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Help Healthcare Startups
bring their products to market.

Patients are waiting for Healthcare to improve.
So far, no one is delivering.
Help us fix it.

Why join OpenRegulatory?

It's bootstrapped.

Ever worked at a Venture Capital - backed startup? Having investors is great, but it often distorts your company goals. Suddenly it's all about growing and selling the company - who cares about building a product which delivers value to humans?

OpenRegulatory is different. It's 100% bootstrapped. Ironically, having no investors (and less money) opens up interesting opportunities: We can serve customers who don't have a lot of money, like, Healthcare startups. And we can build software which only solves a tiny problem, and solves it well.

Now you might say, that doesn't scale. True, that's the whole point! Someone needs to solve the small problems, and we have lots of those in Healthcare.

It's profitable.

Being profitable means more than not having to deal with investors: It means shipping products that matter, because they deliver value to customers. And we know they deliver value to customers because our customers pay us. As some dude at Apple put it, customers vote with their wallets.

This establishes an essential feedback loop for product development - building the right thing. Have you ever built something which never made it to the customer? Not here.

You're helping people.

You're not directly treating patients, but you're enabling other companies to save thousands of patients in the long run.

You meet lots of Healthcare startups.

Doing consulting in any industry means you'll meet lots of companies. Being specialized on startups means that those companies will be new up-and-rising technology startups, trying to bring innovation to Healthcare.

If you're new to Healthtech, it's a perfect way to get your feet wet and see what's out there for you. And if you're already in Healthtech, it's a great way to build your network.

Run by grown-ups.

Tired of 60-hour work weeks and constant pivots because your management doesn't know who your customers are?

Things here are different. I consistently work less than 40 hours per week. Evenings and weekends are off-limits for business communication. I'm a big fan of DHH and Basecamp books like It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work.

I don't micromanage. I believe that if you're micromanaging your people, you either hired the wrong people or you're a crappy manager, or both.

Working at OpenRegulatory

You're treated like a grown-up.

We don't micro-manage. We hardly manage at all. We discuss which projects you'll be working on and the rest is up to you. If you need help, we'll be there any time! But besides that, you'll be setting your own goals, work hours, and working at your own pace.

One meeting per week.

We only have one meeting per week. That's our meeting on Monday mornings when we discuss what everyone will be working on. Everything else is communicated asynchronously via Basecamp, our project management tool.

Strictly speaking, we don't even need that Monday meeting. But we noticed it's actually nice to talk to each other once per week.

A four-day workweek.

Regulatory consulting can be exhausting.

We switched to a four-day workweek before it was considered cool. Fridays are off.

We don't use Slack.

Slack shows an indicator whether someone is online. We don't like that. People should work whenever they want to work.

Also, using Slack often creates an implicit expectation that someone should reply to messages in a timely manner - a false sense of urgency. We only expect you to reply within 24 hours on work days - no online indicator needed. For what it's worth, you could be going to the gym or flying airplanes during the day and working during the night. We simply don't care. We trust you to get your work done.

Please switch off your push notifications.

No one expects you to reply to messages immediately. Switch off your push notifications. If you're in the mood for work, sure, log on to Basecamp or your email mailbox. But in all other cases, there's no need to get interrupted, especially when you're in the middle of non-work activities.

Access to the company bank account.

Everyone gets access to the company bank account to see whether the company is profitable. It also holds us accountable to our spending - you see everyone's salaries, bonuses, and expenses.

Bonuses like a Freelancer.

We track how much revenue everyone brings in. We also track how much everyone approximately costs (salary + taxes + expenses). If you bring in more revenue than your costs, you get 50% of that excess revenue as bonus (simplified). That's a freelancer-like compensation while enjoying the job safety of being employed!

Productivity over 8-hour workdays.

Now, if everyone has access to the company bank account and we also track how much revenue everyone brings in, that enables us to have a clear picture on how productive (or rather, profitable) everyone is. If you manage to be profitable by working 2 hours per day, congratulations! Kick back for the remaining 22 hours of the day and do whatever you want.

Your own company credit card.

Or, in other words: No purchasing process. If you need something, just buy it. You'll also get access to your own Amazon Business account to order whatever you need.

Further Reading

Pioneers vs. Process People

I describe two types of people who join startups at different stages.

Become a Full-Stack Person

In our age of ever-increasing specialization, being a generalist may actually be beneficial.

Businesspeople Are Useless

Just having studied business at a University doesn't mean you're qualified to run a company. It depends on your knowledge of the market you're going in.

Open Positions

We recently launched a job board for Digital Health Jobs.

Click here to view our open positions over there!

No QMS on this planet will save you from creating crappy software.