A Personal Invitation: I'd Like You to Consider Owning a Piece of ChatRx

The Entrepreneur's Life

A Personal Invitation: I'd Like You to Consider Owning a Piece of ChatRx

I have been going back and forth about writing this post for a while.

Not because I am unsure about ChatRx. I am more certain about this business than almost anything I have built in thirty years of medicine. But there is a version of this message that feels like a pitch, and I did not want to write that version. The PEA community is not a list of potential investors to me. You are the physicians I have spent years building something with — and that means I owe you honesty, not marketing.

So let me be direct about what this is and what it is not.

ChatRx is running a crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder, and before we open it widely, I wanted the PEA community to be among the first to know it exists. I am sharing this the same way I would share it with close friends and family, because that is genuinely what you are to me after the years we have spent in this community together.

This is not a guarantee. It is not a recommendation. Startups are risky. Most do not succeed. You should only invest what you are completely prepared to lose. I mean that without any softening — it is the same standard I am holding myself to, and the same thing I would say to my own children if they asked about investing in a startup.

If that framing works for you, keep reading. If it does not, I respect that completely, and nothing changes between us.

What ChatRx Actually Is

I built ChatRx On-Demand Urgent Care because I spent thirty years watching patients skip care they needed because they could not afford it. A mother who could not pay the sixty-dollar copay for her sick kid. A factory worker who rode out a UTI for a week because she could not take a day off to sit in a waiting room. More than ninety million Americans — one in four — skip medical care every year because of cost. That is not a statistic to me. I watched it happen in my community, over and over, for three decades. It's only getting worse now as healthcare costs more than ever, yet provides less value to patients than it ever has.

ChatRx is on-demand urgent care treating 39 common low-acuity infections for $25. Flat fee. No insurance required. No video call. No appointment. Available 24/7. You describe your symptoms through a secure chat. Our FDA-registered AI triage system dynamically answers the three fundamental questions patients typically have about their acute illness — and we do this for free:

• Where should I go?

• When can I be seen?

• How much will it cost me?

We navigate the patient to the optimal location of care for their condition, including the ER, in-person care, or chat-based asynchronous care. For qualifying low-acuity conditions, a physician from the ChatRx Medical Group reviews the case, makes a diagnosis and treatment plan, and provides a work or school note. A prescription is sent to the local pharmacy only if it is needed. The cost is transparently $25, and we only charge if a patient opts in for treatment of a qualifying condition, no insurance, and the payment is typically FSA/HSA eligible. Caregiver notes for work are available separately for $10.

Our quality data to date shows 100% triage accuracy, 100% emergent care recognition, and 97% condition recognition accuracy.

On top of that, based on over 5,000 encounters to date, about two-thirds of the time, patients have not needed an antimicrobial. As physicians, this is no surprise to us. Many of us have had that uncomfortable experience with a paying patient in our exam room, expecting an antibiotic, and debating with us about its merits. Studies show that due to decision fatigue and other factors, many primary care doctors give in to the pressure to prescribe an antibiotic for a viral illness. Our system resolves this tension by objectifying the decision based on national guidelines and standards. The result is antibiotic stewardship, by design. We do not prescribe to generate revenue. We prescribe only when it is clinically indicated based on symptom-based criteria.

Here are some additional resources about ChatRx you might be interested in:

• ChatRx 1 Minute Demo Video

• ChatRx 2 Minute Introductory Video

• ChatRx: The End of Waiting Rooms 5 Minute Explainer Video

• ChatRx 39 Conditions We Treat

National Media about ChatRx

• ChatRx offers a valuable lifeline for rural primary care patients, Healthcare IT News, May 18, 2026

Our Story So Far

We launched in June 2025 out of Plymouth, Indiana, with no marketing budget. Since then, we have delivered over 5,000 visits across Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. We are FDA-registered, patent-pending, HIPAA-compliant, and LegitScript-certified. We treat thirty-nine acute conditions, and roughly two-thirds of our cases are resolved without a prescription.

A note on growth: we have seen strong month-over-month growth in recent months. As with any early-stage company, past growth is not a guarantee of future results, and any forward-looking statements about expansion are projections, not promises.

We are also a named vendor candidate for Indiana's GROW grant, part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Rural Health Transformation Program. That opportunity does not define our path, but it reflects the kind of recognition that comes with what we have built. We also have a growing set of business partnerships across student health on college campuses, primary schools, health systems, and independent pharmacies.

Why I Chose Wefunder

I chose Wefunder specifically because I wanted the people who invest in ChatRx to be people who believe in what we are doing — patients, community members, physicians who understand the problem we are solving. Not institutional investors optimizing a portfolio. People with skin in the game because they care about the outcome.

If You Want to Learn More

The full ChatRx pitch — the problem, the solution, the traction, the team, the financial details, and the offering terms — is all at wefunder.com/chatrx. Read it carefully. Ask questions. Make a decision that fits your financial situation and your comfort with startup risk.

If you have questions for me directly about ChatRx — the clinical model, the growth strategy, what I am building and why — reach out. I am not going to do a hard sell. But I will answer any question you have honestly.

What I Want You to Know Before You Decide Anything

I have been a physician entrepreneur for a long time. I have built things that worked and things that did not. I know the difference between a business with real traction and one running on hope. I am more confident in ChatRx than anything I have built since PEA-SimpliMD.

And I am still telling you: startups are genuinely risky. Most do not make it. The fact that I believe deeply in this one does not change that math. Invest only what you would be comfortable losing completely. That is the honest framing, and I will not soften it.

What I can tell you is this: if ChatRx reaches the scale I believe it can, this is the kind of early-stage opportunity that people look back on and are glad they took a closer look at. And if it does not work out the way I hope, it will still have served real patients, in real communities, who could not have afforded care otherwise. I am at peace with both outcomes. I hope you can be too.

I wrote more about ChatRx's mission and what I am building toward in my post Reflections on My Retirement: Time for Act 2. If you want to understand the why behind this business, that post is the right place to start.

Review the full offering, including all terms and details, at wefunder.com/chatrx →

Investment disclosure: This post is a personal invitation to learn more, not investment advice. Investing in early-stage companies involves significant risk, including the potential loss of your entire investment. ChatRx is conducting an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF / Section 4(a)(6)) through Wefunder Portal, LLC. All terms of the offering, including the type of security, price, and use of proceeds, are available exclusively at wefunder.com/chatrx — please review the full offering documents and risk disclosures there before making any decision. Statements regarding past growth, visits, and quality metrics reflect historical company data; statements about future growth or expansion are forward-looking projections and are not guarantees of future results. Only invest what you can afford to lose.

And whatever you decide about this: thank you. For the years in this community, for the work you do for your patients, and for trusting me enough to read to the end of an email that asked something different from you than I usually ask.

— Dr. Tod

Empowering Physicians to Succeed in Business and Beyond