PocDoc: The founder who scaled by doing the opposite of everyone else

There’s a moment in every founder’s story where the mission stops being abstract and becomes deeply personal. For Steve Roest, CEO and co-founder of PocDoc, that moment came early. “When I was 14, my dad had a huge stroke due to undiagnosed cardiovascular disease,” he says. “That was catastrophic for him, catastrophic for our family.”

That experience didn’t just shape the idea behind PocDoc; it shaped the way the business has been built. What stands out isn’t just the technology, but the clarity of focus and the discipline behind its execution.

PocDoc has scaled at remarkable speed, moving from producing 500 tests a month to 500,000 in just 18 months. That kind of growth rarely happens by accident. It’s the result of deliberate choices, many of which run counter to conventional startup wisdom. While most diagnostics firms outsource manufacturing, PocDoc took the opposite route. “We onshore absolutely everything,” Roest explains, giving the company full control over supply chain, quality and margins.

That decision speaks to a broader mindset: building for scale from day one. Too often, businesses focus on proving the concept and leave operational questions for later. Roest is blunt about the risk. “Just because you're innovative, it doesn't give you a free pass to not think about how to run a great business.”

Another defining trait is focus. PocDoc has deliberately concentrated on cardiometabolic and renal diseases, resisting the temptation to expand too quickly. In Roest’s words, many companies fall into the trap of going “so broad, so quick, where there's no narrative whatsoever.” Instead, PocDoc built depth in a single area, aligning closely with NHS priorities around prevention.

That alignment matters. Cardiometabolic conditions account for a significant share of healthcare costs, yet “90% of them are completely preventable,” Roest notes. The company’s solution delivers a full health check in minutes, outside traditional clinical settings. It’s a model that reflects a wider structural shift. As Roest puts it, healthcare is moving “from hospital to home and from sick care to prevention.”

What’s striking is how much time went into understanding the system before building anything. “We spent hundreds of hours to really understand the clinical pathway,” he says. That upfront investment is easy to overlook, but it underpins everything that followed. Many technically-led businesses focus on the product; fewer take the time to fully map the ecosystem they’re entering.

There’s also a lesson in how PocDoc has navigated complexity. Working with the NHS is often seen as difficult, but Roest takes a different view. “I've found the NHS as open and willing to adopt new technology as any other organisation,” he says, provided businesses understand how to engage with it.

Beyond the operational playbook, there’s a mindset that runs through everything. Roest describes a willingness to embrace risk early in his career, shaped by growing up around both success and uncertainty. That perspective shows in his advice to his younger self: “The only way you lose is if you quit having as much confidence as you can in your vision and think as big as possible.”

It’s a simple idea, but one that’s often tested as businesses grow. Scaling isn’t just about more customers or bigger facilities. It’s about holding onto conviction while making increasingly complex decisions. PocDoc’s trajectory suggests that getting that balance right can be the difference between incremental growth and something far more ambitious.