How NYC twins built a telehealth platform after a $500K startup setback
Twin brothers Zachary and Elias Dorf thought they’d found the perfect business opportunity.Instead, they spent nearly $500,000 and the better part of a year building an online telehealth business focused on eyelash treatments that didn’t take off. Five years later, the technology they built and the lessons they learned became the foundation for Bask Health, a New York-based platform that says it has supported a substantial volume of telehealth transactions and helped businesses reach patients at scale.Bask Health provides behind-the-scenes tools for companies building telehealth services, including connections with doctors and pharmacies, intake questionnaires, payments, and patient and order management.
The company says demand for those tools has grown.The Dorf brothers were already entrepreneurs before Bask Health.During the pandemic, they built a successful e-commerce business selling masks and in-demand supplies.
When it came time to figure out what to do next, they spotted what looked like another promising opportunity in Latisse.This FDA-approved treatment can help people grow longer, thicker eyelashes.At the time, the brothers saw relatively few other companies selling it online.
But there was a big problem, Latisse is a prescription medication.Selling it meant building much more than another e-commerce website.
The brothers needed systems for prescriptions, consultations, payments, pharmacy and patient management.They report spending nearly $500,000 putting all of those pieces together. The eyelash business didn’t perform as well as they’d hoped.
But the systems they’d built turned out to be valuable in a way they hadn’t expected.Soon, other entrepreneurs were approaching the brothers for help launching their own telehealth businesses. Initially, Zachary and Elias worked with them as consultants.
But after signing three clients, they wondered why they were building the same systems over and over again.That’s when they decided to turn ...