Placebo
Marketplace for medical practices to find technology vendors
Here we go! We launched our website today on Product Hunt and Makerpad and blasted across all personal and business social media accounts (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook). I also sent personal emails to my close network and asked them to share among their colleagues if they found the site interesting.
We reached 15 vendor signups! Each vendor submitted an "intake form" with all of their info to be included on their listing. Key learnings:
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Just pick up the phone and start calling. This was super hard for the first few conversations but got easier each time! Don't be scared to mess up. Every time you hear a "no" you're continuing to improve your value prop and pitch.
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Try alternate methods of communication. We started with calling, but sometimes we found better responses from vendors by using Twitter DMs or online chats. Cold emails never worked for us.
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Be very, very responsive. You only have so much time to catch someone's attention, so once you have it, follow up and continue to show your value by being prompt and helpful in all communication with them!
Hey all,
My co-founder and I spent the last two weeks finalizing our idea and coming up with a gameplan for our new venture: an online marketplace for medical practices to find and purchase technology. The hope is to become a one-stop-shop for evaluating all kinds of technology vendors and save time for clinicians, purchasing teams, & administrators by rigorously vetting all of our vendors before we host them.
Additionally, this venture came out of a real struggle we had at our last company... getting a great health tech product in front of medical practices who (rightfully so) use lots of gatekeeping tactics to keep sales out of the way of patient care.
Today we started cold-calling potential vendors and got our first vendor to sign up for the site! This isn't paid yet -- we're hoping to have 10-15 vendors signed on before we start asking for paid site subscriptions. But it's a first! And it feels great!
--Emily
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Awesome, congrats to you both! Do you guys have a platform to facilitate this marketplace yet or will that come later?
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Right now we have a website with 15 vendors in an online catalog view... as we're recruiting more vendors, we'll also build log in capabilities for medical practices! Then we'll build the marketplace functionality.
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Well done!!! I hope it goes well Emily, it all sounds really promising.
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Hey Emily,
I like the idea of helping medical practices find the software a lot actually and see other markets that might be able to use this model.
What’s your on-boarding process going to be like? Are you just doing cold email/calling?
Instead of paid subscription, Why not just earn as an affiliate? Most of these software companies pay as recurring and you don’t have to deal with customers?
4 Comments
This may be helpful
https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup
and use this to get your page indexed and add backlinks
http://www.indexkings.com/index.php
Good luck on your journey
That Github list is a large waste of time. Spent days sending to the sites on it. And 90% of them are geared to fastrack for $150-ish dollars. And the ones that list your product instantly are too small to gain any traction from. From experience I'd concentrate on the free channels...1. Product Hunt 2. Reddit (Although quite aloof and full of keyboard warriors) 3. GetWorm (This is great for getting first customers) 4. Heavy hitting FB groups that are made up of people that could use your product. (Just be wary of Nigerian Princes looking to sell you a pyramid scheme).
Also check out Dan Norris’ 7 day startup launch checklist as there's some great tips in it.
These are such great resources! Thanks for sharing.
Congrats and Good luck!