We made software for fun. Today it processes 20M+ patients. Happy to answer questions
Hi, posted a few months ago, sharing our history today 😄 We'll be happy to answer any questions about our startup journey!
Dashlabs (YC W21) didn’t start as a company. It started as a volunteer project during the 2020 COVID lockdown to help people find places.
Dashboard Philippines homepage
How it started
- We built Dashboard Philippines, a software that mapped out military checkpoints and establishments, during the COVID lockdown.
- It was built for fun. The project grew to have 100+ volunteers and contributors!
- The project caught the attention of government agencies and NGOs like the Philippine Red Cross, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Office of the Vice President (OVP), and Office of the President
As volunteers, we built:
- Laging Handa Dashboard — the official COVID-19 data dashboard of the Philippines, with DICT
- Real-time shuttle tracking for Libreng Sakay, with OVP and the Armed Forces
Then, we were approached to help with a problem.
The Problem:
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) arriving in the airport couldn’t go home.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1118789
- Returning OFWs had to wait long to receive the results of their RT-PCR COVID test because of the slow manual “pre-processing” of swab samples.
- A bottleneck was found: Manual pre-processing of swab samples, which amounted to 15kg of paper processing per day.
15kg for pre-processing OFW swab samples
So we fixed registration…
- Dashlabs deployed one of the first digital COVID-19 Electronic Case Investigation Forms (ECIFs), making that step almost paperless.
The \"pre-processing\" of swab samples became paperless.
…but then, the problem moved.
Medtech using Dashlabs for results processing
- With the improved registration speed, the laboratory team became flooded with too many specimens to manually process. So we integrated their machines.
- Then the releasing team got flooded. So we made them a patient results releasing module.
We cut the wait time of patients from 1 to 2 weeks to 1 to 2 days.
Our first customer
- While traveling during COVID, a doctor happened to see the Dashboard Philippines’ logo on the printed patient registration QR code.
- The doctor was opening a molecular laboratory. They needed software to run their laboratory operations.
- Using the logo on the QR Code slip, they contacted our Facebook page. They were interested in getting our software for their operations.
- Kairos Diagnostic Laboratory became our first customer.
What Kairos likely saw on our Facebook page
Y-Combinator & Seed Raise
- Less than 48 hours before the Y Combinator Winter 2021 deadline, we pivoted our original product idea to **Dashlabs. (**This was also around the same week we started talking to our first customer)
- Dashlabs was accepted for YC W21
- In 2022, Dashlabs raised 1.5 million USD. Was notably backed by: Good News Venture, ADB Ventures, and JG Summit.
Dashlabs Manila Bulletin feature
Finding (and losing) product-market fit
Between 2021 and 2022, the number of our Lab software users grew from 0 to ~50 laboratories. We found product-market fit with COVID laboratories.
In 2022, the COVID recovery started. Demand for COVID laboratory software declined sharply. We lost our product-market fit.
Internally, this period forced us into what we jokingly call the “austerity era.”
- The company had to operate lean and move faster with fewer resources.
- Every customer mattered. Retention, product iteration, and operational efficiency became survival-level priorities.
It was a stressful phase for the company, but it forced us to rethink what problem we were actually solving.
Finding product-market fit (again)
Between 2022 and 2024, we iterated on our COVID lab software and pivoted toward diagnostic clinics and laboratories.
We realized these clinics faced many of the same operational problems as COVID labs:
- manual paper-heavy workflows
- disconnected systems and machines
- slow patient turnaround times
We took the workflows our users relied on most, standardized them, and turned them into a repeatable product and service.
We also saw that many existing providers were charging millions for software that still felt stuck in the early 2000s.
Instead of following the market, we went the opposite direction:
- subscription-based pricing
- affordable enough for SMEs
- standardized implementations instead of heavily customized deployments
The pivot required the company to rebuild while still operating day-to-day:
- reworking the product for a broader healthcare market
- supporting existing customers while redesigning workflows
- rebuilding growth after the COVID demand collapse
Between 2024 and 2025, we grew from ~30 facilities to more than 350+.
What we realized
As we worked with more clinics and laboratories, we realized the software itself was only part of the problem.
Behind every patient's data was an operational system:
- Patient Registration
- Specimen Tracking
- Machine Integration (LIS/RIS)
- Billing and Payments
- Inventory Management
- Results Input and Generation
- Results Releasing
- Accounting and Reporting
- Multi-branch Data Centralization
Most clinics were still running these workflows through paper, spreadsheets, chat apps, and disconnected systems.
Turns out, the real problem wasn’t digitization, it was operational design.
Dashlabs ANC Business Roadshow Feature
Today, Dashlabs has processed more than 20 million patients across 350+ healthcare facilities.
More importantly, working with hundreds of clinics taught us how healthcare operations actually break at scale, and what it takes to fix them.
That’s what we’ll cover in the next articles.
If you've reached this far, thank you! Ask us anything you're curious about
