Student Start-Up

Not many businesses see demand grow a thousandfold in less than a month. But telehealth start-up doxy.me saw astronomical growth and quadrupled its staff to serve some 274,000 providers and 6 million patients last March alone.

Master of Business Creation students Dylan Turner BS'11 and Schuyler Welch BS'17 say the support they received in that program allowed them to prepare for and manage the flood of new customers. Unlike other programs, the MBC allows founders to focus full time on their start-ups.

Doxy.me provides a simple, free, secure, and HIPAA-compliant connection for patients and their health care providers. Almost anyone can sign up and learn how to use it within minutes.

“We accomplished almost everything we set out to do,” says Turner, speaking about their participation in the MBC program, which is provided by the Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy at the David Eccles School of Business in partnership with the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute. Turner is the co-founder and chief product officer of doxy.me. “We are more organized now, we have a comprehensive sales strategy, organizational charts, strategic objectives, and oversight,” he notes. “We have a plan, and now we know how to implement it. In short, we went from a start-up to a ‘real’ business.”

Demand for the services accelerated 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,” says Troy D’Ambrosio BA’82, a faculty executive director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute.

“Now that we’re so confidently moving forward, we’re going to keep moving forward,” Turner says. “We want to build a sustainable business and help as many people as we can.”