Built from what is public: your pricing, the insurer reimbursement, the seed round, the location plan. Nothing here judges what you have already built, because I cannot see it. It is a shared structure for a conversation, with every assumption left editable, so we can disagree about numbers rather than adjectives.
This category is drifting toward optimisation and status, led by the American players. That is the loudest segment and the most expensive one. It is not the one with the best economics, and it is not the promise your product makes.
| Segment | What triggers the purchase | Economics |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger buyers | Someone close to them was diagnosed late, or a family history they cannot stop thinking about. They are not buying a scan, they are buying an end to uncertainty. | Highest intent, shortest consideration, lowest CAC. Best word of mouth, because they tell the people they were worried about. |
| Parents | Not performance. Presence. Being there, and staying able to keep up. Your couples and family pricing already fits this without changing a line. | Strong repeat logic on an annual rhythm, and the most natural referral in the business: the rest of the household. |
| Optimisers | Longevity, biohacking, quantified self. Loud, well served by competitors, price-insensitive. | Expensive to acquire, and the segment that pulls brand language toward the status framing that invites the overdiagnosis critique. |
| Employer-sponsored | Their company paid. No personal trigger, so intent is low even though volume is contracted. | CAC near zero, but converts to a second scan only if results day does the work. |
Build the message for the first two, take the third when it comes, treat the fourth as a utilisation instrument rather than a growth engine. That is also the segmentation that keeps a medical brand medical.
Switzerland and Germany are not one business with two postcodes. Reimbursement does not change what you receive, it changes the price the customer feels, and that gives the same product two conversion rates and two CAC ceilings.
Reimbursement sits on the demand side, not the revenue side. A Swiss buyer decides on roughly a thousand francs, a German buyer on three thousand, for identical scans. One market sells certainty. The other sells the case for prevention first.
An unbooked MRI slot is perished inventory. The machine, the lease and the radiologist cost the same either way, so demand has to land in a specific city on a specific day. That makes national budgets the wrong instrument.
This turns a growth target into people per day per city, and shows whether a target and a margin structure were ever compatible. Better found in week two than in month six.
| Channel | Why it matters here | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Employers and insurers | Contracted volume, near-zero CAC, lands in slots you choose and smooths the days paid cannot fill. | Build it as a function: offer, price grid, pipeline. I did this at Decathlon, zero to CHF 1m+ at four-figure deal values. |
| Results day and referral | The highest-trust moment in the relationship, and where an employer-sponsored scan turns into a personal one. Family pricing already proves the mechanic. | Treat the results conversation as a growth moment, not only a clinical one. Referral offered at the point of relief, not by email weeks later. |
| Paid | The scalable lever, and the one that punishes a wrong ceiling fastest. Health data stays out of ad platforms, which breaks naive attribution. | Two channels run properly, not six run thinly. Geo holdouts, blended CAC as the honest number. |
There is a fast way to hit an acquisition number in this category. You lean on fear, widen the claims, and let the funnel do the rest. It works for two quarters.
Germany is already live, so the question is not entry but what to scale and what not to copy from Switzerland. London is the next entry, and the same three constraints apply in a different order.
| Axis | What changes outside Switzerland | What I would do |
|---|---|---|
| Reimbursement | Negotiated with Swiss insurers. It does not travel. The felt price roughly triples. | Private insurers, employers and clinic partners as the volume route, sized before paid scale follows. |
| Claims | Health advertising is tightly constrained in Germany. Wording that passes in CH can be actionable there. | One approved message library per market, legal review before launch, no improvisation by channel. |
| Trust | Swiss brand signals quality but carries no local medical standing. | Named local clinical partner and medical review visible on the landing page from day one. |
For London I would run it narrow: one location, one partner, one channel, one offer, with the kill criterion agreed before launch. CAC within 130% of the Swiss number by week eight, or stop and re-enter later.
Investors will want CAC by cohort rather than blended, payback with the re-scan assumption stated, retention curves observed rather than modelled, and a defensible answer to what the next franc buys. That discipline is built in month one, not the week before a raise. I have built the investor model and presented to investors, though I have not led a priced round, and I would rather say so now.