New York-based home care startup Hometeam has added new executive positions as the company continues to expand and hit new growth thresholds.
Hometeam named Tom Etergino its first chief financial officer (CFO) and Thomas Seaman as general counsel and chief compliance officer (CCO).
Etergino, who will oversee all financial matters for Hometeam, joins the company from Refinery29, where he started in 2013. In his tenure with Refinery29, he led their Series C, D and E funding rounds, while the company grew from 80 employees to 500.
His appointment at Hometeam signals the home care startup’s rapid growth and the possibility of another funding round within the next 12-24 months, according to Hometeam CMO Andrew Chomer. Hometeam has raised $38.5 million in funding rounds over the past few years, including snagging millions from investors such as Kaiser Permanente Ventures and venture capital firms.
“These guys both have tremendous experience with growth, whether it’s taking startups into the next several rounds, to the public, or dealing with a significant corporation,” Chomer told Home Health Care News. “That experience at multiple stages and the added complexity is key.”
Adding tenured senior executives also lends credibility to Hometeam as it looks to forge relationships with health systems and payers, as well as grow its financial acumen, according to Chomer.
“As we continue to grow as a company, we need more credibility at a senior level,” Chomer said. “As we’re involved in more senior conversations, consider enterprise and payer deals, and converse with health systems, it behooves us to have some experience at that level.”
Hometeam also hit a revenue point that helped push the decision to hire a CFO for the first time, according to Chomer, who did not disclose Hometeam’s revenue.
“Our revenue reached a point where it would really indicate a need to hire someone and the opportunity to very quickly grow beyond where we are today,” he told HHCN. “We are skating to the puck as opposed to waiting for that to happen.”
Prior to his appointment at Hometeam and work at Refinery29, Etergino was CFO of TheStreet and CFO and COO of eMusic.com. As CFO of AtriCure, he took the company public in 2005. He also spent five years as CAO and treasurer at DoubleClick, which raised $1 billion in funding.
As Hometeam has continued to expand within its markets, it also bucked conventional wisdom when it started to accept Medicaid patients in late 2016. The Medicaid service line makes up between 30% and 50% of Hometeam’s total business, according to Chomer. Its growing complexity necessitated, in part, the hiring of in-house general counsel, he said.
“It’s important for us, from a state and federal level, [to be compliant],” Chomer said. “There are so many nuances as we expand, and we want to stay ahead of the curve as opposed to being reactive.”
Seaman, who comes to Hometeam from Orbis International, also has experience in bringing companies to the next level in financial terms. He served as senior vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Teladoc, the nation’s largest telemedicine company, where he prepared the company for an initial public offering (IPO) and completed the acquisition of two competitors.
He was also the SVP, general counsel and chief compliance officer Best Doctors and GoldenSource.
Looking ahead, with its C Suite a little bigger, Hometeam says it will focus on growing its current service lines within the tri-state area—New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“We are laser-focused on these two lanes,” Chomer said of Hometeam’s services.
Written by Amy Baxter
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