Jessica Kim - Co-Founder and CEO of Ianacare

Business Model is Destiny

This month’s interview is with Jessica Kim, the CEO and co-founder of Ianacare. Ianacare is a platform that supports family caregivers. These are adults that are devoting countless hours of their lives to the care for a loved one (an ailing parent, in-law, partner, or child). The company raised a $12M series A led by Greycroft and has live contracts with large employers like Elevance Health and HR Block.

Jessica is a close personal friend, and when I first interviewed her, I thought that the story would largely be about how deeply personal, lived experience compels someone to create a company and start navigating the idea maze. And yes, Jessica’s personal story of caring for her ailing mother is the inspiration of Ianacare.

But what I found particularly instructive is the way that her past entrepreneurial experiences caused her to approach this business differently. Yes, she had a problem that she was compelled to solve because of personal experience. But the way she went about it was more deliberate because she had reflected on some pitfalls in prior businesses. Two areas in particular.

First, she was very deliberate about partnering with a great cofounder. Jessica and Steve are a dream combo. Highly complimentary skills, very strong mission and strategy alignment, both deeply experienced in high-growth startups, and just A+ people overall. In this episode, Jessica shares an exercise that she and Steve went through to really decide whether they were the right partners for each other before fully taking the plunge together. It involved going through 75 questions together (yes 75) including stuff like: “what would you do if we really need money and an investor will only invest if the other person steps down?” Or “What makes you feel most ashamed?”. Pretty intense and personal stuff.

The second learning is the idea that business model is destiny. Figuring out how a company will make money shapes nearly every aspect of a business. What does the right founding team look like? What is the right funding strategy? What defines the right minimum viable product? etc.

The challenge with companies that are deeply driven by personal motivations is that the business model is often an afterthought. This leads to the problem of bringing a great product to market, but with real challenges in turning the product into a thriving business. Entrepreneurs are by nature folks who like solving problems and have a strong bias for action. But this can lead founders to inadvertently make decisions that will be painful to unwind later. Thinking deeply about business model and moving forward with a very strong hypothesis up front is part of working through the idea maze before fully taking the plunge. The hope is that this prevents the company from needing to make a major pivot or reboot because the product, team, or go to market motion doesn’t adequately serve the paying customer.

There is a lot more richness to this interview, so please have a listen and enjoy the conversation! Please also leave a review so that more folks can find the podcast!