There are lots of founders and lots of ideas floating around to help improve the delivery of healthcare services and positively affect the health of each of us as individuals. Unfortunately, many of these ideas never reach their full potential to improve patient outcomes or reduce costs of care. Sometimes, it’s because the idea isn’t feasible or scalable. Sometimes, it’s because the market isn’t ready, or regulators aren’t ready. And sometimes, it’s just because the founder or founding team has a blind spot (or two). Not only do these hidden blind spots ensure their failure, but in many cases, with better planning or a greater, more holistic understanding of the market forces, the blind spot can be overcome. Or better yet, the founder can realize that their idea is doomed from the start and consider other, better options to solve the problem they are attacking.

As a follow up to the authors’ first book, The Startup Protocol, A Guide for Digital Health Startups to Bypass Pitfalls and Adopt Strategies that Work, this book will be a series of case studies about digital health unicorns. The ultimate goal is to further educate digital health startup founders and their teams about what it takes to be successful and have a lasting positive effect on our healthcare delivery system. Through a series of interviews with unicorn founders and leaders, the book will synthesize the information and highlight the elements that led to the growth and success of the companies.

Building on the template of Ideate, Build, Launch and Grow outlined in The Startup Protocol, this book will document the origin story of each unicorn, and then follow it through the process of building their solution, launching the solution, and growing their company to unicorn status.