As the founder and CEO of NPHub, Krish Chopra has set his sights on a singular mission: to streamline the nurse practitioner’s career lifecycle by helping NP students find preceptors (mentors) and clinical rotation opportunities to be able to move to full-time jobs when they graduate. Driven by a desire to help a traditionally underserved and under-appreciated group of professionals, Krish built NPHub to give every NP student the support they deserve for their entire career lifecycle from mentoring to job matching to continuing education.

NPHub addresses the high demand for NPs amid an expected shortage of 180,000 physicians in the next decade according to the American Association of Medical Colleges. To offset this, the U.S. healthcare system is hiring more nurse practitioners with their numbers estimated to grow by 45% from 2021 to 2032. The company has been successfully helping to expand the NP population since its inception in 2017 with Krish and his mission-driven team helping 8,500 NP students from 240+ NP programs to find clinical placements. Reflecting its growing momentum, NPHub has been named one of the country’s fastest growing private companies on the annual Inc. 5000 list for two years running.

Currently in its pilot phase, NPHire matches graduates with full-time jobs––and already has 6,500+ NP and APRN candidates onboarded and actively looking for roles.

In 2019, Krish was named to Inc.’s 30 Under 30 list, a prestigious recognition for rising stars in entrepreneurship, and is a frequent contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, and Huffington Post. He co-authored the book “NP Jumpstart: Marketing Made Easy for Nurse Practitioners” in 2020, along with healthcare management veteran Namar Al-Ganas. Additionally, Krish is a mentor for young start-up founders for the incubator, Propellent Labs, and a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only group comprised of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs aged 45 and younger.

What is NPHub and what inspired you to start the company?

NPHub is the first digital platform in the country designed to match nurse practitioner (NP) students and professionals with clinical rotation and job placements. Acting as a two-sided marketplace, we remove the biggest bottleneck in the NP journey—finding and securing high-quality clinical training—so more students can graduate on time and enter the workforce.

At my previous company, we were focused on helping medical students who wanted to find clinical placements in the United States. But then NP students started reaching out, and we found that they had even greater challenges. Many were facing delays between 6 and 12 months and frequently unable to graduate because they couldn’t find a single rotation. Unlike med students, NP students didn’t have any real support from their universities and were required to find their own clinical placements. So the recipe was there: students needed help, they didn’t have many other options, and because we were early in the space, we had a chance to innovate and build technology.

Despite the huge need for NPs in the healthcare system, these students were cold calling, emailing and searching for months to secure the required training opportunities needed to graduate. The system was failing these students and no one was fixing it. NPs remind me a lot of teachers (underpaid, overlooked) in many ways.

There’s increasing demand for nurse practitioners across the United States. How is NPHub uniquely positioned to support this demand amid looming shortages?

The United States is facing a growing physician shortage, and to offset this, the healthcare system desperately needs more NPs. Yet, NP students face rigorous training requirements and a complex hiring process that uses inefficient, manual processes. NP students spend nearly 3-6 months hunting for 1 placement, and they need 4 (sometimes 5) to graduate.

NPHub solves this complex and deeply rooted problem in the healthcare system at scale. We offer the only national, digital platform that is systemically changing the way NP students, their universities and healthcare organizations connect. Essentially, we help schools and students avoid months of headache by offering vetted clinical sites in a 5 minute experience via our platform. By modernizing the entire process of matching NPs with necessary clinical training, we’re helping to shape the future of healthcare.

Edison Partners has recently invested $20 million in NPHub. How do you plan to use this growth equity investment in the coming months?

We plan to use this growth capital to double down on what matters most: building smarter technology and expanding the ways we support NPs throughout the entire lifecycle of their careers. NPs are the future of healthcare but they don’t have access to dedicated resources that enable them in their career. We wanted to focus on the biggest problems first – clinical training and getting good jobs. By investing in our platform, we’ll also make it even easier for universities and employers to partner with us and extend our services to help NPs at every stage of their career. Everyone wants these problems solved, so we’re going to spend the time and resources to get it right.

This is our first round of institutional capital and it’s coming at a time of accelerated growth for NPHub. Over the last year, we’ve seen NP student growth more than double and have placed over 10,000 clinical rotations through the platform. This level of demand validates that what we’ve built is working, and now with Edison’s investment, we have the ideal partner to help continue our momentum.

What role has the Atlanta tech startup ecosystem played in NPHub’s growth?

Atlanta has been the perfect launchpad for NPHub. When I moved here from New York City in 2014, the cost of living was a game changer as a bootstapped founder. Atlanta gave us the space to focus on building our platform’s technology without needing to raise outside capital too early. And beyond that, the city is full of world-class talent. We’ve been extremely lucky to bring on some incredible team members, especially recent grads from places like the University of Georgia, Emory, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State. We plan to double our Atlanta team in the next 12 months.

Looking ahead, what is next for NPHub?

On our journey to streamline the career lifecycle for NPs, we’re excited about our new platform, NPHire, which is set to formally launch in the coming months. Currently in its pilot phase, NPHire matches graduates with full-time jobs––and already has 6,500+ NP and APRN candidates onboarded and actively looking for roles.

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