Dunedin-founded business WoFo Medstaff is understood to be New Zealand’s first share economy platform devoted to the healthcare sector.
Earlier this month, it notched up registering 5000 healthcare workers on its platform.
WoFo — which stands for workforce — was the brainchild of Chris Mackle and Andrew Wills who met while working at Cook Brothers Construction in Dunedin; Mr Mackle was IT manager while Mr Wills had moved from Auckland as an estimator.
It was developed in 2018 as a solution to quickly and efficiently connect workers with employers across a range of industries, including hospitality, construction, cleaning and event manager.
They left construction to concentrate on their startup, launching the WoFo native app on iOS and Android in March that year.
They were then hit by the ramifications of Covid-19 right in the middle of their startup phase.
With so much critical risk in the likes of construction and hospitality, the pair were led to eventually focus solely on healthcare.
In 2020, they launched a healthcare pilot focused on aged care and, two years later, they decided to transition to become a dedicated healthcare staffing platform.
The platform comprised a pool of healthcare professionals, including registered nurses and healthcare assistants, available throughout New Zealand, and who could be accessed quickly by healthcare facilities, providing an agile solution to staffing challenges, they said.
Several milestones were marked in recent months: Dunedin accountant, and now primarily a professional director, Scott Mason joined WoFo’s board and the company gained recognition from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) as a focus customer, meaning it was a business NZTE worked with more intensively.
The recognition was because of the launch in the Australian market and, while the pair would head to Australia to set it up for clients, the infrastructure would continue to be run from Dunedin.
Mr Wills said the technology was reasonably easy — "the tricky part is making it work for the realities of society".
The pair described their venture as a quiet success story in the city. This year, about $10million was put through to WoFo’s contractors through the platform and they were aiming for $25m next year.
They were thrilled to be able to help solve staff issues while also providing work for people when the cost of living was hurting.
Christchurch was its largest market.
WoFo has 11 staff, including the two founders whose skills were "quite yin and yan" and complementary, and two developers based in Auckland.
While people wanted WoFo to go back to including other industries, Mr Mackle said there were a lot of positives in healthcare.
"I think it’s a bit of a trap sometimes to go for a bigger market size at the expense of the niche that you’re good at."
