When the founders of mobile health startup RoloDoc appeared on Shark Tank last week, it offered a sobering view on national television of what can go wrong when investors don’t like the pitch for your startup. But the perspective offered in co-founder Richard Amini responses to emailed questions indicates that the shark attack was little more than a flesh wound and he and his brother Albert will continue to work on their company. Amini is an Emergency Medicine professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.
What didn’t get aired? Certainly, a majority of our discussion with the Sharks did not air. We were with the sharks for about an hour and they cut it down to 5-6mins. Most of what did not air was in regards to our company’s goals and directions:
RoloDoc is a web-based company dedicated to making healthcare more convenient. Our intent is to create a network of physicians, medical professionals and patients that makes communicating with each other fast and easy. It would essentially be a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to text and email.
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The future of RoloDoc is one that fosters an easy exchange of ideas and a faster form of communication through the use of online physician search tools and a mobile app for encrypted emailing and encrypted password protected text messaging.
Although some have linked it to Doximity, I think we stand out in our desire to include everyone in the medical community (pharmacists, nurses, etc) and we would like to give valuable access to the patients as well.
One of the hardest questions to answer is why would the medical profession want to do this? I think if you ask anyone in the medical field, they would reiterate how difficult it is to find contact info, connect with someone and how much they would prefer the ability to text each other. So, what we are counting on is people wanting to do it because of the time and energy it would save them by joining RoloDoc.
What kind of feedback have you received since the episode aired Friday?
Overall the feedback that we have received has been very positive. We have received applications for positions within RoloDoc as well as potential investment opportunities. We have also received collegial emails with potential recommendations for ways to improve our pitch. Obviously we also received emails which were less than supportive, but this kind of thing will happen when you make yourself vulnerable to millions of viewers.
We are still seeking partners in web development, web security, and venture capitalists to help us take RoloDoc to the next level. In the end, we know we need help. We can’t do it on our own. We need help on the business and finance side and we need help on the web development/security side. Part of the reason for exploring Shark Tank (even when we knew we weren’t ready) was for the ability to quickly market our product and obtain additional resources. If we didn’t pursue this now, someone else would and might beat us to the punch.
What have been some of the challenges you have had as entrepreneurs? It has been a difficult journey to finish residency and fellowship as well as work as co-founders on such a young company. The other challenge has been our lack of business knowledge. For the last 14 years, we have spent almost every waking minute on perfecting our craft. We have had to pursue RoloDoc in our limited free time and haven’t had much time or experience on the business/sales side of things. We hope that as we start our careers, we are better able to learn the business side of things. Luckily we are still very young, I’m 30 and my brother is 31, and we have plenty of energy!! Another major challenge has been the lack of Web development skills. We have relied on foreign web developers for help and along with the time zone and language barriers, they are not fully adept to our security standards in the US when it comes to health care. It is one of the biggest things preventing us from moving forward without partners.
Has it made you and Albert think about focusing on other areas of health IT?
We are continuously thinking about ways to improve RoloDoc as well as innovative ways to improve upon our current healthcare structure but for now we would like to continue to focus on improving communication in medicine with mobile technology.
