Mark Olcott - Not Within These Four Walls

Extreme Uncertainty

What do you know about veterinary medicine?

It’s alright—neither did we before we spoke with Mark Olcott, CEO of Vitus Vet. Turns out it takes a vet to understand there are challenges to running a veterinary practice beyond caring for sick animals. In an industry that still relies on fax machines to send medical records, veterinary practice owners struggle to manage payments, schedule appointments, and streamline back office workflows. Mark saw the problem firsthand when he was a vet managing his own practice, and he tells the story of Vitus Vet's origins when he met his co-founder Kalpesh Raval at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. Mark and Kalpesh took an idea they developed in one of their MBA courses and built a prototype, did extensive customer discovery, and laid the groundwork for their go-to-market strategy--and then pivoted the company soon after. Mark shares some of the lessons he has learned as a lifelong entrepreneur, from his first venture selling candy at the bus stop when he was twelve, all the way through to building a corporate culture at Vitus Vet.

You can check out all the tools Vitus Vet is building to make the lives of vets and pet owners easier (and, of course, keeping those puppies and kittens happy and healthy) at Vitusvet.com, and you can follow them on Twitter @VitusVet.