IndeVets is ready to embrace its identity as a tech company

Michael Raphael’s career has taken him through many industries and iterations before he landed on tech-enabled scheduling platform IndeVets.

Before launching the startup that now offers a platform for staffing veterinarian hospitals, Raphael worked as a journalist, then at a dot-com era startup, and as an intern and eventual managing director of a private equity firm before ever entering the vet space.

The 2017-founded company came from Raphael’s experience with Community Veterinary Partners, a network of animal hospitals which, like many other care centers, were experiencing difficulty staffing enough veterinarians. The poor work-life balance and long hours many vets experience made it hard to keep schedules full and enough vets at each hospital, he said.

That year, Raphael started IndeVets, which lets vets themselves pick how and where they want to work. There were options for tech-enabled staffing solutions, the founder said, but not many that put the worker in control of their schedule. When the company first launched, the scheduling was being done by an operations person, a complicated spreadsheet and lots of phone calls. About six months in, the non-technical founder knew something needed to change.

They brought on a development team to build its tech platform, the Centralized Appointment Tracking System (CATS) — and, yes, that acronym was very purposeful. It was the company’s biggest capital expense up to that point, but one that felt transformative for the business, Raphael said.

That's the path I think so many entrepreneurs find themselves on: They have an idea, they realize they need to become technologists to execute it.

“The tech was something I never really thought was going to be critical for the business. I knew vets needed more flexibility, and we sort of ended up becoming this tech enabled-company,” he said. “That’s the path I think so many entrepreneurs find themselves on: They have an idea, they realize they need to become technologists to execute it. It was a really-eye opening experience, it’s been super valuable to see how that works out.”

Now, vets can sign up as W2 employees with IndeVets, access benefits and continuing education, and choose the hours they work. It compares to many who work as 1099 contractors, Raphael said, but with more security and clarity over their hours. The company says it now works with a network of 1,700 hospitals in 43 markets, mostly on the East Coast. It counts about 150 employees — including 25 members at IndeVets HQ based at 10th and Spring Garden Streets — and 125 veterinarians.

In November, the company took a growth capital investment to accelerate a few aspects of the business. The capital, an investment from New Harbor Capital, will allow the company to increase marketing efforts, attract more veterinarians and “invest in its HQ team.” (The amount of funding was not disclosed.)

Though they do use the office on a hybrid schedule, the team is open to remote candidates, Raphael said, as they plan to add another 25 employees this year. The current plans account for adding roles across the board, but notably to its tech team — another full-stack engineer, and a VP of engineering and front-end engineer designer are likely coming down the pipeline.

For Raphael, moving the development internal has been a signal of the company’s growth, especially coming into the business without the initial tech focus.

“That’s been a huge shift for us,” he said. “We’ve gone from going from a place of knowing nothing about it to growing the business around it.”