Forcura

No. 13 - Small | Jacksonville
Founded: 2012 | CEO: Craig Mandeville

Business: Develops software that provides paperless document workflow and secure mobile communications to in-home and hospice health care organizations 

Quote: “We invite local entrepreneurs into our offices on Friday afternoons. They have access to our entire team, from product development to sales and marketing to implementation. We’ll allow them to present where they are, and we’ll provide resources and guidance to help get them to the next step. That’s how much we’re invested in the city. I think it speaks volumes about our culture,” Mandeville says.

Mounted on the wall of Forcura’s office lobby are three large video screens displaying charts and graphs. The Jacksonville-based health-care technology company uses the TV dashboards to share real-time information with employees about how it’s doing. If customer satisfaction levels drop or there’s a delay in releasing a new software update, everyone knows about it.

“It presents a level of accountability across the company,” says Craig Mandeville, Forcura’s founding CEO. The firm’s 23 employees know “not only how they’re performing, but also how their peers and other departments are doing. We’re a goal-driven organization.”

Forcura develops and manages workflow automation software for in-home and hospice health-care providers, enabling them to cut paper out of their business processes and communicate securely via mobile devices.

Mandeville, a Texas native, was working for financial software company Intuit in Jacksonville when he had a “lightbulb moment” and decided to create Forcura.

At the time, his wife, Heather, was doing marketing work for a local home-health agency. “I was blown away by how technologically underserved the industry was,” Mandeville recalls. “The agency had to go through a lot of paper and manual processes just do its job and serve its patients.”

In 2012, Mandeville used his savings and a “small amount of money” from angel investors to launch Forcura. “I’m a big proponent of bootstrapping,” he says. At his first industry conference, he signed four customers to contracts. “We’ve been growing rapidly ever since,” he says.

Forcura charges in-home and hospice health-care providers a monthly, per-patient subscription fee and has a daily active user count of about 20,000. One goal in displaying company information for all to see is that it gets employees talking about what may or may not be working in their jobs, says Charlie Flynn, the company’s marketing manager. “It keeps us honest,” he says.

In hiring, Forcura looks for employees who will fit the company’s culture. It takes its time with interviews. Mandeville says he looks for employees who are bold, innovative, passionate, transparent and fun.

“Unfortunately, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb if you’re not aligned with those core values,” he says. “The culture here is a living and breathing entity. We don’t want to bring in people who’ll disrupt that and change the energy of the company.”

Forcura gives all full-time employees equity compensation. Employees are free to take as much time off as they choose, as long as they get their work done. The Jacksonville offices include a “fun room” with putt-putt golf and basketball. There also are weekly on-site personal training sessions and monthly social outings to places like Top Golf or the local go-kart racing track.

“We’re extremely flexible,” Mandeville says. “We have kind of a work-hard, play-hard atmosphere.”