Photo credit: Carolina Wilson.

Daniel Cane, founder of Modernizing Medicine, encouraged members of the Miami entrepreneurial community to nurture a dynamic company culture Tuesday evening at Venture Hive in downtown Miami as part of a monthly guest speaker series hosted by Startup Grind, a global network of more than 100 chapters that supports entrepreneurs.

Modernizing Medicine is a productivity tool for physicians that adapts to their unique style of care to save time and provide better care for each patient.  The Web-based platform offers health care information technology solutions to physicians and is used by health care specialists across the country. Before developing Modern Medicine, Cane  co-founded the online education platform Blackboard.  

Connecting and growing the Miami startup community to retain strong entrepreneurial talent is one of the goals of Startup Grind Miami, which Knight Foundation supports.

“We want to empower the community by drawing out entrepreneurs to tell their story,” chapter director Jason Ibarra said. “We want to show people others have succeeded in their own city.”

Cain echoed the importance of fostering a united entrepreneurial community in Miami and the importance of nurturing a healthy company culture.

“Cultures aren’t accidents and aren’t forced,” Cain said.  “Our team at Modernizing Medicine is a diverse group of people, but the one thing everyone has in common is passion.”

Cane described entrepreneurialism as an inherent characteristic people develop at a young age.

“If you can’t imagine working for someone else because you know a more efficient way to do something, you might be an entrepreneur,” Cain said.

Before recounting the stories of his more lucrative startup endeavors, Cain told the story of his childhood lemonade stand where he first realized his entrepreneurial spirit.  When Cain realized devoting the time and resources to making the lemonade was not efficient, he began selling the powdered lemonade packets to customers to make more money in less time.

It was not until college when a simple idea to make lecture notes digitally sharable turned into an online education platform used by universities across the country.  

When Cane found it difficult to keep up with taking notes in a statistics class, he worked with some peers to upload class notes onto the Cornell intranet for the professor and fellow students. Cane’s statistics professor was so pleased with the results that more professors asked for the same service. The success soon sparked the idea for Blackboard.

Cain’s idea for Modernizing Medicine derived from the same concept of streamlining information. Cain said he visited a cutting-edge doctor in South Florida, but was surprised by how redundant and time-consuming the process of filling out paperwork appeared to be among different specialists for the same patient. Cain decided to team up with the doctor to create a digital platform to save time for physicians.

Cain suggested the constant desire to innovate for efficiency is a determining factor of the future success of entrepreneurs and their companies.

“Very few entrepreneurs have one defining ‘ah-ha’ moment,” Cain said.  “They are a constant spark plug generating new ideas.”

Cody Johnson is a communications intern at Knight Foundation.