Bright Health turned its member app into telehealth anyone could buy, then bought Zipnosis to power it. I was on the leadership team that brought the two companies together, and the app that came out of it earned 4.9 stars.
A deal can close in a day. Two companies only become one when the people from both sides stay and build something together. So I made keeping people the first job, and the work started in a room with both teams in it.
Bright's member app started small. Customer service call data showed members struggled with two things: showing proof of insurance and finding a doctor. So the first release did those two things and nothing else.
Then leadership pointed the app at a much bigger market: telehealth anyone could buy, whether or not they had Bright insurance. I worked with our CMO to build the DocSquad brand, and we tested the concept with people before committing to it. The direction held, and Bright bought Zipnosis, a virtual care company, to power it. That deal is where the hard part started.
Now two companies that had never worked together had to build one app. I was on the leadership team with the CPO, the VP of Product, and the head of engineering, and I argued that keeping people had to come first. I designed and ran two days of workshops in Minneapolis, with 25 people in the room and 12 joining remotely. I mixed Bright and Zipnosis people into the same groups on purpose, so both companies mapped the problems of members and providers together.
That combined team kept going back to the people the app was for. Before redesigning the provider side, we interviewed providers and mapped every step of their work. Near launch, 14 interviews with parents, people who avoid going to the doctor, and telehealth users shaped what came next.
The app that came out of that team let someone answer a few questions about their symptoms and get a treatment plan back from a doctor. It treated thousands of people in its first 12 months, and they rated it 4.9 stars across 2,983 ratings. All of it, from the first release to the 4.9, happened inside a year.
USAA needed $25,000 to start investing. Rivals needed almost nothing. We built a low-cost product that picks your investments through a chat, in plain words. It earned a patent, and members put $500 million in it.