"It was an immediate business partner, which is exactly what we needed. Business partner first, artist and creative director second."
The Problem
Background
ZyDoc is a clinical documentation company that combines AI with expert medical language specialists to deliver highly accurate patient notes for physicians. Unlike competitors relying on off-the-shelf AI, ZyDoc's human-in-the-loop model addresses the hallucinations, medication errors, and missing context that plague automated medical transcription. The result: physicians get corrected, formatted notes inserted directly into their EHR with a single click.
As ZyDoc prepared to scale its platform and raise funding, the company brought on a fractional CMO to lead the next phase of growth. But marketing and sales strategy alone were not enough. The team also needed a creative partner who could take rough concepts and turn them into polished brand assets, investor materials, and digital experiences, all while moving at startup speed.
"You need somebody that can execute on creative, that can conceptualize and design it from nothing, can take a brief and turn it into something tactical and tangible," the CMO explained. "When you look at scaling a company, there are a couple of key players that need to come in right away. One is someone who does marketing and sales and the other is somebody that can do creative, including UI/UX."
The Solution
When looking for a creative partner, ZyDoc's fractional CMO turned to Fraction. "Fraction was a perfect choice because we knew that we could work with people who understand the startup environment and they also understand that we're multitasking," he said.
Fraction placed John, a senior creative director, into the engagement. What made the partnership work was not just John's design skills but his ability to operate as a strategic collaborator in a resource-constrained environment.
"I have a skeleton pitch deck here. It's ugly. It is an ugly, ugly baby," the CMO recalled telling John. "There's probably some bad copy in here. It might not make sense, but here's some diagramming. Here's some outlines. Can you take that and run with it and be okay with refining it as we go, knowing that I'm taking the pressure off to make it perfect the first time? I don't need that. I just need partnership."
John delivered. He pushed to establish everything in Figma from the start, building intentionally and ensuring every asset served multiple purposes across the company's digital platforms. The CMO described a working relationship built on trust, with John providing both creative direction and the confidence to move forward on instinct. "He was pretty insistent that we started everything in Figma... John's been able to say, 'No, you're right to ask for that. Go with your instinct. We're going to make this work.'"
The Results
The Fraction engagement delivered tangible and intangible value for ZyDoc:
Faster-Than-Expected Rebranding: "I don't think I was anticipating seeing a well-formatted rebranding so quickly," said the CMO. "I was really grateful for that." John's ability to take rough direction and produce polished work without extensive hand-holding meant the team could move at the pace the business demanded.
Intentional, Multi-Purpose Design: Every asset was built with utility in mind. "Everything that we do is based on the idea that it's utility. We're going to kill multiple birds with one stone across everything that we build," the CMO explained. John approached the work methodically, creating design systems that could scale across platforms and use cases.
A True Business Partnership: The most significant outcome was the quality of the working relationship itself. "It's a really good working relationship. I don't think that would have happened had we not gone through Fraction or had John in particular," the CMO said. He credited Fraction's vetting process for making this possible: "Having an organization like Fraction prep and vet the talent to a level where they can work within whatever strategy you are selling at the time is really important."
The CMO also pointed to the broader case for Fraction's model: "You're not beholden to needing to hire many in niche verticals that don't talk to each other. You can hire one person fractionally who understands business context and use case and can jump in with their expertise where they're needed. It's a brilliant model. It's how the world is moving."
