DexCare’s Category Creation Journey: A Blueprint for B2B Tech Founders
Six ventures into his entrepreneurial journey, Derek Streat from DexCare has learned a fundamental truth about value creation: “What I’ve found in the six companies I’ve built over the years that the place to find the most value creation is when you’re creating a new category,” he shared in a recent episode of Category Visionaries.
Finding the Category Gap
Rather than trying to compete in existing categories, DexCare identified an unmet need in healthcare access. “A handful of things just can’t be solved by partners or invested in because they just simply don’t exist,” Derek explains. This gap became their opportunity to create something entirely new.
Defining the Category
DexCare didn’t just improve existing solutions – they created a new category they call “access optimization.” As Derek notes, “What makes this a new one is that we’re optimizing it in ways that are very different than what happens out there today.”
Their category creation focused on three core innovations:
- Making care more discoverable online
- Intelligently navigating people to the best care options
- Optimizing capacity and load balancing across the healthcare system
Building from Real Pain
Unlike many category creators who manufacture problems to solve, DexCare focused on existing pain points. “You can’t necessarily create the pain… you want to expose it and then address it,” Derek emphasizes. This approach ensured their category addressed real market needs.
Validation Through Providence
Instead of rushing to market, DexCare validated their category within Providence Health System. “We really have been a product in production inside of this large health system for several years now at this point,” Derek shares. This internal validation provided crucial proof of concept.
Strategic Relationship Building
To establish category leadership, DexCare built relationships with industry influencers. “That’s why we have people like Toby Crossgrove on our board who ran Cleveland Clinic, the number two hospital in the entire world. That’s why we have investors like Kaiser Permanente and Providence and Mass General Brigham invested in this organization,” Derek explains.
Thought Leadership Strategy
Understanding the complexity of enterprise healthcare, DexCare focused on thought leadership rather than traditional marketing. “We’re a complex solution sale in an enterprise market and one of the most kind of challenging markets out there… there’s never going to be a buy button for DexCare online,” Derek notes.
Leveraging Industry Challenges
Rather than viewing healthcare’s complexity as an obstacle, DexCare turned it into an advantage. “What I also find is those challenges and headwinds usually can become your competitive differentiators and even the moats that you can build as well because they’re really good at weeding people out of wanting to build businesses in those spaces in the first place,” Derek shares.
Building for the Future
DexCare’s category vision extends beyond current capabilities. “Our vision is that everyone everywhere enjoys exceptional access to the best expertise to treat, prevent and cure illness,” Derek explains. This forward-looking perspective allows them to continually expand their category definition.
Measuring Category Success
The results validate their approach: “We’re either doubling or quadrupling every year across every metric you look at right now in the company,” Derek notes. But beyond metrics, their success in creating a new category is evident in how they’ve changed the conversation around healthcare access.
For B2B tech founders considering category creation, DexCare’s journey offers crucial lessons. Success comes not from inventing problems, but from identifying real market gaps, validating solutions thoroughly, and building strategic relationships that amplify your message. Most importantly, it shows that category creation isn’t just about being different – it’s about solving problems in fundamentally new ways that create lasting value for all stakeholders.