This executive search is for a private equity-backed, revenue-generating, 7-year-old high-growth company that represents the next generation in healthcare innovation—PatientsLikeMe brings together patients in e-communities who create insights on their diseases and treatments by sharing information that improve their conditions. At the same time, these insights bring value to large pharma and biotech companies, influencing the way they develop and deploy drugs. With more than 100,000 registered consumer patients, PatientsLikeMe re-balances the healthcare system, ultimately returning power to the patient.
BSG Team Ventures is retained to identify the VP of Product, an expert in e-community consumer acquisition, engagement, and retention. With current pharma customers like Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis, the Company’s goal is to grow to 2+ million registered users in the next several years. This role will lead consumer online acquisition, experience & engagement, serving as the internal voice of the consumer.
MORE COMPANY DETAIL:
The roots of the company are anchored in one of three brothers who developed ALS, a neuromuscular disease that ultimately proves fatal. Ben and Jamie wanted to do all they could to help their brother Stephen, and—leveraging their prior career experience and entrepreneurial leanings—decided to try to help their brother gain insights from other patients with ALS in order to improve the understanding of how the disease progresses and what might be done to ease and improve one’s condition. And so was born PatientsLikeMe, a health data-sharing platform. The Heywood family’s fight to save Stephen has been chronicled in the book His Brother’s Keeper as well as the documentary “So Much So Fast.” For more, preview an interesting short video piece on their story here.
The Role
As VP Product, this consumer web expert needs to have the following 4 experiences as builder-leader:
- Success in companies whose mission is to acquire & develop vibrant online B2C relationships with consumers who are drawn to affinity groups and online associations
- Ownership & leadership of the entire consumer lifecycle and product roadmap, from acquisition through engagement & retention
- Strong grow-it/scale-it-stage experience, having grown companies or divisions from at least $10M to 25M or more in revenues
- Prior track record of recruiting A-caliber teams with the skills and experiences required to deliver a world-class web-based consumer experience
Companies that might be part of this executive’s career progress (although less likely their most current position) include horizontal social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), online affinity groups (Eons, Weightwatchers, sports fan communities like FanIQ, etc.), social commerce properties (BuyWithMe, Gilt, Groupon), or social gaming destination sites (Gamesville, Worldwinner, Zynga).
Below is a bubble diagram outlining key career & functional attributes critical to success for this role:
