Michelle Fisher wasn’t sure she ever wanted to take on the grind of being in on the ground floor of a startup again.
That’s until she was approached about PhysicianX.
Fisher, who served as vice president of operations at 43North-winning health care startup Circuit Clinical, jumped at the opportunity to lead a startup that was creating a personalized career tool for doctors to navigate job opportunities and professional development, while helping employers hire and retain physicians.
She knew there was a need for this service, and it was also an opportunity to be reunited with two colleagues from Circuit Clinical to ignite another startup in the medical industry.
The founding team at PhysicianX also includes former leaders from Circuit Clinical, Colin Myers, who’s serving as head of operations, and John Waller, who’s head of engineering.
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The company, which has four employees, is wrapping up a pre-seed round of funding where it raised more money than initially expected.
“Startups can be tough, especially at the very beginning when there are so many unknowns,” Fisher said. “At first, I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I ever want to do a startup again,’ but this idea came about with some people that I love and respect, and we had already been through the fire together. There’s something magic about stage founder teams and you feel bonded for life.”
The company has a significant strategic adviser in cardiologist-turned-entrepreneur, Dr. Irfan Khan, the founder of Circuit Clinical. He’s someone who has raised millions of dollars and scaled nationally.
“It goes back to having a high degree of integrity and trust with the folks that built Circuit Clinical and now having another chance with them and being able to shortcut a lot of the mistakes we made before to accelerate a much faster path,” Waller said.
It also helps that all three believe that they are helping solve a major issue in health care. Waller said residents, who are already training and working so hard to become physicians, can have trouble finding a job.
PhysicianX’s mobile app serves as a coach and adviser to help them find the right job match, get through interviews and then negotiate a contract.
“Part of that is giving them the skill set and making it as frictionless as possible to give them the best opportunity and a broader perspective,” Waller said.
About 80% of the company’s initial investors are mid- to later-year physicians, who see it as the future for doctors seeking jobs and entering the workforce, Fisher said.
There aren’t enough physicians in the U.S. to keep up with the demands of health care. There’s also an approximately 40% attrition rate of early physicians in their first five years.
“Helping physicians and the employers find a better way to staff and bring physicians on to stay and build a long-term career with a health system or practice is so critical in society and to health care,” she said. “At the end of the day, it all comes back to the patient, and the patient then wins and benefits in the long run.”
Myers is getting out there to speak with many of the physicians and their employers.
“Sometimes you think you have the perfect plan on the whiteboard, but you need to go take it out to the world and get feedback as quick as possible,” Myers said.
The platform incorporates artificial intelligence in everything it does, helping PhysicanX operate in the most effective and efficient manner.
“Every feature on the platform is built off an AI source – the job matching, the interview simulation, the contract analyzer, and we’re looking at ways to incorporate AI into our everyday workflows for coding, [human resources] and everything about what we’re trying to build,” Fisher said.
It’s also helping create a smaller but more efficient company, which is the trend for today’s startups. Fisher said PhysicianX may never get past 10 employees because of using these tech tools.
“We are early adopters and button pushers,” Fisher said. “We want to know how these things work and how we can make it go faster and smarter.”
While PhyscianX is wrapping up its pre-seed round, the company is aiming to keep the investor team tight, Fischer said. The company declined to say how much funding it raised.
She believes significant revenue will come in the next six months with a path to break even in the next year. After that, PhysicianX may conduct another fundraiser to help expand into other regions of the U.S.
“We have more than we need to prove where we’re at and validate with the physicians, and keeping the team tight will allow us to leverage the dollars a lot more efficiently and for a lot longer,” Fischer said.
In related news, Khan recently announced that Circuit Clinical merged with Lightship, a leader in hybrid trial models and mobile care, to help further build an integrated solution in the medical industry.
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