Growing a Kansas City Based Company Into a National Company

Entrepreneur Matthew Condon celebrated the sale of his first company with champagne on a Friday in December 2013, woke up Saturday with a bit of a headache, went to church on Sunday and then started his second company on Monday.

Condon told the inception and growth stories of both companies — first ARC Physical Therapy+ and then his current company, Bardavon Health Innovations — at the ACG monthly meeting on June 10.

His journey started as “a farm kid from Iowa,” and he credits his farming background for enabling him to withstand the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

“I do think farming is the purest form of entrepreneurship,” he said. “Mom and Dad were incredible partners. Dad as a farmer planted a crop. He and the family did all the work we could, and then there’s a moment where you pray for enough sun and rain and hope that crop grows really well. And then there’s a time when you work really hard to harvest that crop. And then you either cry or celebrate for a day, and then the next thing, you get up and go to work again.”

Condon played football in college. He received a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from Iowa State University, an MBA from the University of Toledo and a juris doctorate in health care law from the University of Toledo College of Law. He “fell in love with health and health care law,” and this led him to start ARC Physical Therapy+ in 2003. The business focused on musculoskeletal health care — “sprains, strains and tears of knees, back and shoulders. Broken toes. It’s stuff we all deal with.”

This branch of health care is becoming the top health care spend in the country at roughly $5 trillion, he said.

Condon looked at the data and found the secret of both of his businesses: Physical therapists spend 30 times more time with their patients than any other provider in health care does. And looking at the data is key to his companies’ success.

“If you look at health care as evolving into a real data-collection engine, that is an incredibly rich source,” he said.

ARC’s early days were a struggle. Condon worked the front desk and cleaned the clinic on weekends. ARC was “really a tech-enabled business that collected data,” so his team started writing computer code to build their own data-collection system.

ARC had about 300 patient visits that first year, 2003. By 2012, that number grew to 100,000 patient visits and became “the most profitable premium physical therapy clinic in the country,” he said. “We went out to that marketplace and didn’t apologize for being the highest cost per visit.”

ARC collected data on patient outcomes — whether they healed or didn’t — and created a network of doctors and other health care providers and shared quantifiable data on the providers’ success rates, “and it just blew up and it grew.” Condon sold ARC to U.S. Physical Therapy Inc. in 2013. After that champagne-launched weekend, Bardavon was born.

Three ARC employees joined Condon at Bardavon. It now has about 300 employees at offices in Mission Woods, Kansas.

Raising capital in a company’s early stages is “so hard,” Condon said.

“Who you raise it from is so important. If they’re looking to get in and out, you need to know that from the start. Others have a long-term view. Our investors know exactly what is and is not important to us, but they expect us — they expect me — to run this business.”

Condon told the ACG audience to look for upcoming news about Bardavon tripling its presence in Kansas City. The company announced June 14 that it had acquired PeerWell Inc., a consumer-focused musculoskeletal health application.

The acquisition enables the companies “to pair in-person physical therapy with virtual tools to support patients before, during and after injury” and create the largest and highest-performing musculoskeletal provider network in the U.S., Bardavon said in a news release.

“It’s been an amazing ride for me (in Kansas City),” Condon told the ACG audience. “Whether you’re tied into it or not, there is a beautiful, budding, exciting ecosystem of entrepreneurs in this town. … I believe this may be the best place to start and grow a company in the country today.”