When jumping into digital-based startups, many founders who do not have a tech background before said jump hire developers to build out the backside of the operation — but not always.
Take the story of pac-IQ, for instance. Years before Adam Tobbe and Lee Jones began their journey of what would become their startup in 2019, they were working as acute care nurses at a Kindred Healthcare facility in Louisville — among other collective stops along their nursing career.
Technology was not their driving motivation, he said. It was to remediate the process of referral and admissions management in the post-acute care (hence the start of its name "pac") world. Post-acute includes any type of care that is received after a patient is discharged from a hospital.
“It’s a very antiquated process,” said Tobbe, who also serves as pac-IQs COO and executive vice president. “It’s a very manual process, very labor intensive — and everything kind of lives in disparate systems.”
Jones — the company’s CTO — and another team member ended up learning all of the technical skills needed to create the initial form of a monthly subscription Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, Referral-IQ, while being incubated in Brockway, Pennsylvania-based Guardian Healthcare.
It was a journey that took four years before pac-IQ left the nest, so to speak, in early 2023. Tobbe and Jones did so while working at Guardian in full-time roles — with Tobbe serving as an executive vice president and Jones serving as a director.
Guardian had never served in an incubator capacity before Tobbe and Jones approached Guardian’s ownership team when they realized how much a startup could alleviate those pain points with a “scalable solution.”
They asked for Guardian to fully fund the startup leading up to it going to market. To date, Guardian and a holding company started by one of the owners, Frank Varischetti, have provided approximately $3 million in capital.
Tobbe said he is not sure if the company will look for additional venture capital.
“We’re small. We’re nimble, and we’ve got partners coming on board, so that may fund our growth,” Tobbe said.
Recently, pac-IQ has been able to pick up a fair amount of steam when it comes to client partnerships. After signing a deal to serve 23 individually contracted communities in Pennsylvania that are connected to Guardian, the company signed a similar arrangement for a Texas-based operator that, too, has 23 communities. The latter deal came as a result of partnership that pac-IQ signed in November with DSSI Direct Supply “an e-procurement system designed for senior care providers,” according to the company’s site.
On Jan. 30, pac-IQ was honored as one of 20 companies in our 2024 KY Inno Startups to Watch awards. At the event, yours truly was approached by a representative from DSSI who flew down from the company’s home base of Milwaukee.
He had in his hand a third contract with an Indiana-based operator that also has 23 communities. Following pac-IQ’s 30-second pitch, I called up Tobbe to the podium to “sign” (finger quotes) the contract at the event. That contract will give Referral-IQ approximately 700 total users.
The company, which has its approximate 2,000-square-foot office located at 12305 Westport Road in Louisville, has a headcount of eight employees, but only three work in a full-time capacity in the office: Tobbe, Jones and Tasha O’Bryan, a fellow nurse who joined early in the company’s formation as vice president of client success.
At the moment, pac-IQ only offers Referral-IQ to the skilled nursing sector. There are plans in place, Tobbe said, to broaden out to the entire post-acute care space.
And don’t expect Tobbe and the team to look for an exit anytime soon — or ever.
“This is absolutely an all-in thing,” he said. “This is a passion project.”
