🩺 Doctolib - The All-In-One Solution for Independent Healthcare Professionals
Overlooked #146
Hi, it’s Alexandre from Eurazeo. I’m investing in seed & series A European vertical solutions (vSol) which are industry specific solutions aiming to become industry OS and combining dynamics from SaaS, marketplaces and fintechs. Overlooked is a weekly newsletter about venture capital and vSol.
Today, I’m sharing a deep-dive into Doctolib which started as a booking management system for doctors and which is now an all-in-one solution for them including telemedicine, messaging and EHR.
I collaborated with Contrary Research to write this post. It’s a great place to find deep-dives of private startups like Ramp, Knowde, Faire, Anduril, Algolia and now… Doctolib.
Full disclaimer: Eurazeo is a proud Doctolib’s shareholder. I’m not the one in the team working closely with the company. I wrote this deep-dive independently leveraging only public sources. It reflects my views and opinions and does not necessarily reflect the views or positions of my employer.
In Europe, healthcare is one of the largest but least digitised sector. Healthcare accounted for 12.3% of GDP in 2021 and this percentage is consistently growing (vs. 11.2% of GDP in 2018) driven by an ageing population and increasing medical costs to support more innovative medical treatments.
Healthcare is one of the least digitised sectors (cf. McKinsey Industry Digitization Index) for three main reasons: (i) healthcare professionals are reluctant to use technology, (ii) the healthcare tech stack is extremely fragmented (e.g. hospitals are using on average 10 to 16 systems of records) and (iii) States are heavily involved in the sector slowing down the adoption of technology as they are partly in charge of covering healthcare expenses (e.g. the NHS in the UK or la Sécurité Sociale in France).
When Zocdoc started in 2007 in the U.S. to streamline booking management for primary care, many copycat startups were created in Europe to replicate this playbook. The model was seen as a great starting point to digitise healthcare because (i) independent doctors are easier to convince than hospitals, (ii) the booking management system is a complementary product to the Electronic Health Record (EHR) they use as an Operating System (OS) to run their practice and (iii) the booking management system has a clear return on investment for doctors increasing sales and reducing admin costs.
Doctolib was amongst these copycats. It started in France in 2013. For many years, it remained laser-focused on selling its booking management system in France and Germany in order to reach sufficient market share to become the de-facto solution for patients to book their primary care appointments creating a strong network effect.
With Covid, Doctolib started to expand its product suite to become an all-in-one solution for healthcare professionals with an EHR, a telemedicine platform and a messaging app on top of its initial booking management system. It also opened a third country in Europe with Italy and became the most valuable French startup.
I divided this deep-dive into multiple sections:
Founding Story
Product
Market, Business Model & Competition
Traction & Valuation
Key Opportunities & Risks
Key Learnings for vSol Founders and Operators
Four Questions to Antoine Freysz on Doctolib’s History
Founding Story
Doctolib’s cofounder and CEO Stanislas Niox-Chateau was born in Paris and grew up in Boulogne-Billancourt in the suburbs of Paris. He grew-up stuttering and had to work intensively with a speech pathologist to reduce his disability. As a distraction, Stanislas quickly started to play tennis, training extremely hard to become a professional tennis player. At 12, he won an international tennis tournament. Stanislas used to play against players who will become well-known such as Gaël Monfis or Jeremy Chardy. Unfortunately, at 17, after a back injury, he had to stop his professional tennis career.
Stanislas refocused his will power and hard-work on his studies. In 2006, he was accepted in the most prestigious business school in France called HEC. After his studies, in 2010, he joined Otium. At the time, it was a startup studio co-led by Pierre Edouard Stérin and Antoine Freysz. Antoine Freyzs recruited him after attending an oral presentation by HEC students in which they were presenting startup projects. When most students were showcasing 20 slides as they were asked, Stanislas had prepared a 300-slide deck to pitch a beauty appointment platform. Antoine said: "He had met with beauty professionals and came up with a complete business model for a beauty appointment booking site.”
At Otium, he contributed to the launch of a booking platform for beauty professionals called Balinea and worked on the turnaround of a restaurant booking platform called the Fork which was exited to Tripadvisor in May 2014 for $150 million. At the time, it was a massive success for the young French tech ecosystem.
In July 2013, Stanislas decided to leave Otium to build his own company. In September 2013, he cofounded Doctolib with Thomas Landais, Jessy Bernal, Ivan Schneider and Steve Abou-Rjeily. Doctolib was another booking management platform. This time, Stanislas decided to go after the healthcare industry. When it launched its MVP in November 2013 with 50 doctors, Doctolib was late to the party. A dozens of French startups were trying to replicate Zocdoc’s success in France including companies like MonDocteur, Keldoc, Rendez-vous-facile, ClicRDV or DocMe. MonDocteur had already raised €2.4 million from a French corporate called Lagardère and Keldoc €700K from business angels.
In 2014, Doctolib started to out-execute its competitors. It convinced 1.5K healthcare professionals and 15 hospitals. It raised a €1 million seed round from Kerala and The Fork’s cofounder Bertrand Jelensperger in February and an additional €4 million series A from PriceMinister cofounders Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet and Pierre Krings. Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet said: “We talked for thirty minutes, but after five, I already knew I was going to invest. He knew all the figures for the medical sector by heart, he had all the answers.” At the end of the year, it was clear that Doctolib and MonDocteur were the only two contenders to win the category.
In the following years, Doctolib continued to over-perform its competitors. It raised a €18 million series B from Accel in October 2015 and a €35 million series C from Eurazeo and BPI in November 2017. It partnered with the AP-HP which is a public hospital group managing 8 hospitals in Paris and 9K healthcare professionals in May 2017. It started its international expansion with Germany in May 2016. At the end of 2016, Doctolib had a 65% market share compared with 35% for MonDocteur and 10% for remaining players.
In July 2018, Doctolib reached market dominance in France by acquiring its most direct competitor MonDocteur for c.€45 million. In retrospect, Doctolib beat MonDocteur for several reasons. It raised more capital so that they could overspend in sales and marketing to win market shares. It had a stronger commercial team and go to market organisation. It had a SaaS-enabled-marketplace model like The Fork with a strong B2C brand in which patients go to book their medical appointment. Lastly, Doctolib focused only on building the best booking management system when MonDocteur had a more comprehensive suite of products for doctors but a weaker booking management system.
In 2019, Doctolib continued its expansion raising a €150 million series D led by General Atlantic at a valuation over €1 billion to pursue its geographical expansion in Germany and to double down on its telemedicine product that had launched in January.
With covid, 2020 propelled Doctolib into another dimension. On the one-hand, its telemedicine product took-off massively. In March 2020, Doctolib launched it in Germany. In April 2020, Doctolib started to offer it for free in France. In five weeks, more than 31K doctors used the service for over 2.5 million telemedicine consultations. On the other hand, Doctolib became part of the national healthcare infrastructure like Palantir did in the UK and in the US. It became the main solution in France in the covid vaccination campaign to book covid tests and vaccine shots.
In the past 3 years, Doctolib pursued its development combining organic and external growth funded by a large €500 million round in debt and equity announced in March 2022 at a €5.8 billion valuation. On the product side, it launched its EHR called Doctolib Médecin in March 2021 and a free messaging app for healthcare professionals called Doctolib Teams in March 2022. It acquired Tanker in January 2022 to strengthen its security stack for healthcare data, Vettore Rinascimento in Sep. 2022 to have an EHR for healthcare facilities and Siilo in March 2023 to double down on Doctolib Teams. It also expanded in Italy in October 2021 with the acquisition of a local player called Dottori.it.
Today, Doctolib has over 340K healthcare professionals using Doctolib Agenda, 5K using Doctolib Médecin and 70 million patients accounts in France, Germany and Italy.
Product
Doctolib offers 6 main products which are fully interconnected: (i) Doctolib Patient, (ii) Doctolib Médecin, (iii) Doctolib Team, (iv) Doctolib Téléconsultation, (v) Doctolib Lecteur and (vi) Doctolib Hôpital.
Doctolib Patient - The Booking Management System
Doctolib Patient was Doctolib’s initial product. It’s a booming management system for doctors. It has three main benefits: (i) it saves doctors one hour and thirty minutes per week in administrative tasks, (ii) it reduces missed appointments by 60% and (iii) it increases doctors’ revenues by attracting new patients as Doctolib attracts 70 million patients every month on its website.
Doctolib Patient is a SaaS-enabled marketplace. It does not monetise via a take-rate when an appointment is made on the platform but via a €139 monthly SaaS fee paid by doctors. As a result, doctors don’t hesitate to refer their patients to Doctolib to book their appointments instead of calling the medical practice. Doctolib has a strong defensibility thanks to its marketplace dynamic: it has become the go-to place for anyone who wants to book a medical appointment.
Patients will go on Doctolib to book their medical appointments. Doctors will manage their agenda on Doctolib Patient. Automatic SMS and email reminders are sent to reduce no-shows. Doctors can also use Doctolib Patient to communicate with their patients and share documents like prescriptions. Doctolib Patient is connected with all the EHRs on the market.
Doctolib Médecin - The Electronic Health Records
Doctolib Médecin is an all-in-one solution for doctors to manage their medical practice. It offers: (i) patient management with all the medical information and historical records, (ii) document management to reduce manual entry or double entry, (iii) a consultation space to be more efficient while you treat patients, (iv) invoicing with automatic transmission to the French Social Security which is a State organism reimbursing some medical costs. Doctolib Médecin has industry specific features that are hard to replicate for horizontal products such as pre-filled templates based on the symptoms observed by the doctor, a connection with a drugs library to give out a prescription, AI to identify from emails received a patient conditions and the nature of attached documents and the ability to directly send invoices to be reimbursed. It’s a €135 monthly SaaS that doctors will pay on top of Doctolib Patient.
Doctolib Team - The Messaging App for Healthcare Professionals
Doctolib Team is a secured and instant messaging app between healthcare professionals to exchange medical documents and collaborate on treating patients. It has a directory with 400K healthcare professionals in France and it’s a secured platform encrypting medical data. It’s a free product that Doctolib uses mainly as a lead generation mechanism to have exposure to doctors who are not yet customers.
Doctolib Téléconsultation - The Telemedicine App
Doctolib Téléconsultation is a telemedicine product. It’s integrated into Doctolib Patient and Doctolib Médecin for a seamless experience on both the doctor and patient sides. It also offers an integrated online payment method and a secured document sharing solution. It’s used by 33K doctors and 6 million patients. It’s a €79 monthly SaaS that doctors will also pay on top of Doctolib Patient.
Doctolib Lecteur - The Medical Card Reader
In France, everyone has a medical card called la Carte Vitale that is linked to Social Security. Doctolib Lecteur is a card reader for the Carte Vitale. It’s a modern card reader that can either be connected to a computer or to a smartphone (which is key for at-home care). Doctors can use the reader coupled with the Doctolib Pro mobile app to generate an invoice and transmit it to the State for patient reimbursement. It’s a €29 monthly SaaS that doctors will also pay on top of Doctolib Patient.
Doctolib Hopital - A Patients Portal for Hospitals
Doctolib Hopital is a dedicated offering for hospitals. It’s used by 260 hospitals in France. It packages Doctolib’s different products (booking management system, telemedicine, messaging app) into a single platform adapted for hospitals. It helps the hospital secretariat to be more efficient with a collaborative agenda for all the doctors as well as with pre-qualification forms that patients have to fill before their appointments. Within the hospital, it facilitates coordination between doctors thanks to Doctolib’s messaging app.
Market
Customers
Doctolib is used by three categories of personas: (i) healthcare professionals, (ii) administrative staff and (iii) healthcare facilities.
For healthcare professionals, Doctolib adresses all regulated specialties (general practitioners, dentists, osteopaths, pharmacists, opticians, psychologists, etc.). Doctolib can sell them their different products. Healthcare professionals are decision makers when they’re independent. If they have an admin staff, they can delegate some tasks. Otherwise, they will be the most heavy users of the solution.
For secretaries and assistants, they support healthcare professionals in their day to day, supporting in managing healhcare professionals’ agenda and the follow-up tasks they need to do after the medical consultation (e.g. prescription, payments).
For healthcare facilities, they can decide to implement Doctolib to simplify access to healthcare for their patients and to increase the productivity of their healthcare professionals. They will be decision makers for the entire facility. They’re also the biggest beneficiaries of Doctolib Teams which streamline communications between healthcare professionals.
Go-To-Market Strategy
Doctolib has four different go-to-market motions: (i) a field sales team to sell its booking management system Doctolib Patient, (ii) an inside sales team to sell its booking management system Doctolib Patient, (iii) an enterprise sales team to sell to hospitals and (iv) a upsell team to upsell to doctors using Doctolib Patient the EHR Doctolib Médecin and the telemedicine product.
Doctolib started with field sales and managed to crack efficient field sales on an ACV below €2K which is extremely hard for three main reasons. First, Doctolib is a great and sticky product with usage and retention rates above what you can see in SMBs. It allowed Doctolib to sustain a strong payback period. Second, Doctolib’s field sales are full-stack in the sense that they do everything from hunting to closing and onboarding. Each field sale has a predefined geographical sector in which he will have full autonomy. Third, Doctolib is a sales driven organisation with a culture combining aggressiveness with excellent customer support. Doctolib’s sales people are known to do whatever it takes to book a meeting with doctors with an internal motto that can be roughly translated to “if you chase him out the door, he will come back through the window.”
As it grew and became a mainstream solution used by patients, Doctolib added an inside sales team to process inbounds from doctors. It also added an enterprise sales motion to sign hospitals which are on longer and more complex sales cycles as well as an upsell team when it released its telemedicine product in 2019 and EHR system Doctolib Médecin in 2021.
Market Sizing
Doctolib is present in France, Germany and Italy. In France, there are 228K healthcare professionals. In Germany, there are 416K healthcare professionals. In Italy, there are 403K healthcare professionals.
When it started, Doctolib was going after an initial €273 million ARR market (€99 per month initial pricing for Doctolib Patient in France multiplied by the 228K doctors in France). Overtime, Doctolib increased its addressable market to €4.5 billion by opening new geographies (Italy with 403K doctors and Germany with 416K doctors), increasing prices for Doctolib Patient (from €99 per month to €129 per month) and expanding its product suite (adding Doctolib Médecin, Doctolib Reader and Doctolib Telemedicine).
Competition
Doctolib has direct and indirect competitors on its three main products: its booking management system, its EHR and its telemedicine platform. It has competitors in the geographies in which it operates (France, Italy and Germany) but also in the geographies it does not operate (e.g. Zocdoc in the US, Docplanner in Poland, Kry in the Nordics).
Most of the time, the booking management system and the telemedicine platform are equipment markets in the sense the doctors had nothing before Doctolib while the EHR is a replacement market with many old-school and local solutions (on-premise, poor UX, closed ecosystems, etc.).
Zocdoc
Zocdoc is a US-based booking management system started in 2007. It raised $376 million in total as of March 2023 including a $150 million growth financing from Francisco Partners in 2021 and the company was valued $1.8 billion in a funding round in 2015. Zocdoc only operates in the US taking into account local specificities like the importance of booking an appointment with a doctor who accepts your insurance and the possibility to review doctors which Doctolib does not do. Zocdoc recently introduced two product developments: it expanded into telemedicine and is building a marketplace by giving access to its product to developers via APIs. Zocdoc never tried to expand beyond the US but it’s a player that will be hard to disrupt for Doctolib if it wants to expand in this country.
Kry
Kry is a Sweden-based digital powered primary and secondary care clinic chain started in 2015. It raised $729 million in total as of March 2023 including a $160 million series D extension in July 2022. It started with a telemedicine product for primary care before expanding into secondary care (mental health, women health) and into brick and mortar clinics. Kry is operating in Sweden, Norway, UK, Germany and France. In France and Germany, it competes directly with Doctolib on telemedicine.
Docplanner
Docplanner is a Poland-based booking management system for doctors started in 2011. It raised $141 million in total including a $90 million series E in May 2019. Docplanner operates in 13 countries in Europe (Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal and Turkey) and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Chile). It has 210K doctors and 90 million patients use its solution every month. Doctolib competes directly with Docplanner in Italy and Germany.
Traction
Doctolib is used by over 340K healthcare professionals. It added 40K healthcare professionals in 2022 (13% YoY growth) and 100K healthcare professionals in 2021 (50% YoY growth). In 2022, Doctolib’s growth of healthcare professionals suffered from its decision to remove non regulated healthcare professionals from its platform (5.7K customers removed).
Valuation
Doctolib started in 2013. It took Doctolib 6 years to reach unicorn valuation when it raised a €150 million series D led by General Atlantic in March 2019. In March 2022, Doctolib raised a €500 million round in equity and debt with General Atlantic and Eurazeo valuing the business at €5.8 billion.
In January 2023, Doctolib disclosed that 340,000 healthcare professionals use Doctolib Patient and 5,000 use Doctolib Médecin. If all these healthcare professionals were independent and were paying Doctolib’s full price it would imply that Doctolib generates €575 million in ARR (340K doctors paying €139 per month for Doctolib Patient, 5K doctors paying €135 per month for Doctolib Médecin). It’s a massively overestimated figure as Doctolib increased its prices overtime and Doctolib also works with hospitals which pay less per doctor but it would mean that Doctolib is trading at a 10x EV/ARR multiple which is a 85% premium compared to publicly listed vertical SaaS EV/NTM median multiple.
Key Opportunities
Upselling the EHR called Doctolib Médecin
In Mar. 2021, Doctolib launched Doctolib Médecin and in Jan. 2023, Doctolib announced that 5K healthcare professionals were already using Doctolib Médecin. Upselling Doctolib Médecin to doctors already using Doctolib Patient is Doctolib’s main growth opportunity in the next couple of years as it almost doubles the ACV it can generate per doctor and it can be achieved with capital efficiency.
Geographical Expansion
In 2016, Doctolib started its geographical expansion beyond France, opening Germany. In 2021, it doubled down by opening the Italian market acquiring a local player called Dottori.it. Going forward, Doctolib could expand into other European countries either via organic or external growth.
M&A
Since its inception, Doctolib has acquired four companies: Mondocteur in 2018 to consolidate the French market, Dottori.it in 2021 to open the Italian market, Tanker in 2022 to improve its data encryption and Siilo in 2023 to strengthen its Doctolib Teams product. Doctolib has also a structured internal M&A team with 5+ people led by a former executive director at Morgan Stanley called Mathieu Gattaz. Going forward, Doctolib could perform acquisitions following three different strategies: product expansion, geographical expansion and market share consolidation.
Becoming the Operating System for Doctors
With its booking management system, its telemedicine module, its communication platform and its EHR, Doctolib is well placed to become the operating system for doctors in Europe. At some point, it will make sense for Doctolib to open a marketplace to let third party apps to access this operating system (e.g. accounting, AI for diagnostic, etc.).
Key Risks
Regulation
In France, the healthcare system is highly regulated with a model in which the State reimburses healthcare costs. With Covid, Doctolib became part of the healthcare national backbone managing bookings for the vaccination campaigns and offering a telemedicine solution when in-person visits were impossible. There is a low probability risk that the State tries to regulate Doctolib’s revenues especially since it has a monopolistic position on healthcare consultations’ bookings.
Constrained TAM Expansion
It’s hard for Doctolib to expand its addressable market by opening new geographies or by selling its products to professions adjacent to healthcare professionals.
On new geographies, Doctolib needs to become the dominant booking management solution to have the defensibility from the network effects of its SaaS-enabled marketplace model. It’s expensive to reach this position. Doctolib managed to do it in France. In Germany and in Italy, Doctolib is making strong progress in this direction. Opening another geography can be extremely costly to win the market especially since most countries have now local booking management systems.
On selling to adjacent verticals, Doctolib could theoretically sell its solution to non regulated healthcare professionals. It did it in France but had to backpedal removing 5.7K customers in October 2022 to refocus on regulated healthcare professionals to avoid bad press from professionals with practices that can be controversial.
Summary
Doctolib is an all-in-one solution for independent healthcare professionals and hospitals in France, Germany and Italy. It started with a booking management system before expanding into telemedicine and EHR. Doctolib has a strong built-in defensibility thanks to its network effect coming from the SaaS enabled marketplace model of its booking-management-system. It won the market in France and is about to win it in Germany and Italy being used by over 340K healthcare professionals and 70 million patients. Going forward, Doctolib has two main growth levers which are geographical expansion and product expansion.
Key Learnings for vSol Founders & Operators
Doctolib is nailing field-sales for local businesses. It’s a hard to crack go-to-market motion because field sales are too expensive, don’t scale and don’t make sense economically compared to the ACV that a vSaaS can generate from a local business. Doctolib’s success is based on 3 key ingredients:
Doctolib’s field salesmen are full-stack. Doctolib gives them a geographical area to cover and they’re in charge of sourcing, closing and implementation.
Doctolib is a sales-centric organisation. Doctolib’s CEO was the company first sales and did everything in his power to close as many doctors as possible, travelling across France to train his salespeople. At Doctolib, a sales is a noble role, which is rare for a startup in France. Many Doctolib’s top executives started as salespeople with the promise that it was the best way to climb the ranks in the organisation.
Doctolib has almost no-churn on its booking management system. Instead of targeting a payback below 9 months as most SaaS targeting independent businesses do, Doctolib was able to support 12-18 months payback period without deteriorating too much its unit economics.
Doctolib waited 7 years to move from a booking platform to becoming an ERP for healthcare professionals. I don’t view this as slow product velocity but more as strong focus on gaining the market in France and Germany to have the defensibility of its marketplace. It’s a great example proving that vSaaS should not over-expand their product in their early days. You should reach product market fit with your first product and capture as much market share as possible before expanding your TAM with new products.
Doctolib vs. Docplanner. Docplanner expanded in as many markets as possible while Doctolib stayed laser focused on winning the French market for 3 years. I believe that Doctolib’s strategy of becoming the de facto booking management system in a reduced number of markets is strictly superior to Docplanner’s geographical over-expansion. If you win a market, you create a long term defensibility thanks to the network effects from the SaaS-enabled marketplace model becoming the default solution to book a medical appointment.
Doctolib recruited A-players from day 1. Several employees who joined when the team was smaller than 100 people scaled with the organisation and became key top executives like Agnès Bazin (chief development officer), Arthur Thirion (managing director) or Julien Meraud (chief product officer).
As a vSaaS, don’t start by replacing the system of records of the industry that you’re trying to disrupt but start by selling a greenfield solution with a clear ROI. Otherwise, it’s going to be too expensive both in terms of product development and customer acquisition. Doctolib did not start by an EHR but by a booking management system that was easier to build and sell. Today, Doctolib is selling its own EHR but it has already a customer base for its other products that can be upsold and it had the time/financial resources to build a complete and superior EHR.
Doctolib has been using M&A in recent years for three main reasons: market consolidation, geographical expansion and product expansion. In Jul. 2018, it acquired MonDocteur to remove its most direct competitor in France and consolidate the market. In Dec. 2021, it expanded geographically in Italy by acquiring Dottori.it. In Mar. 2023, it acquired Siilo to make its messaging product Doctolib for Teams more robust.
Doctolib is a perfect example of how a vSaaS can increase its TAM as it scales the business. It relied on 4 key levers: (i) price increase (Doctolib Patient cost €99 per month or €1.2k per year when Doctolib started and costs today €139 per month or €1.7k per year), (ii) ICP expansion (opening many medical professions as it scales and expanding from independents to hospitals), (iii) product expansion (today, if a doctor uses all the products offered by Doctolib, it pays €372 per month or €4.5k per year) and (iv) geographical expansion (in Germany and in Italy).
Doctolib won in a market which had a strong competitive intensity. When Doctolib launched, it had 30+ competitors with a mix of large corporates (Pages Jaunes, Vivendi, Lagardère), bootstrapped projects and startups. Today, Doctolib has almost a monopolistic positioning thanks to the winner takes-all-dynamic of its marketplace. It won for several reasons:
Doctolib built a stronger team especially in the sales department. Stanislas recruited extremely talented salespeople who started at Doctolib by going door to door, convinced by the vision of the project and by the perspective that they will quickly become managers in the organisation.
Doctolib raised more capital than its peers and raised with professional investors (vs. corporates). It was key to have more resources and become the dominant player in a market with a winner takes all dynamics.
Doctolib was narrowly focused on building the best booking management system for doctors when competitors were also building other bricks for doctors and/or for patients. It helped them to save 30-50% of the time they were spending on admin tasks and to reduce no-shows by up to 75%.
Stanislas Niox-Chateau who is Doctolib’s cofounder and CEO has built his success on 4 key principles: (i) have a long-term mission, (ii) be passionated, (iii) learn everyday to reach excellence and (iv) work hard. This principles come from his love for tennis and the fact that he has always fought a stuttering.
Stanislas draws many parallels between sports and entrepreneurship. "I used to be a top-level sportsman, in tennis. There are extremely strong links between entrepreneurship and sport. Firstly, in the work itself, you set yourself goals and work hard to achieve them, like sportsmen and women. Secondly, in the way you constantly question yourself to improve. And finally because it's a marathon, creating a company requires endurance and courage.”
Stanislas’ obsession to improve and work hard comes from his stuttering. “I’ve been stammering since I was a kid. Fifteen years ago I could barely get bread from the bakery. I used to throw up before every speech. My main strength comes from there, it is my best school of life. It makes me question myself every day, it forces me to work twice as hard as others, and to listen.”
Doctolib has become more than a Zocdoc’s copycat. Doctolib started as a copycat of a US based company called Zocdoc and started in a local market which was filled with other Zocdoc’s copycats. Doctolib managed to out-execute everyone in France but has also been able to bring the category forward. Today, Doctolib is a bigger and much more interesting business than Zocdoc. Zocdoc plateaued in the US when Doctolib is on track to become the dominant player in 3 key European markets and has evolved into a rich platform beyond booking management. It reminds me of Meituan in China which started as a Groupon copycat before becoming a top super-app in China.
Four Questions to Antoine Freysz on Doctolib’s History
With Kerala, Antoine Freysz was the first institutional investor in Doctolib and is still seating on the company’s board. Antoine has a strong track-record in building and investing into startups. He cofounded Otium Capital together with Pierre-Edouard Stérin which at the time was a startup studio. At Otium Ventures, he launched several businesses including NaturaBuy and Balinea. He also worked on La Fourchette’s turnaround until its exit to TripAdvisor. After Otium, Antoine created Kerala which is a pre-seed fund focused on backing top entrepreneurs at inception. Besides Doctolib, Kerala invested into companies like Malt, PlayPlay or Indy.
Antoine is also the best investor I know in Europe when it comes to recruiting. With Kerala, he has been instrumental in setting-up the best recruiting practices and to support its startups to recruit over 200 C-Levels. He recently published an amazing book in French called “La Méthode pour Recruter les Meilleurs” summarising its key learnings on the topic. It’s a goldmine with great general and practical tips on building a recruitment machines to bring A-players into your organisation. If you’re a founder or if you’re interested about recruiting, you should buy it! It’s a great complement to Who: The A Method for Hiring.
Q: What have been the key success factors behind Doctolib’s success?
I would quote 3 main reasons behind Doctolib’s success: (i) customer obsession, (ii) sales aggressiveness and (iii) focus on hiring A-players from day 1.
First, Doctolib built its products with customer-driven insight. It consults with doctors to bring them measurable productivity gains. Doctolib is obsessed with having happy customers and wanting to create a product with a strong usage and a low churn. In the early days, to favour adoption, Doctolib only sold its solution to doctors who were shifting away from their paperback agenda and offered secretary as a service thanks to partnerships with call centers.
Second, Doctolib is a successfully sales-led organisation. Stan [Doctolib’s CEO] was Doctolib’s first salesperson, acting as an example for other employees. Doctolib hired many top salesmen with the promise that they would not only sell but also build their own sales team. Additionally, Doctolib’s sales culture was driven by being extremely close to doctors and their assistants.
Third, Doctolib is obsessed by bringing top talents to the organisation. Initially, Doctolib hired many individuals coming from top French business and engineering school. It has also hired many former entrepreneurs. Today, with the scale, it has become a more diverse organisation.
Q: How did Doctolib crack a go to market motion initially centred around field sales, an expensive startegy to acquire local businesses?
Doctolib’s go to market strategy was hard to crack. On the one hand, it worked because Doctolib was obsessed by having a low churn enabling it to support longer payback periods than what you usually see for SMBs. On the other hand, it worked because Doctolib managed to raise with venture investors who bought into the long term vision to become the de facto solution for medical professions in Europe. These investors were willing to lose money in the short term in order to win the market in the long term.
Q: How did Doctolib add go to market motions overtime?
Doctolib started with field sales to target independent medical professionals. It also sold its solution to public hospitals. It was not a game changer in terms of revenue generation and Doctolib had to slightly adapt its solution to hospital but it had a strong indirect effect in growing Doctolib’s awareness across the doctor sector.
Years after years, Doctolib also added inside sales. It was a natural move as they were able to generate strong inbound leads thanks to world of mouth once they reach a certain market share on a given geography or a given medical profession. Doctolib strengthened this go to market motion during covid when the company could only sell remotely and by starting to use marketing to generate leads.
More recently, Doctolib added a customer success team dedicated at upselling Doctolib Médecin (which is Doctolib’s EHR) to its customer base.
Q: What have been the hardest topics to crack for Doctolib?
On the one hand, cracking the go to market strategy with continuous improvement and with the addition of new go to market motions. Doctolib has also a unique opportunity to introduce product led growth by leveraging its own product suite to generate upsell (e.g. upselling directly Doctolib Médecin from Doctolib Patient or using Doctolib Teams which is a free product as an entry product to sell other products).
On the other hand, expanding to other geographies. Healthcare systems are very different from one country to another. Having a great positioning in 3 key European countries, France, Italy and Germany, in 10 years is a good result. Maybe we could have been faster…
Q: What are Doctolib’s main priorities for the next 36 months?
I’m not the right person to explain the company strategy. I can nevertheless share an important item. Doctolib has opened many product opportunities thanks to its new system of record “Doctolib Médecin”. Catching those opportunities and bringing more value to doctors as well as patients will be key in the coming years.
Thanks to Antoine, Nicolas and Julia for their valuable feedback!
Such a great piece. Insightful as always. So much key learnings for entrepreneurs.
Big fan my friend 🤩