Kevin McMurtry and the upside of being fed up

Kevin McMurtry has offered a useful answer to the question of what makes a task difficult: “shucking oysters.” It is a pleasingly unceremonious reply from someone who had already built a business employing hundreds of people. An oyster does not care about your job title. There is a small opening, a stubborn obstacle and a considerable possibility of making a mess.

His route into entrepreneurship had its own stubborn obstacle. In 1999, he left a meeting-management job that had become difficult and unsatisfying, and started Advanced Health Media with Joseph Luzi. He later described himself with a phrase rarely given pride of place in a founder’s biography: “I was a reluctant entrepreneur.”

Reluctance gives this story its interest. The familiar business origin begins with someone who always wanted to be in charge. McMurtry’s begins with someone who had ideas, knew his field and had reached the end of his patience. The company followed. Years later, his career would include another less theatrical skill: helping other executives take responsibility for the business he had founded.

“I was a reluctant entrepreneur.”Kevin McMurtry, 2005

A philosophy graduate goes into sales

Before AHM, there was Colgate University, where McMurtry studied philosophy, and New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he earned an MBA. He began his business career selling for Procter & Gamble, then worked in publishing before moving into meeting management. Both his parents had worked in the same industry he would eventually serve; his mother at Roche, his father at Hoechst Roussel.

The sequence matters without requiring a grand theory about it. Sales gave him direct experience of a customer-facing job. Publishing and meeting management put him close to the practical business of communicating information. When he went out on his own, he was entering a field he already knew. There was experience behind the irritation.

His response also carried a warning for employers. Discussing his departure in 2005, McMurtry argued that solid performers deserved fair treatment and fair pay, because they could become competitors. His own company was competing with his former employer. The advice had the advantage of having been tested by the person giving it. A resignation letter can become a rather expensive piece of market research.

The rebellion came with customer service

An office photograph from 2005 shows McMurtry seated at a desk, with a monitor to one side and photographs behind him. He is dressed for work, rather than for a founding myth. The setting suits the early business: a company whose ambitions depended on making complicated arrangements function reliably for customers.

At AHM, software sat alongside operational services. Meeting workflows, financial controls and reporting were part of the offering. McMurtry described himself as a rebellious creative, willing to take risks. His chosen arena for that disposition was the unglamorous business of improving how organizations got work done.

That pairing is the interesting part. Rebellion can sound like a preference for breaking things. A company selling dependable service has to give customers reasons to trust it. McMurtry’s early approach joined technology to customer care; a new method still had to work on an ordinary working day. The creativity had an appointment to keep.

By 2005, AHM had 140 employees and sales exceeding $100 million. Those figures describe a company six years after its founding. They also make the word reluctant rather entertaining. Whatever uncertainty accompanied the beginning, the organization had acquired the very concrete obligations of employing people, serving clients and keeping a growing operation together.

Capital, acquisitions and the work of getting bigger

In May 2004, McMurtry was named among the New Jersey finalists for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year competition. By February 2007, Arlington Capital Partners identified him as an award recipient in Business Services. Recognition had arrived while AHM was still being built, before the later changes in its ownership and executive leadership.

Arlington invested in AHM in February 2007, partnering with the existing management team. McMurtry remained chief executive. He set out two intended uses for that backing: more investment in technology research and development, and strategic acquisitions that would extend the services available to clients. The plan attached money to specific next steps.

The product behind the investment included AHM’s PFX System, which brought together planning workflows, eligibility checks, financial controls, documentation and reporting. These are separate jobs that an organization needs to connect. For McMurtry, the commercial opportunity lay in offering customers a coordinated way to handle them, backed by the people who would deliver the service.

In November 2007, AHM acquired the operations collectively known as Embryon. The transaction expanded its capabilities and was announced as taking the combined business beyond $400 million in revenue. That is a company revenue figure attached to an acquisition announcement, rather than a measure of McMurtry’s personal wealth. Scale belongs to the business; it should keep its proper label.

Another expansion followed in February 2010, when AHM acquired substantially all the assets of Advogent Group. McMurtry, then identified as founder and CEO, emphasized the combined business’s scale and range of services. Jeff Brady, its president, spoke about integrating the organizations. The announcement placed headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey, and said integration would begin immediately. It did not disclose the deal’s terms. Those details make the expansion tangible: a larger operation still needed a base and a plan for combining its work. An acquisition has two clocks: the announcement happens once, while the work of joining people and operations continues afterward.

A founder learns a different job

By July 2011, McMurtry was AHM’s founder and chairman. James Burgess had been appointed chief executive, succeeding Brady, who had held the CEO role since March 2010. McMurtry welcomed Burgess’s combination of service and technology experience and said he looked forward to working with him on continued growth.

This is a useful chapter in a founder’s career because the responsibilities have changed. The business still carries the founder’s history, but another executive has the chief executive’s job. McMurtry’s public comments concerned the person arriving and the work ahead. The appointment put his interest in service and technology into the language of choosing leadership.

In June 2017, AHM’s board appointed McMurtry executive chairman. He had been an active director since 2007. His stated remit was strategic guidance and leadership support for the executive team. In the same announcement, Christine Croft was promoted to CEO, with McMurtry offering a detailed endorsement of her work.

He pointed to her experience across the company’s functions and her attention to customers from the beginning of her tenure. His praise centered on what she knew about the organization and whom she understood it existed to serve. A founder who had left an unsatisfying job was now explaining why another person was equipped to lead.

The company then reported more than 500 employees and four offices worldwide. Those numbers establish the setting for the handover: this was an organization with substantial operations and an executive team to support. The chairmanship required influence through other people. Starting a business and sustaining its leadership had become different parts of the same career.

Another beginning, another next step

In 2019, McMurtry co-founded SupplyRx with Brian Horan. The leadership page identifies Horan as CEO and McMurtry as president. A new company brought a different partnership and a familiar division of responsibilities: two founders, distinct titles and technology at the center of the business. SupplyRx described its approach in terms of cloud software, efficiency and reducing waste.

His 2006 reading list adds a small glimpse beyond the executive titles: Ernest Shackleton’s South, Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers and Linda Greenlaw’s The Hungry Ocean appeared on it. The list moves from exploration to wartime history to life at sea. It does not establish a management doctrine, but it gives a more particular picture of his interests than another job description could. The oyster joke, at least, had some maritime company.

The company’s team also included a technology lead, a product lead and an advisor. Those roles give a practical shape to the word founder. A business needs people who can build, maintain and improve its product, as well as people who can sell it. McMurtry’s second venture placed him within that working group, alongside a fellow co-founder serving as chief executive.

On September 2, 2026, Inceptua announced that it had acquired SupplyRx. Its announcement said SupplyRx’s leadership would join the acquiring group to maintain continuity and preserve expertise. McMurtry described the combination as a next step for the company, emphasizing broader reach and stronger customer support. The language was about carrying an operation forward.

There is a clear progression here without needing to turn every decision into destiny. McMurtry has been an employee, a founder and chief executive, a chairman, an executive chairman and a co-founder serving as president. Each title asks something different of the person holding it. The record shows him taking those roles as the businesses around him changed.

The early reluctance remains the detail that makes the career human. A person can be dissatisfied before he is certain, experienced before he is entrepreneurial, and willing to start something before he has rehearsed a stirring explanation for it. McMurtry began with a job he wanted to leave. What followed required customers, colleagues, partners and eventually successors. Even a reluctant entrepreneur has to get on with the work.