POSITIVELY AND SUCCESSFULLY DISRUPTING HEALTH CARE
An industry shift from disease management to disease prevention is driving demand
There is a 10 x 8-foot wall inside Tailor Made Compounding (TMC) lined with notecards, pictures, email print-outs, and letters from doctors and their patients. Thanks to the compounding pharmacy’s custom medications, many patients are in less pain, have lost significant weight, have achieved improved focus or heightened energy, to name a few benefits. Some express appreciation for saving their life.
The heartwarming emails aren’t posted on the wall as sales tools, but as motivators for any employee who ever questions whether their job is important.
“Health care as we know it is clearly broken. We are serving doctors and patients who are focused on a ‘well care’ model as opposed to ‘sick care,’” says Jeremy Delk, TMC’s CEO, who launched the company in 2015. First-year revenue of $120,000 has grown to more than $25 million projected for 2019.
MEETING A MARKET NEED
Delk attributes much of the company’s exponential growth to rising interest in integrative health, a personalized approach to patient care. Integrative health examines a number of measures of health, including labs, weight, BMI, skeletal muscle, as well as subjective gauges, such as how a patient feels and sleeps, and energy level, and prescribes treatments to stave off decline.
While chain pharmacies dispense massproduced prescription pills and liquids, compounding pharmacies can actually create one-off medications with varying potency levels, minus certain allergens, or with additives to address common side effects. Sometimes, the pharmacy’s work involves mixing a custom dosage, preparing pills with the exact level of potency patients need. In many cases, TMC’s custom formulation can also be less expensive than the commercially developed standard.
Physicians are increasingly turning to TMC for help with this type of integrative medicine. “We’ve become an important tool in the physicians’ tool box, helping treat the cause, not the symptoms,” Delk says.
DISRUPTING THE INDUSTRY
At the heart of TMC’s success is a willingness to take risks, Delk says. “Most pharmacies are owned by pharmacists, not entrepreneurs who are willing to test and fail,” he explains. The company invests heavily in research and development (R&D) to develop new medications that address challenges its doctor-customers routinely face. TMC also values acting on patients’ behalf, Delk says. TMC listens to what doctors need in the way of treatments and invests heavily in R&D to try and find solutions, spending more than $40,000 on a single formulation just to test stability. “We’re not afraid to invest, though it doesn’t always pay off,” Delk says.
That willingness to try something new frequently surprises doctors. For example, after hearing that physicians were having difficulty placing orders, TMC quickly reallocated resources and developed an easy-to-use mobile app. Delk says the doctors were shocked that a company would listen to their concerns and immediately do something about them. TMC’s speed and agility made it possible.
Part of the challenge for the pharmacy is developing medications that do what more expensive treatments do, but at a fraction of the cost. Affordability is a core tenet at TMC. Once, when an uninsured patient was quoted $40,000 to $50,000 for life-saving medication, TMC worked with the doctor to find an equally effective alternative for 90 percent less.
“Affordability and education have been central to our growth,” Delk says, so TMC leverages its relationships with doctors and the tools it has at its disposal to make quality health care accessible for all patients.
TAILORMADECOMPOUNDING.COM
No. 45
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX Gone are the days when energy ruled the economy here. A growing prowess in biotech and health care, led by the Texas Medical Center, and aerospace, with NASA, make this Texas hub an alluring sandbox for medical and commercial space startups.
No. 46
Springfield, MA
The nearby Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship at UMass Amherst serves as an incubator of startup talent in Pioneer Valley. Area entrepreneurs also benefit from local funds sponsored by the Valley’s largest companies—and when that doesn’t work, it’s a twohour drive east to Boston VCs.
No. 47
Tulsa, OK See page 84.
No. 48
Des MoinesWest Des Moines, IA
While advantageous tax policies don’t always beget economic growth, in Des Moines it has certainly helped. In 2015, Iowa boosted its Angel Investor Tax Credit to 25 percent from 20 percent and made it refundable, rather than just a tax offset. Marketing software startup Denim credits the rule change with helping it land $1 million from investors.
No. 49
Albuquerque, NM Albuquerque’s economic development puzzle is coming together: There’s a shiny new innovation zone downtown and a state-run $20 million investment fund designed to bolster local VC investment. Per one 2018 report, the city’s degree of founder connectedness—which is considered key to building a lasting entrepreneurship culture—is notably higher than the global mean.
No. 50
Indianapolis-CarmelAnderson, IN
The ripple effect of Salesforce’s $2.5 billion acquisition of marketing software firm ExactTarget in 2013 is still being felt by Indy’s businesses. ExactTarget’s founders started new companies in town and also became angel investors. In 2017, the state of Indiana backed a new $250 million venture fund, and last year it exempted SaaS companies from sales tax. where she had earned her PhD at USC. She chose the city for lifestyle reasons—it’s a nice place to raise a family—but worried that it would be hard to attract the right talent to a town where no one else worked in her niche. She’s found it more than possible. One recent hire came from Johns Hopkins.
To Boccanfuso, Columbia’s rise as a hub for entrepreneurship reflects a broadening perspective in the region. “The cities are watching each other,” she says, “and trying to tap into each other’s momentum. Not only are people in Columbia reaching out to people in Charleston and Greenville, but people in those cities are also starting to reach out to us.”
A state-chartered nonprofit headquartered in Columbia, the South Carolina Research Authority exists precisely to build that kind of statewide cooperation by offering early-stage funding and mentorship to entrepreneurs in all three cities. “If we didn’t have SCRA as a statewide resource, we wouldn’t be putting Greenville, Charleston, and Columbia on the map,” says Caroline Crowder, program director of the USC Columbia Technology Incubator.
Meanwhile, VCs from Atlanta and the Northeast are prowling for deals—and in the case of Atlanta’s BIP Capital, even opening offices—in the state.
As more established and more expensive power centers on both coasts see more people opt out, the Palmetto State stands to benefit from a southward momentum. This year, 40 percent of our Surge Cities are below the Mason-Dixon Line. As Patrick Bryant says of Charleston, “Who wouldn’t want to move to a place where they might spend a vacation?”