Zocdoc: Oliver Kharraz

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2020

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2007, three friends set out to address a common frustration: the long waits and scheduling hassles of booking a doctor's appointment. But soon after launching their online scheduling platform Zocdoc, Oliver Kharraz, Cyrus Massoumi and Nick Ganju ran into a classic chicken-and-egg problem: they had to show potential patients that doctors were available for bookings, while frantically convincing reluctant doctors to sign up. The company solved this challenge and started to grow, but then faced an even bigger hurdle: an identity crisis over its business model, which caused a major rift between its partners. Now Zocdoc is going through another transformation: offering video appointments in the age of COVID-19. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:30.0	SIRES ended up going door to door for doctors offices, actually showing them a PowerPoint page, and this is really a testament to SIRES' sheer will and determination.
0:41.0	He just went to random doctors offices?
0:44.0	Yes, selling to doctors is one of the hardest things to do.
0:48.0	Why?
0:49.0	Well, first of all, their office managers are trained to protect the doctor from people walking and selling them stuff.
0:56.0	So he got a lot of nose?
0:58.0	He got a lot of nose, and a few times it was even escorted out by security, I really think one in a million could have pulled this off.
1:06.0	From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and stories behind the movements they built.
1:24.0	I'm Guy Raaz, and on today's show, how two friends pounded the pavement in New York City to convince doctors to sign on to their new booking service, ZockDock,
1:34.0	and how they grew that idea into a business valued at nearly $2 billion.
1:48.0	One of the most challenging problems for startups that offered to connect customers with service providers is what's known as the chicken and egg problem.
1:57.0	This is the problem companies like Airbnb and Lyft had to solve.
2:02.0	Without home listings, in the case of Airbnb or drivers, in the case of Lyft, you'd have no customers.
2:09.0	But at the beginning, neither of these companies had any customers, so convincing people to list their homes or drivers to offer rides to strangers was not an easy thing to overcome.
2:22.0	And Tony Shoe, the co-founder of DoorDash, who was on the show back in 2018, had the same problem when he started out.
2:30.0	He needed customers who wanted food delivered to their homes, and he needed lots of restaurants to participate.
	...

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