Hey friend,
This is going to be a long one. I’ll use emojis to try to call attention to the important things, but I do hope you take the time to read this all.
Looking at the future of Peachy meant making decisions about the team that were incredibly tough, but essential, to the success of things here moving forward. We have decided to move forward as a team of 4 full-time.
[redacted a couple paragraphs here related to individual team members, but I would put my name behind any of them and deeply appreciate all of the work that they put into Peachy, we wouldn’t be where we are without them]
Additionally, I know I have talked to a few of you individually, and haven’t been sure exactly what I wanted to say here (hence the delay on this update), but just want to give a little bit of a personal update. As all of you know, I have dealt with chronic health issues for a long time (hence, this entire company). After having Covid in January, I started dealing with really amplified symptoms of my long-time diagnosed POTS & MCAS, and it seems like I may have been a little “under-diagnosed” previously and am dealing with some more severe complications from that. That being said, the last month has been incredibly positive and I’m responding to this first course of treatment well. I took 2 weeks off to reset and think through all of this, and between that and a lot of conversations with the team, some of you, and trusted friends- we’re all very confident that this doesn’t impact the direction or plan for Peachy very much. In the short term, PJ has taken over the majority of the “day to day” operational responsibilities that I previously was handling, and I will be focused on contributing on an IC-level and product planning, as well as our fundraising and investor relations.
👉 I will be fine. The next few months will suck, then they will get better. I am as committed to solving this problem (for myself), as I was on day one. This team is nothing if not adaptable. They will be fine. We’ll reassess areas of responsibility at the end of each quarter and adjust accordingly. There is nobody in the world I trust more than PJ. I would bet on him every single time. Peachy will be fine. Either of us are happy to answer any questions or concerns.
Reflecting on the Peachy Pay MVP while writing this has been interesting. In so many ways it feels like we're in the middle of a really intense pivot, but in a lot of ways, we aren’t at all. We did a lot of really incredible work, the tech we built is solid and a perfect foundation for what comes next. We’re solving the same problem, with a similar product, in a different way. We began processing payments in October, decided something needed to change by the end of January, and had this all built by April (on top of ~everything else~).
What it really comes down to is: a) things are not going to change fast enough selling only directly to providers, b) we need a clear primary stakeholder (who are we really building for?), and for us, that’s patients, c) providers are not going to pay just to get paid, they want patients to pay for it as a premium offering, so to monetize them, we need something else, d) a seamless provider billing experience will be reliant on EHR integrations, unless we want to just become an integration company, this isn’t scalable- it’s also a very slow play. We are one of the lowest funded healthcare startups, we do not have time to get a bunch of EHR integrations in place fast enough with real customers to show traction, and f) anything less than that directed at providers first turns into a services business.