Over the past year, there has been a surge in social-media companies going public. Our Social Stock Tracker, which covers stocks such as Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) and Pandora (NYSE:P), has a market value of more than $34 billion.
No doubt, many entrepreneurs want a piece of the action, including Ron Gutman. A year ago, he created a social network called HealthTap.
IPO Playbook interviewed Gutman recently. Here are some excerpts:
What is HealthTap?
HealthTap is an interactive health network connecting users with more than 10,000 U.S.-licensed physicians to receive answers to health questions, anytime, anywhere, for free. HealthTap helps people better understand their health, make better health decisions, and find the best doctors for them. We also help physicians find new patients, better serve existing patients, and build their reputations by publicly demonstrating their expertise.
What are the opportunities in IT and health care? Size of the market?
The opportunities in IT and health care are vast. Health care is a $3.3 trillion a year industry, much of which is stuck in the past, and all of which will benefit from radical innovation.
Currently, we’re primarily focused on one of the most exciting segments of this opportunity: doctor-patient interactions. Very few people know the size of this market or understand the impact that transformative innovation can have on it. Excluding ER visits, procedures, and medications, doctor visits is a market of more than $480 billion a year in the US alone. To put this in perspective, that’s more than 10 times the size of the entire online advertising industry.
What’s your take on the Facebook IPO?
Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve a big kudos for changing the world in a meaningful way.
Coincidentally, we’re located in one of Facebook’s early offices, in the first building on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. Some of the greatest and most innovative startups in Silicon Valley have had offices within a few blocks of our building. We’re happy to be in the company of some great leaders, like Zuckerberg, who have really shown how the desire to make a difference, together with true innovation, persistence, and a lot of dedication and hard work can actually change the world.
The magnitude of Facebook’s IPO is a strong sign that Silicon Valley remains at the forefront of innovation and change.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of “The Complete M&A Handbook”, “All About Short Selling” and “All About Commodities.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli or reach him via email. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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