How Adonis positioned revenue cycle staff as "forgotten heroes" to win enterprise healthcare deals | Aman Magoon

Speaker A: It allowed us to, uh, really cultivate these early champions that took a bet on us because they knew that we studied their data and had a better kind of understanding of their problems than even they did at the time.

Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump in today's episode. Today our guest is Iman Moon, co founder of Adonis Aman. Welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks Brett, how are you?

Speaker B: I'm doing great and looking forward to this conversation. So let's go ahead and jump right in. Imagine that you are flying on a plane, you have someone chatty sitting next to you and they ask you, so what do you do? How do you answer that question?

Speaker A: So I'm a technology entrepreneur, um, building my second company. And I'm focused on solving the administrative burden in our nation's health care system, particularly the burden associated with helping providers, our nation's caregivers, get paid by insurance.

Speaker B: When you reflect back on the other company you founded, what's the biggest difference in terms of how, how you're building this one?

Speaker A: So I would say the biggest difference is in our first business, we're primarily solving kind of this age old challenge of employees of large companies, not really understanding their benefits and not really understanding how their personal finances, their personal health, their personal, uh, demographics may impact the types of benefits, the insurance benefits they should enroll in. And so in large part we're building a product mainly oriented around improving the explainability of something complex. In our second business, we're actually resolving and taking action on, you know, the very complex nuances of insurance and how providers get paid instead of how patients work through insurance. And so fundamentally we're building product in a much more, I would say, operationally complex and data intensive space. And that's had a ton of ramifications on how we've thought about building product, but also how we go to market.

Speaker B: What does the go to market look like today? And then what have been some of those big evolutions?

Speaker A: Yeah, so our, uh, go to market today is oriented around two core customer types. Both would fall within the category of providers more broadly. So think of providers as anyone who provides care and you know, care obviously can be provided in multiple different types of settings. So there's the outpatient setting, so you know, your dermatology groups, your orthopedic groups, essentially appointments that you schedule and you kind of receive that care in an outpatient sort of manner. And then we have, you know, our second market segment which is the inpatient setting. So large hospitals and health systems that are providing care in the inpatient system. And fundamentally we've oriented our go to market and bifurcated it across those two kind of customer types. And there's various other attributes about a customer, including the size of the customer, the systems of record that those customers use, that go into making a, uh, customer an ideal customer. And so we do a lot of pre work to ensure that we're targeting the right accounts based off of what our core ICP is across those two segments. And then we have a fairly, I would say robust top of funnel, you know, curation process, including a lot of work we do at events, including a lot of events that we host ourselves, including some targeted outbound and account based marketing that we conduct. And from there, you know, validating that the leads are high quality, validating that the deals are actually qualified, and moving them through a very rigorous at this point process in our sales funnel that consists of multiple meetings, sometimes across a number of months, uh, until we effectively get to contracting. And you know, obviously from their negotiation and closed one, ideally, is there anything

Speaker B: from a go to market perspective that you look back on now and you think, okay, we tried that and it was a waste of money or a waste of time.

Speaker A: So I'll actually maybe take the inverse of the question. There's a couple of things that we did early on that were very fundamental to us kind of getting to product market fit. And I can kind of spell that out to you because I think it's actually kind of an interesting tactic that a lot of similar types of companies across B2B SaaS can leverage. So in the earliest days of building our business, we didn't have much product necessarily to show potential clients. And so instead what we asked our clients or prospects early on in us qualifying them as leads is probing questions around whether they understood the nature of the gravity of the problem they faced in and around their revenue cycle. Did they actually understand kind of the daily issues they were facing that were leading to kind of an overemphasis on, you know, BPOs and large human led teams working this claims process. And you know, the flip side of that is are they aware in very specific detail around the nature of why their yield on what they're owed is not ideal, AKA why are they leaving money on the table? And so after asking kind of those probing questions, we almost invariably realized that the average revenue cycle leader, the average cfo, knew that they had issues around inflating team sizes and kind of reduced financial yields, but they weren't able to quite narrowly put a finger on the exact nature of why those two things were occurring. And so that's when we pivoted the conversation from discovery to actually pitching them on what we called a revenue cycle analysis. And that analysis consisted of effectively a deep dive data science based diagnostic that our teams would provide as part of a one time artifact that we then present to these potential prospects, these stakeholders in sort of a, uh, McKinsey style or consulting style readout. And, um, those artifacts that we'd spend, you know, two to three weeks developing internally, while not scalable necessarily, obviously having to assign a data scientist to a particular account, not necessarily scalable. But we left, you know, those exercises with a very firm understanding of where this client's problems were, which very quickly allowed us to create urgency with those prospects and shift from sharing these artifacts to them to now actually articulating the value of this product that we're envisioning that we hadn't yet built. And so that kind of diagnostic data driven analysis that we provided, not scalable early on, of course, but it allowed us to, uh, really cultivate these early champions that took a bet on us because they knew that we studied their data and had a better kind of understanding of, uh, their problems than even they did at the time.

Speaker B: This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. What else did you do early on where you spent a lot of time doing stuff that doesn't scale that turned out to be a good use of time?

Speaker A: Yeah, we spent a lot of time early on, I would say, and frankly, we still continue to do this in part. But we felt that building in person relationships was an absolute must in order for us to, you know, build trust, cultivate kind of these early adopters of our technology, to kind of share our subject matter expertise, but most importantly, build kind of in person connections and relationships. And so, you know, early on in the business, seldom would we, you know, close a deal where we hadn't spent 1, 2, 3 kind of in person touch points with these clients that at the time were kind of scattered across the country. And so, you know, there's a big investment of time, resources, energy, etc. That we put into kind of building those early relationships with those clients. And that orientation around being in person, certainly not a regrettable move. I mean, we now have kind of a host of clients that we consider friends even of the business. But it all kind of started with being really, really dogmatic about wanting to meet them in person. And, you know, I think 18 months into the business, we had done a bit of an analysis on what our kind of close one effectiveness was for clients that we met in person versus those that we didn't. And we saw that there was a, uh, pretty staggering improvement in our ability to kind of close deals when we had built kind of multiple touch points in person.

Speaker B: It seems like in person is the theme. I hear that from everyone I talk to, regardless of if they're in healthcare or cybersecurity. I think everyone's betting big and shifting resources to go in person. And it just makes logical sense, I think, in this AI world that we're all very much living in right now, in person, just going to become more and more important.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: What else in terms of marketing strategy do you have planned for 2026? Where are you putting resources or kind of a different way? I like to ask that question is like, what are your big bets from a growth perspective for 2026?

Speaker A: Yeah, so a couple of big bets that we're making, you know, in our industry is becoming like a true subject matter expert in terms of our brand and elevating kind of the discourse in our space and becoming and continuing to grow into this brand that is kind of a trusted name in healthcare revenue cycle. And so a couple of big bets that we're making actively is, number one, we're developing a lot of proprietary primary research articles that are, you know, a combination of us conducting surveys across the industry, uh, a combination of us, you know, diving deep into the data of our clients that we've already served and putting out, you know, original thought pieces that are data driven, that tell the story of kind of how the industry is encountering and embracing the challenges in and around revenue cycle. So, you know, developing original content and really investing in that content, making sure that, you know, we're using the right methodologies, we're kind of resolving ourselves of any inherent biases, etc. And you know, really making sure that we're kind of providing this like PhD level analysis on where we see the industry today and where it's going. So that's one kind of leg of building kind of a brand as a subject matter expert. The second is, and this is something that we've been really passionate about for several years now, is we host quarterly revenue cycle summits in our office, in person, live in New York City. And we, you know, started off with 10, 15 attendees that were fairly impassioned about kind of the topics that we were discussing. And we've now grown to a community of at times 100, 150plus. And these are folks that are traveling from across the country, taking time out of their busy schedules to come to these events because they find that they're able to connect with not only our business more intimately, but they're able to make connections with folks that are similarly interested, similarly positioned across the industry. And so I think broadly speaking, our big bet is, you know, subject matter expertise is as a brand trumps everything else. I think gimmickry kind of throwing out like, you know, free AirPods for example, for a booked meeting. Like those things don't work in health care. You really need to develop subject matter expertise. And a lot of that, you know, comes through time under tension. But also investing in hiring the right people as well who have like that core subject matter expertise.

Speaker B: I wonder if that works for anyone. One of our competitors is running ads right now with uh, like the free AirPods and our ads guy was like, how do we compete with this? Like they're just giving away AirPods, but I can't imagine that that works for, for most industries.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that, you know, when you kind of have this like gimmick based or kind of hook based kind of lead gen engineer, you find that you may, you know, win the numbers game. You might have quantity, but the quality in my perspective is typically lacking. I think when you can develop a community of interested folks that are, you know, really attracted to subject matter experts that, you know, are sharing commentary, thoughts, elevating the discourse, as I mentioned, around a particular topic, you may not find, you know, the sheer volume of leads to be as high. But the quality in my view ends up being far superior and in our view, you know, the quality game depending on of course like the nature of your business. If you're kind of a high volume, high number of clients based business with kind of low ACVs, that volume game may be the right one for you. In our business however, we are kind of an enterprise software. We are at uh, times signing multi year relationships and so really orienting around having quality conversations. Quality relationships is something that you know, works for us really well.

Speaker B: This show is brought to you by the global talent company, a marketing leader's best friend. In these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70% less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co I was spending some time on your website earlier today and one thing that stood out to me is I feel like you've just absolutely nailed the voice of the customer side of things. And even the framing on the website is the heroes of their revenue story. I see so often technology companies seem to uh, mistake who the hero is and they make everything kind of about themselves as the hero instead of the uh, customer, the end customer as the hero. And I think you guys have just nailed that. Take us a bit deeper into the voice of the customer program.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think psychologically in any sort of like buying relationships where someone is selling something to you, whether you're buying a car, whether you're buying a new outfit, whether you're, you know, looking for a uh, new home, for example, anytime the person selling to you is helping you envision what your life will look like when you kind of transact on that product and they orient the conversation away from speaking about the specs of what they're selling. You turn the conversation into a more I would say empathy based conversation if you will. And I think for us what we realize is health care providers and the broader health care landscape. When you think about our nation's healthcare apparatus, the heroes of our health care apparatus are clinicians, right? It's like the doctors, it's the nurses, it's the nurse, uh, practitioners. Like those are the people that are heralded as being kind of the heroes of health care and the folks in the back office who are doing kind of the uh, hard, heavy lifting, you know, high volume, low complexity, sometimes low volume, high complexity tasks, things that like actually get health care organizations paid that are like critical to the lifeblood of a uh, health care organization. Those folks are almost like thought about second, third, fourth or oftentimes never thought about. And so our purpose in, you know, having language that puts kind of those forgotten heroes at like the center of what we do is a very, I think, calculated strategy that we've employed really to, you know, appeal to the emotional side of our buyers who may feel like they've been forgotten. And you know, our view is that through superior technology you can really empower those individuals and give them the ability to operate at the top of their license.

Speaker B: What advice would you have from a go to market perspective to other founders and not to anyone who'd maybe compete with you, but everyone else, of course, to other founders building A.I. uh, in healthcare, what advice would you have to them to, to have the top of mind as they bring their tech to market?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think in the B2B space, when you're selling kind of enterprise software, your philosophy as you go to market has to be around creating value at every single turn of your sales process. And there has to be this inherent understanding that not every conversation is going to be a closed one opportunity or lead to a closed one opportunity, but that those conversations are opportunities for you to create value and create a connection and potentially create an opportunity for yourself further down the line. And what I mean by that is, you know, sometimes in our sales process, just given the size of the healthcare industry, the number of different healthcare providers, we oftentimes meet with and have conversations with prospects that are not qualified based off of our now rigorous icp. And despite that, we're still looking to kind of educate them on other vendors potentially they may want to work with other strategies that they may want to employ. We're providing them with, you know, thoughts, ideas, connections to other leaders in the industry that are similarly positioned. And so in a sense that's another way of building subject matter expertise as our brand. It's like we're not treating, you know, the relationships that we're developing as transactional ones. It's really based off of like how can we be accretive to, you know, the industry more generally and how can we, you know, build genuine relationships? Uh, I would say the other piece of advice is, and this goes back to like what was mentioning earlier, it's like the psychology of buying. You know, sometimes you're buying from an individual instead of buying like a product. It's like being likable, being genuine, being non transactional in nature, like has to be a part of your go to market culture. Like I think gone are the days where, you know, this kind of Wolf of Wall street type of cold calling Wins like large opportunities, like the culture in your go to market team needs to be around building genuine relationships and being, like, truly interested in what you're selling and who you're selling to.

Speaker B: And final question, for those listening in that just want to follow along with you and your journey, where should we send them? Where should they go?

Speaker A: For folks that are listening in, I would say, you know, start from like 30,000ft and think about yourself as someone who transacts on a daily basis and think about the nature of how you transact and how your teams transact and take inspiration from that. You know, last time you bought a car, why did you buy it? Who did you buy it from? What really compelled you during that buying process to make the decision to transact and think about the psychology of someone who is, you know, in a position to transact and try and peel apart, like, the different layers of those decisions that they make. I always like to say that, you know, behavioral economics is like a very understudied, undervalued discipline. And so where I'd send folks is, you know, go look at research around behavioral economics. What is the science of decision making? And how can you weave those core concepts into kind of the machinery that you're building and the engine that you're building that helps, you know, build your business?

Speaker B: Glad to know I'm not alone. That's one of the things I love to do, is go back after I make a purchase and map the entire thing and figure out how I did it. I enjoy doing that for my consumer purchases, for business purchases. I don't know why. It's just, it's a fun exercise and I always learn a lot doing it.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Awesome, man. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. It's been a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Thank you, Brad. Cheers.

Speaker B: Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO, where you'll find the library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers, and other GTM leaders, where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO Podcasts as a service. Mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode.