Raul Källo- Founder Of Viveo Health- Powerful Telemedicine And Full Patient Journey Management Platform

Raul Källo is the founder of Viveo Health. With a vision to give people better lives by making healthcare easily accessible, cheaper, and more accurate. Viveo’s end-to-end platform provides customers immediate access to the doctors.
Viveo Health, a global e-Health innovator, has made its Virtual Office for Doctors platform free of charge to medical workers worldwide in light of the surge in demand for telemedicine appointments. Viveo enables allowing people to choose which doctor they would like to consult with, all while empowering doctors to rethink their business model.
Raul Källo has 22 years of executive competence in the global insurance industry with corporate experience in the US, EU, and CEE.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Raul says:

The best advice is to stay focused and do the things you believe are right. I have received loads of great advice from top business people who are often my friends.

My advice is to get the best people on your team. There are loads of great ideas without execution. You also need to fire very quickly if you feel the person is not 150% right or worst if they are dragging your team down because of the wrong attitude. You need to throw away great ideas and great results only because you get better ones. It can sometimes be costly.

Read on to know more about Raul Källo and his journey.

Please tell me about your personal background, and what are you working on currently? (* What motivated you to get started with your company?) 

Raul Källo: I started in the insurance business at the age of 18 at the same time I entered the university, as I thought it’s an industry with great potential. At the age of 21, I started my own insurance brokerage company that ended up having big corporate clients from the EU, CEE, to North America. For more than 20 years, I helped my clients globally with the most efficient insurance solutions. Currently, I´m working on Viveo Health as a startup to disrupt private health insurance.

What is your current main product, and (If there is any) can you share any product pivot story from founding to the current product?

Raul Källo: Viveo’s main product is an end-to-end healthcare solution that combines healthcare and private health insurance on a most advanced digital data-driven platform. We offer our clients a subscription-based seamless journey when they need medical assistance.

I had a plan to introduce another international insurer to my home country and went to introduce the idea to my client base. What I was hearing was the lack of trust towards insurers and complexity to get help in case of medical needs, so I started Viveo Health.

The other solution that we are launching this week is GDPR and HIPAA compliant free of charge platform that doctors can use globally servicing their patients. Estonia, where I´m coming from, is world e-health country no 1, so the things that we are doing are super high-end globally.

How much money (funding) have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round?

Raul Källo: I bootstrapped the business and invested about €2M my own money and now raised another €2M from the external investors to focus on doing business. We are 39 people currently in 5 countries but hiring. Being in a data-driven healthcare sector, COVID-19 rapidly increased interest towards us, so we postponed some of the negotiations with the VC’s.

How have you attracted users and grown your company from the start? And Which were your marketing strategies to grow your business? 

Raul Källo: We have attracted users by just letting them know we are there to help them. We do it 80 % more efficiently than a conventional system in primary care, and people started to value the time they are spending on going to the physical doctor’s appointments and submitting insurance claims by post.

We started from the B2B model in an underdeveloped market, so it was not an easy start. When we first went to test mode, we noticed loads of weaknesses and put all our efforts into developing the platform for the next months.

For our free telemedicine platform, we are talking with medical associations and governments, UK, UAE, Australia, South Africa, Denmark, to name a few. There is a world demand for 1B telemedicine consultations in only 2020, and we give tools for that.

Which is the best marketing tool for the growth of your startup, and why? 

Raul Källo: When a startup or any company is at an early stage, then people’s expectations are 10 times higher than towards traditional companies. When you do things at least 10 times better, they will start to talk about you. The best marketing that you can get is mouth to mouth, and later you need a budget for that.

What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?

Raul Källo: Our biggest fiasco was that we started to do marketing with an old school outsourced partner. It was super expensive and no results at all. It was like doing the latest tech and hearing Modern Talking at the same time if you know what I mean.

What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fund-raising, and what were the logistics for this? And how many investors have you met so far, and how did you meet these investors and which channels worked best for you?

Raul Källo: The internal decision was to bootstrap the business as far as possible and then to start negotiations with investors. I have met at least 100 investors, and now when we are one of the hottest companies on the market, we get loads of investors approaches ourselves. A cold e-mail was the worst thing for us, I believe, almost no feedback. 

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? (Your insight or advice on this would be beneficial for startups)

Raul Källo: I would recommend not to get offended by cocky VC’s and keep doing your own thing. Your time is your greatest asset, so don’t waste it on a VC’s who is not showing respect towards you.

If they ask you to fix something, then it’s a good chance that after you do it, you can go back and make a deal.

It’s hard to hear all the no’s you’ll get, but it only means your idea is unique. If they all say “yes, then it’s too late, especially if you don’t have a product ready to scale.

Your time is your greatest asset, so don’t waste it on a VC’s who is not showing respect towards you.

What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?

We are ready to scale now, so we are opening new countries soon. Our main goal is still to do things 10 times better than anyone else.

How do you plan to expand globally?

Raul Källo: We are launching our end-to-end concept first in our region, but at the same time, we are making a quick launch in several different countries. We want to find suitable partners before launching.

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global marketing?

Raul Källo: I believe targeting whole countries instead of cities or smaller groups.

How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?

Raul Källo: We quickly went to remote working, but COVID-19 made our company skyrocket. We have hired people who we haven’t personally met, and they do a super good job. A few months ago, we were like a girl in a discotheque with one teeth missing, broken heel and hair undone, but now turned out to be the most beautiful one. All stakeholders like us and of course, we like them as well.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? (or What should all first-time startup founders know before they start their business?)

Raul Källo: First-time founders typically want to raise the money too fast, but also they believe they are much better than in reality. With my first company, I was the same, one of the smartest people on the planet, but then a few years later, when the results were not as good, I understood I need to change. I started work 10 times harder than anyone else on the market, building up a global network and going into minute details in the business. Then clients began to realize how good we are, and business started to be very successful.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Raul Källo: The best advice is to stay focused and do the things you believe are right. I have received loads of great advice from top business people who are often my friends.

My advice is to get the best people on your team. There are loads of great ideas without execution. You also need to fire very quickly if you feel the person is not 150% right or worst if they are dragging your team down because of the wrong attitude. You need to throw away great ideas and great results only because you get better ones. It can sometimes be costly.

What are the one or two things that you would do differently to improve your life (or what kind of personal habits would you improved?) if you could go back to 10 years ago? 

Raul Källo: My career is the best in insurance made my life reasonably wealthy, so financially life standard was pretty good 10 years ago. I wouldn’t say I would do something completely different. It has been a great journey, and one step leads to another, and with Viveo Health, we are just about starting.

You can follow Raul Källo here.

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