32 min
Ep. 262 – Dan Zavorotny: “You just gotta go and try to sell to someone to see who wants your product. The goal is to get them to put their credit card in” REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success
-
- Entreprenörskap
Dan Zavorotny is the co-founder of NutriSense – a metabolic health company that utilizes Continuous Glucose Monitoring (GCM) technology to provide real-time data to clients.
He launched 3 months before Covid, and he has grown the company from an idea to over $150 million valuation in just 26 months and 120 employees. Previously, he worked as a management consultant for KPMG where he consulted for 3 out of top 5 hospitals in the world.
When Dan’s not working, he loves to travel, and he has been to over 100 countries before the age of 30.
Most passionate about
I was working in healthcare consulting and saw a trend over and over. We saw people, hospitals, and insurance companies spend more money every single year on healthcare.
I ran into one of my friends who was wearing a device called a continuous glucose monitor. It tracks your glucose in real-time, 24/7. I put on a device and it completely changed the way I looked at health.
We said, “Let's start a company around it.” We basically launched in two weeks. I quit my job and then we just started going, going, going. Since then, we've gotten to an over $150 million value.
Dan’s career and story
We immigrated from Ukraine. My parents didn't have much money. So, I picked jobs in corporate finance that let me live in France for a year.
Then I focused on my career. I said, “How do I become the best employee possible?” I was doing healthcare consulting. I quickly realized that there are fundamental shifts in the industry of healthcare that need to happen, and there's not enough drive or change inside. So, that has to happen from external forces. I started looking at, like, “What can I start? How can I help this industry?” This was when I ran into my friend, Alex, whom I started a company with and who was an acknowledged expert.
We brought in a third person, Kara, who's our head of nutrition. We can focus on the business, the software, and the human capital in this area to change behavior. That's been guiding us. It's been very effective by focusing on hiring the best people.
Best advice for entrepreneurs
The first one is, in every business, there are always two things that are most important. It's either build the product or service and offering or sell that product or service and offering. You must always say who's doing the first and who’s doing the second. Remember, no matter what you're doing, always focus on those two functions at the beginning.
Number two is, you just gotta go and try to sell this to someone to see who wants it. The goal here is to get them to put their credit card in. Always focus on credit. Until someone's putting a credit card down, they're not actually your customer.
To me, the signifier is, did you collect their cash? If you did, your product has value.
The biggest, most critical failure with customers
It's that we listened to the customers who are the loudest customers, but they might not be our main customers.
It’s important to remember that just because someone is very loud as a customer, that does not mean this is the person you should be billing for it.
I think that's a mistake we made. It doesn't sound that bad, but if you actually think about it, we're a software company. We're telling our engineers to build something and retain all that money on salaries, product development, and a user experience for this one individual, while the other 99% of people might be less vocal. Oftentimes, they're the silent majority. We're basically neglecting them because every time we're building for this one individual, we're...
Dan Zavorotny is the co-founder of NutriSense – a metabolic health company that utilizes Continuous Glucose Monitoring (GCM) technology to provide real-time data to clients.
He launched 3 months before Covid, and he has grown the company from an idea to over $150 million valuation in just 26 months and 120 employees. Previously, he worked as a management consultant for KPMG where he consulted for 3 out of top 5 hospitals in the world.
When Dan’s not working, he loves to travel, and he has been to over 100 countries before the age of 30.
Most passionate about
I was working in healthcare consulting and saw a trend over and over. We saw people, hospitals, and insurance companies spend more money every single year on healthcare.
I ran into one of my friends who was wearing a device called a continuous glucose monitor. It tracks your glucose in real-time, 24/7. I put on a device and it completely changed the way I looked at health.
We said, “Let's start a company around it.” We basically launched in two weeks. I quit my job and then we just started going, going, going. Since then, we've gotten to an over $150 million value.
Dan’s career and story
We immigrated from Ukraine. My parents didn't have much money. So, I picked jobs in corporate finance that let me live in France for a year.
Then I focused on my career. I said, “How do I become the best employee possible?” I was doing healthcare consulting. I quickly realized that there are fundamental shifts in the industry of healthcare that need to happen, and there's not enough drive or change inside. So, that has to happen from external forces. I started looking at, like, “What can I start? How can I help this industry?” This was when I ran into my friend, Alex, whom I started a company with and who was an acknowledged expert.
We brought in a third person, Kara, who's our head of nutrition. We can focus on the business, the software, and the human capital in this area to change behavior. That's been guiding us. It's been very effective by focusing on hiring the best people.
Best advice for entrepreneurs
The first one is, in every business, there are always two things that are most important. It's either build the product or service and offering or sell that product or service and offering. You must always say who's doing the first and who’s doing the second. Remember, no matter what you're doing, always focus on those two functions at the beginning.
Number two is, you just gotta go and try to sell this to someone to see who wants it. The goal here is to get them to put their credit card in. Always focus on credit. Until someone's putting a credit card down, they're not actually your customer.
To me, the signifier is, did you collect their cash? If you did, your product has value.
The biggest, most critical failure with customers
It's that we listened to the customers who are the loudest customers, but they might not be our main customers.
It’s important to remember that just because someone is very loud as a customer, that does not mean this is the person you should be billing for it.
I think that's a mistake we made. It doesn't sound that bad, but if you actually think about it, we're a software company. We're telling our engineers to build something and retain all that money on salaries, product development, and a user experience for this one individual, while the other 99% of people might be less vocal. Oftentimes, they're the silent majority. We're basically neglecting them because every time we're building for this one individual, we're...
32 min