10 years of Cliniko

Cliniko turned 10 on 27 June 2021! The past decade has been quite the ride and we’re feeling so incredibly grateful to have made it this far. Here are a few of our favourite highlights, from our launch in 2011 through to now. We’ll add more as time goes on, too. Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years. Here’s to many more! ❤️

Person with birthday cake
People marching in celebration

A simple proposal

Liora (an Osteopath) was tired of the software she used at her clinic being so problematic. She couldn’t check her calendar from outside the clinic, and the notes function was unusable. She said to her partner Joel (a Software Developer) that he could probably build something better, and it wasn’t even such a big job. It just needed a calendar and the ability to handle treatment notes.

2010

Work began

11 November 2010

Using a loan that had just been approved to renovate their house, Joel quit his job and, with Liora, started a company called Red Guava to begin development on “Clinic thingy” (naming the software was not the first priority). They may have forgotten to let the bank know about the change in plans for the funds.

2011

The Cliniko beta

4 April 2011

The first-ever users of Cliniko signed up to be beta testers. It could have been thanks to Joel’s sales skills (he walked door-to-door and clinic-to-clinic and asked people if they were interested, but none of those people were convinced). Instead, through Liora’s contacts, a couple of businesses agreed to try it out.

Launch day

27 June 2011

After seven months of long days, late nights, and lots of coffee, Cliniko was officially released.

An icon of a smiley face with love hearts.

People liked Cliniko!

31 July 2011

A month after launching, we had 37 businesses sign up to trial Cliniko, with 14 deciding to stick around.

2012

Bartosz joined the team

13 February 2012

As Cliniko grew, it became a lot for just two people to manage. The plan was to hire a local Melbourne developer, but fate intervened. Bartosz (a software developer) applied even though he lived in Poland, and Liora and Joel knew he was The One—thus beginning Cliniko’s international (and remote) team.

In his talk for Real Big Things, Joel spoke about the experience of hiring remotely. Watch a snippet here:

An icon of a bag of money with a dollar sign on it.

Over 6 million dollars invoiced through Cliniko

April 2012

Less than a year after launch, over six million dollars had been invoiced by all the clinics who were using Cliniko to manage their practice!

We released an online booking system

2 May 2012

Up until now, patients had to call clinics to book their appointments—which was, in our opinion, kind of archaic. We wanted to make things easier for everyone, so we launched online bookings. Patients could simply book themselves in, making life more convenient for everyone.

Cliniko committed to donating 1% of all subscriptions to charity

1 June 2012

"Making the world a better place" might be seen as a cliché, but it’s a sentiment that means a lot to us. Joel and Liora decided to donate a portion of all revenue to charity. And this amount would later increase. The first charities we donated to were Plan and WWF.

A photograph of Cliniko's resident CEO and Good Boy, Rufus (the dog).

It was time to grow

12 July 2012

The need for dedicated customer support was growing and Liora’s mum was tired of managing the books! Jim and Melanie joined the team and worked out of the “office” (Liora and Joel’s living room). Rufus (resident CEO and Good Boy) supervised and encouraged extended lunch breaks.

55 countries using Cliniko

24 July 2012

There were people all over the world using Cliniko to manage their practices. We were truly astonished to see the widespread global use of what had been only an idea less than two years ago!

2013

Cliniko got its very own office

July 2013

The team had grown to eight and the office migrated from Joel and Liora’s living room to an actual office in Glen Huntly (a suburb of Melbourne). It didn’t have many windows and the conference room was never used, but many critical conversations occurred while playing table tennis matches.

An icon of an envelope with a red notification circle showing 1 unread message.

Appointment confirmation emails

October 2013

We released a much-needed feature, giving patients the ability to have a record of the appointment that they booked via customisable confirmation emails (complete with calendar attachments).

The first-ever team meetup

November 2013

We now had a total of 10 employees and hosted our first-ever meetup in Australia. Everyone had a blast getting to know one another in person while enjoying good food and taking in some beautiful scenery in Apollo Bay, Victoria. Team members visited from the UK, USA, Brazil, and Poland.

Cliniko got an updated logo

December 2013

Two and a half years in, it was high time for a little branding refresh. Kelly (our in-house designer and illustrator) reworked the existing logo into what you see today. We also made T-shirts! You can take a peek at what we started with—and some of the various iterations along the way—before ending up with what we have now.

2014

2,000 businesses using Cliniko

March 2014

It was amazing for us to realise that 2,000 businesses were now using Cliniko every day!

Connecting with each other in person

July 2014

As Cliniko grew, so did our team (we were up to 14 employees across 6 countries). While we're passionate about the benefits of remote work, we realised that it was also important to have opportunities to connect in person too. Folks flew in from around the globe to hang out, work on Cliniko, and get to know each other.

We went to our first conference

October 2014

Jim, Joel, Liora, and a very young Mae (Joel and Liora’s daughter) headed to Noosa, Queensland for the Osteopathy Australia conference. Mae turned out to be a great marketer, but sadly decided it wasn’t for her and did not attend future conferences.

2015

The team headed to Greece

June 2015

We’d outgrown our smaller meetups with a team size of 17. Nearly everyone (plus some family members) headed to Athens, Greece for two weeks where we found a big enough villa to house us. One of the highlights was watching the sunset from the Parthenon—while working on Cliniko, of course!

We moved offices—again

September 2015

Our team had grown and Glen Huntly was no longer a central location for us. It was time for an upgrade. Our new Richmond office had lots of natural light, a rooftop with a view, and of course table tennis, where Clint (customer support) rapidly gained mastery.

Half a million appointments made via online bookings in this year alone

31 December 2015

More than half a million appointments were booked from the online bookings page just in 2015 (502,760, to be exact!). Kind of mind-boggling—and this number would only increase in the following years!

2016

An icon of a pair of hands held up in the air.

5,000 clinics were using Cliniko

March 2016

There were now 5,000 clinics throughout the world using Cliniko to manage their practice! The fact that we’d even reached 1,000 had surpassed our wildest dreams, so this was a huge milestone.

A new meetup hub

May 2016

With the office becoming less important to our remote team, we wanted to create a different kind of hub where we could all meet in person. We settled on the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia and folks made the trip out to enjoy the fresh air, taste some local wine, and meet some local celebrities—the friendly kangaroos at the local animal sanctuary.

2017

We hired our 20th employee

13 March 2017

Marcus (customer support) became our 20th employee, and the first Aussie “local” who didn’t live on the eastern side of the country (he was in Western Australia). Believe it or not, he had been a customer before working at Cliniko—as a physiotherapist, he had used the software to run his practice!

An icon of a speech bubble containing three dots to signify an incoming message.

We launched chat support

6 June 2017

From day one, we’d always wanted to provide the best possible support to every Cliniko user. For six years up until this point, we’d relied on email and phone calls as our primary methods of helping people, but this needed to change. We were only able to answer 25% of the phone calls that we received and email could be slow. We made a rather controversial decision to switch to chat- and email-based support only, and you can read about why we did this here.

Oh, Canada

July 2017

Two years had passed since our last “big” team meetup in Greece, and this time—with 24 employees plus their families—we opted for mountains and glaciers instead of oceans and olive trees. Everyone met up in Alberta, Canada for a two-week stay in a beautiful part of the country. We hiked in Banff, swam in an ice-cold river, and toasted marshmallows by the campfire.

An icon of a heart surrounded by little stars.

$100,000 donated to charity

July 2017

Since 2012, at least 1% of total revenue was donated to charity. This month marked a total of $100,000 in donations. We’d always wanted to make a difference through our work and were delighted at how quickly it was adding up.

Cliniko became mobile-friendly

August 2017

Up until this point, Cliniko was best suited towards “computer” use—that is, it worked well when using a desktop or laptop computer, but didn’t look (or behave) as nicely if you were on a mobile phone or tablet. We made a bunch of changes to get with the times (or a bit ahead) and implement “responsive design” (the fancy phrase for “works well on things besides computers”) throughout the whole application. This meant that Cliniko was now fully functional across all devices.

Rachel hosted the first-ever Cliniko This Week video

20 August 2017

Little did we know that when we hired Rachel (customer support) that we would also be getting a video pro! Rachel’s bubbly personality and enthusiasm for Cliniko is evident in each and every video she creates. Watch the very first Cliniko This Week video:

A shared space for meetups

November 2017

The location for our meetups came with a barn. It was previously a home for horses, but the Cliniko co-founders didn’t have any equestrian plans in mind. So, instead, they converted it into an exceptional office space—and, in true Melbourne form, included a coffee bar. “The Barn,” as it was called, became a central hub for Cliniko get-togethers.

2018

48,000 people were using Cliniko

1 March 2018

At this point, 48,000 people (spread over thousands of clinics) were using Cliniko throughout the world! This gave us a lot of warm fuzzies.

An icon of a padlock with a tick where the keyhole would normally be.

Cliniko becomes GDPR compliant

May 2018

While we had always been compliant with Australian privacy requirements, we had to make sure that we stayed up to date with new rules coming out! When the EU introduced GDPR regulations, we added features to make sure that those using the software were empowered to be compliant with GDPR.

Body charts arrived

September 2018

After many years of prepping for body charts, they were finally released. This was really exciting because we knew that in addition to typed notes, marking up diagrams would be very helpful to our customers!

Rachel headed to Nepal

October 2018

Rachel (customer support) flew to Nepal to work directly with one of the charities that we support, Beyond The Orphanage (BTO). For two weeks, she spent time building relationships with the BTO team and the children they support. Read her account of the trip here.

An icon of a rainbow flag.

Cliniko became more inclusive

December 2018

We added fields for sex, gender identity, and preferred pronouns into Cliniko. You can read more about this here. Long story short, it’s very important to us that you (and your patients) are empowered when it comes to handling sensitive details. We wanted to add this to Cliniko for a long time and were happy to finally have it available.

2019

Cliniko increased charitable donations to 2% of all subscriptions

January 2019

We increased donations from 1% to 2% of all revenue. Our donations have always been based purely on revenue not profit, to ensure that the charities we donate to are not impacted by our running costs. You can read more about the charities we contribute to here.

A photograph of some members of the Cliniko team working in The Barn.

The office closed down, The Barn became the official Cliniko HQ

14 March 2019

Most of our team was international at this point and even those who lived local to Melbourne were spending more time working from home. We made the decision to formally close the Richmond office and embrace the fully-remote lifestyle (using The Barn as our official headquarters) . . . but not before we played a few final rounds of table tennis!

We redesigned our website

April 2019

After eight years, it was time for a full branding refresh. Our main website had a glow up—which happened to be just in time for the introduction of The Fancy Conference Booth (more on that next).

The introduction of the Fancy Conference Booth

May 2019

We attended the ESSA (Exercise & Sports Science Australia) conference in Melbourne and were happy to have a fancy new booth! We had a great time chatting to everyone and meeting Cliniko customers in person.

A photo of a person giving a presentation to an audience at the first Cliniko Community meetup in Melbourne.

We hosted our first community meetup

June 2019

We had the opportunity to chat with a whole lot of Cliniko users at our first-ever Cliniko Community meetup in Melbourne! It was great to see some familiar faces and to meet new people.

2020

COVID hit

March 2020

Remember that Fancy Conference Booth we mentioned… yeah that went into storage, community and team meetups were put on hold, and the Cliniko team started working on building features that would benefit clinics during lockdowns.

Cliniko became HIPAA compliant

March 2020

Up until now, folks in the United States who needed to be compliant with HIPAA regulations weren’t able to use Cliniko. As with other privacy requirements (such as GDPR), we added features to help make HIPAA compliance a reality for those who needed it!

Telehealth went live

29 March 2020

Social distancing became the norm, but patients still needed treatment. We added Telehealth to Cliniko because we knew that practitioners would need to treat patients remotely—and it became one of the most used features during the year.

Cliniko became PIPEDA compliant

April 2020

As with GDPR in the EU and HIPAA in the United States, we had to make sure that we set clinics up for success with PIPEDA (Canada’s privacy requirements). We added new features to ensure that clinics in Canada could be PIPEDA compliant!

Secure patient forms are released

April 2020

Not everyone could see patients in person, and we wanted to make sure people had access to digital forms that could be emailed to patients, which they could then fill out online and submit back to each clinic. Secure digital patient forms were released, and were one of our most welcomed additions.

The first-ever episode of Cliniko & Coffee

25 June 2020

We wanted to do something both fun and educational during lockdown, so we began an occasional live Q&A session in which Joel showcased his barista skills in front of an audience (tuning in remotely from many countries). Along with teaching everyone about coffee, Joel answered questions about Cliniko. You can watch the recording here.

A screenshot of Cliniko team members meeting up via video chat.

The first virtual meetup took place

15 November 2020

Sadly, the pandemic meant we couldn’t see one another in person, but that didn’t stop us from having our first-ever virtual event. Working out time zones was a little tricky, but most of the team was able to get together over video conference to chat and play some trivia.

We hired our 40th employee

14 December 2020

To get to this point was humbling, to say the least—Cliniko had started in a living room, and now it was a 40-person company, something that exceeded Liora and Joel’s wildest dreams. Fede (customer support) was our 40th hire.

2021

$15 million collected by our customers online

11 February 2021

When the online payments feature launched in 2020, we had no idea that in under a year, patients would have paid over $15 million dollars to their clinics! This number continues to grow, and we’re excited that we get to help make your life easier by making payments easier.

An image of a group consultation taking place via video using Cliniko telehealth.

30 million minutes of telehealth logged

30 April 2021

Telehealth exploded during 2020. We knew that it would be useful, but we were blown away when we saw that 30 million minutes of telehealth consults had taken place through Cliniko! The image above may or may not be a real telehealth consult.

An icon of a tree.

Cliniko went carbon neutral

11 June 2021

We've always cared about the environment and finding ways to offset our carbon emissions is really important to us. In June 2021, we officially became a carbon neutral company. It's an ongoing process to continually measure our own carbon footprint and ensure that we leave the world a little better than we found it.

A photo of a Sea Shepherd flag.

$1 million donated to charity so far

27 June 2021

Cakes and balloons are one way to celebrate a birthday, but even better is donating to those in need. Our tenth birthday marked an important milestone: our charitable donations reached a total of $AUD 1 million dollars.

201 years of work put into Cliniko

27 June 2021

By our tenth birthday, we figured out that 201 years (yes, you read that correctly) of work had been put into Cliniko! This figure included the hours spent by each and every employee, and covered everything: software development, supporting customers, and keeping track of company finances.

Today (2021)

As of our 10th birthday, we have 42 employees spread around the world. Over 20,000 clinics use Cliniko to manage their practices, and we’re still not keen on outside investment. We all consider ourselves family, and without you—our customers—we wouldn’t be here today. So, thank you for coming along on this ride with us, and we can’t wait to see what the next ten years hold!

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