What Gets Into the Nurse Founded Company Database (And What Doesn't)

At RN Forward, we're tracking nurse-founded healthcare companies that scale. Our goal: show the economic value nurses create in healthcare through entrepreneurship and innovation. To do this, our database focuses on collecting data on companies built to scale and transform systems. Here are the qualifications we look for when determining if a company should be included in the Nurse Founded Company Database.

Rule #1: A Nurse Must Be a Founder

We need a nurse credited as founder or co-founder. Any founding role counts; doesn't have to be CEO.

What qualifies:

• There from day one, building from scratch

• Listed as founder or co-founder

• Created the company, not just an early employee

Still counts even if:

• They've exited or sold their shares

• They stepped back from operations

• The company was acquired or shut down

• They're no longer in the C-suite

If they took the founding risk and built it from nothing, they're in.

Rule #2: The Company Must ✨Scale✨

What scaling means: Growing impact and revenue without proportionally growing costs. It's about leverage a.k.a serving 10x more customers without 10x the effort.

What Scales?

• Tech and digital platforms: Telehealth apps, clinical software, education platforms. Once built, they serve 100 or 100,000 users without rebuilding each time.

• Franchises: A medspa, IV therapy, or urgent care model that others can replicate. The system scales, not the founder's personal hours.

• Products: Medical devices or healthcare supplies that get manufactured and distributed. You're not personally making each unit.

• Marketplaces: Platforms connecting nurses to jobs, patients to providers, or professionals to education. The platform facilitates thousands of connections automatically.

• Replicable services: Home health or staffing agencies that expand to multiple markets using documented systems and processes.

• Scalable education: Online courses or certification programs that serve thousands without live teaching each class.

📝 A Note on Staffing and Home Health Agencies

Nurse-founded staffing and home health agencies are common … like really common. While they can technically scale across multiple locations, most operate similarly without meaningful differentiation.

We include these agencies only if they meet at least one of these criteria:

• Significant scale: Operating in 5+ states or territories

• Institutional funding: Raised funding from VCs, private equity, or institutional investors

• Proprietary technology: Built tech that differentiates their model (custom platforms, AI matching, unique software)

• Unique niche or model: Serving a specialized market or operating with an innovative approach that sets them apart

This ensures we're capturing agencies with real impact and innovation, not every local staffing company.

What Doesn't Scale (But Is Still Valuable)

• Single-location services: One medspa, clinic, urgent care, or wellness center where growth is limited by physical space and available hours.

• Time-for-money models: Solo practices where revenue ties directly to billable hours. You can only serve as many clients as you have time.

• Local-only operations: Services in one area with no infrastructure to replicate elsewhere.

Well then what's the exception? That single medspa becomes scalable when it becomes a franchise. The local agency becomes scalable when it expands with replicable processes. It's about business model, not industry.

Rule #3: It Must Meaningfully Improve Healthcare ⚕️

This is our True North. ⬆️

We're looking for companies that demonstrably improve healthcare outcomes, access, quality, workforce effectiveness, or costs. This can happen through direct patient care or by solving critical healthcare delivery problems.

Here's where things get specific. Just because nurses are the customers doesn't automatically make it a healthcare company. So we ask ourselves: "Does this meaningfully improve healthcare?"

The Healthcare Impact Test

A company qualifies if it improves healthcare in at least ONE of these ways:

A. Clinical Outcomes

• Improves health outcomes, prevents adverse events, enables earlier detection

• Examples: Diagnostic tools, clinical decision support, safety devices, infection prevention products

B. Care Delivery & Coordination

• Improves how care is delivered, removes barriers, enables new care settings

• Examples: Workflow optimization tools, care coordination platforms, telehealth solutions, surgical instruments

C. Healthcare Access

• Expands access for underserved populations, reduces barriers, improves equity

• Examples: Community health solutions, credentialing platforms that speed up hiring, interpretation services

D. Healthcare Workforce

• Addresses staffing shortages, burnout, turnover, recruitment, or deployment efficiency

• Must demonstrate measurable impact on healthcare organizations' ability to recruit, retain, or deploy their workforce

• Examples: Faster credentialing systems, transparent staffing marketplaces, competency testing that speeds deployment, career advancement platforms that keep nurses in healthcare, job boards for sustainable healthcare roles

E. Care Enablement & Operations

• Enables providers to practice or deliver care faster and more effectively

• Examples: Clinical documentation tools, supply chain optimization, operational efficiency platforms

F. Healthcare Costs

• Reduces costs without compromising quality, prevents high-cost utilization

• Examples: Utilization management tools, analytics platforms, efficiency solutions

What Doesn't Qualify (Even If Founded By Nurses)

These are all valuable services—they're just not what we're tracking in this database.

❌ Individual Career Services

• Resume writing, interview coaching, generic career advancement

• Personal financial planning for healthcare workers

• Salary comparison tools (help nurses make personal financial decisions, not improve healthcare)

• Financial literacy courses or wealth building programs

Exception: Career services that demonstrate clear healthcare workforce retention or advancement:

• ✅ Job boards connecting nurses to healthcare roles (keeps nurses in the profession)

• ✅ Mentorship platforms for nursing career advancement within healthcare (nurse-to-nurse support for CRNA, NP programs)

• ❌ Generic career coaching without specific healthcare placement or advancement outcomes

❌ Consumer Wellness Without Healthcare Integration

• Fitness apps (even if founded by a nurse with clinical motivations)

• Meal delivery services

• General wellness programs

• Social networking or community apps for healthcare workers

Why these don't qualify: They improve personal wellness or social life, but don't improve healthcare delivery. A fitness app might help a nurse feel better, but it doesn't change how care is delivered or measured health outcomes in a clinical context.

The exception: Consumer health products CAN qualify if they meet 2+ of these criteria:

1. Evidence of improving a specific health outcome (not just general wellness)

2. Clear mechanism connecting the product to healthcare improvement

3. Healthcare providers would recommend or prescribe it as part of patient care

❌ Generic Business Services

• Services applicable to any industry without healthcare-specific innovation

• Standard back-office services (payroll, HR, generic staffing)

• Products marketed "for nurses" without functional healthcare innovation

Examples that don't make the cut:

• Fashionable scrubs without clinical function

• Antibacterial nail polish marketed to nurses

• General lifestyle products for busy healthcare workers

❌ Social Communities Without Professional Services

• General networking or friendship groups

• Social platforms for casual connection

• Facebook communities for nurse socializing

Exception: Communities CAN qualify if they provide tangible professional services:

• ✅ CE credits or certification programs

• ✅ Job boards or career placement services

• ✅ Clinical resources or practice tools

• Must have clear revenue model for these services

The Real-World Test: Examples That Help Clarify

The "For Healthcare Workers" vs. "For Healthcare" Distinction

This is the nuance that trips people up most. Here's how to think about it:

"For Healthcare Workers" (Personal Benefit) = ❌ Doesn't Qualify

• Makes nurses' personal lives better

• Helps with finances, social connections, general wellness

• Benefits the individual, not the healthcare system

• Example: Salary comparison tools, fitness apps, social networking

"For Healthcare" (System Improvement) = ✅ Qualifies

• Makes healthcare delivery better

• Improves outcomes, access, quality, workforce effectiveness, or costs

• Changes how healthcare works

• Example: Clinical tools, credentialing platforms, workforce retention solutions

The gray area is workforce retention:

• ❌ Helping nurses leave healthcare → Doesn't qualify

• ✅ Keeping nurses IN healthcare through career placement or advancement → Qualifies

• ❌ Helping nurses feel better personally → Doesn't qualify

• ✅ Helping healthcare organizations retain/deploy nurses → Qualifies

Why This Matters 🙌🏻

We're building this database to prove something important: nurses create significant economic value through entrepreneurship and innovation that transforms healthcare. For too long, people have understood that nurses provide excellent care, but they haven't recognized the economic impact nurses create by building companies that change how healthcare works at scale.

Every company we add demonstrates that nurses are:

• Founders building venture-backed startups

• Innovators creating technologies that improve care delivery

• Entrepreneurs solving healthcare's biggest operational challenges

• Economic drivers creating jobs and generating revenue in healthcare

Healthcare isn't slowing down, and neither are nurses. 🏃🏻‍♀️ Let's show the "suits," "tech bros," and political decision makers of healthcare what nurses can do!

TLDR; These are the Requirements

1. A nurse as credited founder (any founder role)

2. Built to scale (multiplying impact without proportionally multiplying resources)

3. Meaningfully improves healthcare (outcomes, access, quality, workforce effectiveness, or costs)

If your business doesn't fit these criteria, you're still doing meaningful work! Local practices matter. Solo services matter. Small businesses employing people and serving communities matter deeply.

We're just focused on a specific subset: scalable companies that demonstrate nurses driving healthcare innovation and creating measurable economic impact in the healthcare industry.

Know a Nurse Founded Company that fits the bill? 👉 Let us know. Every entry helps prove that nurses are entrepreneurs and innovators building the future of healthcare.