They’ve since grown to offer 3.8 million available appointments with doctors and specialists across six cities – NY, DC, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas. “2011 is the year we expand across the nation, says Massoumi. Oliver Kharraz and launched at TechCrunch40 in 2007 with 5,000 dentist appointments in New York only. The ZocDoc journey has been amazing for me.” I asked my colleague Oliver why can’t people book doctor appointments this way? He said, ‘You’re right! We should quit our jobs and pursue this idea!’ That was 4 years ago. “Getting healthcare when you need it is arguably the most important human need. “I buy groceries online, I bought my engagement ring online, yet I couldn’t book a doctor appointment online,” Massoumi said exasperated. His eardrum burst in flight and he was unable to get a doctors’ appointment for 3 days. At the time, Massoumi was a consultant at McKinsey and traveling frequently. ZocDoc was founded in 2007 by Cyrus Massoumi, Oliver Kharraz, MD and Nick Ganju. On average, doctors using ZocDoc see an additional 100 patients on a monthly basis. Typically with one or two new patients, the service pays for itself. ZocDoc is a free service for patients, while doctors pay a subscription fee of $250 per doctor per month. ZocDoc allows patients to find nearby doctors who accept their insurance, read verified reviews written by real patients, and instantly book an appointment with a local medical professional online or via the free iPhone App (Android app coming soon). So perhaps it’s like the Open Table for doctor appointments? We’re getting warmer. We first wrote about ZocDoc in 2008, when it began as an online service for patients to book doctor and dentist appointments instantly in lower and midtown Manhattan.

In case you’ve never heard of ZocDoc before, it is one of the most structurally intelligent and most powerful technologies spearheading our health care revolution.

ZocDoc is like… the Airbnb for doctors….No, just kidding! While it does share similar elements to the stellar startup like tapping the power of the Internet to fill vacant space and being a stellar start up in its own right, New York City based ZocDoc is tackling what may be the greatest problem of our time: healthcare.

Zocdoc oliver kharraz