Get really sick, then start a business
There’s something I’ve noticed with people who are forever would-be entrepreneurs – it’s never the right time.
They always find reasons for why it’s not a good time to go for it and start a business.
They need to save more money. The dog is sick. The kids are too young. Their day job takes up too much of their time.
Well, Banu Ozden blows all that out of the water.
She decided to become an entrepreneur at the most inopportune time – when she found out her breast cancer had metastasized to the bone.
“When ever you start a company you take a huge risk even if you’re completely healthy. Some people take that risk and some don’t,” she told me matter-of-factly.
Ozden founded
SmartMedicalConsumer, and it was her illness that actually led her to the idea.
In 2001, when she was 35, Banu was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. This former Bell Labs computing expert embarked on a year of aggressive therapies to treat her cancer. During that time, she became frustrated with the black hole of medical bills she received, finding a host of errors and over-charges.
That sparked the idea for her business that promises to automate the billing process and weed out billing errors. The company went beta earlier this year.
It’s free to consumers but she’s planning to generate revenues by selling ads on the site and selling her proprietary software to companies.
She expects to break even by 2010.
These are big plans for a woman who found out her cancer had metastasized in 2005.
“It was one of my biggest fears,” says Banu about her cancer spreading. “But I tried to come to terms with it.”
She didn’t take her savings and embark on a tour around the world, and she didn’t choose to wallow in her grief. Her coming to terms with it meant starting a business.
“I hear it all the time. People say, ‘are you crazy, investing in this now,’” she explains.
Banu estimates that by 2009 the company will be running in a way that it won’t be dependent on whether she’s able to handle day-to-day operations or not.
And she’s also determined not to let her disease define her and derail her dreams.
“No one knows what the future is. I can say the same thing to a very healthy person. Someone might get in a car accident,” she says.
But, she adds, “I don’t want to over simplify this. The drugs I am on are making me feel healthy. I don’t know if I would have done all this with the old style chemo that makes you feel so yucky, so not yourself.”
Her advice to all the budding entrepreneurs out there who are struggling with a major illness: “Go for your dreams as much as you can otherwise you’ll be a slave of your disease.”
She’s one tough cookie. I’m not sure
I would have had that kind of inner strength.
