While participating in the inaugural year of the Master of Business Creation program from the Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, doxy.me was able to facilitate millions of virtual meetings for healthcare providers and patients during the pandemic and make significant improvements to its telehealth platform.
Doxy.me provides a simple, free, secure, and HIPAA-compliant telemedicine solution. Almost anyone can sign up and learn how to use it within minutes. It uses an encrypted connection and provides a business associate agreement for providers.
The company was already growing before the pandemic, but demand accelerated substantially as regulations and behaviors changed to embrace remote health services.
“This company was already in a good place before the pandemic, and they were ready for the growth when it came,” said Troy D’Ambrosio, a faculty member with the Master of Business Creation program, executive director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, and an assistant dean at the Eccles School. “We look forward to helping more startups like this one as we grow this unique program to support serious entrepreneurs.”
Early in the pandemic, doxy.me saw a thousand-fold increase in demand and quadrupled its staff, growing to serve some 274,000 providers and 6 million patients in March alone.
Colleagues Dylan Turner and Schuyler Welch joined the Master of Business Creation program with a full scholarship to grow and scale the company. The support they received in that program allowed them to prepare for and manage the flood of new customers.
“We accomplished almost everything we set out to do,” said Turner, co-founder and chief product officer, of their participation in the program. “We are more organized now, we have a comprehensive sales strategy, organizational charts, strategic objectives, and oversight. We have a plan and now we know how to implement it. In short, we went from a startup to a ‘real’ business.”
Turner was excited to be part of a new type of graduate program. Unlike other programs, the Master of Business Creation program allows founders to focus full-time on their startup. Everything they do in and out of class is focused on it.
“It was an exciting prospect since it was new and hadn’t been done before,” Turner said. “I wanted to be part of something innovative, and it looked like a perfect opportunity to help me learn and grow my business.”
Before the Master of Business Creation program, doxy.me got its start in other programs at the University of Utah. Brandon Welch launched the company in 2013 while pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical informatics. He noticed an opportunity to provide patient visits by video. Welch and his team participated in University of Utah programs including Bench-to-Bedside, the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, and Opportunity Quest.
Doxy.me continued to grow, and Turner and Welch entered the Master of Business Creation program for the 2019-20 academic year to help bring the company to the next level. They were part of the first class of founders in that program.
“Now that we’re so confidently moving forward, we’re going to keep moving forward,” Turner said. “We want to build a sustainable business and help as many people as we can.”
Learn more about the company at doxy.me.
