This Founder Helps Nurses Find Better Jobs, Faster
Photographs by Anastasiia Sapon
With Incredible Health, Iman Abuzeid has created the fastest-growing career marketplace for health care workers. And she's done it by empowering nurses, who are right up there on the pedestal with Mom and apple pie--and too often have about as much negotiating power.
Abuzeid was well-positioned to see exactly what was wrong with the employment market for nurses. As an MD, and then as a management consultant working in hospital operations and strategy, Abuzeid understood the impact of the nursing shortage. In her personal life, many of her family and friends are doctors, and would complain about understaffing. Yet her co-founder's sisters are both nurses--and would often lament that although they are experienced and qualified, it would take them months to find new jobs.
Abuzeid raised $17 million to build a platform that lets employers apply to nurses, rather than the other way around. Nurses create a profile, and then sit back and decide whether to accept interview requests. Incredible Health automatically vets and screens nurses, helping to match them to specific employers. On average, this cuts the time it takes to find a new job by two-thirds, and the jobs are often better: They come with a 17 percent increase in salary, on average, and a 15 percent decrease in commuting time. Incredible Health works with more than 200 hospitals nationwide, including academic medical centers such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Stanford Health Care. There are more than 150,000 nurses on the platform--a number that is growing by 15 percent each month.
Abuzeid knows the financing strategy she's chosen--venture capital from traditional firms, such as Andreessen Horowitz, which led her most recent round--requires such unusual growth. She's good with that, she says, because the growth and the money match her business strategy and her ambitions. Says Abuzeid: "We want to be the one platform and the one company out there that's giving nurses the best experience."