ClinicNote Founders Fox and Coaldrake Tell Tales of Acceleration

"I remember saying, 'Oh my God, someone just paid us'," Justin Coaldrake, Co-Founder of ClinicNote, said when he realized their soon to be released product had generated its first revenue. Coaldrake and Co-Founder, Tyler Fox, shared their entertaining story of youthful entrepreneurial enthusiasm and success with Mike Colwell, Executive Director of Square One DSM, before a large audience at the August edition of the organization's Startup Stories.

ClinicNote Develops Solution for Speech Therapists

The youngest duo ever to share the stage, Coaldrake and Fox are truly emblematic of the emerging Iowa entrepreneurial ecosystem moving from idea to launch, with a little help from their friends, in about eight months. ClinicNote, a note taking platform for speech therapists that automatically generates progress reports for insurance companies, reduces necessary reporting time from hours to minutes. This frees the therapist to spend more time with clients and generate more billable hours.

The duo expects their product will evolve into a value-add for the insurance companies. Fox and a third co-founder, who has since moved into the background, knew they could develop a solution, if only they could identify a problem. "We knew we didn't want to work for someone, we wanted to start our own thing, but couldn't come up with an idea ourselves so we began a long series of customer discovery calls," Fox said.

A year later, they were still in search of the problem they were going to solve when they partnered with Coaldrake who brought a technical expertise they lacked, but sadly came with no product idea. Enter Coaldrake's girlfriend who was studying Speech Therapy at the University of Iowa. She was complaining about the enormous paperwork insurance companies require to approve continued work with a patient, and suddenly the trio had a mission. The story, literally and figuratively accelerated from there.

A few fortunate twists of fate and an opportune conversation later and these Iowa State graduate students found themselves vying for the inaugural class of the Global Insurance Accelerator. Hoping at best to be admitted as some sort of unfunded student team, they were advised days before the accelerator began that they had been admitted as full-fledged participants, complete with funding in exchange for equity.

And with that the accelerator lived up to its name for the ClinicNote founders moving them from an idea without a product, or a plan, or even a legal entity in February, to a product, a funding round and a launch with paying clients by August.

Describing the mentor matching madness that was the first few days of the program Fox noted, "Being the youngest people there and having a fairly straight-forward project, a lot of people really wanted to help us."

"The accelerator helps you grow and learn skills at a much faster rate than you would anywhere else," Fox explained of the experience. "Having the level of mentor-ship we had at that very early stage built a tremendous foundation for us," Coaldrake added.

Knowing they were the youngest and least experienced of the entrepreneurs in that initial class, the duo worked hard to keep up. "We held our own, but it really pushed us as well," Coaldrake said.

With the product launch behind them and very early feedback largely positive, they took just a moment to speculate about future scaling. Immediate staff expansion is likely to be in the realm of customer service so the founders can continue to focus on sales and product refinement. Pitching ClinicNote as a value add to the insurance companies, including those who saw enough value in the project to sponsor it in the accelerator, could rapidly expand the products market penetration. And of course speech therapists are only a portion of the nearly one million professional therapists in the United States who are burdened with extensive manual report requirements.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

For those who might find themselves with a problem and an idea about its solution in the future, Coaldrake and Fox offered some thoughts.

"Talk to as many of your potential customers as possible before you begin development," Fox suggested. He insisted the extensive interviews they conducted before even the earliest development steps were key to product development.

"Never be afraid to ask for help," Coaldrake said. "Begin the feedback loop from your mentors as quickly as possible." Of his experience in the accelerator he offered, "Don't hold anything too close; those people are there to help you in that environment."

While Fox and Coaldrake had clearly availed themselves of many of the Central Iowa resources meant to stimulate entrepreneurial growth, when asked what was missing from the mix by Tej Dhawan, a champion of that ecosystem, they offered notably mature insights. "There is a disconnect from all of the Des Moines resources and the Ames community, particularly for a student," Coaldrake said. "As a student, I didn't know all of this existed and it would have helped to have had access earlier."

Seconding Coaldrake's observation, Fox added that it is lamentable that higher education continues to steer its beneficiaries toward filling a position within a company, rather than building one. "Basically you go to school to learn how to get a job somewhere rather than learning how to start your own job somewhere."

Keen insights from two young men not unprepared to teach while they learn.