Ben Holber and Ryan Hambley were raised together. 

Hambley, the boy of a dermatologist, always had clean skin. 

But Holber strived with acne from the moment he was a teenager. 

The two noticed first-hand the difference it makes to have a dermatologist on call. 

Apostrophe was born.

The Journey of Apostrophe 

Apostrophe, a brand-new startup that makes it simpler to get Rx acne medicines and therapies, has announced the conclusion of a $6 million seed round managed by SignalFire, with assistance from FJ Labs.

Apostrophe joins users with board-certified dermatologists, who then create a personalized Rx treatment plan for the patients. 

Apostrophe has a vertically combined mail-order pharmacy, which helps the distribution of the treatment plans.

The aim is to eliminate the trouble of trips to the dermatologist, long halts in the waiting room, and the overall annoyance of visiting a pharmacy.

Apostrophe contracts with a physician association to provide the dermatologists to patients, but has no direct employment relationship with the doctors themselves. 

Holber revealed that, given Apostrophe’s positioning as a pharmacy, it is best to have dermatologists at arm’s reach from Apostrophe, and vice versa, to make sure that all people are incentivized individually by the health of the patient.

When users sign up, they are requested to give photos and fill out a questionnaire. 

The Apostrophe program does a few assistive organizations and helps communication, but the tech is not included in any diagnostic analysis. 

Holber stated that the choice to stay away from including machine learning in the diagnostic process was a subtle but important one.

Apostrophe medicines | iTMunch

Why Apostrophe Is Successful? 

In a world of a million offerings online, when you have genuine personalization and genuine personal interaction, there is a large premium on that, said Holber. 

There is a ton of use in acknowledging someone is on the other side looking at your stuff, and who’s there to solve a question.

Hence, Apostrophe is laser-focused on the association between dermatologists and patients by asynchronous text chats, rather than using data and machine learning to substitute the dermatologist.

Consumers spend $20 for the initial consultation, and that $20 is then used as a credit toward the purchase of the proposed Rx treatment plan, which is personalized by Apostrophe. 

The company earns its money off of its pharmaceutical business.

Apostrophe has allocated a sum of $6.5 million since its launch.

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