Startup Challenges: Maintaining Focus

What do you struggle with, the most, as a startup CEO?

Probably the money. If I had an absolutely massive cheque today, there’s so many things that I could do. I think, as a startup CEO, the important thing is ensuring that people stay on track and stay on what you’re trying to build. A lot of mistakes that people make in the startup world is that they get side tracked. This comes in or that comes in and they change their product road map. I think, once you’ve signed up to something, you’ve got to make sure that you follow through with it.

I use healthcare as a really good example, because it’s changing so fast. A lot of private companies were having successes and now the NHS has opened up and the NHS want to do a lot of things. From a Push Doctor perspective, even today, we can enter GP practices, we can enter hospitals, we can enter secondary care, tertiary care. But the biggest challenge is making sure that everybody is synched on, this is what the next six months looks like. This is our goal in five years’ time. Sometimes, there’s something that comes up that you sit there and think, wow, if I had the funding for it, or if I had an opportunity there, we could really blitz this area.

One thing at Push Doctor, today, we serve 4.5 million patients; we want to serve 16 million patients, within two years. If somebody gave me a £100 million cheque, I could make that happen in one year. Well, the team can make it happen in one year. I’m not saying that we won’t get there, but if we don’t get the funding, then it will take longer.

Matching of the fundraising with the KPIs and strategy and goal?

Yes, exactly. Some people also get hooked up on raising an amount, for the sake of raising an amount. Investors see through it, in seconds. If you sit there and say, we need 200 million, they will ask, for what? For this. They’ll see right through it. But if you sit there and say, we want to raise £50 million. This is what we’re going to do with £50 million. This is the journey that the company is on. This is short term, medium term, long term. This is the return. That’s very, very powerful. Also, you need to synch the team with that. Just making sure that that all happens is key.