Dr. Mike Daley - Founder of OrthogenRX
Bilt215
Dr Mike Daley has a big personality to go along with his big company exit. But his seeming overnight success was years in the making. He spent decades assembling advanced degrees and making money for Big Pharma before deciding at the ripe age of 62 to become an entrepreneur and launch his company Orthogenrx. Dr Daley literally liquidated his retirement plans, raised a few million from investors and bet the farm on importing an injection for knee pain already used widely overseas. Seizing the opportunity to exploit a rarely used FDA process loophole he was able to fast track the approvals and...
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Dan Dimitri - Founder/CEO of PharmaForce
Bilt215
After spending 20+ years as a project manager for giants Kaiser Permanente and McKesson he paused to find a problem that he could solve with a new business. He took a deep dive into interviewing clients to find aches and pains that he could capitalize on. After much research and a chance encounter with an investor-backer he launched PharmaForce with the mission to deliver flexible technology solutions for pharmacies, providers and patients demanding greater transparency and lower costs. After a mere 7 years he recently had a very successful exit to a PE firm. Tune in to hear Dan’s story on...
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Sylvester Mobley — Founder and CEO of Coded by Kids
Bilt215
Sylvester Mobley is the Founder and CEO of the youth tech education non-profit, Coded by Kids. Through his organization he works to increase access to tech education opportunities for those who are underrepresented in tech, especially children of color. Under his leadership, Coded by Kids has grown from serving fewer than 15 children in a rec center to serving more than 500 students per week. Tech has a lot of great benefits but there are still groups of people being locked out of it.
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Felicite Moorman — CEO of STRATIS IoT
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Felicite Moorman is the CEO and co-Founder of STRATIS IoT, the only Sidewalk to Sofa® Intelligent Building Solution built for Multifamily and Student Housing. STRATIS helps create smart apartments and intelligent buildings built for the complexities of split multi-family and student housing. Serving over 325,000 apartments in the US, and over 18,000 internationally, STRATIS is poised for more growth in the future.
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Mahe Bayireddi — Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People
Bilt215
Mahe Bayireddi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People, a global HR technology company with a mission to help 1 billion people find the right job. With over 200 million people using the product in 140 countries, including 50 of the Fortune 500 companies, Mahe is well on his way to achieving his goal of revolutionizing the talent life cycle through technologies, specifically AI.
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Nader Elm — Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies
Bilt215
Nader Elm is the Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies, a commercialization of the technology spun out of GRASP Labs (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania). Since its founding in 2014, Exyn has become the world leader in autonomous data acquisition using drone technology.
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Bill Yoh — Co-Owner of Day and Zimmermann, Author, Chairman of Yoh Group
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Bill Yoh is the youngest of five children born to Spike Yoh. Bill's grandfather, Harold, helped build the Philadelphia-based business that is now in its 5th generation, Day & Zimmermann. Founded in 1901 as a fledgling staffing company for engineers, it has grown into a massive organization of 45,000 employees globally and nearly $3 billion in revenue, making it one of the biggest privately held companies in the US and the world.
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Mike Hagan — Founder, Operator, Investor and CEO of Hawk Capital
Bilt215
Mike Hagan is a founder, operator and wildly successful investor in a variety of companies. He has repeatedly proven his ability to create or invest in a company, scale it and successfully exit. His venture was the B2B procurement WebHost VerticalNet, which hit a market capital peak of $11 billion. Unfortunately, Vertical Net ended in flames like many other dot.com companies at the turn of the millennium.
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Bob Moore — Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Crossbeam
Bilt215
Bob Moore is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience, who started his first business venture when he was at Princeton. In the early 2000s, as online poker was becoming popular, Bob jumped on an observation he made to create the Mooraculator to computerize what his peers were calculating in their heads to level the playing field for others who wanted to make money playing poker.
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Dean Miller — President and CEO of PACT
Bilt215
Dean Miller has been a venture capitalist for over 20 years, with particular interest in the healthcare technology and innovations space. Brought up in upstate New York, his early experiences shaped him for independence and entrepreneurship. Dean served as Managing Director at Novitas Capital, where he focused on venture capital investments across healthcare and technology.
info_outlineCary Toner is the former CEO of The Toner Organization which his father started in 1966 with a focus on high risk or impaired risk life insurance. Cary joined the organization in 1979 and soon, new areas of opportunity were presenting themselves in term insurance and annuities. Cary eventually bought the company from his father and from 1986 to 2001, he grew the agency into one of the top 10 in the country with 5000 brokers nationwide and revenues approaching $35 million. He eventually sold the company in 2001, and shifted his focus to his side project that he’d started in 1996 — iPipeline. A truly visionary company, iPipeline focused on reducing the time to underwrite life insurance policies by harnessing the power of the internet. iPipeline was eventually sold in 2015 for $380 million. Cary recounts his business journey, and how he managed the changing landscape of the insurance industry through the years.
Key Takeaways:
[1:18] Kevin introduces his guest for this episode — Cary Toner.
[3:14] Kevin asks Cary five speed questions.
[5:50] What was Cary's path in joining his father's organization, The Toner Organization (TTO)?
[7:40] The original business model for TTO was high risk, impaired risk insurance. What were some changes in the 1970s that made the business model less viable?
[00:09:35] What exactly were high risk or impaired risk cases?
[10:15] Kevin and Cary discuss the customer base for TTO and how the business functioned.
[11:29] What were some of the new products that were coming out at that time that were making the existing business less lucrative?
[16:15] How was the new product, term insurance, received in the market by traditional, old-school life insurance salespeople?
[17:56] How did TTO morph to adapt to these new products?
[19:17] Cary and his father started having differences in their vision for TTO. How did that play out?
[24:03] From 1986 to 2001, Cary focused on building the company. He shares some of what he learned in that time.
[27:45] Who were the 20 salespeople in Cary's company and who were they selling to?
[31:01] Kevin and Cary discuss how big the organization was in 2001, and what kind of metrics the company who bought them over was looking at.
[35:32] Cary had a 2-year contract with BSYS that ended in 1.5 years. What happened?
[39:12] In 1996, Cary undertook the project of simplifying the underwriting of polices through iPipeline. How did he see the need for this project and come up with the solution to solve this problem?
[44:54] What was the revenue model for iPipeline?
[49:24] How was Cary financing iPipeline?
[51:57] What was the turning point that made Cary decide to seek external funding for iPipeline, and what was his process?
[55:36] What was Cary's role in iPipeline after he sold it to NewSpring?
[57:09] Kevin and Cary discuss how TCV's investment impacted the growth trajectory of iPipeline.
[59:04] Looking back, what would Cary have done differently?
[1:00:23] What applications does Cary see with regards to machine learning and artificial intelligence to the insurance industry?
[1:05:37] Does Cary believe that entrepreneurs are born or made? What is next for Cary in terms of business opportunities?
[1:09:13] Cary shares more about his philanthropic activities and involvement in non-profit organizations.
Links:
How Our Robots Ran 30 Million Illustrations in 24 Hours, by Bill Atlee