it may seem Contradictory, but one of the reasons some employers are drawn to health care is regulation. No industry outside of defense is subject to such rigorous scrutiny, and for good reason: When dealing with people, extra caution is essential.
Rules, requirements, and regulatory complexity can be barriers to entry in the world of digital health startups, but they also present opportunities.
Founders often find creative ways to reconcile the extra oversight, like saying their launch is simply a proof of concept or that they can’t justify the cost of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on advertising to attract new users.
When venture funding was scarce, there was a pressing need to prioritize speed and maximize the runway provided by smaller seed rounds. However, the environment has changed: growing investor interest and ample capital available have meant that there is an even greater need to allocate a significant budget to compliance.
Speed and efficiency may be essential for startups, but regulatory compliance doesn’t have to be a bottleneck or a financial drain.
If compliance isn’t a consideration from the start, founders will sooner or later end up in a situation where they have to fight to fix things behind the scenes, spending huge amounts of money on legal fees, and that’s the best case scenario. . At worst, a deal can blow up.
It’s understandable how these concerns can be overlooked at first. There is a certain amount of creativity and dissatisfaction with the status quo necessary for founders to conceive of building something that doesn’t yet exist.
But when you’re building a digital health company, the ultimate end user is a person who needs healthcare. There’s more at stake than creating the next puzzle game or the next food delivery app.
