Thread by @jspujji

She broke every rule and turned $70K into a $30 BILLION company

One my favorite Bootstrapped GIANTS of all time 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

1/ Judith Faulkner was born in Moorestown NJ. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother was director of Oregon Physicians for Social responsibility.

They inspired her to do something in healthcare, but Judith followed her love of math first...

2/ Getting her degree in it from Dickinson College, she saw computers were the future went on to get her MS in Computer Science from University of Wisconsin.

She knew she had the skills and passion to build something BIG in healthcare and help a lot of people, but what?

3/ One of her professors had mentioned the need for a program to centralize and track patient information.

Faulkner wrote it herself.

The department immediately saw the promise it held...

4/ In 1979, in a Human Services Computing was founded in a Madison Wisconsin basement with a $6,000 investment from Judy's parents.

She hired 3 part time employees to help build out her app

They got to work...

5/ After 4+ years of development and another $64K, she had created the first electronic medical records system:

Epic - named for the tales and legends it would track about patient health...

6/ Ahead of its time, Epic took another 2 years before the company hit $1M in revenue.

Judy was known for high standards, determination and a "yes if" culture.

They were on the right track but growth wasn't huge, yet...

7/ In 1990, the business took off. With the PC revolution, every doctor and hospital started using computers and the EMR and Billing were the "hit" product.

She made sure Epic selected their clients as much as they chose Epic.

The product sold itself.

8/ Judy resisted buyout offers, competitive threats (e.g., MSFT, Oracle) while building a unique culture in the midwest.

One of my favorite stories of this is of how they landed Kaiser Permanente against all odds...

9/ In 2003, Epic had sales just north of $110MM and about 900 employees.

Cerner, their chief rival, was about 3x that size.

They were the final 2 in competition for the KP contract...

10/ It was the biggest in health record history at $4B+

A team of doctors, nurses, and IT execs toured the country to check out Cerner setups.

There was only 1 Epic hospital on the itinerary...

11/ Cerner selected who they could and couldn't talk to, but Epic let them roam free.

"Epic treated you like a colleague, not a customer. They don't sell you"

That was the deciding factor. Epic won the deal!

12/ But Kaiser wasn't quite ready to sign. Since Epic was relatively small, KP asked for equity in the company.

Judy shot off a two letter response: "no"

Since then, KP has become Epic's largest customer. Epic, now the market leader, has grown ~20% each year since.

13/ Epic is an ideal model of bootstrapped success:

• No any major acquisitions, ever.
• They invest >32% of their revenue in R&D
• Are completely founder/employee owned.

What has this led to?

14/ Today, Epic has over $3.3BN in revenue and is super profitable (as it always has been.)

It powers over 250 M electronic medical records and >54% of US EMR's are held in Epic's software.

Epic's team is 10K+ mostly in a large HQ in Verona, Wisconsin.

15/ Epic's culture has been described as "idealistic"

• stay private to focus only on patients + doctors
• developers first
• have lots of fun

Its campus includes castles, harry potter fantasy land and a train station.

Dresscode? "Wear clothes if you will see other people"

16/ At 78 years old, Judith Faulkner actively runs the company which just celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019.

Forbes estimates her net worth at $6BN.

17/ Sources:
beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-inf…
forbes.com/sites/zinamouk…
findorff.com/common-materia…
forbes.com/sites/katiejen…
fundinguniverse.com/company-histor…
madison.com/ct/news/local/…

18/ I love this story because it reminds me there is no "right" way to build.

1) She was a female founder in the 80s!
2) An engineer who never sold
3) In the midwest, in healthcare (not tech)
4) Made her culture people 1st
5) She outlasted nearly everyone...

Just incredible!

19/ If you enjoyed this thread, follow me
@JSPujji

I tweet Bootstrapped Giant stories like this every week

Like this one about the early days at Canva:

https://twitter.com/jspujji/status/1428785888306163714?s=20

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