Welcome to the first bonus episode of Found. In this mini-sode we catch up with the very first founder we had on, Iman Abuzeid from Incredible Health. Since we talked to Iman last, Incredible Health has experienced rapid growth and she talks to our producer Maggie about learning to scale after you’ve reached market fit and how they're using proprietary data to improve their product for the next generation of nurses.
Welcome to the first bonus episode of Found. In this mini-sode we catch up with the very first founder we had on, Iman Abuzeid from Incredible Health. Since we talked to Iman last, Incredible Health has experienced rapid growth and she talks to our producer Maggie about learning to scale after you’ve reached market fit and how they're using proprietary data to improve their product for the next generation of nurses.
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Jordan Crook 0:01
Hey, Hey, and welcome to a special bonus episode of found which is the podcast where we talk about the stories behind the startups. I'm Jordan crook. And I'm here with the overly proud Canadian to my shameful American. Hello, a hello, a
Unknown Speaker 0:20
meet Darrell Etherington. Sorry, say my name see arrogant.
Jordan Crook 0:23
This is our first bonus episode where we're going to check back in with founders that we've already talked to. So if you're a longtime listener of the show, then you're gonna hear some familiar voices. One might not be so familiar though. Our producer Maggie is doing these interviews. And she's awesome. And you're gonna love her. Today, we're going to talk to Amman, Abu Zedd, who is the founder and CEO of incredible health. It's a platform that is focused on nurses, helping them get jobs, keep up with their, like licensing and education, community building, et cetera. I actually really loved this episode was our very first one. What about you, Darrell?
Darrell Etherington 1:01
Yeah, it was a great episode. I remember it like it was yesterday. No, it was I think maybe it was special, because it was number one, but also because Aman is great. And I've spoken to her for articles on TechCrunch. Before and yeah, just really enjoyed the conversation and really excited to hear you know, where the business is at now. Me
Jordan Crook 1:20
too. So let's just jump into it.
Maggie Stamets 1:28
Hey, man, thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited to be welcoming some of our founders back to do check ins and see how the founder life has been. It's crazy that you were actually one of the first founders that we had on and people should absolutely go back and listen to that episode. But in case they haven't yet, can you give the top level sort of TLDR of what incredible health does? Sure.
Iman Abuzeid 1:56
So incredible health is a fastest growing venture backed career marketplace for healthcare workers. And our mission is to help healthcare professionals live better lives, and fine and do their best work. And, you know, hospitals and health systems. They use incredible health custom matching technology to hire high quality permanent nurses, and you know, in less than 20 days, which is compared to the industry average of 90 days, and there's an interview request sent on our platform every you know, every minute now. Wow.
Maggie Stamets 2:23
Awesome. Thanks for catching us up a bit. So let's start off Why don't you tell us what you've been up to? What are the updates from the past year?
Iman Abuzeid 2:32
Yeah, there's been a few updates, probably our biggest one is one of our biggest ones is just the launch of our new nurse graduate suite. You know, historically, we were only supporting experienced nurses. But now you know, this free suite of products now supports new graduate nurses, eight includes job matching for them, personalized career support for new graduate nurses and advice platform for them as well. And incredible health is the first and only career marketplace to have a suite of tools and services that's dedicated to new graduate nurses as well. The reason we created this is because of the just the unique challenges that this cohort of nurses have these new graduate nurses are mostly Gen Z, you know, and they're the fifth generation of nurses that are actively working in the US nursing workforce today. And they've got a unique set of challenges just like other Gen Z, Gen Z workers and others professions do as well. And so we did put together a pretty detailed study and looked at our proprietary data as well. So just better understand this group of nurses. And you know, 65% of new graduate nurses report feeling burnt out in the first six months of their employment, which is a shocking statistic, given that they just started and only 15% of recent graduates feel highly confident finding a job that's going to meet their expectations. And then another shocking statistic that we've discovered is that 55% of new graduate nurses do not plan to stay in the industry until they retire. And 41% said that on the job training is their most important consideration when thinking about what resources are provided by their employer. So you know, this is a group of a cohort of nurses that is also experiencing burnout and feeling overwhelmed. And so we launched the suite earlier this year, you know, March March of this year of 2022. And it's already you know, the number of new graduate nurses on the platform is increased 200 times 20% of our new talent registrations are coming from new graduate nurses and 1/3 of the employers on the incredible health platform. We work with 500 hospitals and health systems across the country and 25 states 1/3 of them are actively using our platform to hire new graduate nurses to
Maggie Stamets 4:28
Yeah, I What really stood out to me there is that burnout element that you've pulled out or found within the Gen Z workforce. And I think now is an incredibly intimidating time to be stepping into any field but especially what people who work in health care have experienced over the past three years, I'm sure makes it extremely draining, to go into work and to be finding a job. How are you helping alleviate some of that burnout within these new hires? Yeah,
Iman Abuzeid 5:00
So here's a few specific things that we've done to support them. Number one is that they have access to our marketplace now or hiring marketplace. And so what that means, you know, we're the only platform that uses automation to screen the talents, credentials, and automatically custom match the talent with the employers as well. And we're doing that across 70 specialties and across like 250 skills. So for new graduate nurses signs up, you know, they're able to go through the screening process go through the custom matching process as well. And they're also paired with a what we call a talent advocate, which is like their career coach that helps them prepare for interviews, evaluate different offers different opportunities, as well. The other thing that's unique about this group of nurses is that they're usually more geographically flexible. And so let's say you're open to relocation, and most new graduate nurses are because this marketplace gives them access to employers across 25 states that just like really just maximizes the opportunities that they get. In addition to that we have like a personalized advice platform built into our iOS and Android apps, and where new graduate nurses can ask very specific questions. And the great thing is like experienced nurses will reply to them and reply to them in a highly personalized, you know, useful way too. So lots of questions are shared. They're like, hey, what's the best way for me to get into labor and delivery or to get into the emergency department? So I want to provide some more support there. And then in addition to that, we do have access to mentors, there are some mental health tools built into our talent app as well, that they have access to
Maggie Stamets 6:21
as well. Yeah, having that community element I could see being super beneficial. So pivoting just a little bit to you and your growth. How have you grown? And what have you learned since you were on found last?
Iman Abuzeid 6:34
Yeah, absolutely. There's been a few lessons learned. And, you know, yeah, I met several learnings, honestly. So first and foremost of the importance of having a really strong executive team, you know, I've entered this phase of post product market fit. So in the beginning, in the early stages of a company, you know, you're just trying to do whatever you can to get the product market fit. And then after that, you're trying to scale it. And so we're definitely certainly in 2021. And now we're like in the scaling mode. And part of that has been the importance of hiring a high caliber executive team, we have some requirements for like the leaders that we hire senior leaders that we hire, they have to have come from a high growth setting, incredible health grew 540%. Last year in 2021, we're on track to grow another 400%, this year in 2022. So working with leaders who've seen that kind of growth and experienced that kind of growth, ideally, multiple times before they join us has been extremely helpful. And so that's what we've done in sales and customer success, and you know, product and other critical areas. The second biggest learning is to make sure that the, you know, there were moments over the last 12 months where the growth was clearly outpacing the product in the operations and just ensuring that you can see around corners plan to quarters ahead of time about who do you need to hire on the team who's missing and get those people hired quickly, making sure they're well trained, ensuring that they have the right infrastructure and tools to do their job. And to have like, ensure that they have the processes and the analytics to support their roles as well, to ensure they're successful, just like real every leader here has to constantly think ahead, pretend you know the Imagine your team has to grow three acts. Now what what do you have to put in place, right? Or imagine the growth on the platform, the number of employees are supporting goes up five bucks. Now what you know, so it's really thinking ahead has been probably the biggest lesson learned and last four months.
Maggie Stamets 8:13
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So to think back on where you were a little over a year ago, what advice would you have given to yourself?
Iman Abuzeid 8:21
Yeah, I would have given my advice and advice to myself and a couple of areas, probably similar to what I just said, number one, think ahead, look around corners, what are you missing, and spend a lot of time figuring out, what are you missing? I probably, you know, now when I look at like how I spend my day or my week, a third of the time is spent on hiring, a third of the time is spent on the biggest problem of the business happens to be facing at the time. And then another third is just on strategy. And frankly, what's missing? What am I missing? Or what am I leaders missing? The advice I would given to myself is to allocate more time to that third category. Yeah, absolutely.
Maggie Stamets 8:53
That, you know, impossible task of needing to know what you don't already know exactly what has been a highlight and a low light that you've experienced in the past year,
Iman Abuzeid 9:04
a highlight has been just like the fantastic talent that we've been able to hire across the company that includes the senior leaders includes more engineers and you know, growing our r&d teams, and just really building out even the sort of like that middle manager layer as well who are also important people managers. I mean, I get satisfaction from two areas while building this company. Right. Number one is the impact we have on the users and industry. You know, we are trying to define a new category and becoming a market leaders in healthcare labor. But the second thing I get an enormous amount of satisfaction and motivation from is working with really smart people, and who are trying to solve problems. And so seeing the team is now 145 people, I think a year ago, when we spoke it was I don't know 30 or 40. So it's really has grown a lot and just feel excited about the caliber of talent that we got a low light has been, you know, there have been pockets of the country where we weren't delighting users. Our number one value at incredible health is customer obsession or user obsession. Do whatever you can to delight your users and everybody's accountable to that value, even if you're in On a user facing role, and there were moments where the growth was outpacing the product and operations. And we were not delighting users in certain pockets of this country. And so getting that fixed and addressed, understanding why that happened in the first place, and getting the processes and structure and people in place to make sure that doesn't happen. Again, it's been challenging, but I think it made us a stronger company, and certainly a stronger product and operations as well.
Maggie Stamets 10:23
And to finish it all off, what are you the most proud of both in terms of incredible health as a business and also in terms of you as a leader and in the ways that you've grown in the past year,
Iman Abuzeid 10:34
hands down the most proud of just the impact we've had on the industry and on the on the users, I mean, we really are defining this new category and becoming market leaders. And the growth that we've seen in our expansion across 25 states where we now serve 500, over 500, hospitals and health systems, including really big health systems like Kaiser Permanente and regional systems like WellStar, and Baylor Scott and White, and lots more academic medical centers now as well, including Northwestern, and NYU and Johns Hopkins, really proud buyer of our expansion into the northeast, into the Midwest and to the south. And just the impact we've had on the users, especially the impact we've had on the nurses, I mean, nurses have enjoyed like a 15% increase in pay, on average on our platform for permanent roles. They've also enjoyed a 70% reduction in their commute times, a third of the nurses hired on our platform have relocated from different states. And just like, you know, when you get when we have, you can see all our reviews on Google and on Facebook. And when you hear things like, wow, this is the highest I've ever been paid my career or I dreamt to moving to California or LA, or New York, and I never knew where to start, or I'm finally advancing my career in this specialty that I'm like I've always dreamt of and just hearing those stories is has been extremely motivating. And I am proud of that. And I know the team is really proud of delighting users too. And I think the area that I'm proud to have grown in is I'm an expert in getting to product market fit, I know how to get from zero to one. But getting from one to 100 is actually a whole new skill set. And really working with my executive leadership team, as well as executive coaches and, and with my board to really upgrade my skill level in that area. And in learning how to scale. And what's important scaling has been really important to me, and probably one of the biggest areas I think about and I work on is how to scale our culture, you know, so we have a certain set of values, that incredible health, including customer obsession, and speed and disagree and come in and so on. And like it worked, it's so easy to maintain that culture when the team was small. But once the team starts getting bigger, and there's now multiple teams that have to work together, learning how to scale the culture and the way we work do the work has been a big upgrade in my own professional development.
Maggie Stamets 12:46
Well, thank you so much for coming on him on and letting us know where you're at. It's so cool to see how much you've grown. And once again, I really encourage everyone if you haven't already go listen to the very first episode of found where eemaan talked with Darrell and Jordan way back when incredible health was just 30 or 40 people strong. Thanks again, man. And I hope you have a really great rest of your day.
Iman Abuzeid 13:09
Yeah, thank you so much for having me again.
Darrell Etherington 13:14
founders, those two by myself, TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. You shot Kulkarni is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch. His audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash man. You can also email us found@techcrunch.com And you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618 Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
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