The University Magazine
Entrepreneurs find niche in healthcare
RIT incubator helps grads develop business plan
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| Doug Golub ’03, left, and Tom Hogan ’03
are building a successful business with the support of RIT’s
high-tech incubator. |
Managing the elements of home healthcare can be overwhelming, particularly for smaller companies with limited resources. Tom Hogan ’03 (MBA) saw that firsthand while working for his family’s company, Venture Forthe Inc., a service provider in his hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y.
“When you’re trying to manage 100 employees’ schedules on a sheet of paper, it’s very difficult,” he says. Tracking payroll and billing complicates matters even further.
In hopes of finding solutions, Hogan agreed to serve as a consultant for the company. He and Doug Golub ’03 (M.S., information technology) teamed up.
“Every person we had the opportunity to talk to would tell us, ‘Right now, we use nothing. When you find something, I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know,’ ” recalls Golub. “After hearing that about five times, we realized there might be market potential here.”
That led the pair to create MediSked, a software company providing integrated
solutions to help service-based businesses manage issues like scheduling,
billing and payroll. The company is based in RIT’s high-tech incubator,
Venture Creations.
Tapping into Hogan’s business savvy and Golub’s programming
expertise, the pair created a Web-based software prototype. Implementation
of the system in Niagara Falls proved so successful that Hogan and Golub
chose to pitch it at a home healthcare conference. Their target customers
were administrators of smaller service providers looking for efficient
and affordable management tools.
“The very large agencies can probably afford a multi-million dollar solution,” says Golub, a Long Island native, “but the smaller ones don’t know where to look because there really is nowhere to look, and they don’t really have a lot of resources.”
As a result of that conference, MediSked attracted two additional clients. One of them, Belvedere of Albany, found itself struggling to manage a significant volume of paperwork. Signing up with MediSked helped to change that.
“We have almost 80 clients that we’re keeping different books for, and now everything is in one spot,” says Sue Nestler, Belvedere office manager. “You pull up a client’s name, and everything is there—from their service plan to who worked with them last night.”
Similar sales opportunities and word-of-mouth referrals helped the company expand to 14 agencies by the end of 2005. Today, the company serves about 40 customers in New York state and one in Maine.
MediSked owes a portion of its early success to its affiliation with Venture Creations. RIT’s business incubator creates an environment for students, faculty, staff and alumni to develop ideas of economic and commercial importance.
“We had to go through the process of validating our business plan and really solidifying it to get in,” explains Hogan. “That, and its association to RIT, has been very helpful. When we tell people we’re at the RIT incubator, it just adds a little bit more credibility.”
One of the resources available to companies based within the incubator is the opportunity to interface with veteran business leaders who are willing to assist in an advisory capacity. As members of the Venture Creations board, Kevin Gavagan ’79 (MBA), principal at QCI Asset Management Inc., and Joseph Lobozzo ’95 (Executive MBA), founder and CEO of JML Optical Industries Inc. and an RIT trustee, agreed to serve as advisers to the MediSked team.
“I was very interested in their business,” Gavagan remembers. “It seemed like one of these incredibly simple, right-in-front-of-you opportunities that nobody had bothered to figure out except them.”
Over the past few years, Gavagan and Lobozzo have worked with MediSked to address issues related to the company’s evolution such as pitching venture capital firms and determining service pricing. Considering the company’s early success, Lobozzo says having the opportunity to serve a mentorship role has proven quite rewarding.
“Frankly, it’s more fun watching the enthusiasm of these young guys – and I think they’re going to be immensely successful – than reliving when I started my company 34 years ago. Seeing that enthusiasm in two young men is absolutely incredible fun.”
“It is very rare to hear a business plan projection and then go back a year and a half later and see that you’ve exceeded it by a wide margin,” adds Gavagan. “It was gratifying and also kind of reinforcing to the notion that I’m glad to be involved with what appears to be a developing, winning story.”
According to Golub, “We have the vision, and these folks are the ones who can help us with the steps to get there.”
Don Boyd, RIT vice president for research, says that MediSked is a model example of the type of enterprise that the incubator is looking to foster. He says operating in the information technology field requires the company to focus on staying one step ahead of the competition.
“These young entrepreneurs know their business and their customers, they know what needs to be done,” states Boyd. “We have high hopes for their success.”
Hogan and Golub continue to focus on expanding the company’s client base, but that will require even more time apart from family and friends who sometimes question the merits of their commitment.
“They definitely think we’re nuts for spending this much time on it, but we keep telling them it will pay off,” says Golub. “And it will.”
Adds Hogan, “From where we’re standing right now, it seems almost limitless as to where it could go.”
For more information about MediSked,
go to www.medisked.com.
For more information about RIT’s Venture
Creations business incubator, go to
www.venturecreations.org.