Introducing JT Garwood, Co-founder and CEO of bttn 

Sara:

I'm Sara Lindquist from FUSE. We're an early stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the FUSE family to date.

Today, you'll hear from JT Garwood, Co-Founder and CEO of bttn. We'll discuss a few topics about the business, how it's been going, how it's been growing and why the medical supply industry is ripe for disruption. 

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Thanks for being here, JT. It's always a joy and pleasure to spend time with you, and I'm excited for you to share a bit about your story today!

JT:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Always a pleasure to speak with the FUSE team and very excited to be here.

Sara:

Awesome. So to kick things off, it would be great if you could just share a quick overview and background. What is bttn and how does it serve customers today?

JT:

bttn is building the future of medical supply. As an early entrant in the B2B marketplace space, we are converting a mass amount of non-digital transactions in this 350+ billion dollar-a-year-market, straight to digital ordering. And by doing that, we're helping healthcare providers of all sizes procure medical supplies more efficiently. We focus on adding transparency and ease at every step to this extremely antiquated market.

Sara:

Well, thank you for building what you're building! And so, JT, walking back a little bit, when did you first have that light bulb moment where you thought, "Oh my gosh, I need to build this." Can you describe that a little bit?

JT:

Yeah. I think it starts with understanding that the medical supply market as we know it today is broken. So we talked with thousands of different healthcare providers across the U.S. over the past two years. Everyone from your local dentists to the nation's largest hospitals, and no one was happy with their medical supply experience. And it's because today, medical supply is antiquated, it's timely, and it's just quite frankly, unnecessarily expensive. Through these conversations, it became really obvious that we needed to build something to help. Current broad-based e-commerce providers weren't going to give healthcare a vertical focus in their tooling or customer service, because it's just too specific. And the current medical supply distributors/incumbents only think of themselves as a distributor, not a technology company. So it has created this massive gap that exists where no one is prioritizing what's best for the customer. And so we're building a solution that saves every provider time and money while giving them a vibrant marketplace experience that they know and love.

Sara:

Yeah. Talk about a time to start a business like this! I mean, it's obviously been a crazy couple years and... Yeah, the time is now to shift the paradigm of how medical supplies are distributed and increasing that transparency. And so JT, how would you articulate, why is your team the team to do it?

JT:

Well, first and foremost, we're very mission-driven. We at bttn are on a mission to reduce the cost of healthcare for all, and our whole entire team wakes up every single morning ready to make an impact on that mission. We understand what it takes to win in this market, and are doing so earlier and faster than really anybody has anticipated. Why is that? I think it's in part, and a big reason why is that we have assembled some of the most amazing and brightest team members from other technology giants, and combined that with talent from the current medical supply distributors to capture this huge opportunity.

Sara:

That's awesome. Okay - and quick, if you had to pick one word to describe your team's culture, what would it be? Top of mind.

JT:

Yeah, I would go with mission-driven, or motivated. Because it's very personal to each of us what we're doing. And every single person on the team knows and aligns with that mission, and so we're able to just keep going the extra mile at every single point.

Sara:

Love that. And that actually kind of segues nicely to my next question, which is about the startup and founder journey at large. So obviously starting and running a company is hard work and comes with its own particular set of challenges. And so, what has kept you going along the way? On the opposite end, has there ever been moments where you've just thought, "gosh, maybe I just throw in the towel with this?"

JT:

Yeah, it certainly comes with its challenges. And I would say absolutely not on the “throwing in the towel” piece, because it really has become a personal duty to both Jack and me. And we wake up every morning just motivated to try and help healthcare providers. And there's this big black hole in the market that medical supply has become. And their experience is so hard and so cumbersome that I now feel a very personal duty to help them get out of it. And critical supply just in general shouldn't be this hard to access efficiently.

Sara:

Right. And I imagine too, again, like I mentioned earlier, if there's ever a time to have this mission-driven power behind you, it's in the past two years, right? Being face-to-face every day, seeing the impact that you're having in the midst of COVID and just empowering these smaller medical offices to really take care of their patients. So thank you for building what you're building. It's awesome.

JT:

Thank you.

Sara:

So, in closing here, one final question for you: right now, what do you need more of? How can listeners help and get involved?

JT:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think... Two things come to mind. First is, listeners can start by just asking their local providers to check out bttn. We're on a mission currently to reach every single dentist, every single family office physician, long term care facility, chiropractor, urgent care, ER, hospital in the country. And it really is as easy as giving them our website link and showing them your vote of confidence.

And I would also throw out there, there's a bit of self-education that can happen to shed some light on what's going on in the industry. And so my ask would be to maybe educate yourself on the current inequities of medical supply and the impacts that actually trickle down to consumers like yourself. Why is your ER bill so high? Why does the itemized bill that they passed along have products that are 5-7x the cost of procurement? Is it the fault of the healthcare provider or the insurance company, or is there an undiscussed third player in this market? And I think that understanding of the disparity that exists within it, is a part of understanding our mission at bttn and what we're trying to solve for every healthcare provider, and then therefore every consumer in this country.

Sara:

Love that JT. Asking the big questions, thinking the big thoughts. Important to reflect on that. But, I really appreciate you sharing that. And yeah, again, like I said, thank you for building what you're building. And we at FUSE are certainly so grateful to be a part of the journey and help along the way, and watch you guys go build this world-class company. So really, really excited and thanks for being here.

JT:

Amen. Thank you very much.

Sara:

Oh, and also, talk about team - you hiring?

JT:

Oh, every day, all the time, rapid expansion.

Sara:

Awesome. If people are super excited and want to get involved on the bttn team, where should they go?

JT:

Absolutely. So we have our current listings always available on LinkedIn as well as on our website and on AngelList, so if you're interested in a role specifically - but I always encourage people just to reach out to me directly, we're hiring currently across technology, operations, and sales. And so we're also seeing big movement in our supply chain and marketing teams. So our team just passed 30 members.

Sara:

Woo!

JT:

And... Yeah, so we're getting excited and going into that next big phase of growth. So if you have anybody, or know anybody within your network that is super passionate about healthcare, as well as wanting to build great technology that serves basically every single person as well as providers in our country, we'd love to talk to them.

Sara:

Awesome! Onward, my friend. Thanks, JT!

JT:

Thank you very much.

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Sara:

As JT mentioned, be sure to check out LinkedIn, AngelList, or go directly to the bttn website for job positions open today. You can also find their job postings right on the FUSE website, via the careers page or the portfolio section. Thanks for listening! We'll see you on the next one, which you can find right here on the FUSE blog page.