We had the good fortune of connecting with Andrew Headrick and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Andrew, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Prior to starting Kavira, I spent a lot of time thinking about, and reflecting on, my ‘why.’ I knew that starting a business would be difficult, and that it would be important for me to know who I am as a person, particularly when business would be challenging. Below was my thought process:

1. Personal Growth: Personal growth comes when you step outside of your comfort zone, and I knew that starting a company would force me to live outside of my comfort zone.

2. What Drives Me: It’s probably not healthy, but I’m most motivated by external stressors. I knew that if I cut off my corporate job lifeline, and forced myself to create a company, I’d find a way to be successful.

3. Opportunistic Risk Taking: While starting a company is a high-risk endeavor, there’s also a large reward if you’re successful. I believe that the financial returns available to anyone are larger if they start a company, even when factoring in the high likelihood of a few failures.

4. Life Experience: I’d prefer to have an exciting career full of ups and downs (even if that means going personally bankrupt a few times), over slowly climbing the corporate ladder.

5. The Realization That We’re All Human: Those superstars in life, pop culture, and business, are no different than you or I. We’re all capable of doing big things.

6. I’m Incredibly Lucky: I have an amazing supportive family, a strong network, I’m healthy, I don’t have a wife or kids – in terms of starting a company, I’m in an incredibly privileged position. This didn’t necessarily motivate me to start a company, but it goes without saying, that this made the decision to leave my job significantly easier.

What should our readers know about your business?
Everyday healthcare is too inconvenient and too expensive for most Americans. We all understand this intuitively – it’s a hassle to schedule and go to your doctor’s appointment, you get 10 minutes with the clinician on average, and to pay for your brief visit there are copays, insurance hassles, and surprise bills. The data is scary – 50% of Americans avoid care because it is too inconvenient, and the average American spends over $600 out-of-pocket annually on their everyday care costs. Employers (who traditionally purchase healthcare benefits on behalf of their employees) and employees alike, are desperately looking for ways to solve this problem.

Kavira Health is a subscription-based primary and urgent care clinic, that delivers all care via telehealth, and in-person home visits. The subscription is paid for by an employer, and in turn, employees and their families receive unlimited, on-demand, and completely free access to our services. Kavira is making everyday healthcare convenient and affordable again.

Today, we have thousands of members across the Twin Cities, MN metro area, and we’ve been growing quickly.

But it’s taken us a long time to get here. The first two years consisted of – an idea, building a team, pivoting the business (from a dental business, to a primary care business) due to COVID, splitting with my cofounder, starting again from scratch, selling direct-to-consumer (with zero success), selling direct-to-business (with very little success), and finally to selling through employee benefits brokers. I have personally invested my entire life savings into the company to get the business to a point where we could credibly ask investors for capital. Like any entrepreneurial journey, it’s been full of sleepless nights, stress, and setbacks. I’ve learned a lot over the past two years – personally I’m most proud of learning how to sell and becoming more comfortable with public speaking – both of which were previously my biggest fears.

The hardest part of this whole journey for me, has been trying to figure out when to give up, and when to keep pushing forward. I still don’t know the right answer. There were plenty of times when I thought about shutting the company down, but ultimately kept pushing forward. For some reason I can’t quite discern, we were able to right course before the business went under, and today I’m incredibly thankful for that decision.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I live in Wayzata, Minnesota. Wayzata is a small town 20 minutes west of Minneapolis. Wayzata has awesome restaurants. My favorites are – Benedict’s for breakfast, Grocer’s Table for lunch, and Macanda for dinner. There are some great walking and biking paths in and around the town. If you’re able to get out on the lake, Lake Minnetonka is great for boating, swimming, water sports, sight-seeing, and generally relaxing.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I learned so much in my previous role as a Healthcare Investment Banking Analyst at Piper Sandler. I learned hard skills – like how to put together a financial model, how to put together a sales presentation, how to write persuasively and succinctly, and soft skills – like how to better communicate, collaborate, analyze situations, and think strategically. My experience at Piper has been instrumental in getting Kavira to where it is today.

Website: https://kavirahealth.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kavira-health

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutLA is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.