Founders Readers - Ep 40 - Dr Jonathan Baktari of e7 Health
The Founders Keepers podcast, podded
The Founders Readers podnotes are not a transcript, but accompany the weekly podcast detailing key insights from that exact conversation
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This week, we’re speaking with Dr Jonathan Baktari about his company, e7 Health: A Preventative Health and Wellness Company e7 Health is a preventative health and wellness company that is supervised by Board Certified Doctors…
💬 Quote from the pod:
“Doctors always think that the smartest person in the room, but you know, as soon as you do this stuff, you realise there is a whole new skill set you need to acquire”
- Dr Jonathan Baktari, CEO and co-founder
🔑 Key insights from the episode:
The accidental entrepreneur: Jonathan started off as a “straight arrow” going through a traditional route from medical school to senior administrative roles: He cites that “there was no one moment where it happened” in terms of wanting to pursue business ownership, and that it was “entrepreneurship by a thousand cuts”. His advice on the matter was that “if you're not open, if, if your antenna's not up”, then this could lead to missed opportunities - and that being receptive to new ventures is key.
On launching e7 Health: Jonathan claims the idea for e7 Health emerged in response to tackling vaccine-preventable adult deaths in the United States, and as a motive to move into preventitive health in primary care, which quickly became “a covid company before Covid hit”. Consequently, e7 health was well-positioned to be one of the very first few companies that rolled out nationwide saliva drug testing early on in the pandemic across the U.S.
On pivoting after covid: e7 Health is so-called because they offer seven books of business, meaning that the company can self-sustain if one book of business is adversely affected. Jonathan claims the analogy he offers for their diversified offering is to “imagine you opened up a tire store and you stocked every tire available, commercially available, but decided to only sell Mercedes-Benz. It wouldn't make sense”, and which has allowed them to pivot to other areas of focus after a decline in covid-19 testing.
On not having competitors: Jonathan claims that “I don't think we have competitors…everybody who does what we do does it as a sort of like a side hustle…nobody does it as their core focus”, which has allowed them to grow and dominate in the space - “That's why writing software and technology was so important to manage it” - and effectively resource and roll out programs nationwide in the U.S.
On the challenges of being a business owner coming from a medical background: Jonathan states that “doctors always think that the smartest person in the room, but you know, as soon as you do this stuff, you realize there is a whole new skill set you need to acquire”, which has been one of his biggest challenges to date. Learning to manage accounting, hire and fire people, take and pass on opportunities and growing at a pace that is “commiserated the balance in your checking account” have all been crucial learning points.
On the future of vaccine technology: Jonathan remains highly optimistic about the future of the vaccine industry, but which owes a lot to the response in the covid-19 pandemic: “I'm sceptical that the technology would've gotten off the shelf where not for a 9 1 1 emergency on a world level… there would've been some inherent barriers for that technology to come off the shelf and allow hundreds of people to be enrolled in a study using it just like that”.
His aim in future is to monitor the progress of vaccine technology being utilised across other disease areas, including neurology and oncology, to also come under their service offering.
📖 Background:
Founded: 2009
Location: Las Vegas, NV
IPO status: Private
Industry: Wellness and Fitness Services; Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Services
Market size: USD $33 billion
Employees: 11-50 employees
Funding stage: Pre-seed; Corporation
Total funding to date: Unknown
🔍 What:
A preventative health and wellness company that is supervised by Board Certified Doctors with services that represent 7 areas of health care (Travel Medicine, Student Health, Corporate Health Services, Drug Testing, STD Testing, Physicals and Labs, and Vaccines), as well as corporate services.
e7 Health’s immunization services include having all vaccines available in the US for work, school, travel, and general health (excluding the COVID-19 vaccine).
🔧 How:
Corporate services: e7 Health set up clients with an account and have their employees come utilise services via a voucher system or an on-site clinic with unlimited consultation access to the company Medical Director. Clients are billed monthly.
All employee records are stored in e7 Health’s Electronic Medical Records system, including all vaccine records.
🏙 Company tagline:
“Integrating 7 areas of healthcare”
👉 Find out more about e7 Health:
Twitter 🐦
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