Crowd-Fund Your Startup Medical Practice

Investor crowd-funding rules go into effect today so you will be seeing a lot of commentary about them. Optimum candidates for this funding mechanism are those industries with a built-in crowd and immediate cash flow, like restaurants and real estate.

Given the high debt load of medical residents graduating this June, the new regulations come at just the right time. Why not crowd-fund your startup medical practice?

1. It will force you to learn something about bioentrepreneurial finance that you have ignored all these years.

2. Instead of treating patients, now you will be treating patient-owners and maybe then you will start paying attention to them

3. You will be a trailblazer. If you are successful, others will want you to teach them how to do it and you can quit practice to be a consultant, making much more than you could ever make being a primary care provider. Twelve percent of crowd-fundraisers use consultants and most are not successful. But as a doctor, you are used to recommending things that don't work and getting paid for it.

4. You will be accountable to your stockholders and can no longer ignore all those receivables you don't know how to collect.

5. You will get a chance to make a cool pitch video and sharpen your social media skills.

6. You won't have to pay high interest payments to the bank for your startup loan.

7. You can roll up other practices or franchise the model, charging licensing fees.

8. You can tell who is your patient in the supermarket because they are wearing a T-shirt that says, “I own a piece of Dr. Meyers.”

9. You can act like Warren Buffet at your shareholder meeting.

10. You get to fight with activist shareholders.

Investor crowd-funding might be just the thing for internal medicine residents who don't want to work for the Man. It's a perfect patient-funded business model.

Just beware of the crowd noise.