Inna Plumb | MedArrive
INNA PLUMB
Co-Founder & COO of MedArrive, a startup that connects a workforce of EMS professionals to patients from their homes and within their existing health systems.
What Is MedArrive? Tell Us About What You Do And What Your Mission Is.
MedArrive enables healthcare providers to seamlessly extend care services into the home, unlocking access to high-quality healthcare for more people at a fraction of the cost.
MedArrive’s care management platform allows providers and payors to bridge the virtual care gap, integrating physician-led telemedicine with in-person care from EMS professionals. Patients can access trusted medical expertise from their homes' comfort and safety without any interruption to the continuity of care, ultimately resulting in better patient outcomes, a better-utilized healthcare workforce, and significant cost savings for patients and providers alike.
MedArrive has more than 20k highly-skilled EMS providers in its national network, and services span dozens of clinical use cases, including urgent care, complex condition monitoring, and medication administration.
What Is Your Background? Tell Us About Your Journey To Starting A Company In The Healthcare Space.
I was a founding partner at Redesign Health, where I helped to build a variety of our companies across the healthcare industry and led the Venture Building team. Prior to that I held leadership roles on the Supply Chain team at Blue Apron, where I was responsible for national procurement and sourcing. I started my career in finance, first as an M&A banker at Evercore, and subsequently as an associate in the private equity group at Soros Fund Management.
I’ve always had a strong desire to build things from scratch - I’m happiest when I can have a direct impact and create something new. I was working on a variety of ideas in early 2020 and the more I dug into this opportunity, the more it struck me. I was overwhelmed by the unfolding global health crisis and deeply worried about its impact on my family, in particular my aging grandparents. The more I learned about the EMS space and saw an opportunity to tap into this underutilized labor force and enable them to treat patients safely in the home, the more it felt like absolutely the right thing to be doing. Not only was this a great idea pandemic or not, but it could have a powerful impact on the lives of people like my grandparents and help them feel safer and live healthier lives. I dove in with all my energy, and it’s been an incredible journey ever since.
What Was The Inspiration Behind The Company Name?
We wanted our name to clearly convey that we bring healthcare to patients. We are working tireless to expand access to care to some of the most vulnerable populations and we are meeting them where they are, where they feel safe and comfortable - in their homes.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
By far, my favorite part of the journey has been building and partnering with our team. I view building a strong, collaborative team with a high degree of trust as one of the most important aspects of my job and it brings me immense joy to get to do this every day. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do this with my Co-Founder and MedArrive’s CEO Dan Trigub. He too places enormous value in building great teams and investing in people, and does an incredible job setting the tenor and values of our team culture.
Second to this, I would say is the sense of building something new every day, crafting something that wasn’t there before, I think is one of the most satisfying aspects of being an entrepreneur. This can be a two sided coin though, and some of the toughest times come from the ambiguity of charting a new path - you’re never quite certain which way might be right and that can certainly be exhausting. These are the moments when having a strong team, where true debate and open discussion can happen, become infinitely valuable.
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And What You Use The Money You’ve Raised For.
We are really lucky to have fantastic investors. We raised our seed extension from Kleiner Perkins and Define Ventures and we couldn’t wish for more supportive and knowledgeable investors. Annie Case, Lynne Chou O’Keefe and Chirag Shah have been invaluable partners and sounding boards as we’ve built a strong foundation for the business.
I started working on this idea while I was a partner at Redesign Health, and Redesign Health became our seed investor. Launching out of Redesign gave us a wealth of resources and support that are especially critical for healthcare startups given how complex the space is.
We’ve focused our resources on building a talented team of product, engineering and operations leaders and developing an MVP to launch with our partners.
Who Are Your Co-Founders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?
My Co-Founder and MedArrive’s CEO is Dan Trigub, and I could not have wished for a better partner with whom to build this business. Dan is an exceptional leader. He has an uncanny ability to rally teams behind a clear vision and to bring humanity and care to team culture. It’s a powerful quality for the leader of a healthcare organization, as he helps us practice what we preach. He is exceptional at forging partnerships and driving our growth and instrumental in setting our company’s strategy and a focused path for the future.
How Has COVID-19 Impacted MedArrive’s Growth And Operation Over The Last Year?
COVID has exacerbated the shortcomings of our healthcare system, leading to a sicker population, a frustrated and hobbled healthcare workforce and huge costs for healthcare providers, payors and patients alike. While telemedicine has gone some of the way towards addressing these issues during this time, it falls well short of being a true solution. Patients fear coming into a clinic for risk of infection, delaying preventative and critical care. Vulnerable populations in particular are struggling with key social determinants of health as COVID puts a strain on their living arrangements and finances. Clinicians are overworked while other highly trained healthcare workers, like EMTs and paramedics, are stuck in rigid roles, often not fully utilizing the full scope of their training.
MedArrive addresses these challenges by bridging the gap between remote and in person care. For us, COVID has accelerated the underlying trends that have been present in the healthcare space for many years and provided an opportunity to fix so many of the things currently broken in the system.
From a people perspective, we started the company during the pandemic, so it has always been remote first. We’ve had to learn how to connect and build a genuine and strong culture in a Zoom environment, which while different, has worked incredibly well. It has also given us the opportunity to hire amazing people wherever they might be, or want to be long term.
Anything Exciting That Will Be Launching Soon?
Yes! We will be launching a pilot with an incredible partner in Florida that we hope will have an enormous impact on patients’ well being. I can’t share much yet, but stay tuned for our launch!
What Are Your Daily Routines? Walk Us Through Your Typical Workday Schedule.
The first thing I do is always to get a workout in. I’m an avid triathlete, so usually either a bike, run or strength session. Then I take my dog Pushkin out for a solid game of fetch, make breakfast, and sit down and get to work. My days are usually focused on meetings with partners, operational and clinical planning, and product discussions. Working from home, work and personal life can tend to blend together - it’s definitely been a challenge of the past year. So my husband and I will try to schedule a quick lunch or tea break together whenever we can find time and we try (very hard!) to do dinner without phones.
What Are The Top Three Qualities or Skills You Believe Entrepreneurs Need In Order To Be Successful? Also, What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?
Grit, comfort with change, and the ability to learn from mistakes.
Few things trump hard work and relentless effort. With enough of it, I think it’s possible to overcome shortcomings, mistakes, and just about any wall you come across. I just always come back to grit.
For the second two - startups are all about change and learning from failure. This early on, things will continuously evolve. That’s what makes this stage of the journey so exciting and hard. To adapt, it’s important to admit when you’ve made mistakes, not beat yourself up for them, but just shake it off, internalize the lessons, and move on to tackling the next challenge.
Tell Us A Story Of Something That Happened To You, Something You Heard, Or Something You Saw, That Either Made You Laugh Or Taught You An Important Lesson.
In February of 2020 I completed the Florida Ultraman, just under two and a half full Ironman races over the course of three days (6 mile swim, 263 mile bike and 52.4 mile run). These three days are among my most treasured, not because of how hard the event was, but because of the gift of having my family and friends be there to support and crew for me. They quite literally kept me alive, on course and in fighting shape for those three days. There is something amazing about going through these very acute physical and mental highs and lows that one encounters during this kind of event with people who bring a bottomless pool of support, love and care for you.
It was a hard, intense weekend, but starting a company is hard and lasts for much longer than three days. At the end of the day it’s only worth it and it only works with an amazing group of people by your side.
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?
Jimmy Chin.
You know the Dos Equis ad about the most interesting man in the world? To me that’s Jimmy Chin, the legendary explorer and artist. He and his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi directed Free Solo, the oscar-winning documentary about Alex Honnold climbing El Cap. He is not only an unbelievable director, photographer, and storyteller, but a world class athlete. He was on El Cap in full climbing gear while filming Alex Honnold. He skied down Everest while filming a documentary about the first woman to ski down it, and also happens to be a fantastic surfer. From his movies, he also seems to be a genuinely good human.
Who Is Your Role Model?
My grandfather. He is just amazing. He is the reason I’m here in the US today. He is a brilliant physicist - when he would get sick and have to stay home from school, he’d entertain himself by doing math in bed. Who does that? When the Soviet Union collapsed saw that there wouldn’t be a future in that country for our family and moved with practically no money and no connections, first to Israel and eventually to the US. He started and built a life from scratch in two countries and he taught me that with enough hard work, just about anything can be done and that nothing in this world is more important than family.
At 82, he has endless energy and lives passionately - he adores rich food, the sweetest desserts, opera and of course he still does math for fun.
What Do You Do In Your Free Time?
The most important thing to me is spending time with my husband, family and our dog Pushkin. A lot of that involves running and riding my bike, hiking, and cooking. I’m pretty competitive, so if something can be turned into a race or a game, I’m in.
What Does Success Mean To You?
To me success is giving my all to a goal and maybe, just maybe helping others in the process. One way to achieve that is delivering on our mission to improve people’s lives by bringing more humanity to healthcare. If we’re able to serve patients currently struggling with access to care, have an impact on their health outcomes, create a human connection in the process of care delivery, and create an opportunity for more EMS providers to practice to the fullest extent of their scope, we will have succeeded. We are focused on doing this at scale and impacting the lives of as many people as we can.
Inna Plumb’s Favorites Stack:
Books:
1. Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
2. A Life Without Limits, by Chrissie Wellington
3. The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulkgakov
Health & Fitness:
1. Long bike rides or structured workouts outside
2. Gummy bears - they’re such delicious energy on a long bike ride or run
3. Garmin Forerunner Watch - it keeps me honest and tells me when I’m pushing too hard
Consumer Products:
1. Teapigs Chai tea
3. Milk bones (my dog would live on these if we let him. I don’t consume them, I just provide them)
Newsletters & Podcasts:
1. Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
2. Fresh Air, with Terry Gross
3. Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast - this one’s really only for nerdy bike people like me
