Startups
Scheduling Apps Have Been Around a Long Time, so Why's It so Hard to Book a COVID Vaccine Appointment?
Jan 26 2021
Los Angeles residents scrambling to book vaccination appointments by refreshing their web browsers and flooding hotline numbers are out of luck. By Monday, most appointments on city and county-run websites were taken for the week.
It took just 10 minutes for thousands of reservations to get snapped up on L.A. city's appointment site run by Carbon Health last week.
"The experience has been a little bit like trying to get Rolling Stones tickets," said Sujal Mandavia, the chief medical officer of the San Francisco-based company.
<p>As the city and county update their respective sites with new appointment slots, many eligible for the vaccine are hitting roadblocks — some users seeing appointment times that, in reality, have already been booked. The county is receiving about 160,000 doses each week. According to the state's epidemiologist, vaccinating the region's estimated 1.3 million people over 65 will take until June. </p><p>The rush to schedule vaccinations for health care workers, residents of nursing homes and, now, people 65 and older will serve as a logistical trial run over the next few months. It's become a test of tech providers' ability to build platforms that match the steady wave of traffic. </p><p>"It's just been very difficult because of the overwhelming demand," Mandavia said. </p><p>On Monday, Carbon Health's website announced that it was not taking new appointments at all. And L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said there were no available appointments at county-supported sites through the end of this week. She hopes new slots will be added for Saturday and Sunday. </p><h2>Patchwork Approach</h2><p>Without a national strategy for testing or vaccination rollout, cities and municipalities are relying on healthcare and tech companies to digitize tasks from booking appointments to storing medical information. </p><p>On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new statewide appointment management site called <a href="https://myturn.ca.gov/" target="_blank">My Turn</a>. </p><p>The platform — built by Salesforce, Accenture and Skedulo — is piloting in Los Angeles and San Diego. It's designed to inform California residents whether they are eligible and, if so, to send them notifications about available slots.</p><p>A venture-backed startup founded in 2013, Skedulo has been scheduling appointments for the American Red Cross and supporting coronavirus testing efforts with New Jersey-based BioReference Labs. The majority of its revenue comes from healthcare clients, marketing executive vice president Miles Kelly said, making the company "relatively prepared for the critical mass rollout on the vaccination side."</p><h2>Navigating the Tech </h2><p>Kelly said the company has strived to "make something that is super-sophisticated come across as relatively straightforward or simple."</p><p>"One of the biggest issues we're experiencing now is that the people that we are striving to get vaccinated are not necessarily those who would be digitally native," said Shira Shafir, a UCLA associate professor of epidemiology.<br/></p><p>But even younger people familiar with the internet are struggling to make appointments online.</p><p>On Sunday, Shafir saw an email for open appointments and rushed to My Turn to book a slot for her 80-year-old doctoral advisor "knowing with certainty he would not be able to do so." </p><p>The website crashed, then listed times that she wasn't able to reserve. </p><p>"You look to platforms booking tickets for very in-demand concerts and there are certainly wait lists and people pushing refresh, refresh, refresh," Shafir said. "This is not a new phenomenon, though it might be new to public health." </p><p>The city's appointment site will stay up even as My Turn is rolled out across the county. Carbon Health entered the deal to help L.A. schedule its vaccine appointments after working on the city's testing efforts. In a little over a week, the $175 million venture-backed company built the platform to list every open appointment offered at five city-run vaccination sites.</p><p>"We have really bulked up our network server resources so that we're able to handle any variation in volume," Mandavia said.</p><p>But things could get even more complicated. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is reportedly inching closer to approval, a development that could pose other challenges, said CORE CEO and co-founder Ann Lee. The nonprofit group operates vaccination pop-ups in L.A. including the Dodger Stadium location.</p><p>"It's just a one-dose vaccination which makes life easier, but how do you deal with two different types of vaccines on the same site?" she said. </p><p>Lee is reminding residents that most appointment-booking issues have to do with supply and demand. There just aren't enough vaccines available for everyone eligible to get one.</p><p>"The thing I have been telling the people I care about is the minute they get the notification that appointments are available, they do need to drop everything," Shafir said. "There are very few things on anybody's calendar that would be more important than getting to a vaccination site." </p>
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The dating app, S'More, which is short for Something More, is getting some love from investors.
The service, which debuted in Los Angeles in June, says it has registered more than 165,000 users since it came out of stealth mode last March and is seeing 20% to 30% monthly growth. Users skew female and young, with more than half under 35 years old.
<p>On most dating apps, pictures are paramount. But on S'more, photos are blurred out until users have spent time talking to each other. </p><p>The new funding will be used to expand the company's operations by hiring a full-time development team and expanding marketing to get ready for a full nationwide rollout.</p><p>Under stay-at-home orders, dating apps have been one of the only ways for singles to meet during the pandemic and <a href="https://www.nbc12.com/2020/12/07/dating-apps-booming-amid-pandemic/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">have seen explosive growth as a result.</a> Earlier this month, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/tech/bumble-ipo-paperwork/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bumble filed paperwork to go public. </a></p><p>"The dating and social discovery space is in an accelerated-growth mode, with the industry expanding more than 18 percent in 2020, and a flurry of investor activity including IPOs, acquisitions, spin-offs, and newly funded start-ups," Adam Cohen-Aslatei, CEO and Founder of S'More, said in a statement. "The downside is that dating products have become stale and lack innovation for years. S'More aims to change that by offering daters a deeper way to connect beyond the swipe of a headshot."</p><p>S'More also announced it is redesigning its app to allow users to include more multimedia in their portfolios and make it easier for them to chat with each other. It is also adding a meter to indicate when profiles will unblur. </p><p>Other investors in the seed round include Workplay Ventures (Mark Pincus), Gaingels, Loud Capital/Pride Fund, Kenny Harris (Plusgrade), Justen Stepka (Enterprise Fund), Rafael Vivas (AppLovin), George Church (Harvard/MIT), John Abbott (former CEO The Meet Group), SideCar Angels, and Brad Weschler (former CEO IMAX), and Joshua Black (Apollo Management). </p>
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Los Angeles-based Goodpods launched at the start of the pandemic in the hopes of answering the question "What podcast should I listen to?"
As the podcast market has become more saturated, more and more companies are trying to make discovery easier. Google's Podcast app relies on AI-powered suggestions to lure listeners. Other podcasting platforms like Breaker take an approach more like that of social media.
<p>"So many podcasts are being created every single day. And so the vast universe of podcasts that you can listen to is just getting bigger and bigger," said JJ Ramberg, co-founder of Goodpods. "Discovery is getting harder and harder."<br/></p><p>Ramberg, the former host of MSNBC's weekend business program "Your Business" and "Been There Built That" podcast, came up with the idea for Goodpods after she found herself stalling her daily jog so she could search for a good podcast. She realized there was likely a more efficient way to ask her friends for podcast recommendations.</p><p>So she co-founded Goodpods with her brother, Ken Ramberg, as a way to stay connected with friends about what they were listening to in the podcast world. Both Rambergs are investors in dot.LA.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzMDI0My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDcwMTgzNn0.oBw2FI5xFfGKCuWkgit9QEGX8V1sd3M_u6hfV9d_V8g/img.png?width=980" id="ecae6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9de86ca1d792622c7f02e0aa0f45e2f6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Brea" data-width="1014" data-height="1204" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Breaker was recently bought by L.A.-based Maple Media.</small></p><div style="display: none;"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUzMDI0My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDcwMTgzNn0.oBw2FI5xFfGKCuWkgit9QEGX8V1sd3M_u6hfV9d_V8g/img.png?width=980" id="ecae6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d8042d732073e6ef67ce09d46abab68c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Brea" data-width="1014" data-height="1204" /></div><p>"Rotten Tomatoes does it for movies. Yelp does it for restaurants, Goodreads did it for books," said Ken Ramberg. "There was no really social network or discovery platform for good podcasts, really."<br/></p><p>Over half of Americans have listened to a podcast and about a quarter listen to a podcast at least once a week, according to<a href="https://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-Infinite-Dial-2020-from-Edison-Research-and-Triton-Digital.pdf" target="_blank"> a recent survey</a> by Edison Research, which examines trends in digital media consumer behavior. </p><p>Breaker, a social podcasting app similar to Goodpods, has also been trying to make it easier for listeners to find podcasts they love. Maple Media, run by Michael Ritter, recently bought the platform and its social media handles <a href="https://dot.la/breaker-podcast-2649943995.html" target="_self">after Twitter absorbed their staff</a>. He thinks the problem is that all this content was created without a well-thought-out infrastructure that could channel it to consumers.</p><p>"Podcast discovery trails other media formats, such as video," Ritter said. "YouTube executes very well with a robust recommendation system that has been refined over the past 15 years and TikTok is innovating in this area as well. Podcasting does not have this infrastructure, but new shows and audiences are both growing very quickly."</p><p>Goodpods launched at the start 2020, and has averaged over 1,000 downloads monthly since, according to Apple app store data. Since March, the Los Angeles-based app has attracted attention from celebrities including <a href="https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/1298334414095753217?lang=en" target="_blank">Kim Kardashian West</a>, who offered to follow back the first 10 people who followed her on the app — a move that was not a paid partnership in any way, said JJ Ramberg.</p><p>Other notable users include journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell, actor and producer Alyssa Milano and journalist and host Katie Couric.</p><p>Among the groups that have popped up on the app's recently released feature are "Gen Z College Podcasters," university students who are sharing the podcasts they've made with each other; "History Lovers," podcast listeners who share their favorite podcasts; and "Slopeside Pod Club," whose description reads "Pods for dog walks."</p><p>Podcast creators can also use the app to see how many listens their own podcasts are getting and they can interact directly with their audiences, enabling them to crowdsource opinions and ideas for later content.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGbWVkaWElMkYxMDMzMTRfMDFiNzBmODNkY2RjNGQ4ZWE2ZDg4NGI5N2M5NjhmNTIlN0VtdjIucG5nJTJGdjElMkZmaWxsJTJGd181NjQlMkNoXzQzOCUyQ2FsX2MlMkNxXzg1JTJDdXNtXzAuNjZfMS4wMF8wLjAxJTJGMy1waG9uZXNfdjMud2VicCZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRnN0YXRpYy53aXhzdGF0aWMuY29tJnM9MTA5Jmg9NTA2M2ZlNzEzODE3YTRkZWI4NjZlNTM5OGFhNDMxNWQ3ODhkY2QzNDIxNDkwNjA5ZGJiNjk4ZWM1YWM3NGM3OSZzaXplPTk4MHgmYz00MDM3NTI5NzkzIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNDkyMTU2MH0.cNDsMpm6GS7q2nQ_sZMy2-AS5ZSsUorzIfJzsCbTWXk/img.jpg" id="cb9c7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="453077da8a1579329bb085a67cc2db0c" alt="Goodpods" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Goodpods aims to make it easier for listeners to find podcasts they love. </small>
</p><p>Podcasts have long had trouble gaining new audiences, so there is a market for companies like Goodpods if they can successfully create a revenue model.<br/></p><p>"Podcast discoverability isn't a business in itself," said Colin Maclay, a research professor of communication at USC and executive director of USC Annenberg's Innovation Lab. "It may be a feature, but it is not a business by itself. But if you imagine a mixture of a social network with that, then you maybe [can] build toward a business."</p><p>Maclay is optimistic that larger players in the podcasting world like Amazon, <a href="https://dot.la/wondery-2648972988.html" target="_self">who recently acquired Wondery,</a> Spotify and Apple, won't crowd out smaller companies like Goodpods. He points to Twitter, <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-twitter-facts-what-s-happening-in-2019-14995056#:~:text=The%20two%20worked%20on%20a,a%20new%20employee%2C%20Jack%20Dorsey." target="_blank">which started as a podcasting app</a>, and eventually grew into a much more general social media site.</p><p>Ritter, who now runs Breaker, said the advantage companies like his have is that larger players have been more focused on exclusive content rather than the social aspects of podcasting such as sharing and listening — both key to discovery.</p><p>"We believe social podcasting platforms continue to have plenty of room to innovate and create unique sharing and listening experiences in the future," said Ritter.</p><p>As for the Rambergs, this is not their first venture together. In 2005 they founded Goodshop, an online shopping coupon code site that donates a portion of each sale to charity. It's raised $13 million since it launched, donating to causes from local schools and dog shelters to the American Cancer Society. Ken Ramberg also co-founded JOBTRAK, a college job site which was acquired by Monster.com in 2000.</p><p>When asked what Goodpods' plans are moving forward, JJ Ramberg said: "We're still early days. It's not even been a year yet. So we are 100% focused on the user experience and fulfilling the promise that users find great new podcasts, and podcasters find new users."</p>
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