Healthcare marketplace PokitDok raises $4M Series A

Vator Splash SF 2013 winner lets consumers shop directly from providers for health services

Health marketplace PokitDok, which won Vator Splash SF this past February, has raised $4 million a Series A round funding, the company announced Friday. The round was led by New Atlantic Ventures and syndicated with Rogers Venture Partners. Seed investors, including Subtraction Capital, Zac Zeitlin and FFP Holdings, also participated in the round.

The company previously raised a $1.35 million seed round in 2012 from Charles River Ventures, George Zachary, Jonathan Sposato, Geoff Entress, Albert Prast, Jason Portnoy and Zac Zeitlin. The company has now raised a total of $5.35 million.

New Atlantic Ventures and Rogers Venture Partners, the two new investors in PokitDok, were a good fit for the company because they share the vision of the healthcare market, Lisa Maki, co-founder and CEO of PokitDok, told VatorNews.  Maki is pictured above with Bambi Francisco, CEO and Founder of Vator, and Robert Scoble, a prolific blogger and Rackspace evangelist. 

"New Atlantic Ventures is a clear leader, Rogers is another, who have developed a strong thesis focused on the opportunities inherent in the emerging Health market," she said.

"Specifically, they believe in innovations that engage patients more actively in managing their own health care and health care expense as well as technologies that enable providers to be more efficient and proactive in how they present themselves and their practices to the new healthcare consumer. Our view of the current market is well aligned and it is fantastic to have investors who embrace the opportunity."

The new money will be used to hire employees in the engineering, business development and marketing departments, in both its Silicon Valley headquarters, as well as its office in Charleston, South Carolina. The company currently has 11 employees, and it may double that number in the next year. 

The company will also be used to expand PokitDok’s oversubscribed beta program.

"While we have recurring revenue from contracts like the one we have with United Health, we were looking to scale the business," Maki said. "We’re expanding to license our data to insurance companies and large self-insured employers seeking to provide their members and employees with a health marketplace where they can make smart treatment decisions and minimize claim size."

Founded in September 2011, Menlo-Park, California-based PolitDok is a price transparent health marketplace where consumers shop directly from providers for high value health services. It allows patients to search by condition, or specialty, and then request a quote, and purchase a service directly from a health provider. Users also can include their desired budget which the providers then either agrees to or then proposes an alternate amount. Consumers to access PokitDok on the Web as well as on a mobile device to get a quote.

The service also contains a database of all active providers in the US. When a user requests a quote, if the provider is not already a member of PokitDok, the service will contact them for the user.  Maki could not reveal how many people have so far requested quotes, but would say that it has provided a successful quote within 48 hours for every request.  Right now a user can only request a quote from one provider at a time but PokitDok will be be rolling out batch quotes soon. 

PokitDok has partnered with over 1,000 practices which have an average of 1,500 to 2,500 patients each.

(Image source: https://www.daytondailynews.com)