The Inspiring Story of BrightWhistle

At last night’s ATDC Entrepreneur meeting, Greg Foster shared the inspiring story of BrightWhistle. Here are the highlights of the story:

• Started in April 2010, moved into ATDC in August 2010
• Now at 20 people; with dozens of clients
• A year ago, he was having trouble with strength in his left arm. Doctor’s found a golf-ball-sized grade 3 tumor (there are only 4 grades, so 3 is really bad).
• He used social networking to find the surgeon at MD Anderson that removed the tumor
  • Social networking led to great physician recommendations from friends
  • First connection to the surgeon happened through a Facebook message; Greg received a call back 30 minutes later
  • This same social process is what BrightWhistle does to help connect patients to physicians
• BrightWhistle had a great team of investors that stuck with Greg through the whole ordeal
• He underwent 8 weeks of radiation
• Greg also has a fantastic co-founder in Chad Mallory, who picked up the slack and grew sales by 50% while Greg was treated
• First customer, Piedmont Health, came through a recommendation by Urvaksh. Second customer came as Greg cold called Duke and worked his way to a deal.
• Greg did not have a background in healthcare, so hired initial sales team with vertical rolodex in healthcare
• Greg sells features 6 to 9 months ahead of the current product state
  • It forces the product team to focus on what customers want
  • The sales cycle is at least 6 months in healthcare anyway, so it works to sell features in advance of delivery

After telling the story, Greg shared a few parting words of advice:

• Watch out for the charlatans
  • These are people that aren’t entrepreneurs but pose as entrepreneurs
  • Make the distinction between entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial scientists that float around
  • You really want to be talking to the people that don’t have time to talk with you because they’re running their own startups; they’ll give you much better advice than the entrepreneurial scientist
• Priorities
  • Things that are important right out of college become less important over time
  • Family, friends, relationships, sanity increase in value over time
  • Relationships with people that matter lasts a whole lifetime
  • Make investments in things that are long-term, not short-term
• Getting Started
  • If you haven’t worked for another entrepreneur before, do that first before starting your own thing
  • Raising money is not indicative of success
• Elevator pitches are for chumps
  • Don’t believe entrepreneurial scientists that say otherwise
  • If you spend your time getting your business down to a 20-second pitch, you probably don’t have a business
  • What you want is something that is incomplete, that speaks to the customer’s problem and leaves them wanting more
  • The elevator pitch tries to encapsulate everything into a short say-nothing, mean-nothing statement

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Greg. He has clear vision and is a great communicator. BrightWhistle is an important company to watch in Atlanta.

I’m specifically glad Greg talked about selling into the future. That’s something I do as well and something that perturbs my engineers (as he perturbs his). Now I have backing and can say, “If Greg does it, it must be good stuff!”

How do these BrightWhistle insights inspire you?

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