About Dispatch
Dispatch is building the modern replacement for the hospital call light. Through a modern user tablet, patients can get their non-medical needs met faster, helping to improve patient satisfaction and reducing the burden on nursing staff.
Challenge
Lack of Ops experience, limited bandwidth, and few connections for potential hires
As a founding CEO of a bootstrapped startup, Kevin Davis was used to doing a lot with very little. He found himself wearing many different hats on any given day which, unfortunately, meant he was often stretched too thin in the wrong directions. Getting caught in the weeds of Dispatch’s day-to-day operations, Kevin was unable to think strategically about the company’s expansion, product vision, and delivering on product promises.
We’re not just dealing with software at Dispatch. We have physical tablets that are embedded into hospital units. So if a tablet stops working, needs a new battery, or even catches on fire, I have to physically go in to replace them. These moments add up and end up taking a lot of my time.
Kevin knew that if he wanted to make an impact at scale and expand beyond the 7 units he was serving, he’d need a better internal structure. He needed an expert to come in to put processes in place that would allow him to better serve his customers, build better feedback loops, and ensure the product was performing as intended.
Kevin was no stranger to bringing on part-time hires across engineering and ad hoc support within a hospital. He knew the value of fractional work, especially as a bootstrapped startup that was cost conscious. Unfortunately, Kevin had never hired a senior operations lead before and didn’t know how to properly scope out the role, what sort of profile to look for or how to source the right candidates.
Fortunately, he came across Hello Generalist within a Slack channel for founders who use a popular startup bank.
The Solution
Hello Generalist helps scope, source, and connect Dispatch with 5 potential ops candidates, successfully helping to find the perfect hire
After discovering Hello Generalist, Kevin set up an initial chat so HG could better understand his business, his main challenges, and what sort of hire he needed.
Working with HG really helped to clarify my own thinking around what sort of supported I needed. Shaina even helped me draft up a post for me to source my own leads on Linkedin. When I didn’t get the quality I was looking for from the inbound messages, that’s when I knew it made sense to work with HG.
After the initial conversation, HG helped Kevin scope out an ops role that would help to better support existing hospital units, collect more customer feedback, determining what success looked like for customers, and give Kevin back more time so he can spend it working on product, thinking about product and go-to-market strategy, and expanding to more units with a dialed-in playbook that sets hospital units up for success.
HG was able to source 5 different candidates, help Kevin design an interview process which involved a few video calls and a HW assignment, and ultimately hire Harry.
The thing about the HG process that I love was that it just works. Much like how Amazon’s best feature is that you can get what you want same day or within days, the best part about HG is that you get access to great people on a simple-to-use platform and access to an amazing team that supports you through every step of the fractional hiring process.
Results
Kevin’s fractional hire helped systemize daily operations, giving him back hours each week to focus on expanding units served and delivering on product promises to existing customers
After hiring and onboarding Harry Siggins, Kevin saw an immediate improvement in Dispatch’s ability to serve their existing customers. Today, hospitals are seeing more value from the product, staff feel more comfortable using the tablets, and the Dispatch team has a better process for collecting feedback from units as well to continuously improve the product.
Harry has also helped Kevin prepare for expansion through taking care of the nitty gritty research around storage and inventory management.
Hiring Harry has given me time back in my day to actually make sure our customers are happy, fulfill product promises and deliver on features, move our product and eng teams forward, and think about expanding our footprint.
With Harry handling more of the day-to-day operations, Kevin recouped tens of hours a week that he can dedicate back into driving the product roadmap, managing the engineering team, spending more time supporting sales, given the long sales cycles for hospitals and has more mental bandwidth to think strategically about the future of Dispatch.
If you’re in a situation like mine and don’t know how to hire for the role, use HG. You get access to a directory who’ve been vetted and team that’ll work alongside you to make sure you get the best hire possible for your needs at a cost that works for you. It’s a no-brainer.