Meet Innovator of the Week
Todd Kozikowski
President and Founder of Yabidu
Please provide your 30-second pitch about your company.
Yabidu is a unique company that was created for the sole purpose of supporting caregivers who manage a family member’s illness. We empower families with the tools they need to take a more active role in the healthcare process and help them coordinate complicated and often-overwhelming treatment plans. Whether it’s ensuring that a patient’s care team of doctors and health care professionals are all on the same page, helping to streamline patient care instructions, lab tests, and doctor’s notes, or organizing insurance information, we help to connect all the dots to help simplify the process of managing care. In addition, Yabidu’s nationally-recognized team of health partners offers expert guidance to families who have questions or need medical information at a moment’s notice.
Who or what was your best resource for starting your company?
Sometimes one’s own personal experience can be the catalyst for change. The idea for Yabidu was created in a neonatal intensive care unit where my newborn daughter suddenly and without warning, began to experience chronic seizures. Life changed in an instant. Much later, after she recovered, I couldn’t help but reflect on the experience and how it shaped our family. To my surprise, I learned that my co-founder, Kevin Campanella, had a similar experience with his own daughter who also spent her first week of life in intensive care. Together, we created Yabidu based on our experiences as fathers and caregivers who have seen, first-hand, what families endure when a loved-one faces an unexpected illness, and how life changes in the blink of an eye.
What was your biggest obstacle in starting your company and how did you overcome it?
Building credibility in the healthcare market often requires the backing of strong community partnerships that families can trust. We were fortunate to overcome this hurdle when local organizations like Easter Seals and The Moore Center recognized how our solution could immediately benefit their communities. This provided a stepping-stone to national advocacy organizations like Autism Speaks, Allergy & Asthma Network, The American Heart Association, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and many more who joined our cause to build a nation-wide partnership. This has created tremendous brand respect from our family caregivers as well as participating hospital systems, health plans, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers and more.
As time went on, we met with many families across NH receiving a multitude of services from local community organizations like Easter Seals, The Moore Center, NH Family Voices, Lakes Regional Community Services and Gateways of Nashua. As we learned about the specialized needs of these families, we were able to better define how we could support these organizations in order to truly transform our system of care.
What’s the best advice you have received?
Ask more questions than you receive. You’ll get a more compete understanding of the business challenges and unique needs of your community. If you can then reflect this input as an intuitive and simple expression of your mission (i.e. product, service, etc.) you just might transform an industry.
What about the NH lifestyle appeals to you?
New Hampshire is a wonderful place to live and work. I can best summarize in a top ten list:
- You never get sick of those White Mountains!
- We’re not commuting on Rt-128
- There are a million places to hike, bike, camp and swim.
- We LOVE our sports teams.
- Lots of great college towns.
- From farmers markets to specialty shops and restaurants – we make being a resident fun.
- We like snow and miss it when it’s gone!
- Someone knows someone with a cabin on a lake.
- Maple Syrup (enough said)
- We build great communities that link neighborhoods, organizations and businesses to impact change. Maybe it’s our “Yankee ingenuity.”
What does the future look like for your company?
For the last year, we have been privately introducing our company to families across the country and to multiple health organizations. We are excited to fully release Yabidu at the top of 2016!
Yabidu’s mission is to create a healthier world by promoting the active participation in the health care process. If we can connect the world’s best caregiving resources to patients and family caregivers, we believe this will ultimately lead to improved health outcomes. We are excited to empower the millions of caregivers out there who are clamoring for much-needed support and resources.
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