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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. This was the right path in this case. The value is for the consumer, if he could attract just 100K visitors per month, that's $500,000/year. Not only that, he would have a highly targeted group of users that he could tailor all kinds of products and services to.
You need 1mil visitors for 500k.
I do, however, think it makes much more sense as a consumer tool rather than a doctor tool: if I've already gone through the trouble of making an appointment at a doctor, who I trust, I've either given up on trying to resolve the issue myself and will trust their prescription, or I have no idea how to approach the issue or symptoms I'm feeling as communicated by WebMD. Your value proposition is saving the consumer time and effort of booking an appointment to find out how to best fix a minor-medical issue they (or, say, their child) may have. Is that a sustainable proposition? I don't know, but it makes much more sense to me than as a tool to tell doctors how to do their job "better".
I'd imagine if you went the WebMD consumer route, too, once you reach a certain user-size, you'd have no problem partnering with pharmacies (or even pharmaceutical companies) to offer coupons for some OTC medicines in exchange for a referral fee, as is standard in the industry (a. la. GoodRx). Then you're providing value to the consumer in the form of recommending useful medicines, providing the consumer a way to get that medicine for a lower cost, saving them time and money spent at the doctor's office, and providing the pharmacy/pharmaceutical company a new customer.
Although, I have to mention, reading the article and seeing mentions of MVP and no testing or concrete business plan, I remembered the book "Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup"[1] and I loved how Bill Aulet in the book mentioned the MVP model and gave his own thought:
Instead of everyone rushing MVPs, he recommends to people to rather chase an MVBI, a minimum viable business idea, since as he says, the purpose of a business is to create value and capture it, since you are not running a charity.
I must say he convinced me, and changed my line of thinking, it does make sense when you think about it, you cannot build the product for the sake of the product.
I also like the quote "Real entrepreneurs fall in love not with their product, but with their business plan."
[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18652777-disciplined-ent...
That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer. I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them? For example, Susan (p…
The conversations are surely paraphrased and exaggerated—just look at the style of the rest of the article. The position that doctors should be trying new things to improve their care sounds good but in practice most doctors are strongly biased towards the status quo and usually inaction is preferred to a slightly unknown action, even if that action has better expectancy.
This biz was clearly made for consumers but yea ads are tough - need a lot of eyeballs.
I think this was posted already (a couple of years? ago) Anyway, yeah, it wasn't a good value proposition (and is it just me or GlacierMD is a bad name for this)? Because in the end, it doesn't matter much if you don't get "the absolutely best choice of drug". If it solves your problem great, if not, doctors can exchange it, but that's when the drug or dosage is bad, not "not great".
The current ideology of needing to go big fast kills a lot of decent ideas. Everyone thinks there are two modes for a service: dead or worth $1B+. Not to like bash you while you are down but you may have been able to do this while working and not spending $40k on contractors. Not everyone needs to raise $10M, get a flashy office, employ 200 people and have all of the trappings of a "successful" startup founder; if an…
Sure you need to spend a lot of money to grow a $1B+ business, but the same is true for a $100M business or a $10M business and even most $1M businesses.
“Doppelganger has created value for the customer but not for the company.” Tell that to “Celebs”, which’s sole app function is the described and makes ~$200K MRR.