VIDEO: GoHealth Co-Founder Brandon Cruz

–February 2016 Founders’ Stories —

How this entrepreneur has found consistent growth in an ever-changing healthcare landscape

Our February 2016 guest was Brandon Cruz of GoHealth, a software company that builds solutions for the future of healthcare.

Over the past 15 years, GoHealth has evolved to help people find and manage their healthcare coverage. The company has grown to over 1,000 employees. In 2013, GoHealth was included as one of the 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work, and was ranked by Built in Chicago as a Top 100 Digital Company. In 2014, GoHealth was named to Deloitte’s 2014 North America Technology Fast 500.

In this edition of Chicago Founders’ Stories, we hear about how Brandon made his quest to help individuals pay less for healthcare into a profitable business, and how he believes GoHealth will change healthcare for the better.

We think you’ll enjoy this great episode about a fascinating company.

Content Breakdown:

0:00 Introduction and backstory

9:53 How to tackle a big idea, especially when you’re not an expert in the market

17:28 The origin of GoHealth and how 2005 was “the year things started to take off”

23:46 Why, at first, GoHealth decided not to raise money — and why making conservative growth estimates helped the company

32:53 GoHealth’s long-term goal

33:57 Q+A

Essential Quotes:

• “Going from 50 employees to 100 is the hardest time…because you’re changing everything at once.” Tweet this
• “Bottom line: if you scale really fast, you’re going to waste money.” Tweet this
• “You have to expect [mistakes] to happen.” Tweet this
• “What we want is to change healthcare for the better.” Tweet this
• “People are going to become shoppers and consumers [of healthcare] and that will bring prices down.” Tweet this
• “When your gut tells you the market’s already mature, don’t jump into something that you know is about to hit a wall.” Tweet this

This video is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You can view details of this license here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode