Profile: Joella Almeida and MedEssist

What does your company do?

MedEssist has created a more accessible, equitable, and personal health care system through the modernization of local pharmacies.

What was the insight/inspiration that led you to launch it?

It was the combination of my co-founder Michael and I collaborating on the idea.

When I transitioned to being a Shopify partner, I learned a lot from the access that I had to the backend dashboards. It was quickly evident how much of an impact you could make if you focused on infrastructure technology that could scale vs. something that fits a mold. Meanwhile, Michael, my co-founder has been a practicing pharmacist for over 10 years and he wanted to find a better way to impact the lives of his patients and would also allow more access for those that were older or not tech-savvy. By joining forces, we knew we could find a new way to influence healthcare delivery and access for not just Canadians, but eventually everyone.

How has it been received by the market? Why do you think it has been so well received?

The simplest answer is there’s never been anything that’s built for a pharmacy-specific workflow that is very niche, yet scalable across pharmacies worldwide.

We’ve launched probably 70+ features that are customer-driven. Features that our customers have asked us for (built on our unique customizable infrastructure). We employ many pharmacists across all areas of our company from BD, engineering, product, and of course our clinical solutions team.

How did you know you were ready to found a company?

I spent about 2 years freelancing and trying to get the most amount of “no’s” I could possibly generate to build up my resilience. From there, I worked with Mike doing door-to-door in-person sales for almost a year. This is the toughest part of starting anything - the uncomfortable part.

Once we had over 60+ customers and proved we could scale nationally, we joined forces formally to focus on it.

How did you meet your founders/know they were the right people to start a company with?

We initially met through a friend who connected us over our passions for pharmacy and tech. From there, I worked with Mike doing door-to-door in-person sales for almost a year.

We spent a lot of time thinking through business ideas together and talking about how we would go about solving problems. It was fun, but most importantly, we had no ego over our desire to problem-solve efficiently.

What has been the hardest thing on your journey so far?

Growing slowly has been a blessing but also incredibly hard. We’re very intentional about each new team member we bring on and we work very hard to build what our customers want - often that means late nights and tight deadlines.

What has been the most pleasant surprise?

Hearing how much our customers love our product and trust us has been the best surprise. When there have been Government or provincial changes, customers reach out to us by email and our live chat to tell us before it’s announced because they trust us to take care of them. We’ve also had a lot of large enterprise customers come to us without having an enterprise salesperson, and purely through word of mouth, which has been incredibly gratifying.

Who is the unsung hero on the team? Why?

Our pharmacist and programmer - Bita Janzadeh. She initially joined us for her pharmacy rotations, but stayed on doing a variety of different roles from sales, to customer service, to hiring, and social media. And today she's the lead Developer on our Clinical tool for Minor Ailments. We're incredibly proud of her.

What are you trying to achieve over the next 12 months?

In the last 12 months, we proved that we have the best cloud-based pharmacy solution for independent pharmacies in Canada, and now we've taken it across the border as well.

Our next big achievement will be deploying our solution across different public health challenges and reaching more patients across different healthcare needs.

Who are the startups you like in your market?

• OpenPhone

• Hypercare

• PocketHealth

• Hyivy

You can catch Joella in real life at our next TechTO Together Event on February 6! She'll be taking the stage to chat about her Founder journey and all things scaling.

Tickets are still available!

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Quick Takes: Top Takes from the month of January

Now that we have entered February, we take a look back at some of the top takes from across the ecosystem in the month of January.

What are your top takes? Reply to this email and let us know what stood out to you in the month of January.

• Shopify kicked off the year with some new adjustments. What can other companies learn from these decisions? READ HERE

• When acquisitions fall through, what's next? READ HERE

• The strategy of growth through acquisition. What is it all about? READ HERE

• Learn a powerful strategy from this companies acquisition. READ HERE

• The governments billion dollar effort results in chaos vs. growth. READ HERE

• Atomicjar proves that Canadian tech talent is very much in demand. READ HERE

A New Episode of Quick Takes drops on February 9

Quick Takes returns LIVE at 12:00 pm ET/9:00 am PT on February 9 across the TechTO platforms.

Episodes dropping every other Thursday all year long!

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Headlines and Content

• #ICYMI - Catch up on past newsletters if you hadn't yet subscribed!

• Canadian Startup news of the week - READ HERE

• Why has no one heard of this billion dollar home brand? READ HERE

• An investment in future virality - READ HERE

• Why Google's funding round had 'red flags' - READ HERE

• **NEW CONTENT** TechTO Firesides ft. Justin Herlick, Co-Founder and CEO of Pine - WATCH HERE

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Founder Program 2023, Gradient Spaces (Toronto, ON)

Gradient Spaces is launching the Founder Program 2023! The applications to be part of the second cohort are now open and close on February 7th.

The Gradient Spaces Founder Program is Canada’s first equity-free accelerator for 2SLGBTQIA+ and under-estimated founders. Their 12-week-long founder program focuses on the things startups need most: education, mentorship, and community.

Learn more about the timeline, and selection criteria HERE

Co-Founder Match

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Reach out to [email protected] with the following info:

• What you're looking for in a Co-Founder

• What you're building

Events and Links

Check out the interesting content, events, and happenings for the community here:

• TechTO Together | Toronto: February 6, 2023 - Join us again #IRL next week! - REGISTER HERE

• Startups Mentorship Program: February 11, 2023 - Virtual Event - REGISTER HERE

• TechTO Talent | Virtual | February 22, 2023 - Meet and mingle with top tech talent and employers hiring now! REGISTER FOR FREE

• TechTO #IWD2023 Event: March 6, 2023 - Come celebrate women in tech with us! REGISTER HERE

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