Trusera, a ‘Health 2.0′ site founded by former Amazon exec Keith Schorsch, is facing tough times. The startup is nearly out of money, and Schorsch says that unless it can raise more funding by the end of April, it will have to shut down on April 30.
Trusera launched ten months ago, offering users a community where they can share their stories about how they’ve dealt with health conditions. Instead of simply segmenting users into different groups according to the disease they are dealing with, Trusera also takes other information into account, including a user’s hobbies, location, and age. Using this data it tries to match users up with each other, so that their experiences and tips can be shared with the people who stand to gain the most from them. The other benefit of this matching system is that users can elect to receive Email updates whenever a new match submits a story or tip, which means that users don’t have to worry about constantly searching the site for new information.
Trusera is well designed, with a friendly interface that lends a sense of community that makes the site seem like more than just a reference guide. It also has a few innovative features in the works, like a writing assistant that offers users tips as they write about their experiences (Schorsch assures me that it is nowhere near as annoying as Microsoft’s infamous Clippy).
But while it has grown a dedicated user base, it is still fairly small (which isn’t too surprising given that it has been around less than a year). The site faces off with a plethora of competitors in this space, which include everything from similar online portals to more basic forums. Many sites also revolve around individual diseases, which can further segment these communities.
While Trusera may be forced to close at the end of next month, Schorsch says that the company will continue to maintain the website content and platform on private servers, which they can reactivate down the line should they come across new funding.
where did 2 million go?
i cant say i’ll feel sorry if they hit the deadzone
where did 2 million go? I think that we know the answer to this question: expensive offices with expensive furniture, maybe catered lunches, high salaries and bonuses, etc.
Chasing the dream… “we will have extraordinary success and grab a big piece of the multi-billion US health care market, etc.”
Steve Case failed “Revolution Health” burned through over $200M before a mercy buyout.
“Common Sense,” you are such an old, little used concept.
Regarding Trusera.com, what good is it to get personal unreliable health information from someone with colon cancer in Seattle or diabetes in Atlanta?
If we have a health problem, we need to see a doctor. And the reality is that no website is going to replace a highly trained professional, when we need one.
What a bitchy bitter comment, thats why doctors like you will be out of practice soon and we need a site like Trusera
sure. then trusera.com will cure your std.s
moron
I agree to a certain extent with the doctor’s comments. Of course people should see their doctors. But, the quality and knowledge of doctors is not a constant. I think most people use the web like they would use a second opinion–to double check that they are getting reasonable care and are asking the right questions.
My boss lost her father when the doctor botched laparoscopic surgery. The surgeon nicked his liver and he bled out. After the death, her family found out the doctor was not a thoracic specialist as he had claimed and that he did not even have privileges to do that surgery. During the surgery, the nurses knew it was not going well and this doctor turned away the helped of a vascular surgeon. Nobody forcefully spoke up and saved his life. The doctor now practices in a different state. So, I’m all for anything that helps patients advocate for themselves.
Keith’s a nice guy, from my brief interaction with him, and I think their site brought some interesting innovations to the space. Sorry to hear of the troubles.
That is sad, I remember doing a write up on them and hate to see anyone in healthcare having issues.
http://ducknetw...b.blogspot.com/
Personally, I will not put my medical history on some website. As it is, I go out of my way to prevent my medical history from being passed around with my insurance company.
Its information that should be keep very private, because who knows what insurance companies will do with it in the future. They go out of their way to not pay for crap. Thats all I need is some website I signed up for years ago being data mined and then being denied coverage.
You didn’t even bother to look at the site, did you?
I have to agree with you on this one. I mean now-a-days people are afraid of having their name googled; imagine what would happen if someone came across your “problems”.
I still think it’s a cool service though. It helps people find others who are dealing with the same things and through collective collaboration people will be able to overcome their shortcomings.
I wonder how much better this would work if the community was a little more anonymous. Like instead of referring to someone’s actual name, you referred to them with their username. You never know their identity but you still get to know who they are (aside from name etc) and how they relate.
But, I wish Keith the best of luck!
totally agree, that’s why I always look for content from trusted sources when it comes to health, and I have to say http://www.your...althtopics.com/ is doing a pretty good job aggregating and categorizing all the health topics we care about.
Does this site offers anything different than say an Organized Wisdom and/or Cosmix? How many monthly uniques do you currently serve, and what ad company do you use?
This is innovation in health. This is what Health 2.0 should be. Not some message board.
http://www.freemd.com
FreeMD seems not only to be extremely weak on content coverage, but for those few conditions it does cover it is poorly designed and features an useless irritating prerecorded doctor asking questions that could be written in text.
Feels a lot like (online) health 0.5
According to quantcast the site has over 200K UU and is trending upward. Compare that to the lame 15K for this site and you can draw your own conclusions. And when I went to the site the questions were written out in text. Maybe that changed? Seems to me the site is useful in that it actually gives you some real information on what to do. I dont think its trying to be a WebMD.
Now that’s pretty funny. If this is Health 2.0, we better get to 3.0 fast.
Adwords spending = trend upward. Pretty simple. Anyone can spend on Adwords and start an upwards trend which is why traffic is a deceiving number. Revolutionhealth was a classic case of this.
I have never seen an ad for FreeMD anywhere in Google. And I am there alot buying for clients. FYI.
Wtf is health 2.0? Sounds like lameness 3.0 to me.
heheheh
That’s because you don’t have your ears to the ground my friend. Health 3.0 has already (in part) begun.
Just proof that a ‘Brand Name’ founder is no success guarantee.
In this climate, only the real smart and slim startup’s get funding, just the reality of it.
We think this is a great site and we are sorry to just learn about it. Hopefully they will get some rescue funding because unlike many other sites, this one provides some tangible help to its community. To many sites (social networking) focus on exploiting their members narcissistic tendencies to gain some semblance of a definable target market while not helping them solve any problems in their life. Not that they have to, but may be its about time some entrepreneurs changed the game and offered value instead of waiting for their sell out to a larger company.
Baci Schorsch is the CTO
man..even the family dog is on the payroll…what’s next? the family cat is company PR person?
not surprised
Companies that get funding in the next year “should” be the ones that have bootstrapped and survived…even when they got funding. Those are the ones that have longevity and will survive any economic downturn. So VCs… if you’re listening, look outside your our own connections. You might discover a company that can actually bring in a nice return. A smaller return is way better than than a 2M investment that is about to die.. unless you really don’t care.
Agreed!
That’s unfortunate to hear, especially since Trusera was part of the Seattle startup scene. It’s always sad to hear when a startup goes down, we’ll see what happens next.
Try surfing clasilistados.org
I don’t understand what angel investors ever saw in this company to begin with. There was nothing novel about the site, and it wasn’t like there wasn’t several health sites already in the space doing the same thing.
It didn’t help when the site was poorly executed. Until a bit ago, the site was a cumbersome mess and was really poorly put together.
This company simply had and has no business to be in business. No business model, no revenue, no point.
i am a doctor by profession, and i have used trusera. the community there was pretty decent but i did not liked the idea of people sharing their medical histories in form of stories.
so far many health 2.0 sites i have seen in recent time, i have liked the concept of real-time interaction with doctors on which http://www.healthcaremagic.com is working, the best thing about this site is it lets you connect and chat with qualified physicians in real time with very economical charges, keeping the feeling doctor-patient relation alive. doctors there help you with first level medical consultation online, and if require they refer you to specialist and also fix your appointment (in india)… they’ve recently raised $2.5 Mn from Accel and I think if they go global, it will be a killer thing on health 2.0 space.
ommmmm yeahhhh.
this really sounds like a genuine review! LOL
since when are spammers allowed on TC?
Haha. Just put the 2.5 into the Cayman’s, you’ll only get an 8% annual return but its better than having your cash flowing into the trash can.
I don’t understand what angel investors ever saw in this company to begin with. There was nothing novel about the site, and it wasn’t like there wasn’t several health sites already in the space doing the same thing.
It didn’t help when the site was poorly executed. Until a bit ago, the site was a cumbersome mess and was really poorly put together.
This company simply had and has no business to be in business. No business model, no revenue, no point.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
Health-only community sites are not a standalone business (at least at present time). The few startups in this space over the past few years that have been sold were priced at roughly the money they raised (ie, asset sales).
Most of the health info sites not backed by a major publisher with other sources of traffic will be next to fail.
Trusera launched a year late in a niche that already had too many sites in.
Taumed already down, hopecube too. Dailystrength and Wellsphere got a mercy.
Who’s next?
My guess… weare.us, webtribes, wegohealth, Inspire, imedix and maybe mdjunction and healia too. All gone by the end of 2009.
Who will stay?
Medhelp (they seem to have become one of those…), Dailystrength, Patients like me and maybe just maybe OrganizedWisdom
David, see you on New Year’s 2010.
CEO Keith and Trusera are class acts; people with real health issues do communicate through personal stories, and they trust the opinions of others who have real-life experience. Give their site a real look… I give them credit for addressing the 98% of our health lives when we’re not in the doctor’s office.
Display ads provide little to no value in the health space. Therefore, I question the longevity of any of the firms mentioned. There is little meaningful way to monetize a health message board which is what 99% of these are today. And there is nothing interesting about sites like MedHelp or any other reference site that takes content from any of the major content licensors. There are two successful firms in eHealth today: WebMD and Google. And little on the horizon to change that…