Jeff Dachis has been a leader in the New York tech scene for a long time.
Dachis co-founded digital marketing solution Razorfish in 1994, growing the company from a two-person shop to over 2,000 employees, bootstrapping the company until its IPO in 1999. In 2008, Dachis founded Dachis Group, which used proprietary data analytics technology to help brands optimize their social marketing efforts. In 2014, that company was acquired by Sprinklr.
In 2013, at age 47, Dachis (pictured left) was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes.
“I found it really weird that I went to the doctor, met with the nurse practitioner for a few minutes, then was given an insulin pen, a prescription and a pat on the back. I felt very much not cared for.”
So, for his third act, Dachis embarked on a mission to impact every person on the planet with diabetes and access to a smartphone.
The result is One Drop, an app that aims to help people with diabetes log, learn and share information in order to manage the disease. Dachis started the company back in 2014, when, prior to building anything, Dachis spent hundreds of hours interviewing people with diabetes in order to specifically understand their pain points when it comes to convenience, price, support and self-care.
The app officially launched in April 2015.
“My previous business experiences and my experience building One Drop are completely interlocked and related experiences,” said Dachis. “At Razorfish, we invented the idea that user experience is the key to finding value in any digital service. You can commoditize tech, but in the end, it’s the user experience that really makes the product unique and definable. In the digital economy, user experience is the key definer of value. We pioneered and invented the craft of defining, developing and implementing user experiences for every industry on the planet. User experience is what I do.”
To that end, the user experience is at One Drop’s core. Within the app, users can monitor their personal insulin levels, log the effectiveness of their medication and track their physical activity and diet. All of this data is then tracked and analyzed by the One Drop team, which uses the information to further determine how to best take care of its users.
“Diabetes is a data-driven disease,” said Dachis. “Managing diabetes requires individuals to understand carbohydrates, medications, insulin, physical activity and glucose information all in one place.There’s not one platform on the market that allows you to have all that data in one place, except One Drop. We have medication information, all of our users’ glucose readings, all of their insulin doses, the different kinds of insulin they use, all of their physical fitness activity — all that information is what’s required to live with diabetes.”
One Drop also makes living with diabetes more affordable. While a pack of 50 blood glucose test strips runs between $50-$90 at drugstores, One Drop created a direct-to-consumer monthly subscription model that provides unlimited blood glucose test strips and 24/7 in-app support for $39 per month. Customers can also buy One Drop’s blood glucose monitoring system, which includes a glucose meter, lancing device, test strips and a carry case.
“When it comes to improving user experience, we’re thinking about price, packaging, et cetera — every aspect has been thought through to improve the lives of people with diabetes.”
Since launching two years ago, over 150,000 active users worldwide use One Drop’s suite of services. The company now counts 20 people on its team, many of which are affected by diabetes themselves.
One Drop has received $8 million in funding to date.
“I get up every day and sleep well at night because I get emails, texts and notifications every day about how we are impacting the lives of our users in a meaningful and positive way,” said Dachis. “And I say that in the sense that we’re empowering those users by making them feel different about the way they manage their diabetes. But we’re also impacting their health in a significant way that they’ve never received before.”
Image via One Drop.
