When you start a startup, there's pretty much one thing that's guaranteed: the roadmap you start with won't be the roadmap you scale with. When you're in that problem-solution-discovery phase as a founder, you know your mission as a founder, but you have to stay nimble to your method.

And that was definitely the case for co-founder/CEO Joseph Schneier and the team at Circle, a healthtech company building a platform "designed to bridge the gap between benefit providers, health companies, and the communities they serve."

But they got their start as Trusty Care, building a consumer product that offered plan comparisons for Medicare recipients, unbiased by any particular health insurer as a stakeholder. However, regulatory barriers held them back - but earned market insight into the systems at play meant two new open paths for Joseph: become a brokerage, or tackle deeper systemic and infrastructural issues plaguing the entire insurer, provider, and patient workflow.

We cover all of that, and more, including customer feedback that led to their brand relaunch, social perception of health insurers, venture capital's reaction to Circle's approach, the AI opportunity, and incentives in slow-moving systems.

This is Episode 010 of The Sherveen Show, featuring Joseph Schneier, co-founder and CEO of Circle (the healthcare one, not the fintech one).

Follow Sherveen:

X: https://www.x.com/sherveen

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherveenm

Follow Joseph: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joschneier

If you're interested in the early stage startup journey, incentives in healthcare, startup branding, social perception of insurance, venture capital and its relationship to healthtech, and everything in between, this episode's for you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.