Monthly retainers for “reputation management”
Pay only when a review actually posts.
About applaud
We hate nonsense. So we don't sell it.
applaud is a small team of healthcare operators and digital marketers who got tired of watching practices pay four-figure monthly retainers for “reputation management” that didn't move a single review. So we built the thing they should have been buying all along.
Two specialties, one product.
Half the team came out of healthcare operations — running front desks at multi-location practices, building review funnels for DSOs, and watching a thousand five-star moments quietly evaporate because nobody asked.
The other half came out of growth marketing — running paid acquisition, CRO, and lifecycle funnels for companies that actually had to show ROI every month or get fired.
Both halves agreed on one thing: the review-generation space was built for software vendors, not the practices paying them. We weren't going to fix it by writing a nicer dashboard. We fixed it by doing the work.
Healthcare ops
Front-desk veterans, DSO consultants, HIPAA-trained.
Growth marketing
Paid acquisition, CRO, lifecycle, ROI-or-fired.
Founding team
Four people. Same room as you.
What we hate
The whole industry is built backwards.
Below is a list of things we've seen practices billed for that should not exist. We don't do any of them.
Annual contracts with break fees
Cancel any month. No penalty. No drama.
$15K “onboarding” that's really just running an EHR connector
$0 setup. We do the integration on our dime.
Generic SMS templates built for retail
Bespoke scripts written for your specialty, by people who've worked in it.
Dashboards no one in the practice opens
Realtime alerts where your team actually lives — Slack, SMS, your account manager.
“AI-powered” chatbots that botch the patient's name
A real, America-based team with realtime AI coaching behind them.
What we actually believe
Results that move the practice, not the dashboard.
If we don't deliver, you don't pay.
Our incentive matches yours. No retainer to drag along when months go sideways. A bad month is a zero invoice — on us.
Reviews are a number on the practice's P&L.
Not a vanity metric. Every additional review at 4.5+ moves new-patient booking flow. We're paid to move that number.
Healthcare doesn't get adapted retail playbooks.
Scripts, channels, timing, escalation paths — built for the specific dynamics of medical / dental / derm / medspa, not lifted from a Yelp-restaurant template.
Meet the team
Four people, one weird obsession.
applaud is small on purpose. The people on this page are the same people you'll work with at kickoff, on the standing call, and on the day you decide you want to scale.
TN
Tom North
Founder
Built Local SEO programs for healthcare networks before applaud existed. Got tired of watching practices pay for software that wouldn't move a single review. Writes most of what we publish about how Google's local algorithm actually works.
Los Angeles, CA
AL
Avery Linden
Head of Brand
Five years writing performance-marketing playbooks for venture-backed SaaS. Joined applaud to apply the same rigor — and the same allergy to retainer nonsense — to healthcare review-gen. Owns the voice you're reading.
Brooklyn, NY
RP
Riley Patel
Head of Operations
Spent seven years on the front desk + practice manager track at a six-location dental group. Knows where every shortcut breaks. Runs our outreach team and the operational side of every customer relationship.
Pittsburgh, PA
If you're tired of paying for nothing, we should talk.
Twenty minutes. We walk through your practice's actual review velocity, tell you honestly whether applaud fits, and send you the audit either way.