Person / Operator / Founder
Richard Fine
He decided medicine should apologize for your headache. Now he is rebuilding how America books a doctor.
Richard Fine. The strategist who thinks a pill box should be kind to you.
He decided medicine should apologize for your headache. Now he is rebuilding how America books a doctor.
Richard Fine. The strategist who thinks a pill box should be kind to you.
At Zocdoc, the question is no longer "can you find a doctor?" It is "can you actually get seen?" Richard Fine has spent more than a decade making the second one true.
Richard Fine runs business at Zocdoc, the company most people meet when a toothache sends them searching for someone, anyone, with an open slot on Thursday. His title has changed four times - VP of Marketing, VP of Strategy, Chief Commercial Officer, now Chief Business Officer - but the assignment has only sharpened: take Zocdoc's long-term vision and turn it into concrete next steps. Lately that vision has a name he likes to repeat. Not a marketplace. Infrastructure.
"Demand without a path to action is frustrating," he says. "The hard part is turning that intent into real care in a fragmented system." It is a strange thing for a marketing-trained executive to fixate on plumbing. But Fine has always been more interested in the gap between wanting something and getting it than in the advertising that creates the want.
That instinct shows up early. Both of his parents are professors of epidemiology, so health policy was dinner-table talk before it was a career. He went to Oxford and came out with First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics and Economics - the degree of choice for people who like arguing about how systems should work. Then, instead of consulting or politics, he went into brand strategy, and eventually into the medicine aisle.
Before any of the Zocdoc titles, there was Help Remedies. Fine has described the origin plainly: he was standing in a drugstore with a pounding headache, surrounded by boxes shouting in red and yellow, and thought medicine should be calmer than the symptom. So he built a line of over-the-counter products that looked nothing like their neighbors - white, quiet, made from molded paper pulp and corn-based plastic, with names like "Help, I have a headache." Open the box and it spoke to you: "Hello. I'm sorry about the headache."
It worked. Help expanded nationally to Target, Walgreens, Duane Reade and even W Hotel minibars, and the design world noticed: an IDEA award for packaging, a Cannes Lion for advertising, a best in show from Dieline. The company was acquired. That made Fine a founder with an exit - and, after a second venture, a two-time founder with two exits.
"I love healthcare and hate current healthcare incentives. At Zocdoc, I get to work on improving both." - Richard Fine
At Redscout, Fine spent years on how people experience brands - Nike, PepsiCo, Diageo, Johnson & Johnson. He learned that the product is only half the story; the other half is whether anyone can be bothered to engage with it.
Help Remedies stripped the shouting out of the drugstore. White boxes, plain language, biodegradable pulp, a note that said sorry about your headache. It sold nationally and won a Cannes Lion. Proof that empathy scales.
At Zocdoc he keeps climbing - marketing to strategy to the C-suite - while pushing one idea: technology only matters if it is paired with incentives that get patients actually booked and seen.
Help Remedies began with Fine standing in a drugstore, actually having a headache, deciding the packaging was making it worse.
The boxes were molded paper pulp and corn-based plastic, with a note inside that read "Hello. I'm sorry about the headache."
Both of his parents are professors of epidemiology. Health policy was a dinner-table staple.
His brand work spans Nike sneakers and Diageo spirits as well as headache pills - and now appointment infrastructure.
Help products went from a Brooklyn idea to Walgreens shelves and W Hotel minibars.
At Zocdoc he has held at least four distinct titles, working his way from marketing to the C-suite.