Cloudy with a chance of Innovation

Explore CliniCloud with Josh Zail

Mission (The Why):

CliniCloud's mission is making quality healthcare accessible and efficient, particularly for treatment of the most common medical conditions. The problem? A cough or wheeze might just be a symptom of the common cold, or it might be a sign of something more serious. You’ve got three options:

    

    1.  Book an appointment, trek to the doctor’s office, wait in the waiting room, eventually see a doctor.
       
2. Rush to the ER in a panic. It’s probably unreasonable to be this panicked, but you’re freaking out anyway.
  

         3. Google your symptoms and treat yourself, with zero input from a medical professional. Not the greatest idea in the world.

The Solution?

CliniCloud!

Philosophy (The How):

CliniCloud cofounders Andrew Lin and Hon Weng Chong believe that technology is the key. They’ve been friends since medical school, and dived into the entrepreneurship world for the first time when they came up with the basic idea for CliniCloud in 2012. But they didn’t invent the most accurate thermometer in the world, or the most cutting-edge stethoscope ever seen. 

Lin and Chong with their inventions

They designed and built devices that are simple to use, and record measurements straight to your smartphone. The CliniCloud app manages your vital signs recordings, allowing you to label, store or share them with a doctor. CliniCloud partners with Doctor on Demand in the US for video consultations with physicians, but here in Australia we have to get by with texting or emailing our recordings to our GP.  

Everything that Clinicloud does has the aim of building a partnership between patients and doctors with shared responsibility and hassle-free communication.

Legal Structure (The What):

CliniCloud is a Proprietary Limited Australian Private Company. In case you’ve forgotten since my last post, that means it’s a business owned by a small number of ‘shareholders’, and doesn’t sell its shares to the public. And it’s Australian. If you think you’re going to forget again, maybe you should write that down.

Stuff it does (The More Interesting What):

The Connected Medical Kit is CliniCloud’s flagship product, bringing a digital stethoscope and a non-contact thermometer together in a stylish case for easy transport. 

Now that's sleek!

The kit will set you back 149USD, but the app is free for both Apple and Android. If you don’t have a smartphone, you’ll have to go buy one first. Cost varies across the board, although I am looking to sell my old Samsung Galaxy S4 for a very reasonable price. Comment if interested.

The stethoscope and thermometer seem very easy to use, they’re not scary and confusing like you might expect from diagnostic medical instruments. As someone who loves figuring out a new piece of technology without any interference from a pesky instruction manual, I think they actually look pretty fun to use. See for yourself!

What they do well:

Having practiced in hospitals in the early days of CliniCloud, Lin and Chong clearly have a deep understanding of their key customer segment: young parents. They’ve witnessed the anxiety and frustration of late-night trips to the ER, and realised that technology has the potential to reinvigorate the system and improve outcomes for patients and doctors.

CliniCloud offers parents peace of mind and can help avoid a time-consuming and stressful trip to the doctor’s office or ER. If an in-person consultation is required, the parents can provide the treating doctor with their recordings. 

That’s pretty valuable, as temperature and respiratory data over an extended period of time usually lead to a more accurate and quicker diagnosis than a one-off examination.

It also saves families money, and gives doctors more time to focus on serious conditions without having to sift through all the simple cases.

Room for Improvement:

Data security and accuracy of the instruments loom as major technical challenges for CliniCloud, but I’m going to talk about a more human issue. 

Minimising hollow buzzwords and promises to 'change everything' year after year helps with the credibility required for marketing a medical product, but I think the language on their website, specifically the blog section could be a little tighter, make the ‘sleek tech’ branding more holistic by talking a bit more like a bigtime tech company.

Unfair Advantage (why it deserves an entire blog post):

CliniCloud differentiates itself from similar companies with their hardware’s simple, elegant design. It makes customers feel like they know how to use it already, and that’s a big deal. The kit is an attractive piece of technology, and its user-friendly design makes me feel like I’d look cool and have fun using it.

Lin and Chong have cleverly aligned their product with today’s culture of health and fitness tracker apps, while maintaining the legitimacy required for a customer to trust a company with their personal medical issues.

Fun for the whole family!

Final Thoughts:

CliniCloud brings patients and doctors together in a way that I haven’t seen in any other enterprise. Lin and Chong have managed to demystify and unclutter the process of obtaining quality medical advice, and engage patients in their own family’s care. I haven’t decided if I’m going to buy a Connected Medical Kit just yet, but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where CliniCloud go from here!

You Can't Spell 'Entrepreneurship' Without Entrepreneurs - delve into The Entourage with Josh Zail

 

Mission (The Why)

The Entourage is all about teaching entrepreneurship to young aspiring entrepreneurs, providing tools and advice that work in the real world. They are big on values, with 10 short and sweet mantras such as “Take Initiative. Don’t Wait” and “Do More With Less, Become a Master of Leverage”. They all fall under the umbrella of “Inspire freedom, enable greatness, change the world.”

Philosophy (The How)

­Entourage founder Jack Delosa strongly believes that entrepreneurship should be taught by successful entrepreneurs, people with a 'been there done that' experience. Jack doesn’t think that universities are able to keep up with the pace of change in the world of entrepreneurship. Everything that The Entourage does has the aim of educating and creating a community of capable and passionate entrepreneurs.

 Legal Structure (The What)

The Entourage Education Group is a Proprietary Limited Australian Private Company. In English, that means it’s a business owned by a small number of ‘shareholders’, and doesn’t sell its shares to the public. And it’s Australian. Cool.

Stuff it does (The More Interesting What)

The Unconvention is Entourage’s cornerstone event, a one-day carnival of big-name speakers and outcome-orientated workshops that celebrates entrepreneurs who do business unconventionally. It’s likely that the words ‘disrupt’ and ‘innovate’ will be mentioned more than once, but the Unconvention is a lot more than buzzwords and hype. More on that in a minute.

The Entourage offers a range of education products, from the Diploma of Business (specialising in entrepreneurship) to the Launch program, Build Program and Scale Program. Each of these is tailored to a different stage in the entrepreneurship journey, but they’re all driven by the core ideas of learning from people with plenty of experience in the arena, and getting out into the real world to make your business happen. Becoming a member of The Entourage is free, although enrolling in one of its programs or attending the Unconvention requires payment.

 What it does well

Throwing aspiring entrepreneurs and hugely successful founders into the same room spreads knowledge sharing, but more importantly it spreads passion, and lays the foundations for meaningful networks. I’m studying entrepreneurship at uni this year (sorry Jack), and I’ve already discovered that starting a business is really, really hard. Stuff goes wrong every 5 minutes, the pressure is relentless, and motivating yourself can quickly become an uphill battle.

Sharing your passion means that it’s still alive even when you’re having a rough day- it multiplies and expands and energises everyone it touches. Having a network of people who have experienced similar struggles can be the difference between sticking with your start up against all odds and throwing in the towel like a boring, rational human being.

From the Unconvention to the full-length education programs, The Entourage is constantly getting entrepreneurs together to learn from each other and create a supportive community, and I think that’s its core strength.

Room for Improvement

In my opinion, weaknesses are almost impossible to find when it comes to The Entourage, but I do think that by marketing to ‘entrepreneurs under 40’ they alienate older aspiring entrepreneurs that may share the mindset and appetite for learning of their younger counterparts. I understand the youthful and dynamic brand is very important to The Entourage, but I think people over 40 are equally capable of risk taking and innovation.

Opportunities (Exciting stuff on the horizon) 

It’s not hard to see that this enterprise works hard to integrate its 10 core values into every move it makes. “Live on the extra mile, good enough isn’t good enough?” reads one of my favourites, and this mantra drives The Entourage’s push to become a nationally-accredited Higher Education Provider in 2018, meaning it’s taking a giant step toward becoming an actual university. This might seem a touch hypocritical given Jack’s comments about the pitfalls of universities, but I think it’s a bold move that has the potential to boost The Entourage’s credibility, effectiveness and reach.

 

Unfair Advantage (Why it deserves an entire blog post)

Although The Entourage’s more obvious Unique Value Proposition is in the education department, I think its unfair advantage is the community factor.

Everything about The Entourage feels personal, differentiating it from the   production-line student experience stereotype that most education institutions face. The Entourage is all about having fun. It reminds you to enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship, a journey renowned as one of the most demanding and unforgiving career paths. 

Plastered across its website are photos of people brimming with passion and excitement, along with video interviews with satisfied Entourage graduates.

My favourite part of The Entourage’s digital profile is AskJackD, a video blog where Jack answers questions sent in by budding entrepreneurs. I think this episode encapsulates the purpose of AskJackD, and touches on The Entourage’s unique aura.

A thoughtful and inspiring blog.

Onesie day at the Entourage Office

The Annual Entrepreneurs' Harbour Cruise

 The Australian Startup Awards

The Entourage’s playful community spirit intertwines with its educational philosophy of person-to-person learning. Sharing of expertise and passion generates both at a phenomenal rate, and that’s why I can’t wait to see where The Entourage goes from here.