The Long Road to IPO: Randy Lipps' 30-Year Journey Building Omnicell

Omnicell pioneered automation technology in healthcare, transforming from a startup in Randy's house to a publicly traded company worth over $3B. In today's Unicorn Builders episode, Randy shares his journey from identifying a critical need in healthcare while his daughter was in the ICU, to building and scaling a company that has lasted over three decades.

Topics Discussed:

• Building and launching a healthcare tech company in the 1990s
• Going public during the dot-com crash after three attempts
• The evolution from on-premise solutions to cloud-based systems in healthcare
• Transitioning from product-focused to solution-based offerings with onsite expertise
• The future of autonomous pharmacy and AI integration
• Maintaining relevance and growth over a 30-year journey

 

GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:

1. Build trust through personal connection and domain expertise: Randy's background in healthcare and industrial engineering, combined with his personal experience in hospitals, helped him build credibility with early customers. He emphasized the importance of personally visiting customers and sharing his story to create trust in a conservative industry.
2. Find the right milestone that creates value: Randy's team built a working prototype with just $75,000, which immediately attracted VC interest. He notes, "The key in winning in any of these games is get to the right milestone that creates value. It's not the ultimate finished product... but it's a milestone someone can look at and say, 'Wow, this company is going to make an impact.'"
3. Make complex technology accessible through familiar comparisons: When marketing their solution, Omnicell found success by comparing themselves to established players: "Because we compare it to their story, to our story, that just allowed people to easily understand." While Randy didn't love referencing competitors in his pitch, it helped quickly establish credibility and understanding.
4. Evolve your service model based on customer outcomes: Omnicell discovered that having their experts onsite led to twice the productivity compared to customer-operated systems. This insight drove their evolution from a pure product company to a solutions provider: "Many of our products today come with experts and people on site to help you get the outcomes you want."
5. Think in decade-long horizons while executing in three-year cycles: Randy emphasizes the importance of having both short and long-term vision: "If you only think in two to three year increments, you're going to get to the end of one of those nodes and then you'll have nowhere to go. You need to at least have some thesis on what 5 and 10 years looks like."
6. Embrace constant reinvention: Randy attributes his longevity to continuous personal and professional development: "You really have to reinvent yourself every three years. What's got me to this point isn't going to do for the next three years." He recommends seeking feedback from board members and advisors who will challenge you to improve.

 

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