Clipboard Health is an app-based talent marketplace that matches nurses, nursing assistants and other healthcare professionals with facilities that post open shifts. Our easy-to-use app allows qualified healthcare professionals to find and sign up for open shifts at facilities near them. The company’s mission is to lift as many people as possible up the socioeconomic ladder. For more information, visit culture.clipboardhealth.com
As a child of immigrant parents, Wei started out with a mission, and it’s one that hasn’t changed: to find ways to lift people up the socioeconomic ladder. Her initial idea for income-share agreements failed to gain traction with engineers, lawyers, and doctors. Another group Wei started working with was nursing students. It was in the conversations with these soon-to-be nurses that Wei noticed a common thread: they were all very worried about actually being able to get a job after school.
“The idea (for Clipboard Health) morphed into… okay, let me try to help nurses find jobs.” Wei shared with Y Combinator. “Helping them with their resumes, helping them with interviews, finding ways to give them clinical experience… It was hard, but it was the first pivot that was at least into this industry.”
Wei built a nurse-focused job board but discovered a significant issue: staffing agencies dominated the listings who were looking for full-time nuses for their end customers, healthcare facilities and hospitals. Wei shared
The number 1 reason that they would “fail a candidate” is for scheduling. They would say, this nurse is great, but they can only work Monday to Wednesday shifts, but not Thursday to Friday ones. Or they can’t be on-call during the weekend
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This lack of control for nurses sparked an idea: what if nurses could choose the shifts that fit their lives rather than facilities dictating an inflexible schedule?
“At some point, I just called the facilities myself and asked, ‘Do you need the same person to come in every month? Or can I give you two different people to fill up that schedule?’ And they all said ‘Yes, we’re very short staffed, we just really need people.’ And this was before COVID, this is 2018!”
Clipboard Health, a marketplace for connecting nurses with healthcare facilities was born!
Wei tried contacting hospitals directly but struggled to reach the right people. Her cold calls were unsuccessful, with receptionists mistaking her for a job seeker and hanging up. Undeterred, she switched to a more direct approach, making in-person visits to connect with decision-makers at the facilities.
Seven months pregnant at the time, Wei was Ubering from facility to facility to pitch the concept of Clipboard Health. After a month of this, a key puzzle piece fell into place; at a facility in Walnut Creek, she found the right person to talk to.
“This woman… I think she felt sorry for me because I was super pregnant,” Wei notes. “She taught me a lot of the jargon; she was a scheduler and I was, basically, an agency. She decided to give me a chance — she was like: if you can get two people to fill these two shifts this weekend, I’ll hire you on a permanent basis.”
“We filled those shifts,” Wei said with a smile.
That facility signed on to be Clipboard’s first customer; today, Clipboard Health works with over 5,000 facilities, staffing them with nurses, medical assistants, and clinicians.
Clipboard Health began with a humble tool: a spreadsheet. Wei Deng manually matched nurses' availability with hospital needs. Frustrated by slow software development, they pivoted to a quick, short-term solution: texting. Nurses texted their availability, and Wei texted back with matches.
As the platform grew, Clipboard Health adopted a hybrid model – technology to streamline the basics, but with Wei still personally negotiating the best rates for nurses. Finally, as the concept proved itself, Clipboard Health built the robust app-based marketplace it's known for today.
Clipboard Health hit the hockey stick growth following its Series B funding of $50 million in March 2021, followed by Series C funding of $30 million in February 2022.
Clipboard Health is a profitable Unicorn today, having grown 25X in 18 months since March 2021. Clipboard Health operates one of the largest two-sided marketplaces, bringing healthcare professionals (HCPs) and healthcare facilities (HCFs) to improve patient outcomes and the state of healthcare in general. Clipboard Health team is focused on balancing both sides of the market and provide the best matching experience for both the customers, the HCPs and HCFs.
Clipboard Health’s mission has remained the same over years with a focus on lifting as many people up the socioeconomic ladder as possible. Clipboard Health is continuing to invest into core technology that powers credentialing workers, checking their licenses and certifications to onboard at scale and with full compliance. Clipboard Health empowers nurses with the ability to get paid immediately as soon as their shift is over, providing the worker with immediate access to their earnings, with full flexibility of picking and choosing shifts to meet their needs.
Wei shared “I am always thinking about if there are other problems our customers have, that Clipboard Health can solve, whether it involves things like payments for their own healthcare workers, their full-time staff or helping them manage their own workforce. That’s where I see the platform going, becoming a more full stack solution for both the healthcare facilities and providing more resources for workers on training (to upgrade their skillset and earning potential).”
Many of the greatest companies in YC’s history pivoted along the way. Here's the story of how Clipboard Health founder Wei Deng found an idea worth over $1B.
Clipboard Health, a company developing a platform to match healthcare workers with shifts at health facilities, has raised $80 million in venture capital.
