Trek Health’s Customer Segmentation Evolution: From Small Practices to Multi-State Operations

Most healthcare startups choose their lane: either serve small independent practices or target large enterprises. Trek Health took a different approach by building a platform flexible enough to serve both. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Dilpreet Sahota revealed how they built a product that could scale from solo practitioners to venture-backed operations spanning 15 states.

Understanding the Market Structure

The behavioral health market presents a unique opportunity. Unlike traditional medicine, where most doctors work for large health systems, mental health remains largely independent. “There’s 780,000 mental health providers in America today,” Dilpreet notes, adding that these providers are “largely practicing within independent practices owned by clinicians, operated by clinicians.”

Building for Provider Entrepreneurs

Trek Health’s platform serves what Dilpreet calls “provider entrepreneurs” – a spectrum that includes both newly licensed practitioners and ambitious healthcare startups. “Our client is the owner of a practice, generally, that wants to clean up this process and wants to streamline as many of these workflows as they can,” he explains.

The Platform Approach

Rather than creating different products for different segments, Trek Health built a unified platform that could scale with their clients. “We support provider groups ranging from someone as small as just a couple of providers… and now our largest clients are venture backed startups that have a presence in 15 states,” Dilpreet shares.

Solving Universal Pain Points

What makes this approach possible is the universality of the problems Trek Health solves. Whether you’re a small practice or a multi-state operation, the fundamental challenges remain the same. As Dilpreet explains, providers “have to spend a ridiculous amount of time on the phone with insurance networks dealing with angry patients that have a claim that was rejected, and now they got to pay a ridiculous amount out of pocket.”

Pricing for Scale

Trek Health’s revenue model reflects their scalable approach. “We are generally taking 5% of the transaction on behalf of these providers to actually service them,” Dilpreet notes. This percentage-based model ensures the solution is accessible to small practices while remaining valuable for larger operations.

Current State and Growth

The strategy is working. “We today are serving 35 clients, over about 200 providers today that are encompassed within those 35 clients,” Dilpreet shares. This mix of client sizes allows Trek Health to learn from different scales of operation and continue improving their platform.

Key Lessons in Product Scaling

Trek Health’s experience offers several insights for B2B founders building scalable products:

1. Focus on Universal Problems Instead of creating separate solutions for different market segments, identify and solve fundamental problems that affect all potential customers.
2. Build for Growth Design your product architecture to handle both small and large implementations from the beginning.
3. Price for Accessibility Create a pricing model that makes sense for small customers but scales effectively with larger ones.
4. Learn Across Segments Use insights from different customer segments to improve the product for everyone.

The Path Forward

Trek Health’s goal isn’t just to serve different market segments – it’s to transform how healthcare payments work for everyone. As Dilpreet explains, “What we want to aim to is have less than 10% of total transactions that our team is processing require any sort of human input whatsoever.”

For B2B founders, Trek Health’s approach demonstrates that serving different market segments doesn’t always require different products. Sometimes, the key is identifying universal problems and building solutions that can scale from small implementations to enterprise deployments.

By focusing on fundamental challenges in healthcare administration and building a flexible, scalable platform, Trek Health has positioned itself to serve the entire spectrum of behavioral health providers – from solo practitioners to rapidly growing healthcare startups.