Roberto Leon, HealthAtom | Starting a SaaS, Expanding Your Product, and Growing from Small Customers to Large

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Can you imagine building and growing a software business to millions of dollars in sales without raising capital?

We spoke with Roberto León, cofounder and CEO of HealthAtom, a management platform for health centers.

HealthAtom was born more than 10 years ago with a simple product for dentists.

Today, it is a complete piece of software with clinical, administrative, CRM, and fintech modules, and it serves 7,000 small, medium, and large health centers in more than 20 countries.

After bootstrapping, in 2023 HealthAtom decided to raise a round of 10 million dollars from investors such as Kayyak Ventures, FJ Labs, and Amador Holdings.

Roberto told us about HealthAtom’s beginnings, how they built their MVP with very little money and landed their first customers. We also talked about how they have expanded their product over time and how that allowed them to go from selling to small customers to much larger customers.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:50] - Beginnings and First Customers

How did Roberto arrive at the fascinating world of startups?
About their first sales. What did the first dental clinics he was pursuing tell them? And how did they manage to close their first customer?
How does Roberto think about working with early adopters at the start of a startup? How do you find them and focus on them? Especially when you are bootstrapped, there is pressure to want to sell anything to anyone.
What would Roberto say are the pros and cons of having done consulting at the start of Dentalink?

[12:13] - Product Expansion

What Dentalink’s MVP looked like. Why did they choose to start with those features?
One of the most common reasons investors pass on software companies is that they are “features, not products.” Was their first product a “feature,” as investors say?
In their first sales or conversations with investors, did Roberto get the typical objections that you could do the same thing with a free tool like Excel or Trello? How did he handle them?
How did Roberto get information from his existing customers, and how do they prioritize the next product modules they build?
How is product built as you scale, and how does information flow so you can keep moving forward?
How has their culture and mindset changed in going from the scarcity of being “bootstrapped” to the “abundance” of venture capital? What aspects do they want to keep, and what aspects have to evolve?

[29:25] - From Small Customers to Large Ones

How have the product and the sales strategy had to evolve to go after larger customers?
What would Roberto say are the biggest challenges startups face when moving from SMEs to large customers?
What would Roberto say is the best market segment in which to start a business? How would he advise other founders to think about that decision?

[42:37] - Rapid-Fire Questions

If he had to start a company from scratch, what is the main piece of advice Roberto would give himself?
How are Roberto and his team preparing to adopt artificial intelligence?
Changes Roberto would like to see in Latin America’s startup ecosystem