Above: Hill Ferguson
Image Credit: Hill Ferguson/LinkedIn
Telemedicine provider Doctor on Demand has made shuffle in its leadership, replacing its founding chief executive Adam Jackson with former PayPal executive Hill Ferguson. The company claims this transition was needed to bring in a “leader with a different set of skills to execute an increasingly dual-pronged strategy of nurturing its direct-to-consumer business while rapidly expanding its number of enterprise customers.”
Ferguson starts at Doctor on Demand on May 11 and Jackson will depart the company, but remain as an advisor.
This isn’t the first time that both Jackson and Ferguson’s career have crossed paths. In a blog post, Jackson explained that he once interned for Ferguson while an undergraduate at Venderbilt University. Jackson hasn’t revealed any specific plans after officially stepping down, but has said that “I am an entrepreneur at heart, and our team’s staggering achievements to date have led us to a growth phase that I believe calls for a different set of talents in a CEO.”
As for Ferguson, this role is one he’s likely been training for after a short four month stint at the venture capital firm Social Capital as its executive-in-residence (EIR). But it’s his time at PayPal that he’s perhaps best known for as chief product officer. He departed the payment processing service in 2015 following a management shakeup after Dan Schulman assumed control as CEO. Before that, Ferguson spent time at Yahoo, Yodlee, MoneyCard Financial, and Zong.
For Doctor on Demand, his ability to develop products and grow users within a highly regulated and complex industry like financial services is likely what the company hopes he can reproduce within health care.
Doctor on Demand launched in 2013 as a way to connect you with a physician using a livestreamed video from your mobile device, competing alongside services like at one point Google Helpouts, HealthTap, MDLive, Teladoc, and others. Today it’s available to “tens of millions of Americans” through their employers or health plans, and it has an enterprise offering being used by four of the Fortune 10 companies and others — it recently signed its 400th corporate client.
The company declined to provide specifics about what its “next phase” looks like, except that it wants to “bring effective, affordable care to millions more Americans.” The naming of Ferguson is perhaps akin to what happened at Google in 2001 when Eric Schmidt was brought in as CEO to replace cofounder Larry Page. Doctor on Demand’s board seems to want a more seasoned executive who can move things forward quicker and at scale, with experience building product and dealing in highly regulated spaces.
Under Jackson, the company has seen its telemedicine platform establish itself, and even forming partnerships with major insurance providers such as UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. He has also guided the company in raising $86.75 million in venture funding, including $50 million in June, from Shasta Ventures, Venrock, Andreessen Horowitz, GV, Lerer Ventures, Richard Branson, and Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush.
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