A fast-growing Atlanta health technology company hired its first chief financial officer away from another successful local startup.
Austin Pauls is taking the CFO role at Loyal, a company that creates an artificial intelligence-driven platform to help hospitals and health systems with better patient care, according to a Wednesday morning announcement. Pauls was previously vice president of finance at Stord, a supply chain tech company that reached a $1 billion valuation in 2021 and continues to garner recognition for its rapid growth.
Pauls has almost two decades of financial leadership experience and also worked at co-working giant WeWork.
Loyal, led by CEO Chad Mallory, is used in about 290 hospitals across 35 health systems, according to previous Atlanta Inno reporting. About 55,000 providers use the platform. Customers include LifePoint Health, a Tennessee-based health system with more than 85 hospitals and $6 billion of revenue.
Between January 2021 and April 2022, Loyal's revenue quadrupled, according to previous reporting. The company now has more than 200 employees, according to a spokesperson.
That growth came when Loyal released a new product — a software that health systems can use as patient-specific operating systems. The service allows patients to know who are their providers, what appointments are available or message reminders for upcoming appointments.
“The vision of a full experience for the patient is the Holy Grail of our industry,” Mallory said. “We're excited to be doing it and just want to keep building off of that momentum.”
Mallory founded Brightwhistle in 2010, a digital marketing company that helps health systems get new patients through search and social media. That company was acquired by Birmingham, Alabama-based Influence Health in 2015.
Later that year, Mallory launched Loyal. In October 2020, Loyal raised a $12.5 million Series A round, led by Concord Health Partners, a health care-focused investment firm based in New Jersey.
Loyal has an office in Technology Square's Coda building, a tower that exemplifies the Georgia Tech-led partnerships among startups, corporations and academia. Cisco Systems Inc. is also based in that tower. About a third of Loyal's employees work in the office and the rest of staff is remote, according to the spokesperson.
