Zak Holdsworth, Hint Health
From 80 Doctors to 1,000 Customers in Vertical SaaS
Zak Holdsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Hint Health, a membership management, billing, and payment platform for direct primary care practices. In 2014, Zak and his co-founder Graham set out to transform the US healthcare system. They were frustrated with a system that spends a trillion dollars a year in waste - roughly NASA's entire budget since inception - while delivering half the quality of other modern economies. They decided to build vertical SaaS for a community of doctors stepping outside the insurance system to offer care directly to patients and employers. The problem: this niche had roughly 80 doctors in it. Despite zero healthcare experience, Zak and Graham moved fast. Within 30 days of committing to the idea, they attended their first industry conference, started cold calling, began building a product, and closed their first paying customer. A few months later, they had their first 10 customers. But speed came with a cost. Zak says if he could go back, he would spend more time researching customer problems before building. By moving too fast, they accumulated product debt that set them back an estimated two years. The bigger challenge was trust. These doctors depended on their billing system to make payroll. If Hint failed, their practices would shut down. Zak overcame this by personally guaranteeing to cover any missed payments out of his own pocket - putting roughly $20,000 on the line for a single customer. From there, Hint Health grew through community events, partner referrals, and word of mouth. Zak launched an annual industry conference that grew from 120 attendees to over 450. He built integrations with complementary vertical SaaS vendors and created a free accelerator program for customers. Today, Hint Health has nearly 1,000 customers representing 750,000 lives, processes over half a billion dollars in payments, and has raised $64 million across four rounds. But the path was far from typical - Zak pitched over 1,000 investors because venture capital firms struggled with the small total addressable market of a vertical SaaS business in a niche healthcare segment.
