Vikram Bhaskaran was leading creator partnerships at Pinterest when his father started showing early symptoms of ALS, a rare end-stage neurodegenerative disease.
“It turned my world upside down,” Bhaskaran said. He worked during the day and spent his nights Googling about diseases and treatments and joining Facebook groups. However, Bhaskaran found it incredibly difficult to find clear and helpful information about his father's condition.
“I was sitting surrounded by some of the brightest minds in engineering and design in Silicon Valley,” he said. “But health-wise, it felt like the dark ages.”
So in the midst of the pandemic, Bhaskaran teamed up with two friends, Weill Cornell Medicine neurosurgeon Rohan Ramakrishna and Pinterest engineer Arun Ranganathan, to create clinically accurate complex We built Roon, an online resource for medical information. suffering from a specific disease.
Roon replaces Google (commonly referred to as Dr. Google) and traditional healthcare content sites such as WebMD and Healthline with video-based Q&As on thousands of health topics created by doctors at leading medical institutions That's what I'm aiming for.
Dr. Ramakrishna noticed that he and other doctors often answered the same questions when examining patients. However, these answers will only be provided during a doctor's visit.
“Doctors have billions of bits of privileged information in their brains that they share in their clinics, but it doesn't extend much outside of their own medical practice,” Dr. Ramakrishna said. Ta.
Roon is inviting thousands of doctors to share their information on the platform. Anyone looking for answers about diseases can visit Roon to watch over 16,000 short videos about ALS, glioblastoma, dementia, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), fertility and family formation. You can. In the coming months, Roon plans to expand its coverage into women's health (menopause, breast and cervical cancer, basic gynecological health), followed by pediatrics, cancer, neurology, and metabolic health. The plan is to expand the content to include health.
Bhaskaran sees Roon as a creator platform for doctors. “This is a bit like the early days of Pinterest,” he said.
Physicians join Roon because they want to provide valuable information and share their knowledge. The company's platform gives you the opportunity to be a creator, but it doesn't necessarily mean you make money from your content.
Roon offers participation fees to doctors, which some have refused due to conflict of interest regulations, but Bhaskaran said this is not a platform that seeks to turn doctors into well-paid social media star creators. said.
But Bhaskaran believes doctors find Roon helps them save time and provide better patient care. For example, you can share Roon videos as a pre-appointment or post-appointment teaching aid.
The appeal of Roon's content to patients is the ability to hear medical advice from real doctors and other patients battling the same disease.
Although the company has not yet started generating revenue and does not have an established business model, investors have faith. The startup was co-led by Forerunner Ventures and First Mark, with participation from previous investors Sequoia Capital and TMV, and raised $15 million at a valuation of $68 million.
Forerunner Managing Partner Eurie Kim deeply resonated with Roon's recommendations. She spent over 10 years caring for her mother who had cancer.
“I don't have a lot of time to talk to my surgeon or my doctor, so when someone asks me, 'Do you have any questions?' I panic,” she says. Kim sees Roon as a way to help patients become more knowledgeable and prepared for their appointments.
As for how Roon monetizes its content, Kim believes Roon could take several routes. It could sell advertising or offer a subscription service to hospitals and medical practices that want to share educational videos with patients. The site could also be expanded into a doctor directory to help patients find doctors and second opinions, she said.
Kim, a consumer-focused investor, believes that once a platform attracts a significant number of loyal followers and users, the business model becomes clear.
“You have to start with content. You have to start with trust and correct information and grow from there,” Kim said.