There was another one, a vet, that used to be like every other vet. In fact I remember his group of volunteers coming to a team brainstorm a few weeks back saying that they had no ideas; they couldn’t see how they would innovate this business to make it different from others. It's important to us that we don't simply promote copycat businesses but vets make sick animals well, you can’t change that fact (at least not without losing customers!) It was quite a challenge.
At the time I remember comparing the traditional model of vets to
private healthcare (i.e. you pay on a case by case basis when you get ill) and
I suggested they try a more NHS-ish style business model whereby the customers
pay a retainer to the vet every month, who receives money whether or not the
animals are sick but then also comes out to the farm when needed and also does
checkups so that preventative healthcare is possible. I didn’t hear any more
from the group on this subject and, if I'm honest, I forgot all about it.
I was therefore fantastically surprised when one of
the other pitching panels told me yesterday that the most impressive entrepreneur they’d seen was a vet called Eric who had secured 6 contracts with farms, doing
checkups etc, making sure that animals didn't get sick, rather than just treating them once it was too late. He wanted money to buy new stocks of drugs for the animals and we
decided to give him the full amount that he asked for.
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