Valant Medical Solutions, which has developed software to help psychiatrists manage billing and electronic medical records at their practices, has scored $937,000 in financing in an oversubscribed round, according to a SEC filing. The deal follows a $1 million round last December.
Founded by brothers David Lischner, a psychiatrist who previously ran Evidence Based Treatment Centers of Seattle, and Ben Lischner, a former software developer at AT&T Wirelesss, Valant was started to relieve the time demands on psychiatrists and mental healthcare professionals.
We caught up with David Lischner for the latest installment of Startup Spotlight.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “We make software that improves the value of behavioral health care and makes behavioral health care practices more effective and profitable.”
Inspiration hit me when: “I couldn’t find an adequate practice management solution for my private practice.”
VC, Angel or Bootstrap: “Angel financing.”
Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “Deep domain knowledge throughout the organization.”
The smartest move we’ve made so far: “Raising money rather than continuing to bootstrap. It has allowed us to scale more quickly.”
The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “Partnering without adequate due diligence in the early days. We have fixed this.”
Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “Bezos. He’s had an interest in new health care models and has an office close by.”
Our world domination strategy starts: “First with gaining market share, then connecting patients and providers, and lastly with providing a platform for transforming health care service delivery. Network effects will help us sustain market power as we add value to and extract revenue from all types of transactions within behavioral health care.”
Rivals should fear us because: “We have incomparable domain knowledge, a world class engineering team, and a superior product and pipeline.”
We are truly unique because: “No one can match our deeply ingrained domain knowledge.”
The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: “Our first and only 24 hour outage. We responded with an aggressive upgrading of our IT operations and have since achieved 99.95 percent up time.”
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “Make it a priority to hire and retain the best talent. Also, read the Art of the Start and the Lean Start-Up.”
