The conventional wisdom about selling AI to healthcare systems paints a picture of conservative buyers and lengthy sales cycles. But Corti CEO Andreas Cleve has discovered a more nuanced reality: it’s not about selling AI—it’s about solving the impossible trade-off between efficiency and care quality.
Beyond Single-Player Solutions
“If you’re a single player, GP, physician, clinician, and you want really great dictations like speaking to a device that then puts out text, I think you have probes of opportunities to find that from many great companies,” Andreas explains. But Corti targets a different challenge: “Where we help is if you’re that system and you have somebody like a medical director who owns the risk that’s going on in, let’s say, 100,000 phone calls or video calls every year.”
This distinction between single-player and system-wide solutions shapes everything about Corti’s sales approach. It’s the difference between selling a tool and solving an organizational problem.
Finding the Pain Points That Matter
The key to Corti’s success lies in identifying specific operational challenges that keep healthcare leaders awake at night. As Andreas describes: “Let’s say you’re an operational manager who knows that your 500 staffers at your payer hotline, they’re really stressed because they’re dealing with a terrible work environment, they’re overworked and you need to make sure that you’re there to give them the support and training they need before they needed it.”
The Technology Stack Revolution
Rather than positioning themselves as yet another healthcare vendor, Corti presents a vision for modernizing outdated systems. “We’re not sort of selling them something new or changing their workflow, we’re just selling them a vision of a technology stack that isn’t archaic and old fashioned and filled with black screen software,” Andreas notes.
This approach has driven impressive growth. Since launching during COVID, Corti has grown from $800K ARR to 300% growth last year, with projected growth exceeding 200% this year.
The Trust-Building Timeline
Selling to healthcare systems requires patience. As Andreas explains, “Maybe there’s fantastic overnight success building Roblox ad platforms, but in our line of work, if you really want to have a deep impact on these patient providers, pay providers, then it just takes a ton of time and trust is something you build over that time.”
This timeline varies significantly:
- Government deals in Europe can take up to a year end-to-end
- Some deals close in 90 days
- Average sales cycles run 6-9 months
Solving the Healthcare Paradox
What sets Corti apart in sales conversations is their ability to solve healthcare’s central dilemma. “The majority of tools out there today has at least a little bit of either a direct or indirect trade off,” Andreas observes. “Yeah, you can automate your, let’s say ICD coding, but you don’t know what kind of impact that will have on the clinicians.”
Instead, Corti positions itself differently: “You are a sophisticated payer provider, you have ideas of what good looks like and you want not just to automate or cut cost, but you also want to do it while improving care. And that is a dichotomy for most providers.”
Regulatory Navigation as Competitive Advantage
Rather than viewing healthcare regulations as obstacles, Corti treats them as opportunities. “Today it’s something that we think about as a competitive advantage or at least edge,” Andreas explains. “And it’s something we know that we need to navigate with the most delicacy and focus.”
The Impact-Driven Sale
Ultimately, Corti’s most powerful sales tool is the impact they create. “When they tell their story about why it made sense to join us, they can always tell a story about how a patient got impacted,” Andreas shares. “And that just rocks my world every time I hear it.”
For founders selling deep tech to healthcare systems, the lessons are clear: focus on system-wide problems, embrace the trust-building timeline, and solve for both efficiency and care quality. Success in healthcare sales isn’t about quick wins—it’s about proving you can deliver meaningful impact at scale.
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