Key Takeaways
Unbelievable Well being flips the hiring mannequin so employers apply to nurses, serving to 1.5 million U.S. healthcare employees discover everlasting roles extra effectively.
Dr. Iman Abuzeid co-founded Unbelievable Well being in 2017 and at the moment serves as its CEO.
Since 2017, the corporate has raised about $100 million at a $1.65 billion valuation.
The spark for Unbelievable Well being, a $1.65 billion platform to deal with staffing shortages in healthcare, got here from cofounder and CEO Dr. Iman Abuzeid’s family.
“Lots of my relations are docs, surgeons who apply, they usually have been usually complaining about understaffing,” she says in a brand new interview with Entrepreneur. “They only don’t have sufficient nurses within the working room; they will’t do as many surgical procedures as they want.”
On the similar time, her cofounder, MIT software program engineer Rome Portlock, saved listening to the other frustration from nurses in his household. They have been skilled and certified nurses who utilized at 10 locations and often didn’t even hear again.
When Abuzeid and Portlock dug into healthcare hiring round 2017, they discovered a system caught in time. “We simply realized that the processes, the instruments, the know-how — nothing’s modified in healthcare hiring particularly for over 20 years. We simply figured there simply needs to be a better manner,” Abuzeid says.
Unbelievable Well being makes use of AI to deal with one among healthcare’s greatest crises: power workforce shortages. Right this moment, greater than 1.5 million nurses (about one in two nurses within the U.S.) use the platform to handle their careers.
From medical college to founder
Abuzeid was born in Sudan and grew up in Saudi Arabia. She accomplished a six-year mixed undergraduate and medical diploma in London between the ages of 18 and 24.
“I went to medical college as a result of my dad, my two older brothers have been docs as properly,” Abuzeid says. “I simply figured, hey, different individuals within the household are doing it, I would as properly do it too.”
Throughout medical college, she realized that whereas being a health care provider is “a improbable profession,” she needed to “have an effect on a a lot larger scale.” So she completed her diploma, skipped residency, and moved on. She didn’t apply medication after incomes her medical diploma.
As a substitute, after medical college, she joined McKinsey, doing hospital operations and technique. Then she went to the College of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Faculty of Enterprise to get her MBA with a deal with healthcare administration, earlier than relocating to the San Francisco Bay Space.
There, she turned a product supervisor at early-stage healthcare tech startups, studying find out how to work with engineers, designers, and information scientists. She noticed what it really takes “to construct and develop merchandise,” she says. These abilities, mixed together with her medical and consulting background, positioned her to see each the ache factors and the potential in healthcare hiring.
Flipping the hiring mannequin
In 2017, “all the celebs aligned” for Abuzeid. She had the benefit of residing within the Bay Space and she or he had expertise working for startups. That 12 months, she left her product position to start out Unbelievable Well being. “It was time to start out and to turn into an entrepreneur, which is a dream that I’ve had since I used to be younger,” she says.
Unbelievable Well being’s first product was a two-sided market, however with an essential twist: employers apply to nurses, not the opposite manner round. Nurses join and create a profile, getting into their preferences. After that, employers ship them interview requests. The nurses resolve which interviews they need to settle for and which of them they need to decline.
That reversal resonated instantly. “The healthcare employees completely liked that,” Abuzeid says.
Constructing a market meant confronting the issue of needing each employers and employees. Abuzeid’s answer was to start out slender. The corporate launched solely within the Bay Space, then added Los Angeles, and stayed in California for about two years. That geographic focus made it manageable to construct the product and collect suggestions earlier than increasing to different elements of the nation.
Reaching unicorn scale
Right this moment, Unbelievable Well being has just below 100 staff and helps about 1,500 hospitals and amenities, together with main nationwide techniques, regional networks, tutorial medical facilities, neighborhood hospitals, surgical procedure facilities and residential well being organizations.
The platform now contains persevering with training, wage estimators, and AI-driven providers along with its core market. There are two major AI choices: a voice agent named Gale and one other one named Lyn. Gale is a profession associate for healthcare employees, which helps create resumes and run mock interviews. Lyn can conduct interviews on behalf of employers, interviewing candidates in days, not weeks. Abuzeid debuted each AI brokers in September 2025.
“We’re saving every HR crew member one to 2 months of their time with our brokers proper now,” she notes. “That’s significant, and that’s altering their job description.”
Financially, the corporate has raised about $100 million, and in 2022, it reached a $1.65 billion valuation, making it a unicorn. Income comes primarily from a subscription mannequin wherein employers pay for entry to the platform. Nurses can join free.
Classes for founders
Abuzeid emphasizes that founders ought to have a transparent, regular North Star. “At all times attempt to have a really clear imaginative and prescient [and] mission,” she says. “Your technique and techniques change over time, however simply make sure that your North Star, the place you’re finally headed, stays constant and genuine.”
Certainly one of her most placing factors is about psychological well being and management. Citing Ben Horowitz, Abuzeid says that “the primary job of a CEO is to handle your individual psychology.” In her eyes, the psychological well being of founders and CEOs has not been talked about sufficient.
Abuzeid credit remedy, government teaching, a peer group of CEOs and agency boundaries with ensuring that work doesn’t take over her life. She invests in herself so she will keep efficient in her position over the long run.
Beneath the unicorn valuation, Abuzeid’s motivation stays to assist nurses discover employment. She roots her objective in her authentic coaching and her household’s experiences in medication.
“I believe healthcare employees are among the most overworked and underappreciated employees on this nation,” she says. “It’s a privilege to have the ability to construct merchandise and options that assist them and assist their employers too.”
Key Takeaways
Unbelievable Well being flips the hiring mannequin so employers apply to nurses, serving to 1.5 million U.S. healthcare employees discover everlasting roles extra effectively.
Dr. Iman Abuzeid co-founded Unbelievable Well being in 2017 and at the moment serves as its CEO.
Since 2017, the corporate has raised about $100 million at a $1.65 billion valuation.
The spark for Unbelievable Well being, a $1.65 billion platform to deal with staffing shortages in healthcare, got here from cofounder and CEO Dr. Iman Abuzeid’s family.
“Lots of my relations are docs, surgeons who apply, they usually have been usually complaining about understaffing,” she says in a brand new interview with Entrepreneur. “They only don’t have sufficient nurses within the working room; they will’t do as many surgical procedures as they want.”
On the similar time, her cofounder, MIT software program engineer Rome Portlock, saved listening to the other frustration from nurses in his household. They have been skilled and certified nurses who utilized at 10 locations and often didn’t even hear again.
