A student nurse shows up to a hospital for clinical training. She needs to know which building, which floor, which unit, and who her preceptor is. Before she walks through the door, she needs proof of flu vaccination, COVID vaccination, background checks, drug screens, HIPAA compliance, and fire safety training.
Now multiply that across an entire nursing program. Dozens of students, dozens of clinical sites, dozens of preceptors. Each with different requirements, different systems, different paperwork.
“Just think — that’s one person, one spot, one unit, right?” says Liam Woodard, co-founder and CEO of Whitecoat Learning Platform. “But when you think about it from a program or institution perspective, with multiple students, it becomes highly complex very quickly.”
And that’s just the administrative side. The clinical training itself had its own problems.
A QR code instead of an end-of-week email
The way clinical training feedback worked before Whitecoat: a preceptor sent their student an email at the end of the week. Here’s what went right, here’s what went wrong. Sometimes a piece of paper. Sometimes a form requesting feedback from the past month.
Think about that. You’re training someone to take care of patients, and the feedback loop is a retrospective email that covers an entire week of work in a few paragraphs.
“The historical way of doing things was really laborious, not user friendly,” Liam says. “Oftentimes, they were handed a piece of paper or sent an email saying, ‘I need feedback,’ and the feedback was requested for the last week or last month.”
Whitecoat replaced that with a QR code.
Each student has a unique QR code. After an interaction, the student shows it to their preceptor. The preceptor scans it and fills out a questionnaire built specifically for that program and learner type. Takes 30 to 60 seconds.
Instead of one retrospective snapshot, you get a continuous record of performance. Real data. Real time. Specific to the skills that matter.
“Because we’re able to capture so many of these independent moments, we have a longitudinal record of a learner’s performance versus these snapshots in time that are often done retrospectively,” Liam says.
Simple idea. Massive difference.
The data follows students into the workforce. Hospitals can look at a candidate’s Whitecoat record and see where they trained, who they trained with, and how they performed. Before Whitecoat, hospitals found out the hard way — after the hire.
The introduction that changed the company
Liam’s co-founder, Craig Myers, was running a physician assistant program in Cleveland. He lived the broken system every day. Liam came from healthcare operations and value-based care. Between what Craig was experiencing firsthand and what Liam was seeing from an operational lens, the same problems kept showing up.
They built Whitecoat to fix it. The product worked. But building a product and building a company are different problems.
Liam and Craig joined Project Healthcare at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center in Spring 2024. He’d never been plugged into Nashville’s startup infrastructure.
“Prior to joining the EC, I was not aware of Launch Tennessee, their program, and just that there were investment opportunities from that organization,” Liam says.
The EC made the introduction. LaunchTN funded Whitecoat. Then funded them a second time. Knoxville-based Market Square Ventures invested. Nashville healthcare angels followed, including PYA’s Jeff Pate.
$1.6 million raised in three months. All of it traceable back to an introduction Liam didn’t know he needed.
“That has been just incredibly meaningful for us financially,” Liam says. “But in addition, it brought us a lot of reputability to other investors, angels in the marketplace, and partners.”
Eller Kelliher, Chief Investment Officer at Launch Tennessee, saw something specific happen between the two funding rounds.
“Our confidence in a follow-on investment into Whitecoat was driven by their ability to turn insight into execution,” Kelliher says. “Between rounds, Liam and his team made clear product progress, built a stronger and more diversified pipeline, and showed early customer traction that validated real market demand. Just as important, the team demonstrated the discipline and domain expertise needed to scale. That combination gave us conviction to back them twice.”
That validation opened doors. The Tennessee Hospital Association signed. The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association — 26 member health systems, 117 hospitals — signed. Northern Arizona University signed. Ten-plus high-volume clients in one year.
One introduction. Two rounds of funding. A cap table full of healthcare leaders who now open doors on their own. That’s the compounding effect of the EC network.
What founders should know about the February cohort
Project Healthcare’s new cohort starts in February 2026. Liam has advice for founders heading in.
First: be flexible.
“Things are going to change from your vision today. Some things are going to take longer than you would expect and some are going to move a lot faster than you might expect.”
Second: the network is the product. Not just the curriculum — the people, the introductions, the follow-through.
“If you really work hard at the craft of intentional networking, intentional follow-ups, thanking folks for introductions or spending time with you, and then following up on introductions that they make on your behalf — I think you’d just be shocked how quickly you can grow a really meaningful network.”
Nashville’s startup community, in Liam’s experience, doesn’t keep score. “People that are just willing to help, without looking for something in return.”
That tracks with the EC’s data. The referral network converts at 44% versus 23% for search traffic. People who get introduced to the EC by someone who’s been through it are nearly twice as likely to apply. The network sells itself because the results are real.
Why alumni stay connected
Liam graduated from Project Healthcare. He’s still connected to the EC. Not out of obligation — out of utility.
“Staying connected to the Entrepreneur Center alumni network has been incredibly meaningful,” he says. “It’s not just about staying in touch. It’s about continuing to learn from, contribute to, and support the work that the EC does for founders across Nashville.”
He describes a full-circle dynamic. Early on, the EC opened doors and relationships that were valuable — even if Whitecoat wasn’t fully positioned to use them yet. Now, with a more mature product and clearer focus, those same connections hit differently.
“Being able to re-engage with the EC ecosystem now, when we’re ready to contribute value in return, feels like a full-circle moment.”
That’s the part most founders underestimate. The EC isn’t a six-month program. It’s an ongoing network that compounds over time. The introduction that didn’t quite fit in month two becomes the partnership that closes in month 14.
What’s next for Whitecoat
Whitecoat has 11 full-time employees. They launched one year ago. They’ve added an agentic AI tool that lets administrators search all their program data through a chat interface — who’s struggling, why, and what the data says about it.
“We’ve all become different levels of users of GPT-like tools,” Liam says. “The world of sorting and filtering Excel documents is not long for this world for most people. We wanted to be ahead of that.”
The company could be profitable this year. The focus for 2026 is growth, customer acquisition, and expanding Whitecoat’s footprint.
A year from now, Liam wants Whitecoat to be “a fully integrated platform that is the connective tissue between learning and work.” A platform that stays with people from training through the workforce. Not a tool that stops at education or starts at hiring — one that does both.
“When someone trains on the same platform that they later work within, the transition feels natural instead of disruptive. And that builds confidence.”
Confidence was the problem Whitecoat set out to solve. New clinicians coming out of school technically trained but unsure of themselves, without clear signals that they were ready. That uncertainty contributing to early burnout and first-year turnover.
Whitecoat closes that gap. When people know where they stand and what they’re capable of, confidence follows. When confidence improves, competence is easier to achieve. The outcomes improve for everyone.
A QR code. Thirty seconds. A longitudinal record instead of a retrospective email.
That’s the product. And the EC helped support the company that built it.
Become an EC member. Access to the network doesn’t require waiting for our fall cohort. Members get coworking space, invitations to member-only events where you’ll meet people like the LaunchTN team, and access to the same advisor network that opened doors for Whitecoat.
Membership gets you in the room where those introductions happen.
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