Dr. Moby Kazmi is the President and Co-founder of COPILOT Provider Support Services.
As a very young boy, I was deeply curious about where my father went in the morning and what happened before he came back. I only knew he was a physician and working with pharmaceuticals.
The more I learned about his work, especially with specialty pharmacies, the more interested I was. I was inspired by his level of determination and ability to work so seamlessly with customers. He taught me innumerable lessons; just by being himself, he gave sage advice. This is why I urge everyone entrepreneurial to soak up as much knowledge as they can from their family.
I harbored aspirations of becoming a physician just like him. As a second-year medical student, I was doggedly following my dream of treating patients.
But in my research of specialty pharmacies, I saw a tremendous chance on the horizon (this was when the founder of CuraScript, Don Meffe, sold his company to Express Scripts.) At the same time, I recognized an opportunity to help treat more patients than I could ever have as a doctor at a hospital. The base of knowledge I’d built working with my father along with Meffe’s success story was my first inspiration to look deeper into the industry.
The true marker of success I’ve found to move leaps and bounds is the drive to stay determined through setbacks and the ability to keep pushing forward despite challenges.
Making The Big Commitment
I didn’t want to look back and regret not having at least tried. Now I urge everyone to act with this same conviction. Despite my family’s objections, I decided to take time off from med school to focus on my new business plan.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 20 years, true success isn’t just about reaching the end goal一its about embracing the process. To build capital, I reached out to my friend from college, Nuaman Tyyeb, and convinced him to join me in partnership, teaming up to build a high-touch, patient-centric specialty pharmacy.
The goal was simple: to help patients access medication affordably and improve clinical outcomes. We began to connect with interested investors. After an intense period of hard work, the company flourished. What I learned here is persistence is key to growth. Failure is an inevitable step toward success. You need to fail, get up and fail better the next day.
Don’t rush past the challenges; it’s through those struggles that real growth happens. Only when you value the journey can you fully appreciate the success that follows.
When it became time to sell the business, we held on to the core technology that powered our original success, using it as the foundation for our next venture.
But when I sold my first business, I didn’t run a proper process. I got a large-scale offer, was dazzled by it and jumped at the opportunity to make the kind of money that was on the table. In retrospect, I wish I had kept my head and run a process with multiple bidders to leverage a better deal.
When it came time to sell my second business, I did things differently. I employed a banker, ran a process and courted multiple interested parties. This time, I was able to make a more informed decision.
You want to look for a partnership where one plus one equals three. What I learned is the right partner brings access to a different perspective and a larger network, creating a synergy that propels each partner further than they can alone. However, you want to be smart about the specifics. Retaining a significant equity stake keeps you invested in your own company’s future success.
Overcome Early Challenges With Clear Differentiation
Starting a business from scratch, especially in a complex field like specialty pharmacy, is daunting. Specialty pharmacies aren’t the same as your average corner CVS or Walgreens, they deal in high-cost, complex medications for chronic and rare conditions. There are significant insurance hurdles, benefit verifications and prior authorizations to navigate, along with other challenges.
Looking back, one thing I capitalized on early was the understanding that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to be innovative. In my case, I drew inspiration from a number of others in the field, especially Edward Hensley, who co-founded a company called AssistRx that provides hub solutions to pharma.
I looked at what Hensley was doing and saw the potential to enter the space from my own vantage point. This discovery helped spark the idea for COPILOT and allowed me to find a market of my own, providing services that differentiated our company. At COPILOT, we developed proprietary software that electrified the reimbursement process. By leveraging technology to speed up key parts of the reimbursement process, we created new efficiencies that set us apart.
Be A Master of One, Then A Jack Of All Trades
Because of my background in specialty pharmacy work and passion for medicine, I was driven to the field and able to see opportunities that others couldn’t catch. After that, I needed to gain competency in areas I never thought I’d need to educate myself in, like business development, sales, marketing and managing operations.
The lesson is to focus on mastering one area that you are deeply interested in before taking on the other pieces of a business. Being a ‘jack of all trades’ off the bat can lead to failure if you don’t have deep expertise in at least one key area.
With any new venture, it’s imperative to observe what others are doing and find ways to carve out your own niche. Then focus on ways to drive efficiency and improve outcomes for consumers. How can you be different? Make your value proposition unique. That’s the key to standing out.
At the end of the day, a decent idea with great execution has a chance to be successful, but a great idea with poor execution will be a lost cause. It all comes down to execution一which I’ll cover more in part two.
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