Finding a Doctor With ZocDoc (Fox Business)

• Report rights infringement
• published: 15 Nov 2011
• views: 1835

Sometimes finding a doctor can be tough. Especially when you need an appointment right away. Well, there's a startup website out there that may simplify that whole process for you. The aforementioned Robert Gray has the man behind ZocDoc. Robert? Robert: Hey, Chris, that's right. And if you're looking for a flu shot, this gentleman here, Cyrus Massoumi, can help you find that as well. In fact, he is the CEO and the founder of ZocDoc. ZocDoc.com. Cyrus, thanks for joining us here. Basically, you go on your website, it's a reservation service for doctors, much like going on to book a restaurant reservation. Talk to us about it here. With flu shot time of year... I was on the site earlier, you've got locations and doctors there. How did this happen, and are doctors marketing this through your site? Cyrus: Sure, so the company's four years old, of course, and we see historically over the last four years, every time during flu season more and more people are booking appointments. Last year I think we saw a 43 percent increase in total overall appointments on the website, and already this year we've started to see an increase. In the last 30 days, 15 percent more people have booked an appointment on ZocDoc, and I think our flu shot appointments are up about 24 percent. Robert: Now, it sounds pretty simple, right? We've talked about it like booking dinners, booking a doctor. How profitable is it? Are you revenue-positive in any way, and why can't others cross the moat and become competitors? Cyrus: Yeah, sure. So we spent our first two and a half years just in New York, making the New York model profitable. And many of our early markets are profitable. Each market launch -- we're now in 12 cities -- has gone faster than the market before it. Most recently we launched Boston, a few weeks back, and that was perhaps our most successful launch to date. So we're really pleased with the progress of the business. As far as competitors are concerned, we like the joke that our competitor is the phone. There really is nothing out there. And it's quite difficult to do what we do, because you have to work with all these different types of doctor systems, to integrate to all their calendars. Robert: So the heavy lifting's the software that you guys are putting in? Cyrus: It's the software, it's having great customer service, it's being able to sign up the right doctors at the right times in the right order, so it's quite a challenge. Robert: So five and a half million appointments, you say overall. You're expanding to another city that's near and dear to your heart. You want to expand on that any further right now? Cyrus: Well, we've launched in most large cities in America. There's one city that's particularly of significance to me, but I can't reveal it for about a week. Robert: Coming soon, the president's healthcare. It's in the spotlight today. The Supreme Court says they're going to review the legality of it. How would that affect you if indeed it does go into place? Cyrus: Well, you know, one of the issues in healthcare, of course, is accessibility. And at ZocDoc our mission is to improve the accessibility of healthcare. And to some extent, healthcare reform is trying to do that in a different way. We do it through making more times available, they do it through giving people financial access to healthcare. Now, the issue with healthcare reform is you have 30 million new patients that are coming online as a result of healthcare reform, should it get through the Supreme Court. And what will happen is it will inevitably make it even more difficult for people to find a doctor. So what that suggests is that a system like ZocDoc, a marketplace where you can go on with the click of a mouse and find out of thousands of doctors the one doctor who can see when you need it -- that's something that we think, regardless of healthcare reform, is a needed service, and it's one that we provide. Robert: Very quickly, you have a 'who's who' of investors here. Can't let you go without talking about Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, and on and on. You have 95 million bucks... When's the IPO coming? These guys are probably looking for a payday at some point. Cyrus: Yeah, you know, right now we're just focused on rolling ZocDoc out nationwide. We want everyone in America to be able to make doctor's appointments and get doctor's appointments when they need it. And until that's done, we're not setting our sights on the financial market yet. Robert: Alright, Cyrus Massoumi, he is the CEO and founder of ZocDoc. Chris, you can go on and get set up for your flu shot right away.