---
title: "Zachary and Elias Dorf of Bask Health: How Pivoting From a Failed E-Commerce Startup Built a Turnkey Telehealth Empire"
url: "https://authoritymag.co/articles/zachary-and-elias-dorf-of-bask-health-how-pivoting-from-a-failed-e-commerce-startup-built-a-turn"
publisher: "Authority Magazine"
author: "Authority Magazine Editorial Staff"
authorUrl: "https://authoritymag.co/authors/authority-magazine-editorial-staff"
interviewee: "Zachary and Elias Dorf"
company: "Bask Health"
category: "Tech"
datePublished: "2025-07-17T22:06:57.236Z"
dateModified: "2026-11-12T17:05:23.827Z"
tags: "Tech"
---

# Zachary and Elias Dorf of Bask Health: How Pivoting From a Failed E-Commerce Startup Built a Turnkey Telehealth Empire

*Twin brothers and co-founders Zachary and Elias Dorf share how overcoming early failures and a costly investor conference mistake led them to build a comprehensive SaaS platform for telemedicine entrepreneurs.*

> Our biggest mistake was not launching to customers sooner. When we were running out of money and hadn’t launched yet, one of our advisors suggested we attend the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, supposedly one of the biggest healthcare conferences in the world.

---

I*had the pleasure of interviewing Zachary and Elias Dorf. Zachary and Elias are twin brothers and co-founders of Bask Health, a software company that helps entrepreneurs launch and operate direct-to-consumer telehealth businesses. Growing up in New York with complementary skills — Zach in entrepreneurship and Eli in finance — they entered the healthcare space after facing their own difficulties accessing care while in college. Their first telemedicine venture, focused on eyelash enhancement, failed due to advertising barriers and customer acquisition challenges, but it led them to identify a broader need for a turnkey telehealth platform. Bask Health was founded as a response to this market gap, and it now powers over 100 companies serving millions of patients, offering an all-in-one solution that includes provider networks, pharmacies, billing tools, and patient portals. With a usage-based monetization model and a focus on customer success, the Dorf brothers have built a company that continues to grow primarily through referrals and word-of-mouth in a largely competitor-free space.*

---

T**hank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?**

Growing up as twins in New York, we found ourselves on different paths, though we both had a keen sense for technology, computers, and programming. Zach had more business acumen and was a born entrepreneur, starting businesses practically straight out of the womb. Eli had more of a money-making approach, figuring out ways to earn since he was young — selling Xbox account upgrades, coaching his own team, managing his own gaming server, and various other ventures.

Despite our different backgrounds and career paths — none of which involved healthcare — we found ourselves post-college wanting to blend our experiences. Zach had started an e-commerce focused data science company, while Eli had run biotech investment banking work. Our own struggles accessing healthcare services while in remote areas during college, combined with our technological aptitude, led us to come together to start an e-commerce focused healthcare company.

**Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?**

When we came together to enter the e-commerce healthcare space, we naively decided to start an online telemedicine platform focused on women’s eyelash enhancement using a generic version of Latisse called Bimatoprost. It might sound questionable now, but at the time, we thought it was going to be a real winner.

We sourced some money from an old colleague of Eli’s and spent practically every dollar we had trying to build this platform, it took almost 9 months. Ultimately, we ran out of money and needed to shut the company down. We couldn’t get enough customers, couldn’t figure out marketing, and kept running into obstacles with Google and Facebook not letting us advertise prescription products.

We shut the company down and ended up owing Eli’s colleague money. We were at a crossroads, both considering returning to our previous paths in e-commerce and biotech investment banking. However, we started receiving emails through our dormant website from people seeking consulting services to help them build their own direct-to-consumer telemedicine platforms. These inquiries led us to pivot and start a new company focused on providing services that would have dramatically helped us launch our own direct-to-consumer business faster — as well as helping these potential clients start theirs. Here, Bask is born.

**So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?**

Today, we’ve built a product that addresses all the issues and problems we faced ourselves as young telehealth entrepreneurs without much access to capital but wanting to start telemedicine companies that could compete with established players like Hims, Hers, and Roman.

Our platform has been incredibly successful because it turns out many other founders and entrepreneurs in this space face the exact same problems we did. It’s incredibly fulfilling to solve challenges we experienced firsthand and to hear how our solution is helping others overcome these same hurdles.

**It has been said that our mistakes are our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?**

Our biggest mistake was not launching to customers sooner. When we were running out of money and hadn’t launched yet, one of our advisors suggested we attend the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, supposedly one of the biggest healthcare conferences in the world. We were told to prepare a pitch and demo, and we’d be able to raise money without a problem. We thought this was a great idea!

We worked around the clock to prepare our demo and get the platform ready, booking last-minute flights and an expensive hotel in downtown San Francisco. When we arrived, it was pouring rain, and the hotel we’d spent $1,000 a night on turned out to be essentially a homeless shelter. We showed up in nice suits, carrying our printed pitch decks, yet we were dodging clouds of “homeless musk” and screams of “Fire!”. We barely got an ounce of sleep because of the noise (and the roaming night walkers).

The next morning, we had a full day of investor pitches. One after another, we realized these were all biotech-focused investors who had no idea what we were pitching. They were mainly investing tens of millions in new drugs and drug discovery, while we were asking for a few hundred thousand dollars — way too small for them. We spent three days pitching to the wrong audience, without even having launched to customers yet.

We left JP Morgan, returned to New York, and realized two critical lessons: first, ensure that any future investors we pitch are software investors, not biotech investors; and second, we needed to launch our platform to paying customers within the next two months or run out of money.

This mistake actually became a valuable lesson. It forced us to focus, launch to customers, and realize we didn’t need biotech money. The concept was too far outside their wheelhouse, which validated that our platform would be successful because no one in the healthcare space was approaching it from the software perspective we were bringing to the industry.

**What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?**

Continuing from the previous story, when we returned to New York and put our heads down, the first thing we did — even before completing our MVP — was put up a website outlining our vision for a Shopify-style platform to help entrepreneurs launch direct-to-consumer telemedicine businesses quickly.

This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. Our first customer actually found us by emailing through our website while searching for anything that could help him launch his business. Nothing like our all-encompassing solution existed at the time.

What truly makes us stand out is that we provide everything needed to launch a full direct-to-consumer telehealth company: the doctors, the pharmacies, the patient portal, billing tools to build out the patient experience, payment processing with multiple providers — literally every component needed to start, build and scale a company in this space. This is a real lifesaver for companies that need to launch quickly and don’t want to spend a year duct-taping solutions together. Much to our surprise, it has also been a lifesaver for existing enterprises that are dealing with poorly built solutions. With us, businesses can launch (or migrate) in an afternoon, and we’re very proud that many have done exactly that with our software.

**Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?**

The biggest thing to avoid burnout — not that Eli and I have ever experienced it — is ensuring you’re building something that others give you direct feedback on, confirming it’s actually useful to them. In many cases for us, customers have told us our product has been life-changing for them personally and for their business.

Burnout typically happens when you’re spending a lot of time on something that hasn’t gained traction or that you don’t enjoy building. Our best advice is to find something you enjoy building and get it into the hands of people who will actually enjoy using your product or service. If you’re still experiencing burnout despite this, building might not be the right career path for you.

**None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?**

We’re most grateful to our first few customers, who found us before we even had a working product or prototype. They helped shape what our product became by telling us exactly what they wanted and needed. They patiently waited as we built it out for them, essentially co-creating the product with us. We’re ever so grateful for that partnership because it allowed us to achieve a form of product-market fit from the very beginning.

**Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your app or software currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?**

We have well over 100 telehealth companies using our software, serving millions of patients who access their patient portals through these telehealth companies and transact with them. Additionally, we interact with over 600 employees and founders of these businesses on a daily basis, helping them utilize our services to the fullest.

The first thing that helped us build this thriving community is that Eli and I work directly with every business that signs up for our platform. We personally help the founders have a successful launch and build their businesses over time (will see how long we can keep this up for).

Second, customer success and support is one of our primary pillars. Because we care so deeply about our customers, they see that commitment and tell their friends, who tell their friends. Word-of-mouth is one of our biggest drivers of growth — we actually don’t do any marketing, so our reputation is key to our growth.

Lastly, we’ve been fortunate to be one of the only platforms in this space without direct competitors. Being great partners to every vendor and third-party we work with, from pharmacies to providers, has made them our best source of business as they constantly refer new clients to us. Having a product that people genuinely need allows us to win business consistently, even if we’re showing up on the third or fourth page of Google search results.

**What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users? Have you considered other monetization options? Why did you not use those?**

Our monetization model is primarily usage-based — we make money per order in addition to a software fee. This aligns our incentives with our customers, as we’re motivated to help their businesses process as many orders as possible.

This approach also aligns with our values. As we mentioned earlier, Eli and I struggled ourselves as founders in this space with limited capital. We wanted to build a platform that allows people to start a business with minimal upfront investment and only pay more as they become successful. With transaction fees, Bask only gets paid when the business using our platform is successful, allowing entrepreneurs to get started with minimal capital and only scale expenses as they grow revenue.

We did try two unsuccessful methods initially: a free trial and a no-subscription fee model. We thought both were great ideas, but the free trial led to a lot of time wasted on people who had no real incentive to launch. Similarly, without a software fee, many users never got over the finish line. Adding a modest software fee helped us understand who was actually serious about launching a business versus who was just exploring options.

Additionally, since customer success is so important to us and we want to ensure every customer gets the same level of attention, the software fee ensures that everyone is actually committed to starting a business so that we can provide the high level of service all our customers deserve.

**Thank you. Here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful app or a SaaS? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.**

1. **Get your product to market as soon as possible.** Launching quickly allows you to gather real user feedback and adapt your product accordingly.
2. **Reduce upfront costs and create a differentiated product with limited competition.** Focus on creating something unique that solves a specific problem better than anyone else.
3. **Be the best at what you do.** Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Excel in your specific niche and continuously improve your offering based on customer feedback.
4. **Focus completely on one thing until it’s done.** Especially when first starting, it’s critical to dedicate 100% of your attention to making your core product exceptional before expanding.
5. **Recognize that working seven days a week instead of five is a competitive advantage.** If everyone else is working five days and you’re working seven, you’ll progress faster than competitors trying to do the same thing.

Additionally, in today’s world of global talent and remote work, you can find incredible people worldwide to help build your company cost-effectively, whereas traditional companies often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on product development.

Finally, understand that building something and scaling something require completely different skill sets. Building can be done with focus and a small team, while scaling requires continuously hiring good people over a longer period.

**You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)**

If we could start a movement, it would be about solving major healthcare problems in the US through telehealth. Many people don’t realize that with a platform like ours, starting a telehealth company is remarkably accessible, and there are numerous opportunities to address vast healthcare deserts while building a profitable business.

There should be a movement encouraging entrepreneurs to launch telehealth businesses that help solve these significant problems in America. Additionally, we need to change legislation to allow more services to be delivered through telehealth, increasing care access for patients across the United States.

Many non-urban areas lack access to top-tier medical services. Just as we can access global talent by expanding our hiring pool, patients should be able to expand their provider access nationally, moving beyond their local doctors to find top-tier specialists for their conditions through telehealth.

Through Bask, we’re also able to provide personalized medications that patients might not have been able to access for hundreds of miles, as our compounding pharmacy partners can produce precise, specific medications. This movement toward telemedicine and personalized medications is here to stay and has the potential to transform healthcare accessibility.

**How can our readers further follow your work online?**

People can visit Bask.Health, our website, and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and all the major social media platforms. We also maintain a blog where we post insights about what we’re seeing at Bask, both through the lens of founders and our team members. If you want to follow along as we build Bask, feel free to visit our blog as well.

[https://bask.health](https://bask.health)

[https://bask.health/blog](https://bask.health/blog)

[x.com/baskhealth](http://x.com/baskhealth)

[https://www.linkedin.com/company/bask-health/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bask-health/)

**This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!**

---
Source: https://authoritymag.co/articles/zachary-and-elias-dorf-of-bask-health-how-pivoting-from-a-failed-e-commerce-startup-built-a-turn (Authority Magazine, Tech). Interviewee answers are first-person statements of the guest. Index of all pages: https://authoritymag.co/llms.txt