Photo courtesy of Startup Grind Madison
Madison HealthX Ventures Founder and Managing Partner Mark Bakken discussed his path to founding multiple IT consulting companies at a Startup Grind Madison event Wednesday evening at 100state.
HealthX Ventures is a venture-fund company that invests in healthcare IT startups in the Madison area. After founding multiple startups, Bakken wanted to share his IT knowledge and entrepreneurial experience to help companies build themselves from the bottom up.
“I really like working with startups,” Bakken said. “It’s my way of giving back to the community.”
Bakken previously co-founded Nordic Consulting, which was ranked as the 46th-fasted growing company in the United States in 2014.
Serving as Nordic’s CEO from 2010 to 2014, Bakken combined his strong IT background with his interest in the healthcare industry. After watching Epic grow exponentially, he decided to start a company with a former Epic employee to offer consulting services to healthcare organizations using Epic software.
Bakken said that it was an easy decision to start Nordic because the healthcare industry was looking for solutions that technology could solve, such as making healthcare more affordable.
“We (at Nordic Consulting) are making a difference in healthcare,” Bakken said. “The industry needs good solutions and it needs to be affordable”
Before founding Nordic, Bakken started, expanded and sold Goliath Networks and Bedrock Managed Services and Consulting. Goliath Networks was a consulting firm that focused on Novell and Microsoft infrastructure and was ranked 97th of the 500 fastest growing companies from 1993 to 2001.
While serving as Goliath’s CEO, Bakken was approached by Bill Gates to serve on the very first partner advisory council; he accepted and served from 2001 to 2007.
After he sold Goliath to a public company, he founded Bedrock, where he gained more insights into the many aspects of running a business.
“I learned a lot about what I am good at and what I am not good at,” Bakken said.
Throughout his years of experience, Bakken learned what it means to be an entrepreneur.
“As an entrepreneur, you have to always agile, nimble and adapting to the things you have to do,” Bakken said.
