Interview with Dr. Zhen Chan – 383
In this podcast episode, John interviews pediatrician Dr. Zhen Chan whose startup offers a new way to find a job by eliminating third-party recruiters and putting physicians at the center of recruitment.
Through his platform Grapevyne, doctors can earn substantial referral bonuses while helping colleagues find positions with unprecedented transparency and detail. With his unique combination of medical training and business school education, Dr. Chan is reshaping how physicians connect with career opportunities.
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Reimagining Medical Recruitment Through Physician Networks
Dr. Zhen Chan noticed something broken in physician recruitment – endless vague job listings, intrusive third-party recruiters, and a lack of transparency. His solution? Grapevyne is a physician-only platform that puts doctors in control of the hiring process.
The platform incentivizes physicians to refer qualified colleagues while providing detailed job listings that answer doctors' questions about potential positions. In just a few months since launch, the platform has attracted over 315 physician members and eight healthcare organization partnerships, with 40+ new positions currently being onboarded.
Building a New Way to Find a Job While Staying Clinical
Despite the demands of launching a startup, Dr. Chan maintains his clinical practice as a per diem pediatrician while running Grapevyne full-time. He partnered with HealthWorx Studio for initial funding and assembled an expert team spanning technology, recruitment, and healthcare operations.
The platform aims to expand beyond job matching to become a comprehensive career resource for physicians, offering guidance on contract negotiation, healthcare payment systems, and professional development.
Summary
Grapevyne is the next revolution in physician recruitment through a peer-driven platform that eliminates traditional recruiters. The platform offers substantial referral bonuses and detailed job listings. It has already attracted over 315 physician members and eight healthcare clients. Physicians interested in joining can visit grapevyne.health or contact Dr. Chan directly at zhen@grapevyne.health.
Links for today's episode:
- Grapevyne.health
- Dr. Zhen Chan's LinkedIn Page
- Zhen Chan's Email Address: zhen@grapevyne.health
- Healthworx Studio – building the future of healthcare by working with founders driven by purpose, passion, and impact.
- How to Practice Hospital Medicine and Found a Startup
- Introducing a Fearless Medical Entrepreneur
- How to Nurture a Career in Cutting-Edge Healthcare Technology – 156
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 383
This Physician Entrepreneur Offers a New Way to Find a Job
- Interview with Dr. Zhen Chan
John: Well, I like talking with physician entrepreneurs, as some of you listeners know, and today is going to be very interesting. He's a relatively young physician pediatrician who's also running a company full-time. So with that, let's just get into our conversation with Dr. Zhen Chan. Hi, Zhen.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Hi, John. How are you doing?
John: Really good. I came across, I don't know how we met, actually; I think we were introduced basically.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: When I looked at your website and your LinkedIn profile, I mean, it's really interesting. You're involved with this company. But before we get into that, let's have you go ahead, like we do every podcast interview, and just tell us about your medical training, your background experience, and then kind of lead up to what you're doing now.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Sure, that sounds good. So I'm a pediatrician by training. Didn't do any fellowship, but I graduated residency summer of 2023, which I can't believe it's been that long already. Yeah, I did that up in New York Presbyterian with Weill Cornell in Brighton, Manhattan. And then the rest of my education was all back in Miami where I grew up— Miami, Florida. So, I was at the University of Miami for undergrad and medical school, and I took a year off between third and fourth year for business school as well. It was focused on health management and policy, and it really kind of expanded my knowledge of healthcare beyond just the clinical piece. So that was the seed of some of this extracurricular interest, so to speak. And then during residency, I did a lot of quality improvement work, was able to have the opportunity to lead a couple projects as well, which was super fun. And I think because of how fulfilled I was from doing that, and also some of the advocacy work too, I was like, "Oh, maybe I gotta do some more career exploration and like soul searching." I wanted to apply for Peds Hema Fellowship. Second year, I toyed with the idea of doing PICU. And then I was like, wait a minute, I really enjoy these like back end healthcare solutions. I really think that working on them allows you to really scale your impact. And so let me do some exploring. I networked people all over the field— public, private sector, you name it. And worked in venture capital actually for about a year as like a part-time associate. And that started as a fellowship position just to get to learn and get a lay of the land. And then I really, really enjoyed meeting founders. I really enjoyed people working in early stage startups because of how mission-driven they were and really trying to solve problems that are out there. And that's when I said, "Oh, I really want to build something on my own." And here I am.
John: All right. Well then, tell us what is it that you decided to build and what problem were you solving by building that.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. So the company's called Grapevyne— Grapevine spelled with a "Y". And the name comes from this, kind of comes from the song. I heard it through the Grapevine, or the saying, "I heard it through the grapevine." Because what we're doing is we're driving physician recruitment and the job matching process through physicians. So, no need for third-party recruiters. We're also, because we're physician-founded and we're building a team around understanding what doctors truly value, we're creating job posts that are fundamentally different from the other job boards that you see out there. So no more of these like vague, undescriptive listings that you're looking at this and you're honestly, you don't know salary, you don't know location, you have no idea what this job even entails. And more importantly, you don't know what it's going to be like day to day, which is very important to understand. And so, as someone who went through a job search myself, I know exactly what we need. I want to, if there's certain specialties, I'll go out and interview those specialists to say, "Hey, in your specialty, what are the things that you really want to see on a job post?" And we'll put that all there. So that's one fundamentally different piece. The other piece is that how we drive the process and that is through referrals. So, once an employer contracts with us and puts a post on our job board, we activate the network and we tell members— who are all physicians right now— to say, "Hey, look at these posts." If you're interested yourself, you can apply. But if you know someone who could be interested and you think they're a good match based on this very detailed listing, comprehensive listing, you can refer that over to them and you will actually get a significant cash payout for a successful referral, meaning like right now, the structure is if someone submits an application because of your referral and it's a qualified application, that you can get $25 on most of our posts right now. If they complete the interview process, you'll get another incremental payout. And then if they actually get hired and truly start the position because of your referral, you'll get the most significant payout. Right now on our job board, every post has a payout of $2,000. That could be different in the future, but that's what all the posts have now. So, we're driving the process through physicians. We're a company led by a doctor— not that I can speak for everybody, I do want to say that. Then we're bringing money back into the process too. So ownership, cash, everything— we're putting back into the physician community.
John: Okay. That's pretty unique and interesting. It seems like there's always processes that can be improved— made less costly, less onerous, less time consuming and so forth. So, let me just kind of think about the different stakeholders here.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: So, I mean, it sounds like a physician can, if they know of a job opening, and let's say their organization, they can make a referral or put a post or something. Or do they come from directly from the hospitals and the medical groups that are looking for physicians?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, that's an important distinction. So it's not that everyone can just post whatever opening they have. We do contract with the employer. And then we look at the post that they want to give us. And we will work through because they probably already have some standard materials and bulletins that they're sharing with the traditional recruiters out there and the traditional job boards that are out there. But we will take that bulletin, inject kind of our own flavor into that. If it's an ENT job, we'll try to find an ENT member of our community and we'll try to find an ENT maybe in our personal networks and then say, "Hey, if you were to look at a job, what would actually entice you? What do you need to know? What are the questions that you probably would have had to go through a lot of intermediaries to find out before you actually get a comprehensive understanding of the job?" Let's get all those details and let's just smack them onto the job post. And then for the employers, the reason why it's a better format is- we're creating posts that are more engaging. So, doctors can see these and will say, "Wow, I actually really like what's on here. I know everything I need to know. I'm willing- I wanna apply." As opposed to somebody coming in and saying, "Hey, I have this fantastic job that's perfect for you. It's in a great location. Do you wanna hear about it?" And you're like, "I'm not gonna respond to this email. Like I get a million of those. Like what's gonna make this one any different?"
John: Yeah, I can think about some of the complaints I've heard about the usual process. Like... For some it is they find something online— a job— but they really don't know. Like they might even be blinded in the sense that they don't even really know exactly where it is because the host isn't actually revealing that until they get your name and phone number. And then they apply, they send in the resume and they don't hear anything forever. Sometimes, you know, just they don't qualify, but. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot to improve in that process. So, and the revenues for this that really is supported by the companies, the hospitals and the groups that are looking for physicians.
Dr. Zhen Chan: That's correct. That's correct. We are on that kind of contingency fee structure, but we're able to charge a much more affordable flat fee structure. And right now, since we're early, we're not charging any subscription fees, any listing fees— nothing like that. So there's no downside risk to working with us and we're not expecting any exclusivity. We really just want to solve a problem in this space and be able to reduce the administrative expense that goes out into things that frankly, we are seeing as unnecessary.
John: Interesting. I'm just kind of thinking through the process too. Like if I were, let's say working at that organization already, let's say there's 500 physicians there. I mean, would it make sense for the HR department, whoever's putting these out to actually promote let their people know, I suppose. Sometimes I like to do things, you know, like in a vacuum or quietly. But I mean, they could just let all their interns know that they've got an opening for another internist. They're probably doing it because these internists have asked for it. And so, hey, by the way, if you're gonna help us get the word out, feel free. That would, I would assume, would be something that could work.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, many groups have internal employee referral programs. What I like to say is this is an employee referral program scaled to the entire network of physicians that are out there and anyone can look at jobs and refer each other. It's not going to be siloed to your facility.
John: Okay. Awesome. Well, let me ask how are things going so far. What's the feedback? I think you are relatively new.
Dr. Zhen Chan: We are. We are. So we launched our first job post in end of September, got another— if I remember correctly— seven onboarded at the end of October, and then we had another 16 mid-November and we're currently onboarding another 40 from a larger health system. We're up to eight clients just in these short few months and in terms of member size, that's probably been the most exciting thing to see— how many physicians really enjoy the idea of this platform and want to support its growth. We've gained now over 315 members, just I would say over October, November, and these first couple of weeks of December, we've gained about three-quarters of that. So it's been tremendous growth.
John: Interesting. So those what do you find? Are they all actively looking, or are they thinking, "Wait a second, doesn't cost me to join? I might need something six months down the road. Why not just join now and find out?" And then when they see the right position, they say, "Maybe I should jump on that."
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. combination. So we have a combination of members who came because they were looking for some things right now. And, you know, frankly, we're because of how new we are, we may not have the right opportunity for that specific person actively looking. But most physicians are passive job seekers, meaning and that I think there's a paper that was put out that it's around 80% of physicians are passive job seekers with a survey from it wasn't a paper sorry, a misnomer. It was a survey of about 1,500 hundred doctors and so what passive means is "I'm not actively looking but if something nice rolls my way, maybe I'll pay attention to it" and so, I'm not gonna be on job boards; I'm probably gonna ignore those text and calls from outside recruiters but if someone I know sends me something that's interesting I'll take a look and that's how our process works so we have a lot of those individuals to and my hope is that as we bring on more employers have more jobs going to be more opportunities for everybody to see. And if they want to apply for themselves, they can. If they feel like there's someone else that's in their network, that's a good fit, they can refer that out. And I see it as a potential to make significant cash too, when you're making a lot of referrals. And I don't think doctors are going to be out there spamming and trying to scam each other for a quick buck in this way. You can lose a lot of trust in that process. And that's exactly why there's so much lost trust in traditional recruitment.
John: Yeah, I guess it'll be interesting how things pan out, but I would assume that most physicians have a lot of integrity and they're not going to be even making a referral to something that they think is at an organization they're not really fond of or something like that. So, that's awesome. Well, let's pause on this for a minute. Tell us how to go to Grapevyne and do that, and then I want to come back to something else.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Sure. So you can find us at our website, grapevyne.health. That's Grapevyne spell with a "Y", dot health. Our websites allows you to take a look at what we're all about, and then you sign up for our platform. Really the onboarding process, I would say it takes about maybe three minutes-ish to just give some basic info. We use a cell phone number for the sign-on, so we can have that one-step verification with you. We're really keen on not having anybody that's not a physician, be excluded from the platform. So it's a physician-only platform. We have an NPI right now that you use, which the NPI is out there, but that's how we verify. Once you're on, you'll see a dashboard with featured jobs. There's another page with all of our jobs, and we're working on a couple extra features to make sure that what you see is most relevant to you, and that there's a way for you to search, and filter, and everything like that.
John: Awesome. That's good. No, it sounds— I went on there and I only went so far before I thought, "Well, I'm not really looking for a job," but yeah, it was well-designed. And that brings me back to this other question I wanted to ask you. It has to do with running this business, practicing at the same time, that piece of it. And we also like to hear about the business building itself. And, you know, who did you pick out - how did you get this thing built and all that? So we kind of want to know a little bit about the business and what it takes to run this thing while you're still practicing.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll talk about the practicing piece. I do still practice part-time. I am on a per diem contract, here in D.C., and this is a really good balance for me, based on my interest. Is it going to be the balance for the rest of my entire career? I don't know. But I do enjoy what I'm doing right now and the full time, running a startup aspect of things. It's- I would say hours-wise, it's as intense as I think I had residency. Like, yeah, it's as many hours as it was in residency. Now, do I get to do my work remotely? Do I have my puppy sleeping next to me and I can have my lunch and everything like that? Of course! I'm not going to compare it to the physical exhaustion I was experiencing in residency, but it's a full-time 24/7 type job. I'm working on the weekends, all that kind of thing. And The business side, building out a team is super important. So one of the first things I personally had to recognize was where are my gaps— where are things that I'm not an expert in? I won't be able to be the best person to do this part. And that was dealing with the lawyers, like the legal side, the day-to-day operations. I've never built a business from the bottom up before as a first-time founder, so I wanted to go out and find someone, and I found an amazing co-founder. His name is Drew Mayer, has been a repeat founder of early-stage companies, has been working in the healthcare startup space for a long time and worked with physicians. His father was a physician. So, when we were talking to him and I was developing that relationship, just felt like we were really aligned on the physicians take back medicine kind of push and that sentiment. And then as we move forward, we brought on an engineer. I can't do product development; I can't code. So went out and looked for someone there, brought on an individual who he worked on Indeed job board. And so, you know, had experience and expertise there. And then finally, you know, as much as we are trying to replace the third party recruiters, I have to be sensible and say, "Well, if there's established recruiters out there who are good and who really do care about physicians. Is there someone out there that can give me that expertise and has been in the industry for a long time?" And we did bring someone on just like that who's been working in health systems, in the exec positions and can really, and just bring her expertise and experience in ways that I personally like. So, finding what I don't have and being able to find the others to come in and help team up kind of building this "Avengers-like group" is the way I see it. And building this business— I have to give credit where credit's due, the concept of Grapevyne came from a venture studio. And so that venture studio is based here in D.C. It's called HealthWorx Studio, spelled with an "X". Yeah, we both have like words that are spelled differently. And so HealthWorx Studio, and they are always incubating and coming up with new ideas. And when they think they have enough research to say there's something here, they go out and look for founders to really come in and build out the concept. Like it's like you start with one puzzle piece and then you want someone to come in and build the whole puzzle. So they come out and look for founders that align with the vision or can give their own vision, build out the business strategy, build out the team, and then take it out of the studio. So that's the model that we're working under right now.
John: So are they the ones that provide the capital to support some of this? Or do you do a separate, you know, fundraising? How does that work?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, so from the conceptualization up to today, it's all been funded by the studio. And we are going out and looking for outside investors. We really want to find well aligned investors, specifically in the physician community— those that are going to be, I think ideally our end users too, right? Because then they can give us feedback, they can be the users of the product, whether if it's for their own practices to help them hire more. physicians or it's going to be physicians who are like, "wow, this is something I can really use." Those are the types of well-aligned investors that we are looking for, but we're starting those conversations now for angels, VCs, etc.
John: Okay. So with the studio, would it be people have used "incubator" as a term, you know, with other is that a similar type of idea that kind of get ideas, get people together?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. The way I like to explain it using what I understand is typically in venture capital, and you usually associate venture capital with earlier-stage companies or growth-stage companies, there's traditional venture capital firms, which is all about, you know, we're going to financially analyze you, we're going to do our diligence on your product, make sure that you have the right team, all that, and say, "All right, we're willing to give you capital for whatever returns expectations." That's traditional VC. And then you have the accelerators and incubators out there that outside founders will come up with an idea and then apply in, in exchange for equity. They apply in to obtain the expertise, to obtain the support resources, et cetera. Then you have now what's, there's more and more of them coming out, venture studios, which act like this reverse incubator or this reverse accelerator. They come up with the idea, start funding it. When they feel there's something there, they'll go out and bring in founders to take it out of the studio. That's my understanding. There may be listeners who will say, "I don't know if Zhen's right about that."
John: Well, it seems to be your experience, you know? So things do evolve over time, but it's a good explanation. It helps me understand really what's going on a little bit better.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: Okay. Well, we're going to get to the end pretty soon here. So I want you to go back and kind of re, just restate, like, what do you think, like the big advantages to Grapevyne over, the current way of trying to find a job.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. So for us, recognizing that traditional recruitment, it's not efficient, it's not effective, and it's costly. And there's not really great guarantees for finding the right candidate. So our process, because it's referral-based through the physician community itself, and we're crafting job posts fundamentally different than the bulletins and posts that you see out there, we believe we're gonna be better, where our posts are gonna be better in engaging. And your jobs are going to be more visible by a larger swath of physicians that are out there. And on the physician side, the source of truth or the, not the source of truth, but the person who's going to be reaching out to you and giving you anything is always going to be someone you are already connected with— a trusted existing connection. So, driving trust, driving transparency, and ultimately for us as boots-on-the-ground clinicians, if I can improve job matching, if I can say doctors will be put into jobs that they are better fit for because the sourcing is inherently better, we can reduce burnout, we can reduce churn and turnover, doctors will stay in these jobs for longer and especially in fields like primary care or especially in practices that are in rural and underserved settings. Physicians are likely to take those jobs, stay in those jobs, and you have better access and better continuity. That's a hypothesis. I hope that plays out that way. But those are all the, I would say, the value props for what I, to me are the three different stakeholders, the employers, the physicians, and the patients, to be honest. And we're also, you know, for physicians, the job board for me, that's one piece of the puzzle. I want to also build out a career center, provide all of those resources that frankly in residency and medical school, we just didn't get that education. We didn't get that training on how to negotiate contracts. What are the different payment systems that are out there? Everybody talks about value-based care and a fee for service and all these kinds of things, the trends. How do I provide education on all of that we missed that I think is very important practicing medicine in the modern day. Because also, if I can provide more of that education in a way that it's digestible and people will actually view it and take it and absorb it, then I think we will also be able to practice medicine better, take back that ownership again— it's aligned with that sentiment— and not be burnt out as much as an entire industry of workers.
John: Now that sounds like a good plan. I think we were talking earlier before we started recording that looking to the future, I think a lot of physicians are looking to do maybe a nonclinical and a clinical.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: And there would be no reason why that couldn't be something that just normally kind of evolves on this site.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, absolutely. We are open to posting nonclinical positions on our site. Physicians are looking for them, you know, extra avenues, not just in the form of side-gigs but thinking the similar vein to me— where there are things in healthcare that I also wanna work on. What are the jobs that are out there that can allow me to do that? I think more physicians need to be in those positions. And then you have physicians that are burnt out and are looking for an alternative while still making a difference. Those are out there. So we wanna be a supportive platform for every doctor, no matter what they are looking for in their professional careers.
John: That makes me think of another issue, which maybe you've already reached out to, but what about locums, which is a different kind of clinical job, but it is a clinical job and just need to find them.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, there are a lot of agencies that are out there in the locum space. And we just felt from a business strategy standpoint, let's not go into them. Would we ever go into them? I don't have an answer for that right now. But for me. There's also an element where Locums is an expensive band-aid to provide access to care. Now, don't get me wrong; it's a great gig for a lot of physicians that are looking for them. And I would never stop someone who is looking for them to, I would never stop them from doing so. But for us, we wanna drive more of those full-time positions right now. And I think that's the right strategy. But again, I think in business, it's not like medicine where we try to be as— well, we do try to be as surefire as possible— but a lot of these strategy decisions, I think, some may say that it's the right call; some may say it's not, and right now we're making the call to not do locums just yet.
John: Got it. Got it. Okay, what if someone wants to reach out to you personally for a question or something?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, so my email address is Zhen, Z-H-E-N@grapevyne.health. Again, reminder Grapevyne with a "Y". And so you can reach me by my email, and then I'm on like every social media platform. Too many, I think. It's been great. I love engaging with the community on social media. So, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and there's a Grapevyne account and my own personal account. And maybe we'll just link it in the show notes. It'd be it'd be a doozy to list.
John: OK, I'll put a few in and I'll definitely put grapevyne.health. I kind of used the dot com at first when I was looking for you. But no, Grapevyne with a y dot health. I'll put that in the show notes. And I think pretty much people can get information, everything they need to know. Physicians, if they're really thinking they're gonna access this kind of service, your service, then just go to grapevyne.health and do it. Check it out.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: All right, well, this is pretty exciting. I'm glad you could be here and answer my questions. I think it's inspirational to people— physicians who are thinking, "Well, maybe I could do something entrepreneurial. I could do a startup," or maybe not something as this, is a pretty big deal. This is a big thing. You're devoting full-time to it. So it's not like starting a little side gig on the weekends or something. So, I'm really glad you could join us and I'll be watching the growth of this thing. And it should be pretty interesting. And it sounds like that a lot of planning and a lot of investment of time and effort in this. So, you're to be congratulated.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, well, I really appreciate the support. I really appreciate you inviting me on. And I have to plug this podcast because I forgot to mention that when I was in my exploration journey, I love learning by podcasts. And this was one of the first ones, if not the first one, I hopped on to listen to a whole slew of episodes to learn just what else is out there for physicians to do. And yeah. So, so anybody who anybody who's listening I hope you share this with more physicians out there.
John: Well, I appreciate those comments. All right, Zhen, we're gonna let you go then. And with that, I'll say goodbye. And hopefully I'll catch up with you again, maybe a year from now.
Sounds great. Have a good one.
John: All right. Bye bye.
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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 383
This Physician Entrepreneur Offers a New Way to Find a Job
- Interview with Dr. Zhen Chan
John: Well, I like talking with physician entrepreneurs, as some of you listeners know, and today is going to be very interesting. He's a relatively young physician pediatrician who's also running a company full-time. So with that, let's just get into our conversation with Dr. Zhen Chan. Hi, Zhen.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Hi, John. How are you doing?
John: Really good. I came across, I don't know how we met, actually; I think we were introduced basically.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: When I looked at your website and your LinkedIn profile, I mean, it's really interesting. You're involved with this company. But before we get into that, let's have you go ahead, like we do every podcast interview, and just tell us about your medical training, your background experience, and then kind of lead up to what you're doing now.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Sure, that sounds good. So I'm a pediatrician by training. Didn't do any fellowship, but I graduated residency summer of 2023, which I can't believe it's been that long already. Yeah, I did that up in New York Presbyterian with Weill Cornell in Brighton, Manhattan. And then the rest of my education was all back in Miami where I grew up— Miami, Florida. So, I was at the University of Miami for undergrad and medical school, and I took a year off between third and fourth year for business school as well. It was focused on health management and policy, and it really kind of expanded my knowledge of healthcare beyond just the clinical piece. So that was the seed of some of this extracurricular interest, so to speak. And then during residency, I did a lot of quality improvement work, was able to have the opportunity to lead a couple projects as well, which was super fun. And I think because of how fulfilled I was from doing that, and also some of the advocacy work too, I was like, "Oh, maybe I gotta do some more career exploration and like soul searching." I wanted to apply for Peds Hema Fellowship. Second year, I toyed with the idea of doing PICU. And then I was like, wait a minute, I really enjoy these like back end healthcare solutions. I really think that working on them allows you to really scale your impact. And so let me do some exploring. I networked people all over the field— public, private sector, you name it. And worked in venture capital actually for about a year as like a part-time associate. And that started as a fellowship position just to get to learn and get a lay of the land. And then I really, really enjoyed meeting founders. I really enjoyed people working in early stage startups because of how mission-driven they were and really trying to solve problems that are out there. And that's when I said, "Oh, I really want to build something on my own." And here I am.
John: All right. Well then, tell us what is it that you decided to build and what problem were you solving by building that.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. So the company's called Grapevyne— Grapevine spelled with a "Y". And the name comes from this, kind of comes from the song. I heard it through the Grapevine, or the saying, "I heard it through the grapevine." Because what we're doing is we're driving physician recruitment and the job matching process through physicians. So, no need for third-party recruiters. We're also, because we're physician-founded and we're building a team around understanding what doctors truly value, we're creating job posts that are fundamentally different from the other job boards that you see out there. So no more of these like vague, undescriptive listings that you're looking at this and you're honestly, you don't know salary, you don't know location, you have no idea what this job even entails. And more importantly, you don't know what it's going to be like day to day, which is very important to understand. And so, as someone who went through a job search myself, I know exactly what we need. I want to, if there's certain specialties, I'll go out and interview those specialists to say, "Hey, in your specialty, what are the things that you really want to see on a job post?" And we'll put that all there. So that's one fundamentally different piece. The other piece is that how we drive the process and that is through referrals. So, once an employer contracts with us and puts a post on our job board, we activate the network and we tell members— who are all physicians right now— to say, "Hey, look at these posts." If you're interested yourself, you can apply. But if you know someone who could be interested and you think they're a good match based on this very detailed listing, comprehensive listing, you can refer that over to them and you will actually get a significant cash payout for a successful referral, meaning like right now, the structure is if someone submits an application because of your referral and it's a qualified application, that you can get $25 on most of our posts right now. If they complete the interview process, you'll get another incremental payout. And then if they actually get hired and truly start the position because of your referral, you'll get the most significant payout. Right now on our job board, every post has a payout of $2,000. That could be different in the future, but that's what all the posts have now. So, we're driving the process through physicians. We're a company led by a doctor— not that I can speak for everybody, I do want to say that. Then we're bringing money back into the process too. So ownership, cash, everything— we're putting back into the physician community.
John: Okay. That's pretty unique and interesting. It seems like there's always processes that can be improved— made less costly, less onerous, less time consuming and so forth. So, let me just kind of think about the different stakeholders here.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: So, I mean, it sounds like a physician can, if they know of a job opening, and let's say their organization, they can make a referral or put a post or something. Or do they come from directly from the hospitals and the medical groups that are looking for physicians?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, that's an important distinction. So it's not that everyone can just post whatever opening they have. We do contract with the employer. And then we look at the post that they want to give us. And we will work through because they probably already have some standard materials and bulletins that they're sharing with the traditional recruiters out there and the traditional job boards that are out there. But we will take that bulletin, inject kind of our own flavor into that. If it's an ENT job, we'll try to find an ENT member of our community and we'll try to find an ENT maybe in our personal networks and then say, "Hey, if you were to look at a job, what would actually entice you? What do you need to know? What are the questions that you probably would have had to go through a lot of intermediaries to find out before you actually get a comprehensive understanding of the job?" Let's get all those details and let's just smack them onto the job post. And then for the employers, the reason why it's a better format is- we're creating posts that are more engaging. So, doctors can see these and will say, "Wow, I actually really like what's on here. I know everything I need to know. I'm willing- I wanna apply." As opposed to somebody coming in and saying, "Hey, I have this fantastic job that's perfect for you. It's in a great location. Do you wanna hear about it?" And you're like, "I'm not gonna respond to this email. Like I get a million of those. Like what's gonna make this one any different?"
John: Yeah, I can think about some of the complaints I've heard about the usual process. Like... For some it is they find something online— a job— but they really don't know. Like they might even be blinded in the sense that they don't even really know exactly where it is because the host isn't actually revealing that until they get your name and phone number. And then they apply, they send in the resume and they don't hear anything forever. Sometimes, you know, just they don't qualify, but. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot to improve in that process. So, and the revenues for this that really is supported by the companies, the hospitals and the groups that are looking for physicians.
Dr. Zhen Chan: That's correct. That's correct. We are on that kind of contingency fee structure, but we're able to charge a much more affordable flat fee structure. And right now, since we're early, we're not charging any subscription fees, any listing fees— nothing like that. So there's no downside risk to working with us and we're not expecting any exclusivity. We really just want to solve a problem in this space and be able to reduce the administrative expense that goes out into things that frankly, we are seeing as unnecessary.
John: Interesting. I'm just kind of thinking through the process too. Like if I were, let's say working at that organization already, let's say there's 500 physicians there. I mean, would it make sense for the HR department, whoever's putting these out to actually promote let their people know, I suppose. Sometimes I like to do things, you know, like in a vacuum or quietly. But I mean, they could just let all their interns know that they've got an opening for another internist. They're probably doing it because these internists have asked for it. And so, hey, by the way, if you're gonna help us get the word out, feel free. That would, I would assume, would be something that could work.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, many groups have internal employee referral programs. What I like to say is this is an employee referral program scaled to the entire network of physicians that are out there and anyone can look at jobs and refer each other. It's not going to be siloed to your facility.
John: Okay. Awesome. Well, let me ask how are things going so far. What's the feedback? I think you are relatively new.
Dr. Zhen Chan: We are. We are. So we launched our first job post in end of September, got another— if I remember correctly— seven onboarded at the end of October, and then we had another 16 mid-November and we're currently onboarding another 40 from a larger health system. We're up to eight clients just in these short few months and in terms of member size, that's probably been the most exciting thing to see— how many physicians really enjoy the idea of this platform and want to support its growth. We've gained now over 315 members, just I would say over October, November, and these first couple of weeks of December, we've gained about three-quarters of that. So it's been tremendous growth.
John: Interesting. So those what do you find? Are they all actively looking, or are they thinking, "Wait a second, doesn't cost me to join? I might need something six months down the road. Why not just join now and find out?" And then when they see the right position, they say, "Maybe I should jump on that."
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. combination. So we have a combination of members who came because they were looking for some things right now. And, you know, frankly, we're because of how new we are, we may not have the right opportunity for that specific person actively looking. But most physicians are passive job seekers, meaning and that I think there's a paper that was put out that it's around 80% of physicians are passive job seekers with a survey from it wasn't a paper sorry, a misnomer. It was a survey of about 1,500 hundred doctors and so what passive means is "I'm not actively looking but if something nice rolls my way, maybe I'll pay attention to it" and so, I'm not gonna be on job boards; I'm probably gonna ignore those text and calls from outside recruiters but if someone I know sends me something that's interesting I'll take a look and that's how our process works so we have a lot of those individuals to and my hope is that as we bring on more employers have more jobs going to be more opportunities for everybody to see. And if they want to apply for themselves, they can. If they feel like there's someone else that's in their network, that's a good fit, they can refer that out. And I see it as a potential to make significant cash too, when you're making a lot of referrals. And I don't think doctors are going to be out there spamming and trying to scam each other for a quick buck in this way. You can lose a lot of trust in that process. And that's exactly why there's so much lost trust in traditional recruitment.
John: Yeah, I guess it'll be interesting how things pan out, but I would assume that most physicians have a lot of integrity and they're not going to be even making a referral to something that they think is at an organization they're not really fond of or something like that. So, that's awesome. Well, let's pause on this for a minute. Tell us how to go to Grapevyne and do that, and then I want to come back to something else.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Sure. So you can find us at our website, grapevyne.health. That's Grapevyne spell with a "Y", dot health. Our websites allows you to take a look at what we're all about, and then you sign up for our platform. Really the onboarding process, I would say it takes about maybe three minutes-ish to just give some basic info. We use a cell phone number for the sign-on, so we can have that one-step verification with you. We're really keen on not having anybody that's not a physician, be excluded from the platform. So it's a physician-only platform. We have an NPI right now that you use, which the NPI is out there, but that's how we verify. Once you're on, you'll see a dashboard with featured jobs. There's another page with all of our jobs, and we're working on a couple extra features to make sure that what you see is most relevant to you, and that there's a way for you to search, and filter, and everything like that.
John: Awesome. That's good. No, it sounds— I went on there and I only went so far before I thought, "Well, I'm not really looking for a job," but yeah, it was well-designed. And that brings me back to this other question I wanted to ask you. It has to do with running this business, practicing at the same time, that piece of it. And we also like to hear about the business building itself. And, you know, who did you pick out - how did you get this thing built and all that? So we kind of want to know a little bit about the business and what it takes to run this thing while you're still practicing.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll talk about the practicing piece. I do still practice part-time. I am on a per diem contract, here in D.C., and this is a really good balance for me, based on my interest. Is it going to be the balance for the rest of my entire career? I don't know. But I do enjoy what I'm doing right now and the full time, running a startup aspect of things. It's- I would say hours-wise, it's as intense as I think I had residency. Like, yeah, it's as many hours as it was in residency. Now, do I get to do my work remotely? Do I have my puppy sleeping next to me and I can have my lunch and everything like that? Of course! I'm not going to compare it to the physical exhaustion I was experiencing in residency, but it's a full-time 24/7 type job. I'm working on the weekends, all that kind of thing. And The business side, building out a team is super important. So one of the first things I personally had to recognize was where are my gaps— where are things that I'm not an expert in? I won't be able to be the best person to do this part. And that was dealing with the lawyers, like the legal side, the day-to-day operations. I've never built a business from the bottom up before as a first-time founder, so I wanted to go out and find someone, and I found an amazing co-founder. His name is Drew Mayer, has been a repeat founder of early-stage companies, has been working in the healthcare startup space for a long time and worked with physicians. His father was a physician. So, when we were talking to him and I was developing that relationship, just felt like we were really aligned on the physicians take back medicine kind of push and that sentiment. And then as we move forward, we brought on an engineer. I can't do product development; I can't code. So went out and looked for someone there, brought on an individual who he worked on Indeed job board. And so, you know, had experience and expertise there. And then finally, you know, as much as we are trying to replace the third party recruiters, I have to be sensible and say, "Well, if there's established recruiters out there who are good and who really do care about physicians. Is there someone out there that can give me that expertise and has been in the industry for a long time?" And we did bring someone on just like that who's been working in health systems, in the exec positions and can really, and just bring her expertise and experience in ways that I personally like. So, finding what I don't have and being able to find the others to come in and help team up kind of building this "Avengers-like group" is the way I see it. And building this business— I have to give credit where credit's due, the concept of Grapevyne came from a venture studio. And so that venture studio is based here in D.C. It's called HealthWorx Studio, spelled with an "X". Yeah, we both have like words that are spelled differently. And so HealthWorx Studio, and they are always incubating and coming up with new ideas. And when they think they have enough research to say there's something here, they go out and look for founders to really come in and build out the concept. Like it's like you start with one puzzle piece and then you want someone to come in and build the whole puzzle. So they come out and look for founders that align with the vision or can give their own vision, build out the business strategy, build out the team, and then take it out of the studio. So that's the model that we're working under right now.
John: So are they the ones that provide the capital to support some of this? Or do you do a separate, you know, fundraising? How does that work?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, so from the conceptualization up to today, it's all been funded by the studio. And we are going out and looking for outside investors. We really want to find well aligned investors, specifically in the physician community— those that are going to be, I think ideally our end users too, right? Because then they can give us feedback, they can be the users of the product, whether if it's for their own practices to help them hire more. physicians or it's going to be physicians who are like, "wow, this is something I can really use." Those are the types of well-aligned investors that we are looking for, but we're starting those conversations now for angels, VCs, etc.
John: Okay. So with the studio, would it be people have used "incubator" as a term, you know, with other is that a similar type of idea that kind of get ideas, get people together?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. The way I like to explain it using what I understand is typically in venture capital, and you usually associate venture capital with earlier-stage companies or growth-stage companies, there's traditional venture capital firms, which is all about, you know, we're going to financially analyze you, we're going to do our diligence on your product, make sure that you have the right team, all that, and say, "All right, we're willing to give you capital for whatever returns expectations." That's traditional VC. And then you have the accelerators and incubators out there that outside founders will come up with an idea and then apply in, in exchange for equity. They apply in to obtain the expertise, to obtain the support resources, et cetera. Then you have now what's, there's more and more of them coming out, venture studios, which act like this reverse incubator or this reverse accelerator. They come up with the idea, start funding it. When they feel there's something there, they'll go out and bring in founders to take it out of the studio. That's my understanding. There may be listeners who will say, "I don't know if Zhen's right about that."
John: Well, it seems to be your experience, you know? So things do evolve over time, but it's a good explanation. It helps me understand really what's going on a little bit better.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: Okay. Well, we're going to get to the end pretty soon here. So I want you to go back and kind of re, just restate, like, what do you think, like the big advantages to Grapevyne over, the current way of trying to find a job.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah. So for us, recognizing that traditional recruitment, it's not efficient, it's not effective, and it's costly. And there's not really great guarantees for finding the right candidate. So our process, because it's referral-based through the physician community itself, and we're crafting job posts fundamentally different than the bulletins and posts that you see out there, we believe we're gonna be better, where our posts are gonna be better in engaging. And your jobs are going to be more visible by a larger swath of physicians that are out there. And on the physician side, the source of truth or the, not the source of truth, but the person who's going to be reaching out to you and giving you anything is always going to be someone you are already connected with— a trusted existing connection. So, driving trust, driving transparency, and ultimately for us as boots-on-the-ground clinicians, if I can improve job matching, if I can say doctors will be put into jobs that they are better fit for because the sourcing is inherently better, we can reduce burnout, we can reduce churn and turnover, doctors will stay in these jobs for longer and especially in fields like primary care or especially in practices that are in rural and underserved settings. Physicians are likely to take those jobs, stay in those jobs, and you have better access and better continuity. That's a hypothesis. I hope that plays out that way. But those are all the, I would say, the value props for what I, to me are the three different stakeholders, the employers, the physicians, and the patients, to be honest. And we're also, you know, for physicians, the job board for me, that's one piece of the puzzle. I want to also build out a career center, provide all of those resources that frankly in residency and medical school, we just didn't get that education. We didn't get that training on how to negotiate contracts. What are the different payment systems that are out there? Everybody talks about value-based care and a fee for service and all these kinds of things, the trends. How do I provide education on all of that we missed that I think is very important practicing medicine in the modern day. Because also, if I can provide more of that education in a way that it's digestible and people will actually view it and take it and absorb it, then I think we will also be able to practice medicine better, take back that ownership again— it's aligned with that sentiment— and not be burnt out as much as an entire industry of workers.
John: Now that sounds like a good plan. I think we were talking earlier before we started recording that looking to the future, I think a lot of physicians are looking to do maybe a nonclinical and a clinical.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah.
John: And there would be no reason why that couldn't be something that just normally kind of evolves on this site.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, absolutely. We are open to posting nonclinical positions on our site. Physicians are looking for them, you know, extra avenues, not just in the form of side-gigs but thinking the similar vein to me— where there are things in healthcare that I also wanna work on. What are the jobs that are out there that can allow me to do that? I think more physicians need to be in those positions. And then you have physicians that are burnt out and are looking for an alternative while still making a difference. Those are out there. So we wanna be a supportive platform for every doctor, no matter what they are looking for in their professional careers.
John: That makes me think of another issue, which maybe you've already reached out to, but what about locums, which is a different kind of clinical job, but it is a clinical job and just need to find them.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, there are a lot of agencies that are out there in the locum space. And we just felt from a business strategy standpoint, let's not go into them. Would we ever go into them? I don't have an answer for that right now. But for me. There's also an element where Locums is an expensive band-aid to provide access to care. Now, don't get me wrong; it's a great gig for a lot of physicians that are looking for them. And I would never stop someone who is looking for them to, I would never stop them from doing so. But for us, we wanna drive more of those full-time positions right now. And I think that's the right strategy. But again, I think in business, it's not like medicine where we try to be as— well, we do try to be as surefire as possible— but a lot of these strategy decisions, I think, some may say that it's the right call; some may say it's not, and right now we're making the call to not do locums just yet.
John: Got it. Got it. Okay, what if someone wants to reach out to you personally for a question or something?
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, so my email address is Zhen, Z-H-E-N@grapevyne.health. Again, reminder Grapevyne with a "Y". And so you can reach me by my email, and then I'm on like every social media platform. Too many, I think. It's been great. I love engaging with the community on social media. So, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, and there's a Grapevyne account and my own personal account. And maybe we'll just link it in the show notes. It'd be it'd be a doozy to list.
John: OK, I'll put a few in and I'll definitely put grapevyne.health. I kind of used the dot com at first when I was looking for you. But no, Grapevyne with a y dot health. I'll put that in the show notes. And I think pretty much people can get information, everything they need to know. Physicians, if they're really thinking they're gonna access this kind of service, your service, then just go to grapevyne.health and do it. Check it out.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: All right, well, this is pretty exciting. I'm glad you could be here and answer my questions. I think it's inspirational to people— physicians who are thinking, "Well, maybe I could do something entrepreneurial. I could do a startup," or maybe not something as this, is a pretty big deal. This is a big thing. You're devoting full-time to it. So it's not like starting a little side gig on the weekends or something. So, I'm really glad you could join us and I'll be watching the growth of this thing. And it should be pretty interesting. And it sounds like that a lot of planning and a lot of investment of time and effort in this. So, you're to be congratulated.
Dr. Zhen Chan: Yeah, well, I really appreciate the support. I really appreciate you inviting me on. And I have to plug this podcast because I forgot to mention that when I was in my exploration journey, I love learning by podcasts. And this was one of the first ones, if not the first one, I hopped on to listen to a whole slew of episodes to learn just what else is out there for physicians to do. And yeah. So, so anybody who anybody who's listening I hope you share this with more physicians out there.
John: Well, I appreciate those comments. All right, Zhen, we're gonna let you go then. And with that, I'll say goodbye. And hopefully I'll catch up with you again, maybe a year from now.
Sounds great. Have a good one.
John: All right. Bye bye.
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