Dan Rodrigues - Founder, CEO of Kareo

 

Dan Rodrigues brought so much wisdom and perspective to our discussion today.  I loved how reflective he was on his entrepreneurial journey.  To share a bit about Dan –

He founded and is the CEO of Kareo, a SaaS company here in Irvine in the health care industry. Kareo is providing a kind of "medical office in the cloud" for independent physician practices.  He and his team have over 50,000 customers in every state and have grown rapidly over their history.

Dan has raised over $100M in capital and has over 600 employees at Kareo.  He recently added a well-known entrepreneur to his board of directors, Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Dan for over 10 years and we’ve talked a lot about the company and his personal journey over the years. He certainly shared a lot of that in this conversation, and I hope the listeners appreciate how open he was with them. 

Before Kareo, Dan founded or co-founded a couple other companies.  He began his career at a couple well-known software and Internet companies, Visio and Real Networks, after he graduated from UCLA. Go Bruins!

Dan is a cheerleader for Orange County and has built a big family (5 kids) while building Kareo, so he’s super busy!  And so is his amazing wife, Kate!

Dan's words of wisdom at the end were 3 things: "You've got to love what you do, and where you do it. (that's how you'll persevere through the challenges you'll face)  You really have to be honest with yourself about the opportunity, and your true north star to believe in.  And you have to have the tenacity and resilience to overcome. (often the entrepreneur gives up on the business instead of working through it).  With those 3 things, you can be successful."   Great perspective and advice, Dan!