The Road to The Global Insurance Accelerator

Wright: What is the background of ClinicNote and the problem you solve?

Fox: Morgan and I had already been working on two business ideas before this one — one in the paralegal field, the other in the heating & air conditioning industry. We were using a lean startup approach. Every day we were making Market Discovery Calls where we would ask the person on the other line in each industry the same question: “Walk me through your typical day.”

Through this approach, we were able to find out which part of their day they didn’t like or what frustrated them the most. Their voice would change when they spoke of their problem area. So based around the problems we found for each industry, we brainstormed ideas about how to solve them. However, for these industries, we were never able to get traction with our ideas, or the ideas were too costly to pursue.

Justin Coadrake (the third team member of ClinicNote) was already a good friend of ours. One day he mentioned to us how his girlfriend had complained about the speech pathology field and the process with insurance reports. We decided to give the speech industry a go on this same lean startup approach. We began calling speech therapists. It just took off.

Wright: Why do you think the speech pathology field responded so well to your ideas?

Fox: Finding an industry where people want to innovate or they really care about helping other people — this is huge. We were learning that the number one reason people go into speech pathology is to help someone. We’d be calling 50-year old Professional Speech Therapists running their businesses and they’d hear a young, college student on the line trying to solve one of their problems. Of course they wanted to help us help themselves!

Wright: Tell us about getting accepted into the GIA.

Fox: Justin Coadrake was a student in Kevin Kimle’s Ag Entrepreneurial class. He found out there were extra spots for an event being held at seed genetics entrepreneur & billionaire Harry Stine’s house. Usually the opportunity was for students in only the agriculture major, but Justin got the okay to go, and he invited Morgan and me. While we were at Stine’s house, Morgan recognized venture capitalist Scott Hoekman of Next Level Ventures. They had met prior at the Okoboji Entrepreneurship Institute (OEI). Both Morgan and Justin had attended OEI earlier that summer, a weeklong entrepreneurial program that the ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship supports in partnership with the Iowa Lake’s Corridor organization.

Because Morgan knew Scott from OEI, we felt comfortable approaching him and discussing our speech pathology business idea. Scott excitedly told us about GIA — how he read an article in the Des Moines Register about GIA still looking for applicants.

Following the event, Scott introduced us to Tej Dhawan, the interim managing director of GIA. Tej met with all three of us to hear us out. He liked us enough to set us up with Brian Hemesath (ISU alumni, ’99 Computer Engineering), the soon-to-be managing director of GIA at the time.

We met Brian at a coffee shop without knowing that he had already decided it would be a “hard no” to to our team’s request to go into the Accelerator. However, we get to talking with Brian and tell him about our 50+ discovery calls with speech therapists and he starts to listen. He starts to see the value in what we’re doing. The talking evolves and Brian soon has an idea of creating a Student Team spot for the Accelerator, where we could participate.

“If I can come up with a student spot with no money, full access to workspace, and possibly a full network of mentors — are you guys interested?”

Without a doubt, we all respond with a yes. The meeting ends and Brian goes back to his Board to convince them of this Student Spot. All of us are thinking, “so you’re saying there’s a chance?” We keep repeating this in the back of our minds as the weeks go on.

We finally hear back from Brian about the student spot, “You guys are in!” All of a sudden we have the feeling that our worlds have completely changed. Everything just fell into place.

But that’s not even all of it. A week before the accelerator starts, Brian calls us down to create a video to share with his Board. He tells us the reason that he’s doing it is for the Board to meet us. After creating the video, he tells us it’s really to ask the Board to consider us for a full spot in the Accelerator. Aka…the $40,000 seed grant!

With only a week away from the Accelerator starting, we don’t hear from Brian. Then Sunday before it starts, at 9 o’clock at night, Justin gets the call from Brian.
We are in! No longer a Student Spot. Full access to mentors and workspace. Oh, and a cool $40,000!

Wright: Reflecting on your path to the Accelerator now, what is your takeaway from this experience?

Fox: You hear the cliché — It’s all about who you know, and who you know… But THAT IS literally what it’s about. We wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for knowing people. And this doesn’t stop after joining the Accelerator. It’s a continuous theme as this is exactly what the Accelerator offers with its extensive network of mentors and doors that are constantly open.

Wright: What is the biggest challenge in the Accelerator?

Fox: The biggest challenge of it all — is that because we are young, everyone has their two-cents to offer to the “young-gun, college students.” It’s true that they ALL have extremely valuable information that we need to know. However, just because we need to know it, doesn’t mean we need to know it TODAY.

Wright: What is the biggest challenge with ClinicNote?

Fox: Getting in front of the right people — pre-service reviewers, claims insurance, and healthcare insurance companies. It was really easy to get in front of speech therapists. Now we need all the help with intros to the insurance side.

[Take note, readers]

Wright: How has entrepreneurship at ISU impacted you and your team?