Jane App: From Clinic to Cloud: The Inspiring Journey of Jane's Founders in Building a Profitable Healthcare Revolution
Company profile
Company business details
Motivation to build the product
Co-founder Alison Taylor opened a multidisciplinary health clinic in 2011 and could not find any existing software that supported online booking, medical charting and billing for a diverse group of practitioners in one system. Frustrated by having to cobble together separate tools and host them on-premises, she teamed up with her web-designer friend Trevor Johnston to build a custom solution. They realized the same gap existed across many clinics, and decided to turn their in-house tool into a scalable product.Problem that their product solves
Small and mid-sized health clinics often juggle multiple standalone applications for appointments, documentation, billing and insurance, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Jane solves this by providing one platform that handles all key administrative tasks, freeing therapists, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, counselors and other practitioners to focus on patient care. End users include clinic owners, administrators and healthcare providers who need an efficient, reliable system to manage their practices.How they developed a primary version
The initial version was built in six weeks as part of a client’s website and hosted on a Mac Mini in her clinic, then expanded over the next 18 months to include a full electronic medical records module and billing features. The founders collaborated directly with their own practice and early adopters to refine functionality before a full launch in 2014. As usage grew, they continuously iterated on the product in-house, adding key modules such as video appointments and insurance integration based on customer feedback.Their unfair advantage
Jane’s co-founder pairing of domain expertise (a practicing clinic owner) with product/design skill ensures deep alignment with customer needs, driving exceptionally low churn and strong word-of-mouth referrals. Profitability from day one has enforced capital efficiency and allowed growth on the company’s own terms.Strategies
Idea Validation Stage
Scratch-Your-Own-Itch Positioning
Built the product by solving the founders’ own problem in her healthcare practice, ensuring a genuine market need, authentic user insights, and product–market fit before launching to a wider audience.
Vertical Market Focus
Focused deliberately on an under-served tier of multidisciplinary clinics (physiotherapy, chiropractic, massage, etc.) instead of chasing the broad healthcare market. By solving the real pain points of scheduling, billing and record-keeping for this niche, they found practitioners eager to adopt and evangelize the product.
Pre-Launch (Product Development & MVP)
Word-of-Mouth Referral Marketing
Hosted the first version of the software on a local Mac Mini inside the founder’s clinic. Other practitioners discovered the public online booking link, asked to use the tool themselves, and referred peers—driving initial organic growth without paid acquisition.
Humanized Branding via Personable Product Name
Chose a simple, easy-to-spell human name (“Jane”) for the software early in development to stand out from literal competitor names. This personable branding conveys a friendly “team member” role, increases memorability across disciplines, humanizes the product and encourages natural word-of-mouth.
Design-Led Branding
Treated the initial clinic project as a branding exercise by designing a beautiful website and seamless patient experience, rather than using a bland third-party scheduler. The high-quality visual identity and integrated booking link in the footer drove inbound interest from other clinics seeking the same polished look, setting up early organic growth.
