Name: Greg Swayne
Current Title: Partner at TechCXO
Location: Atlanta, GA
This month, our Mentor Spotlight goes to Greg Swayne. Greg is a seasoned C-level executive and entrepreneur with deep experience in content, technology, SaaS and has led many successful startups.
Prior to joining TechCXO he served as COO of Florida-based MDLIVE and oversaw its growth from 45 employees when he joined to over 180 when he left. He also served as Chairman and President of AirSage where he still serves as the company’s Chairman. Prior to AirSage, he was the Chairman and CEO of Remark Media (NASDAQ: MARK), formerly HowStuffWorks International (HSWI), expanding the popular website into Brazil and China and producing rapid organic growth before re-focusing on the U.S healthcare market, becoming an equity owner and development partner for Sharecare, a social Q&A healthcare platform created by Jeff Arnold, founder of WebMD, and Dr. Mehmet Oz whose popular syndicated TV show reaches millions of consumers daily. Earlier, Greg was President and COO of HowStuffWorks US, which was acquired by Discovery Communications in 2007. Greg was also part of the Series A embedded management team that led N2 Broadband prior to its acquisition by Tandberg Television in 2005. He has been a pioneer in e-health since its infancy when as a Medical Illustrator, he created the idea for and co-founded A.D.A.M. in 1990, which began as a fully illustrated, dissectible male and female anatomy program but quickly morphed into the best of breed provider of interactive health information and decision support tools which today has powered thousands of health websites and dozens of health portals with updated health content including Yahoo health, AOL health, and WebMD to name a few. Greg took A.D.A.M. to the NASDAQ exchange in 1995.
We are incredibly grateful for Greg's service and couldn't be more excited to highlight him in this month's mentor spotlight! Read on to learn more about Greg.
What have you enjoyed most about being an Endeavor mentor? What event have you enjoyed most while participating as a mentor at Endeavor?
I enjoy meeting the founders and hearing their stories…how they came up with their idea and launched their respective businesses. Understanding the challenges they are facing is the most interesting aspect of these meetings as its where I feel I am able to give them ideas on how they may move through, over or around a particular problem. For that reason, I like the Endeavor Local Selection Panel events the most.
I like the energy of entrepreneurs. Their perseverance, resilience, resourcefulness and optimistic attitude are contagious and motivates me to help them with my expertise or experience. No matter what industry or type of business they are in, I have always found the experience with them intellectually challenging, rewarding, and fun.
Historically, the healthcare system has operated in separate silos. Now medical provider networks, insurers, government payers, big pharma, and tech are forging new cross-industry collaborations, opening up wider access to data and drastically improving patient health. But given what has happened in 2020, how can they continue to reinvent themselves to create technology that helps fast-moving diseases?
2020 was actually a watershed event in terms of accelerating the adoption of Telemedicine and accelerating the breakdown of silos within the healthcare system. The system had to seek ways to continue to provide healthcare services and do so without direct physical encounters. Out of necessity, technology platforms where advanced and patients were encouraged en masse to adopt the utilization of these platforms with dramatic and permanent results. Telemedicine holds the promise of finally enabling the most efficient navigation of patients through the healthcare system… from low acuity problems to managing more chronic conditions and patients with multiple co-morbidities, the technical overlay being driven by Telemedicine across traditional healthcare access points is enabling (for the first time) true data portability, and with this a better ability to direct patients to the appropriate point of care. As a result, we are now seeing more innovation with new start-ups solving problems that will yield better efficiencies, as well as more favorable outcomes for patients. 2020 has dramatically accelerated innovation, and therefore opportunity, in the healthcare system.
What is one thing that might surprise people about you?
I began my professional career as a medical illustrator after graduating from the Medical College of Georgia. I began illustrating with traditional techniques including pen and ink and graphite but quickly adopted computer illustration tools which led me to my first entrepreneurial adventure when I co-founded ADAM, Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine, which began as a fully illustrated, dissectible male and female anatomy computer software. ADAM ended up selling products in dozens of countries across the globe and the Company became a public company on the NASDAQ exchange in 1995 and following, quickly morphed into the best-of-breed provider of interactive health information and decision support tools as the internet came into being. Over the years, ADAM has powered thousands of health websites and dozens of health portals with updated health content including Yahoo health and WebMD among others.
Thank you Greg for your continued leadership and giving back to the global entrepreneurial community and beyond.