Cherie Kloss Uses Tech to Help Nurses Land Jobs

Following her struggles working in the medical field, Cherie Kloss launched a tech company to address staffing issues in the nursing industry. 

Kloss is the founder and CEO of SnapNurse, a tech-enabled healthcare staffing agency focused on rapid response crisis staffing and on-demand staffing. SnapNurse was founded in 2017, and its premiere platform was launched in 2018. The company is on a mission to help solve the nurse shortage in America.

McKinsey reports that nurses are leaving the profession at an alarming rate because of staffing, workload, and the emotional toll of the job. SnapNurse's platform connects healthcare professionals with facilities that have immediate and long-term staffing needs, provides a payments system, and offers workforce management, credentialing, and more. 

"I want to give nurses the opportunity to fill in those staffing gaps and make extra money," Kloss told Lifewire in a video interview.

"Our slogan is empowering nurses through technology, meaning we empower them to make more money and help the nursing shortage by using the technology to help them find those jobs."

Like Swimming With Sharks

Kloss's parents emigrated from Korea, and when they first arrived in LA, her father worked as a dishwasher. She said he was always urging her to get an education, so she went to the Emory School of Medicine and became a nurse anesthetist. Kloss worked in this role for 17 years. During ten of those years, she was running a production development company on the side. 

"During those ten years, I worked very sporadically as an anesthetist and had to pick up shifts here and there," Kloss said. "It was a very burdensome process getting credentialed, recredentialed, and keeping track of all of that at 11 different facilities."

Kloss said her career working in the media was successful until the reality TV industry began to die off and transform. During this time, she decided she wanted to launch a tech company focused on helping nurses pick up more shifts at various facilities. Kloss launched SnapNurse when she was 49, and she hopes to be an inspiration for other women on the fence about making career changes. 

"You can have many different careers; you don't have to be stuck in any one," she said. "Find a company that can give you a new start, or start your own startup. Don't be afraid and think it's ever too late."

Kloss's media business was her first taste of entrepreneurship. She said she learned about business during this venture and worked through some tough lessons, like not paying herself. 

"It was like swimming with sharks, but I guess that's why I wasn't really afraid to launch a tech startup."

Exponential Growth

Even without a tech background, Kloss said she immersed herself in learning about the industry following her media career. She began taking free classes on YouTube and reading books to learn anything she could about the tech startup space. 

Kloss has grown SnapNurse to 375 internal employees, and more than 150,000 medical professionals have used the company's platform since it launched. SnapNurse has grown exponentially over the past 18 months.

"We've gained so many hospital contracts because of the high demand, so we've been able to stay sticky and continue growing today," she said. 

The company's consistent growth is why Kloss recently won one of Ernst & Young's 2021 Entrepreneur Of The Year Southeast awards, which she said has been the most rewarding moment in her career. SnapNurse went from $1 million in revenue in 2018 to $1 billion in revenue today, Kloss said. 

Despite the numbers, bringing in money hasn't always been the easiest as a minority woman founder. When Kloss has talked with venture capital firms, she said she often ends up turning deals down when VCs tell her that she'll need to be replaced for them to write a check. 

"I've seen that prejudice out there. I've never really been able to raise venture capital, which is surprising given our growth and trajectory," Kloss said.