Most startups fight to dominate existing categories. But some of the most valuable companies succeed by making existing categories obsolete. In a recent Category Visionaries interview, Corti CEO Andreas Cleve revealed how his company is dismantling traditional healthcare software categories to create something entirely new.
The Category Creation Challenge
When asked about Corti’s market category, Andreas’s response reveals the complexity of category creation in healthcare technology: “Right now we’re just in AI and healthcare and that’s sort of umbrella category for all of us right now. Who’s challenging that the technology stack is defined.”
Breaking Down the Old Stack
Rather than fitting into existing categories, Corti is systematically replacing multiple legacy systems. As Andreas explains, “We will replace the payer provider’s call recorder, we’ll replace their call analytics, we’ll replace some of their clinical documentation, we’ll replace some of their decision support with non decision support stuff.”
This isn’t just feature expansion—it’s category consolidation. By “meshing together a lot of very archaic, classic vendor spaces into a new space,” Corti is responding to fundamental changes in healthcare technology infrastructure.
The Single-Player vs. System-Wide Distinction
Corti’s category creation strategy becomes clearer when examining how they position themselves against existing 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 notes.
But Corti targets a different level entirely: “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.”
Solving the Quality-Efficiency Paradox
What makes Corti’s category unique is its ability to resolve healthcare’s central tension. As Andreas explains: “The majority of tools out there today has at least a little bit of either a direct or indirect trade off… 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 is creating a category for “sophisticated payer providers” who “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.”
The Technology Stack Revolution
This new category emergence isn’t happening in isolation—it’s part of a broader transformation in healthcare technology. “I think that’s more a symptom of the tech stack is changing. It’s changing really fast,” Andreas observes.
Lessons in Category Creation
Corti’s approach to category creation offers several insights for other B2B founders:
- Look for System-Level Problems: Individual point solutions often indicate opportunities for system-wide category creation.
- Consolidate Legacy Categories: Sometimes the best new category comes from combining and reimagining existing ones.
- Solve Fundamental Tensions: Categories that resolve seemingly impossible trade-offs can create enormous value.
- Align with Infrastructure Evolution: Category creation is most powerful when it accompanies fundamental changes in technology infrastructure.
The Future of Healthcare Categories
Corti’s experience suggests we’re entering an era where traditional healthcare software categories may become obsolete. As AI and automation capabilities mature, the distinction between different types of healthcare software—clinical documentation, decision support, analytics—may matter less than the ability to deliver system-wide impact.
For founders building in healthcare or other regulated industries, this insight is crucial: sometimes the most valuable category isn’t one that exists yet. The key is recognizing when evolving technology capabilities and customer needs are creating space for entirely new categories to emerge.
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