A Better Fit

Prime Minister Mark Carney said earlier this year, “I’m most useful in a crisis. I’m not that good in peacetime.” This was an unusually candid admission for a politician—and a revealing one. It demonstrated an astute awareness of his strengths and weaknesses.

I founded ClearCanvas in 2005 as a typical for-profit corporation. But as I look back on that experience, that structure wasn’t particularly well suited to who I am. It probably magnified my weaknesses more than it amplified my strengths. While I’m extraordinarily grateful that things worked out in the end, one thing became clear to me over time: being a for-profit leader doesn’t energize me. I’m just not wired that way. 

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that running a profitable business is hard. And running a profitable business that is also devoted to improving the common good is even harder, because sometimes those two goals may not be entirely synergistic.

That’s why I decided that CareChorus Health would be a Foundation–a non-profit corporation.

Software non-profits are more common than you might think. Some of the big ones include Signal, The Linux Foundation, Apache Software Foundation and Free Software Foundation. There’s also one in the medical imaging space called the Open Health Imaging Foundation, started by some good people I had met during my ClearCanvas days. And so there are precedents.

There are also good strategic reasons to operate as a foundation. In the consumer healthcare space, it potentially affords you a certain amount of goodwill, as there is occasionally some distrust of for-profit healthcare companies. It also opens up the potential for more diverse funding sources, including government grants, private foundations, and philanthropic capital.

But perhaps most importantly, it fits who I am. That may not be everyone’s reason for choosing a particular structure. But for me, it matters.