Doximity: A Boat Missed
This past week I talked to Ann Michael, Founder, CEO & Chair of the Board of Delta Think, about the plight of associations, and Doximity came up.
I shared that in 2008 or 2012 — I can’t even remember when — we wrote a piece on professional communities and identified nearly 200 of them that were active at the time. In our published research, we lamented the noticeable absence of associations from the professional community sphere. IEEE would eventually buy GlobalSpec, but if you looked at the vast majority of associations then, their membership was basically MIA when it came to online communities under the association brand.
Fast forward and Sermo came along. And then Doximity. Every time I see these amazing assets being built, I ask myself: Where are the associations? Where is UptoDate? Take the AMA, for example — the leading association and advocacy group for physicians. They have physican members. Why didn’t AMA create an online community for doctors to do what Sermo or Doximity have done?
UptoDate is in nearly every doctor’s office in the US, if not around the world. It’s a major feat for WoltersKluwer — a great asset and a super meaningful solution. Look at every EMR system in a doctor’s office, and UptoDate is built in or easily accessible from it. But why can’t doctors also reach one another? Why couldn’t a community component have been built as an offshoot of it, especially with its ubiquitous presence? I haven’t asked the AMA or the head of WKSHealth, but I will. I’m curious. I’m sure there’s a legit answer, but from a natural adjacency standpoint, this type of opportunity looks like a real missed boat.
I asked the then head of LexisNexis many moons back why there wasn’t a community of lawyers built off the back of it or then Thomson’s WestLaw? What I got back was that lawyers don’t collaborate. I guess it’s a combative profession, right? IDK, but it didn’t make sense to me then, and it doesn’t now.
So fast forward, and Doximity’s founder is $2.9 billion richer this week. He started the company in 2010 and built a must-have juggernaut in just a decade plus or minus. He also said he resisted Silicon Valley wisdom, which sounds to me like a perfect environment for WKS or AMA, who by tradition, are not Silicon-Valley-esque.
I’m not picking on either of these two organizations — I have great respect for them and what they do. I just want companies with great potential to do things that can be so great. Years ago, I had great debates with leaders at Factiva and LexisNexis about why Google and Yahoo were competition. They couldn’t see it because they were blinded by the business model of a closed container doing search for a fee. Hmmm, what about an open container doing search for free? Sure looks like competition to me? From the user’s POV, it’s competition regardless of the business model. But they didn’t see it and, of course, we know what happened as Google came to dominate the world.
Meanwhile, docs have a great solution, Mr. Tangney is a wealthier man, and the hub of innovation that too often comes outside our industry goes ticking merrily along.