USC Marshall School of Business Podcast Features Alum’s Startup Advice
The International Business Education and Research MBA (IBEAR MBA) at USC’s Marshall Graduate School of Business continues its training of future global business leaders with an engaging new podcast series, Business Class.
Greg Drobnick, a recent contributor to Business Class, is a USC International Relations alum and co-founder of Heal, a personal healthcare app. The creators of the business podcast will follow Drobnick as the company continues to expand.
Drobnick describes Heal as “an on-demand app that allows families to … have instant access to quality healthcare. A doctor can come to you in up to two hours or you can schedule a visit up to a week in advance.”
During his Business Class discussion, Drobnick shared his strategies for raising over $30 million in startup funding for Heal, which has promised to revolutionize healthcare access to consumers in an ever shifting national landscape.
“Everything takes longer than you think and is more expensive than you think,” he says of Heal’s initial startup effort. During this time, he and his team worked through the kinks in their technology and widened their network of doctors and users. The Heal team took their idea to a startup conference, the Montgomery Summit. In the Summit’s ‘Moneyball’ competition, they competed against seven other teams to win a sizable prize in venture capital that took them to the next level.
The win allowed the team to “hire great engineers … and doctors,” Drobnick says, which took them to the next phase of development. Having already run successful businesses, Drobnick and his co-founders had access to capital upon early inception, a situation which he admits was atypical for many startups.
Drobnick advises listeners to be patient, and to connect not only with a professional network, but to join an incubator to encourage momentum and creativity as ideas develop through early stages.
About the Author
Maggie Boccella
Maggie Boccella, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, is a freelance writer, artist and photographer. She has consulted on various film and multimedia projects, and she also serves as a juror for the city's annual LGBTQIA Film Festival.
