How do you test a blood testing business, when none of the co-founders come from a clinical background? What happens when your entire investor pipeline disappears overnight? What do you do when customers just aren't buying?  And what's it like scaling a health tech startup from 0 to 130 staff, and over a 100k customers? 

The person to ask is Eliot Brooks, co-founder of Thriva and former COO. We spoke the week Eliot stepped down to make space to explore  new entrepreneurial endeavours; after 7 years spent building the company.

Thriva have raised £11m so far, including £6m raised in 2019, and £4m in 2020 based on growth rates at the time of 100% year on year. 

In 2022 they were number 7 on the Financial Time’s list of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies. 

In this episode we asked Eliot about: 

• His path into entrepreneurship, and where the idea for Thriva came from
• How you test a health tech business in the early stages…. Can you be lean and agile? Do you need totally different approaches?
• Scaling a business- Expectation vs reality, what were some of the early guesses that had to evolve as they grew… 
• Lessons learned fundraising as first time founders
• His plan to step down: why now? How do you phase yourself out as a founder?
• And much more…

Links

• Give Thriva try