Building a High-Growth Business in Times of Extreme Uncertainty
The following summary of the keynote of Shift Work Summit 2025 delivered by Curtis Anderson covers the highlights of the 30 minute session. Read on for the key points and watch the replay video below.
Building Through Chaos
At Shift Work Summit 2025, Nursa founder and CEO Curtis Anderson opened Shift Work Summit 2025 with a candid look at what it really takes to build a high‑growth healthcare startup in an era defined by constant shocks. Drawing on Nursa’s journey since 2019, he described the last five years as living through multiple “eras” of change in technology, regulation, capital markets, and frontline work. For founders and operators in shift‑based industries, his message was clear: uncertainty is not a phase to wait out; it is the normal condition to build for.
From 2019 To Now: Five Eras In One
Anderson traced how the COVID‑19 pandemic and its aftermath reshaped both startup building and healthcare staffing. The 2020 health crisis triggered economic whiplash, remote work at scale, and a sharp pullback in growth‑stage funding, forcing startups to rethink how they operate and invest. At the same time, healthcare systems faced unprecedented staffing gaps, pushing them to search for more flexible, real‑time ways to connect with clinicians.
In this context, Nursa’s model—connecting facilities with vetted nurses and clinicians for per‑diem shifts via a marketplace—moved from a nice‑to‑have to a critical infrastructure layer. Anderson highlighted milestones like single‑day demand that exceeded half of Nursa’s first‑year volume as proof that both clinicians and facilities were hungry for new staffing models. Rather than chasing growth at any cost, the team leaned into understanding how these macro shifts were changing what “good” looked like for workers, patients, and operations.
Principles For High Growth In Uncertainty
A core theme of the talk was that high growth in uncertain times comes from disciplined clarity, not heroic optimism. Anderson emphasized the importance of constantly articulating both why an initiative should succeed and the most likely reasons it might fail, and doing this early enough that the team can course‑correct. By normalizing conversations about potential failure, Nursa’s leadership created space for honest debate without making critiques feel like personal attacks.
Curtis also underscored three operating disciplines that became non‑negotiable as the company scaled.
- Tight feedback loops between facilities and clinicians, so product decisions reflect the lived reality of both sides of the marketplace.
- Relentless simplification of workflows, like reducing the steps required for a facility to post a shift and for a nurse to pick one up.
- A willingness to revisit assumptions about pricing, incentives, and go‑to‑market as the funding and regulatory environment shifts.
People-First Healthcare Marketplaces
Even as the talk covered funding cycles and operating metrics, Anderson continually brought the conversation back to people. Nursa’s mission is rooted in the belief that clinicians and facilities are subjects, not objects - human beings whose autonomy and constraints must be respected by any platform that claims to serve them. That philosophy shows up in how Nursa gives nurses more control over when and where they work, while giving facilities tools to plan staffing more proactively and reduce burnout on the floor.
He shared stories of clinicians using Nursa to gain financial stability and independence by flexing their schedules, illustrating how “high growth” can translate into real quality‑of‑life improvements. For leadership teams across healthcare, senior living, and other shift‑based industries, the takeaway was that sustainable growth comes from aligning the platform’s success with better outcomes for workers and patients, not just filling more shifts.
Key Takeaways For Founders And Operators
“Pessimism is a more intellectually seductive option than optimism and captures our attention. you can turn on the news or open your preferred social media feeds for five minutes and you'll have ample illustration of that allure. It is vital for survival though at a very basic and biological level and helps us prepare for risks before they arrive.
Optimism is equally essential. The future is for the faithful and the belief that things can be and will be better even when the evidence is murky is one of the most essential parts of everything that we do from maintaining a sound friendship or a relationship to making a long-term investment and in many cases for entrepreneurship..”
-Curtis Anderson, CEO, Nursa
For founders, investors, and operators building in shift work marketplaces, especially within the dynamic health care vertical, the session offered a practical blueprint:
- Treat macro‑level volatility - pandemics, rate shocks, regulatory changes - as design constraints for your business model, not excuses for performance.
- Build cultures where teams can rigorously pressure‑test ideas, including their own, without stigma.
- Invest in technology that reduces friction for both sides of the marketplace, turning chaotic demand into manageable, data‑driven workflows.
These key points of using challenge as a catalyst for growth, focusing on culture, and deeper investment in technology provide a practical guideline to navigate the ebb and flow of achieving scale in the midst of uncertainty.
Anderson closed by reframing uncertainty as a competitive advantage for teams willing to lean into it. When organizations stay close to their users, move quickly on learnings, and stay grounded in a clear mission, they can not only survive turbulence but also use it to build resilient businesses that become valuable by understanding customers and solving their most important problems.
For more information on Shift Work Summit visit the event page at shiftworksummit.com and watch the full replay of this session go here.
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