muggermike's Journal

Founded in January 2006, DailyStrength.org says that it has been "funded by a prominent Silicon Valley VC." The social networking startup is built around the range of health care issues from lung cancer to diabetes. Members can exchange information online and as the logo suggests, provide comfort to each other.

DailyStrength was co-founded by Doug Hirsch who was VP of product at Facebook for just 4 months (must be an interesting story there) but but before that was GM, entertainment at Yahoo for 4 years. Hirsch also operates the scrapbooking business AboutMyBaby.com.

 

Doug Hirsch is one of the founders of DailyStrength. He used to be the VP of Product at Facebook and General Manager of Yahoo entertainment. He is currently the owner of another meaningful startup, AboutMyBaby.

For entrepreneurs with startup ideas not focused on revenue but rather, how they can impact people’s lives, what advice can you give to entrepreneurs on how best to build their startup?

You need to do something that you are passionate about and have a personal interest in. A startup is all consuming. With passion comes motivation.

A variety of skill sets are needed so you will need to have a solid team and partners to realize the idea.

For example on our team, we have a therapist, a mommy, and a growing group of advisers.

We believe in fostering personal relationships with not only professionals in the field but also people who understand the internet and believe in the power and impact of open sharing.

Founders that I have spoken to has told me on more than one occasion that with the advent of Web 2.0, it provides an inexpensive way to build your startup and does not require venture funding. On this note, do you have any remarks?

Initially, DailyStrength was self-funded by me.

There is enough open source software out there to test your idea really quickly by building an inexpensive site and testing the response from users. Only after you have touched upon something that resonates with users that you should start building your team and spending more money.

DailyStrength is one of the most meaningful sites I’ve seen on the internet today in how it aims to help people. A website as purposeful as this should be told to as many people as possible. How is DailyStrength letting the world know about what you guys are trying to do? How do you market?

Word of Mouth. As a social networking site, we put power in the hands of the people that use it. By building a support network of people that have similar medical conditions online, we believe that word of who we are, what we do, where we do it, why we do it, and how we do it can be proliferated to the masses.

Do you see DailyStrength as also being an avenue for introducing the effectiveness of alternative medicine such as acupuncture?

Absolutely. In fact, acupuncture is one of our more popular treatments.

We have a list of treatments. Treatments that people have had the most success with will bubble to the top.

We first started out thinking of building a database of treatments, types of surgery, and prescription drugs for specific conditions, but I realized that we were going about this the wrong way. We wanted to also build a community that could discuss the effectiveness of not just western medicine but also consider moving into other areas of healing such as eastern medicine, that may prove useful in certain cases.

In your search engine capabilities, does DailyStrength have the goal of sorting new members by communities and location? In other words, in the next 3-5 years does DailyStrength intend to also provide a medium whereby people within similar communities can meet?

Yes and wholeheartedly. At the end of December, we intend to launch a recommendations section. Where members, of their own accord, can provide their recommendations and locality.

 

Over 113 million Americans search for health information online, and internet companies dealing with consumer health are drawing lots of attention.

Santa-Cruz, Calif. based DailyStrength, the social network that connects people through their health problems, has recently closed its first round of venture financing with Redpoint Ventures. While the company declined to give a precise figure, it’s estimated to be in the $5-7 million range. The funding came easily. Co-founder Josh DeFord said he got the check two months after making the first pitch.

We previously covered the company last November, and according to Josh, traction has been improving. He wouldn’t disclose exact numbers, but said that unique visits are growing at 25% a month, with pageviews growing at 60%. With the influx of cash, the company intends to expand its team, make partnerships, and add features like personalized news. Widgets are on the way.

DailyStrengths’s funding is just part of the considerable buzz around consumer health recently. Last February, PatientsLikeMe a competitor to DailyStrength, raised a $5 million round. Earlier this month, PeerWisdom, another site dedicated to helping people find health-related information, also raised money, though it has yet to launch. (It also has changed its name to Trusera.) Likewise, AnswersMedia raised an undisclosed amount to make expensive health information videos. Consumer health search engine Healia today said it was acquired by the media and marketing company, Meredith Corporation. Finally, Kosmix is trying to spin-off its health search into a new brand.

(Update: More details on Trusera. It is run by two former Amazon.com employees Keith Schorsch and Ruben Ortega, and raised $2 million in seed funding from Seattle venture firm Benaroya Capital, along with TerraPass chief executive Erik Blachford, Ackerly Partners’ Christopher Ackerley, Amazon.com executive Kim Rachmeler and Washington Mutual’s corporate development executive, Craig Tall. See more here.

And on AnswersMedia: it raised its funding from Talon Asset management, a Chicago venture firm, along with founder Jeff Bohnson and other company executives. More here.)

One might worry that within this growing plethora of sources, some harmful misinformation will find its way to the top. We hope that in the race to take the lead, companies don’t lose sight of the fact that, in this vertical market, they’re dealing with people’s lives.

DailyStrength is another one of those Internet sites you swear you’ve heard of before, because the idea sounds so obvious and the need so great.

It is a health support social network, and it has just raised a first round of funding from Redpoint Ventures.

Health care has been a popular theme in recent years. You’ve got search engines like Kosmix and Healthline, advice sites for doctors, and large informational sites like WebMD. But none have developed vibrant social networks. WebMD has messsage boards, but that’s it.

If you’ve got second-stage breast cancer, and you’re about to take a drug called Tamoxifen, what happens when you do that? Where do women go to find people who are also taking the drug, correspond with each other, and give each other virtual “hugs” at 3am? That’s the place DailyStrength aims to be, says co-founder Doug Hirsch.

It is early days for the site. It takes a second to see all that is there; its front-page is a bit busy. But once you dig deeper and play around with it, it is quite logical. Each member of the network belongs to a community centered around a health problem, say breast cancer — and they each can create a personal profile. Finally, there’s a listing of treatments, which is also cross referenced with communities and the profiles.

Hirsch likes to point, for example, to the second most popular treatment, Lexapro. The Lexapro treatment page shows that more than 100 people have used it, but that only half of them find it works. But it shows ten people used it for bipolar disorder, and 80 percent of them report it successful. While not scientific, it provides a good guide nonetheless.

The site then lets you drill down, by selecting the “bipolar disorder” link, which takes you to a page with more information about that health problem, and a listing of members suffering from it, and the discussions they are having about it. See screenshot here:

DailyStrength has four employees, and six contractors. It is based in Los Angeles, but is still semi-virtual, with Hirsch’s other co-founders Lars Nilsen and Josh Deford in Santa Cruz and Portland. DailyStrength launched quietly in September, and had 50,000 unique visitors in November, Hirsch says.

Inspiration for the site, Hirsch says, came during college when Hirsch watched a cousin get liver cancer and die within a few months. Hirsch “ran away” from it at the time, but the experience stuck with him, he says.

Coincidentally, Hirsch developed an interest in the social aspects of the Web. Hirsch joined Yahoo in 1996 as employee #20 and ran product management at Yahoo for chat, personals, message boards, groups and mail. He left in 2001, and ran Yahoo’s entertainment division for four years. Hirsch was also a vice president at Facebook for a few months, until he left earlier this year. His two co-founders are also ex-Yahoos.

The Web’s social networking sites are only popular among the 15 to 25 age-group, Hirsch says, with the exception of LinkedIn. To be popular among a wider age group, a site has to deal with a subject people are passionate about — for example, sex, money or survival. That explains LinkedIn, Hirsch says — it serves peoples’ perceived need to network in order to make money. Health and survival, however, are passions that don’t have social networking outlet to date, he said. Thus DailyStrength.

There are a slew of other sites that come close to what DailyStrength does, such as CarePages, and CaringBridge and OrganizedWisdom, but none of them have focused as much on networking or offer the latest Web 2.0 tools and look we’ve become familiar with. One more recent Silicon Valley competitor, MDJunction, comes close; it is still focused on breast cancer, but is building out. There is also niche site Breatcancer.org, which has a vibrant community, but it is non-profit. Steve Case launched Revolution Health in April last year, but it’s not clear where it is headed