In the past year at health tech company Free Market Health, Joe Cardosi has tripled headcount to 40, grown the Strip District-based startup’s payer client base and raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, he founded the company in 2019 after a 15-year career in specialty pharmacy. Cardosi is preparing Free Market Health for even more milestones as it looks to broaden its online marketplace. The company’s platform is designed to ease pain points for all who interact with the specialty pharmacy supply chain. Customers can range from patients to insurers to the pharmacies themselves.
What has been your biggest challenge getting your startup to where it is today?
One of the challenges with having a wonderful, hardworking team leveraging modern technology is the temptation to solve more problems. The Free Market Health team is bright, ambitious and genuine in our mission to make meaningfully positive impacts on patients, and we’ll always be challenged (in a good way) with striking the right balance of focus, execution and solving the next problem.
How can Pittsburgh better serve its startup community?
As a first-time founder, I have nothing but great things to say about the Pittsburgh startup community. With our established industries, growing tech footprint and strong academic ecosystem, access to knowledge, mentors and support is here in abundance. … I would like to see knowledge-sharing, mentorship and good advice from those who have traveled the road continue to be a real accelerator to the next generation of founders.
What do you hope your startup will be doing five years from now?
First, I hope that our company will be thriving in the execution of our mission to deliver better experiences for patients. Second, I hope that our company will be a force of good in the community. In the early days, it’s hard to not focus all of your organizational energy on the development of your product and solution. As we grow, I believe it will be equally important to focus some time and resources outward, through service for the betterment of our communities.
