Daniel Crittenden

Entrepreneur

After a few years of building, my co-founders and I were able to bring the RevMed Marketplace public initially in Texas. Now RevMed has users in 26 states and we are continuing to expand.

I have a passion for turning ideas into reality. It’s also highly rewarding to be innovating in an industry like healthcare. I’m inspired by knowing that my work every day is genuinely helping people.

At RevMed, we’re helping to reduce waste in healthcare by creating a peer-to-peer, transparent market for medical devices and capital equipment. One of RevMed’s co-founders, Dr. Andrew Dold, realized the extent to which excess inventory is a problem for hospitals during his fellowship at NYU—where he was readily given thousands of dollars worth of medical supplies to practice with since they were excess stock, no longer used by the facility. Hospitals and ASCs are often sitting on a goldmine of excess supplies with no good way to offload them when they aren’t needed at that particular facility. Rather than letting those critical supplies go to waste, my co-founders and I wanted to build software to connect hospitals, allowing them to profit from the sale of their excess inventory and save money buying critical supplies at a discount. Both sides of the transaction win and health systems support their peer’s bottom lines.

If you consider the limited inventory tools combined with the size and complexity of supply spend, a small improvement can go a long way. We know a provider’s main focus is supporting patients. RevMed has focused since day one on simplifying the ability to identify and sell excess through our marketplace.

The most rewarding part of innovation for me is seeing an idea become a tangible reality. It is fulfilling to know that what I am working to build every day is making life easier for people and contributing to the improvement of the healthcare industry. The most frustrating thing is the early time lag to adoption before the fear of the unknown ultimately transitions to the fear of missing out.

As an entrepreneur taking on a lot of risk, it's easy to give into the fear of failure. In any disruptive startup, you have to believe that what you are trying to accomplish is already accepted and you’ve succeeded. You have to tell yourself that what you are doing is correct, and that the way things used to be done is largely incorrect. It’s easy to give into the fear that people will not accept your ideas or believe in them like you do, and that can affect your team’s momentum. Coming to terms with the difficulty it takes to change behaviors and its inherent challenges, and allowing that to motivate you rather than stifle you is key. Maintaining this mindset will go a long way in helping you to persevere in the face of uncertainty.

Persistence is Paramount: If you are trying to change the status quo with your product, it will take time and persistence. The waiting game can be very frustrating but some of RevMed’s best clients required relentless persistence before we signed them up. Now they are thanking us for making the effort.
Always fear failure, but let fear motivate: If it were easy, everybody would do it. The odds of failure in any startup are high. Remember this always, but use it to build the grit and hard work ethic needed to succeed. Mistakes are going to happen no matter what. It is how a company deals with those mistakes and course corrects to avoid them in the future that defines success in the long run.
Every Problem is an Opportunity: RevMed itself was created because a multi-billion dollar problem exists within the US Healthcare industry that, in our opinion, wasn’t being adequately addressed. As we built this company from day one, there have been no shortage of unforeseen problems to solve. In order to become a successful entrepreneur in my opinion, you need to enjoy solving problems; otherwise, you are in for a rough ride.

Over a decade of experience in capital markets at Canaccord Genuity. 3+ years experience as an economist at Neary Family Office. CFO of a Neary Family Office investment, bringing from seed-stage to 140+ employees, $30MM Revenue run rate and cash flow positive in under 3 years.