160: Building a Software Business from a Canadian Basement – Saud Juman of PolicyMedical

160: Building a Software Business from a Canadian Basement – Saud Juman of PolicyMedical

Background on Saud Juman of Policy Medical:

Saud Juman is the founder of PolicyMedical Inc., a healthcare software company. Over the following years, Saud grew the company to serve more than 3,000 hospitals and healthcare systems worldwide, growing it to serve millions of patients, clinicians and community members daily.

Private equity firms began to take notice of the way that PolicyMedical was changing the industry. In 2018, software company iContracts, backed by a major private equity firm, approached PolicyMedical about an acquisition. In August of that year, PolicyMedical joined the company and Saud transitioned from his position as CEO.

Saud currently serve on the board at Markham Stouffville Hospital, and he is a charter member and former President of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Toronto’s chapter for a global nonprofit providing mentorship, education, networking, and funding to entrepreneurs.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:00] Saud Juman, from Ontario, Canada, founded and ran PolicyMedical for more than 17 years. PolicyMedical was a healthcare software solutions company, which he already sold last year.
[3:07] One of the main products of PolicyMedical is its healthcare compliance software that manages important documents in the hospital.
[5:32] In his early 20s, Saud went into deep soul searching to seek out what he really wanted to do. Eventually, he realized he wanted to go into the health industry. Saud talks about how the idea of PolicyMedical was born.
[12:54] Nine to ten months in the company, they got their very first paycheck amounting to $9,995 US dollars.
[16:41] Saud knew what product to create because he listened to the customers.
[17:43] Shifting to cold calling US hospitals instead of Canadian hospitals worked really well for Saud when they were just starting.
[22:05] Saud tells the story of how they were able to acquire their first client and their first paycheck. He literally just made up the pricing on the spot while talking to the client.
[25:02] When his co-founder left, Saud learned a big lesson of having some sort of partnership agreement with his co-founder to make parting ways easier.
[26:54] In the first 7 years of the company, they were just breaking even and earning just enough to pay everyone. Saud decided to restart and relaunch the company in order to get to the next phase and scale it up.
[29:15] Rebuilding the product was the best solution in order for the company to grow and move up. Migrating the clients to the new product was also a long process.
[32:10] Bringing in two new engineers from Silicon Valley were needed to rebuild their new product software.
[39:09] Saud gave some examples on how PolicyMedical was able to enhance their customer experience and make their customers become a fan.
[45:06] On the 15th year of the company, Saud was thinking of leaving PolicyMedical.
[46:04] According to Saud, the process of selling a company is very brutal and gruelling.
[52:32] There are certain qualifications that Saud is looking for when coaching entrepreneurs and business owners.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Books
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? My moleskin notebooks
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? My business is sold

Key Point from the Interview:

“When you start a company and you’re starting it with more than yourself, you should take some time to write down on a piece of paper some kind of agreement between each other, in terms of what your roles and responsibilities are. And if you were to disentangle and leave each other, how that actually looks. It’ll just make it a lot easier.”