Columbia Welcomes Home Alumna Dana Weeks, Co-Founder & CEO of MedTrans Go

You know you are off to a good start when your guest speaker asks to take a selfie with your class.

We had another great session of our H4H venture incubator class last Wednesday at Columbia.  Dana Weeks, Co-Founder and CEO of MedTrans Go, joined us to share her founder’s journey and the opportunities ahead.    

MedTrans Go is a tech platform that helps doctors, medical practices, hospitals, and facilities to reduce patient cancellations, increase revenue, and efficiently deliver care.  This marketplace startup now offers the previously unserved or underserved convenient access to transportation, interpreters, prescription delivery, and telemedicine.

Atlanta based MedTrans Go was named a 2021 Startup to Watch by Atlanta Inno.  MedTrans Go participated in Morgan Stanley’s 8 venture cohort Multicultural Innovation Lab accelerator in 2021 and Morgan Stanley recently led a $1.5 million seed round for the company.  We appreciate the dedication of Columbia Business School alumnus Stefan Lehmann-Karp, operating partner of Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Lab, to these founders and our own in this venture incubator course at Columbia.

What prompted this founder’s journey?

The story started when one of the co-founders, Dr. Obi Ugwonali, an orthopedic surgeon (and Columbia alumnus #roarlionroar), had two back-to-back surgeries cancelled.  Cancellations were impacting Dr. Ugwonali’s practice and prompted a look into the reasons behind them.  In this particular case, one patient cancelled because their ride did not show up and the other because an interpreter was not available.  These were solvable reasons with no on-demand solution to address them.  Looking into this further as a market opportunity, the co-founders discovered that over 54% of cancellations are due to the lack of transportation and the lack of interpretation.  This is a $150 billion market because that is what is lost every year due to cancellations.  The incentive to pay for this is the recapture of that lost revenue.  

On the patient side, there is a sizeable population not able to get the care that they need because of these issues.  This is a critical problem for surgery patients, dialysis patients, older patients, and other individuals.

Who pays for this? 

All invoices have medical billing codes.  The founders initially looked at the healthcare providers, surgeons in particular, as a target customer.  They are starting to see a lot of other opportunities with hospitals for chemotherapy appointments.  If you don’t get the patient there the prepared oncology medication goes to waste.  They also have a growing business in the personal injury and the workers comp space.  The founders work with foundations to ensure the community impact for a more equitable access to healthcare.

MedTrans Go is also in advance conversations with insurance companies to offer non-emergency transportation because those who have coverage may revert to ambulances for transportation if they have no other options.

What was the customer discovery process?

Early on the co-founders knew that this technology was helpful to doctors specifically.  These early customers were part of the solution development when the MVP was launched in the winter of 2018.  They were brought on as advisors, customers, and investors.  These customers became ambassadors giving testimonials and enabling scaling.

What were the bumps along the road?

For hospitals, a number of big deals were signed with the CTOs and CFOs.  One of the things the founders failed to initially understand was who the people were scheduling the rides.  The founders learned that when you sell to a hospital you need to do multiple sells not only to get the deal but also to use the offering.

What has been the biggest failure or set back?

“It was in the technology development.”  

When the founders first launched their product, they started with a local tech firm that helped them develop their first app.  This outside firm didn’t listen to all the things that the founders needed so they brought someone in-house.  The founders trusted that the person was doing everything that they needed but discovered that the person was not doing anything at all.  The biggest lesson the founders learned was that they have to be on top of the technology.  This means weekly or daily monitoring to ensure that each feature of the product is being changed as intended.  

“The good thing about that is our product has the real DNA of what we need and what our customers need.

This protects us from our competition because it is an app that not just anybody can build since we built it collectively as a team…

It is about getting ahead of the game faster as it is evolving and changing.”

How about the trade-off of investing in marketing versus more features?

“We give a lot of weight to marketing because it is a product that people need and want but they just need to know about it.  We need to get out there in any and all sort of ways.  We utilize any opportunity.  For free advertising we do everything.  We speak on panels, write articles, do white papers if we can, collaborate with folks, and have events.  It is also about being curious and aligning ourselves with partners that can utilize our services and offer theirs as well.”

Our class topic on Wednesday was customer acquisition strategy through the optimization of digital and social media strategies.  On the digital marketing side, MedTrans Go realized how it is important for a B2B organization to target those who are going to do the contract fulfillment (in this case ordering of their services) and go to where they congregate online.  The founders of MedTrans Go learned to do a lot of YouTube and video marketing because the people who order their services watch those more than the ads.  They also used HubSpot to create content that promotes in a “how to” video format.  

“We feel that it is important to get out in as many channels as we can.”

The pandemic brought both challenges and new opportunities for the co-founders to diversify their offering and target adjacent customer segments in their marketplace.  Customer needs prompted the offering of prescription delivery services as well as telemedicine on the MedTrans Go platform.  The startup currently operates in ten states and sees opportunities for further expansion.

Dana Weeks not only opened up about the challenges and lessons of her founder’s journey but also stayed on after class to advise several teams of enthusiastic founders in the health and wellness space who sought her advice.  We just about had to turn off the lights in the building when we left the classroom.  That is the level of enthusiasm and commitment from our special guests and expert mentors to what we are doing here at Columbia.

A big thanks to our other amazing mentors who enhance our Columbia community of impact founders:  David Bolocan (Payments & Banking as a Service Guru), John Majeski (CEO of Portola Valley Partners), Neal Rickner (MP Elevation Ventures & CEO of Seafire Capital), and Marty Ringlein (GP Adventure Fund & Founding Partner of Venture Studio).

#startups #entrepreneurship #leanlaunchpad #venturecapital #socialimpact #socialenterprise #tamercenter#columbiauniversity #columbiabusinessschool #capitalforgood #startupsuccess #healthtech #morganstanley