This Serial Entrepreneur Raised $380 Million To Build A 24×7 Virtual Healthcare Platform To Offer Assistance Via A Mobile App

In the world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as inspiring as that of Ran Shaul, a serial entrepreneur who embodies the resilience, adaptability, and foresight required to build and scale companies on a global level.

In this interview, Ran talks about his roots in Tel Aviv to his foray into the US business landscape. He reveals his experiences with growing with his company, building a venture in a new country, and achieving product-market fit. Ran also offers insights into raising $380M for K Health.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

Growing Up in Israel: The Birth of an Entrepreneurial Spirit

Ran was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, often referred to as the “Startup Nation” for its burgeoning tech scene. During his teenage years, the foundations of Israel’s startup culture were being laid with companies like Amdocs leading the charge.

“Technology was a big deal even back then,” Ran recalls, pointing to the influence that companies like Amdocs had in building a bridge between Israel and the global tech industry. This early exposure to tech and innovation set the stage for Ran’s entrepreneurial mindset.

Ran’s journey was further shaped by his experience in the Israeli army, where he spent five years serving as a lieutenant. The military provided him with invaluable leadership skills, discipline, and the ability to manage under pressure.

“At 21, I was already managing a platoon of 120 people,” he reflects. “The decision-making processes, leadership, and strategy development I learned in the army were incredibly applicable to business management later on.”

Ran learned how to assess and define a strategy, determine whether it is well executed, and execute it in a way that others follow.

The Leap into Entrepreneurship: Synergy and Early Success

After completing his army service and university studies in computer science and industrial engineering, Ran spent some time understanding how organizations work. He worked in two different IT technology companies.

As Ran recalls, at the time, the ideas of data warehouse, data mining, NLP or Natural Language Processing, and AI were just starting to take off. He had always been passionate about data and could understand how to use data, code, and apply data solutions to business problems.

Ran quickly realized that this is where his strengths lie. He could be a good algorithm developer, and better yet if he could apply the algorithm to a business problem. At this point, he was ready to take risks and dived right into building his first company, Synergy.

Synergy, a company focused on data science and big data solutions, grew rapidly, reaching over 100 consultants, and was eventually acquired by Ness.

Reflecting on his first company’s success, Ran remarks, “Usually as an entrepreneur, you don’t necessarily get the first thing right, but for me, that actually worked really well.” The acquisition process for Synergy, though rigorous, was relatively smooth.

The company that acquired Synergy was looking for a way to bridge technology with business solutions, a gap that Ran’s team had uniquely filled. “They had a lot of technology, but they didn’t have the connectivity between business algorithms and solving real business problems.”

Ran recalls the three-month due diligence process, valuation, negotiations, and eventually, a compromise to arrive at a middle ground. He stayed on for another six months before moving on to his next project.

The Move to the U.S.: Building a Global Company

Following the success of Synergy, Ran co-founded his next company, Pursway, alongside two brilliant engineers fresh out of the Israeli army. They had this innovative idea of using data to determine causality behavior between two individuals to identify the one who was more influential.

Essentially, they wanted to build an algorithm to assign a mathematical score to identify the influential person. This direct marketing concept was the precursor of present-day influencer and social media marketing and became the Pursway business model.

Ran recalls how his co-founders were more academically oriented, while he was more inclined toward the business side. They raised funding from BatteryVenture, a very well-known VC, and started the company with the first check.

As Pursway grew, however, it became clear that if they were going to make a significant impact, they needed to move their operations to the U.S. Their investors advised them that selling sophisticated B2B AI technology remotely was not practical.

Back then, offshoring was not prevalent and entering into deals with enterprise clients like the Bank of America, American Express, and Fidelity without being there in person was not possible. Ran moved his family to Boston, landing in the middle of a snowstorm in December.

The cultural shift was immense, but Ran quickly learned that you have to be there in person to do business in the U.S., especially in the B2B space. “In the U.S., you’ve got to be prepared. You can’t tell a story that’s 70% there—you need to have all your checks and balances in place.”

Pursway thrived, eventually being acquired by IPG Media Brands. Ran’s takeaway from the experience was that if you want to build something that is going to be monetized in the US, you better be in the US to do that. To understand the market, you have to be in the market.

“You’ve got to understand the scalability and the conservative, semi-conservative approach of corporate America. People don’t want to take unnecessary risks. This is not a place to do pilots,” Ran learned.

As Ran sees it, to be successful, you need to pace yourself and not rush things. He also stresses talking about and publishing case studies to ensure people understand what you’re doing. Getting references is how you can build a bigger, scalable, and wider business.

Another crucial lesson for Ran was identifying the opportune moment to enter into an acquisition. “You need to think about how to build a big company—one that will last. Maybe along the way, you get an acquisition offer, but that shouldn’t be your goal.”

When asked how to time an acquisition, Ran emphasizes that founders shouldn’t build a company solely with the intention of selling it. For him, passion and long-term vision are at the heart of building a successful, enduring business.

However, the acquisition worked well for him because he met his co-founder, Allon.

Lessons in Scaling and Building K Health

With each venture, Ran gained deeper insights into raising capital and scaling a company. His latest venture, K Health, which he co-founded with Allon, is a direct result of those learnings. Ran recalls meeting Allon through mutual investors.

At the time, Allon had just taken his company, Vroom, to IPO and was looking for expertise in data and data mining. Ran started by working in his company as a consultant. The duo realized that they shared views on business problems, how to build a vision, and how to create products.

The idea for K Health emerged from the realization that healthcare data was vastly underutilized, creating inefficiencies in the system that could be addressed through AI and machine learning.

“We knew nothing about healthcare at the time, but we quickly realized this was a perfect storm—a huge business problem, a societal issue, and data that wasn’t being used well.” Ran and Allon came up with the idea to build an automated approach, an AI physician as good as doctors.

The K Health Business Model and Raising Funding

K Health provides clinical AI-powered primary care services and has scaled significantly, forming partnerships with healthcare giants like Cedars-Sinai and Hackensack Meridian Health to bring the product to market.

The platform allows users to access 24/7 care through a clinical AI system, transforming how people interact with healthcare. For instance, patients in California can use the Cedars-Sinai Connect app, while patients in New Jersey can access the biggest health system, Hackensack.

K Health also has a direct-to-consumer model allowing patients to use the app even if they don’t have insurance or don’t belong to any health system. The concept proved to be highly successful, and the company scaled rapidly, raising a lot of funding, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, after the pandemic, the IPO bubble burst, and funding dried up, bringing fresh challenges to K Health. Ran and Allon realized they had to change their perspective to earn profits. They had to establish unit economics, and to do that, they revisited their strategies.

The duo aligned K Health with the health system and entered into partnerships with three giants. They changed their fundraising strategies, realizing they needed to be in constant relationships with investors before onboarding them.

Ran and Allon would sit down with investors and assess whether they were a good fit–interested, mission-driven, and understanding of the business and its competitive advantage. This interest would have to go beyond due diligence. That’s how they raised $380M for the company.

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Future Vision for K Health

Ran and Allon hope to reinvent how patients get healthcare, which hasn’t changed much since the 1950s. They want to re-engineer the 1.4 billion patient visits to primary care centers in the US every year.

K Health would eliminate driving to centers, filling out forms, and spending two minutes with the physician without knowing the problem or whether the physician is the right doctor to approach. Instead, the doctor would come to them. The ultimate mission is access to high-quality care.

K Health attempts to intertwine AI into consultation between physicians and patients to elevate it for better efficiency. It will also assist in how people now view healthcare–more about preventive care and not just about seeking care.

K Health empowers patients by giving them control of their medical history. By partnering with large providers, the company now has 120 physicians working 24×7 to see patients in clinical AI-powered primary care practice.

In Retrospect

Looking back at this journey, Ran suggests working more diligently before making decisions instead of relying too much on intuition. He also credits Allon, his co-founder, as the tempering force that connected him with the right people and helped him grow significantly.

Ran is happy that his first company was successful, but he advises entrepreneurs to work for other founders and understand the complexity of building companies. He also tells aspiring founders to be mentally prepared to fail and deal with unexpected hurdles head-on.

Ran also advises preparing for the possibility of a pivot and working on the MVP for the perfect product-market fit. Understanding that the business ecosystem is dynamic is crucial, and founders should be ready to test products with real users to know what works.

In Conclusion

For Ran Shaul, the entrepreneurial journey is never truly over. “As an entrepreneur, you need to be willing to work forever in the company you create,” he says.

With that mindset, Ran continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible, one venture at a time. His story is an enduring inspiration to founders everywhere.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Growing up in Israel and serving in the military shaped Ran Shaul’s leadership and strategic decision-making skills.
• Ran’s first company, Synergy, succeeded early by bridging the gap between business algorithms and solving real-world problems.
• Moving to the U.S. taught Ran the importance of being physically present to scale a B2B business and navigate corporate America.
• Pursway’s innovative marketing concept, focused on identifying influencers through data, led to its acquisition by IPG Media Brands.
• K Health was born from recognizing the inefficiency of healthcare data and applying AI to create a scalable primary care platform.
• Ran and his co-founder raised $350M for K Health by aligning with health systems and strategically choosing mission-driven investors.
• Ran advises entrepreneurs to be prepared for failure, test products with real users, and work toward perfecting product-market fit.

 

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