.png)
We are spotlighting Botco.ai, and its co-founder and CEO, Rebecca Clyde. Botco.ai is changing how healthcare companies are able to manage the patient experience using AI to answer patients’ critical questions in a timely manner.
What led you to become a founder?
My career started in marketing intel, which led me to a position where I was implementing a company’s marketing automation strategies and CRM software. After working there for almost a decade, I left to start my own agency, which specializes in implementing marketing automation services for larger companies. There, we became experts and partners with platforms such as Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
What shifted my area of expertise from marketing automation to use cases in healthcare is what inspired Botco.ai today, and is based on my own personal healthcare experience for my daughter.
What was your “Aha” moment that sparked the idea for Botco.ai?
My daughter has chronic asthma, and had an incident when her prescription ran out when she was younger. After hitting roadblocks, we couldn’t get her prescription filled in time, and she ended up in the hospital – that triggered a whole series of health events that we are still dealing with today.
The frustrating part was knowing that if all these systems had been linked and automated, this wouldn’t have happened. So I started digging into this and realized that the customer engagement platforms that healthcare companies and pharmacies use are disjointed. And that’s when Botco.ai was created as a way to improve that.
Our vision has been to streamline the patient experience so that a patient can always get the answer they need right away—whether that is an appointment, a renewed prescription, or a diagnosis. Through our agentic platform, they get that experience.
How has Botco.ai grown since starting?
We launched our first product in 2020 and received a grant from the State of Arizona that year, which kick-started our efforts. Since then, we’ve raised $5M in venture capital.
In 2023, we were selected as a recipient for Google’s Latino Fund and awarded $150,000 in award funding. It was really encouraging to be picked by Google and receive this grant in their highly selective process. They were intrigued by how we were applying AI and solving challenges that had not been solved yet.
We connected with Bronze Valley through gener8tor and were intrigued by their market in the Southeast, so we applied for their Investment Accelerator in Birmingham last year and were accepted. We found that community to be an incredibly supportive group, which also provided us access to prominent healthcare research institutions like UAB.
What’s ahead for the company in 2025 & beyond?
An exciting advancement for our company is moving into clinical trials and opportunities, and partnering with prestigious organizations like the University of California Health System.
We’re building a model right now based on clinical data to match patients into clinical trials and making sure that people are being directed to the most life-saving path. Then, clinical teams can use this information to make better recommendations for their patients.
Founder to founder: What’s your advice to other entrepreneurs?
For any entrepreneur looking to start a business, you need to have a strong conviction about the problem you are solving. The battle to start a company, get through all of the uphill efforts, and that ongoing, never-ending feeling requires unwavering conviction.
Every morning when I get out of bed, I’m excited to do what I’m doing because I know what I’m creating is making a difference in the world. I tell founders to be utterly convicted because that’s the only way to get through all the challenges of being a founder.
Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your story about Botco.ai and for the helpful advice for new founders! We look forward to your progress in the year ahead.
