A Cautionary Tale: Cost Plus Drugs

As the internet buzzes around the launch of Cost Plus Drugs I thought back to a Medium post by a friend of a friend.

A friend of mine went to pharmacy school with Kyle, the founder of Blueberry Pharmacy - the Cost Plus Drugs of two years ago you've never heard of.

As Kyle's Medium article describes 18 months ago the CEO of Cost Plus Drugs was reaching out to him to figure out just how/where he was getting the drug pricing listed on his website at the time.

Those of us that have been around for a while probably know where this is going...

Maybe because Kyle (Blueberry Pharmacy) didn't realize what was going on -or- maybe because he's so altruistically devoted to addressing the issue of RX drug prices in the US he described various aspects of the business he'd been developing for two years to what he should have known was a formidable competitor.

I've never met Kyle but the argument could certainly be made if he (and who knows how many others) helped enable Cost Plus Drugs with no personal benefit that's better for all of us. With no insult to Kyle the platform and marketing machine that is Mark Cuban would have been in the position to pull this off and crush them no matter what.

Increasing access to fairly priced RX drugs is a noble endeavor and Kyle should feel good about being a (however small) part of Cost Plus Drugs bringing them to a much wider population.

However, for those of us in startup land I can't help but look at this as a cautionary tale. Ideas are cheap, the details aren't.

In this case bad for Kyle, great for everyone else.