team Vocap Partners, Impact Engine, and Waterline Ventures! Here’s to another exciting chapter ahead.
