My colleague had a vision. Not the kind that comes from a business school classroom or a venture capital pitch competition, but the kind that comes from years of practicing medicine and watching colleagues slowly lose the thing that brought them into this field in the first place. Autonomy. Joy. The feeling that you are actually helping someone, not just generating documentation.

The three of us, my CEO colleague and two fellow co-founders, built our company together, from that shared frustration. We started this as a team of physicians who were tired of waiting for someone else to solve a problem we lived every single day. But our CEO did something that the rest of us will never forget. He walked away from a hospital-based practice with a great salary, stable income, and a career that most physicians would consider a success by any measure. He left it, not because something went wrong, but because he believed in what we were building deeply enough to go all in. That kind of conviction changes everything about how a team operates and how seriously the people around you take the mission.

My co-founder and I went all in with him in our own way, still practicing, still in the clinic, but fully committed alongside him. When someone you built something with bets their career on it, you do not step back. You step forward.

I recently listened to an episode of the White Coat Investor podcast featuring Dr. Josh Daly, who spoke about his brain tumor diagnosis and what it clarified for him about happiness and fulfillment. He talked about how joy in life is rooted in relationships, autonomy, and control over your own path. That conversation hit all three of us in a very personal way, because that is exactly what medicine has been quietly taking from physicians for years. And it is exactly what we are trying to give back.

If that resonates with you as a physician, I want you to keep reading.

What we built, and how we are building it

We are building a physician-facing AI platform. We are not a tech company that hired some doctors as advisors. We are doctors who built a technology company because we lived the problem and got tired of waiting for someone else to solve it.

But here is what makes our model fundamentally different from anything else being built in this space: Our physician investors are not just writing checks and waiting for a return. They are coming on as beta sites. The platform is being designed and built around their direct experience, what they actually need at the point of care, what frustrates them, what would give them their time back. Every feature, every workflow, every decision runs through the filter of real physician feedback from people actively practicing medicine.

This is a company built for physicians, by physicians. Not built in a boardroom and then handed to physicians to use. Built with them, from the ground up. The tools that exist today were built from the outside looking in. We are building ours from the inside out.

What happened when we started raising money

When we began reaching out to fellow physicians about investing, we expected resistance. We had no finance backgrounds, no Silicon Valley network, no formal pitch training. What we had was a mission and a phone full of colleagues who understood the problem the moment we described it.

We have now raised over $1 million, entirely from fellow physicians. Not institutional investors. Not venture funds. Doctors. People who looked at what we were building and said yes because they recognized themselves in the problem.

What we learned is that physicians are not hard to convince when the thing you are building is real. They are actually some of the most discerning evaluators you will ever pitch, because they will not invest in something they do not believe in clinically. When a fellow surgeon wires you $100,000, it is not just a financial decision. It is a statement of belief.

And when those same physicians become beta sites, when they are testing the product in their own practices and giving us feedback that shapes every iteration, the line between investor and co-creator disappears. That is exactly the kind of company we are building.

What the burnout crisis is really about

We talk a lot about burnout in medicine. But I think we often misdiagnose it. Physicians are not burning out because they stopped caring about patients. They are burning out because they have lost control of how they practice. Every minute spent on documentation, prior authorization, and administrative overhead is a minute stolen from the reason most of us went into medicine in the first place.

Dr. Daly said it plainly. Happiness comes from autonomy and relationships. When medicine takes both of those things away, you are left with something that does not resemble the career you signed up for.

Our CEO recognized that before any of us articulated it out loud. And he made the most personal kind of statement you can make. He reorganized his entire professional life around solving it. That kind of commitment is contagious. It is why our physician investors did not just write checks. They got on the phone, they asked hard questions, and then they said yes, because they could feel that this was built from a real place by real people with real stakes.

A message to physicians who feel stuck

If you are a physician reading this who is frustrated, burned out, or quietly wondering whether there is something more meaningful you could be doing, I want to say something directly to you.

Our CEO left a great job. My co-founder and I went all in. Our investors put real money behind something that did not yet exist in tangible form. None of us did it because it was the safe choice. We did it because the alternative, continuing to watch medicine move in the wrong direction without doing anything about it, felt worse.

You do not have to leave your practice. You do not have to write a check. But if you are a physician who wants to see medicine change, know that the people who understand this problem best are already working on it, and they look exactly like you.

This is a company built for physicians, by physicians. And we are just getting started.

J. Todd Walker is a dual board-certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist based in Austin, Texas, practicing with Texas Orthopedics Sports and Rehabilitation Associates. A former college athlete and type 1 diabetic who underwent open heart surgery as a child, Walker brings a rare personal perspective to patient care.

He is the cofounder of TurnKey AI Practice, a physician-built AI platform that has raised more than $1 million from fellow physicians to restore autonomy and eliminate burnout in medicine. He is also cofounder of Morning Rounds Coffee, a physician-owned company that gives back to doctors. Built by surgeons, for physicians.

Walker’s research spans orthopedic sports medicine, regenerative medicine, and clinical practice innovation, with work appearing in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, and the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. A representative sample includes “Strategies to Identify Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Minimally Manipulated Human Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate Lack Consensus,” “What Was the Change in Telehealth Usage and Proportion of No-show Visits for an Orthopaedic Trauma Clinic During the COVID-19 Pandemic?,” and “Minimalist shoes: Risks and benefits for runners.”

He is married to Ashleigh Porter, MD, an oncologist, and together they are raising their son, Hudson Samson Walker. Learn more at his website, and connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Justin T. Smith is a board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic sports medicine and shoulder reconstruction surgeon and the founder and CEO of Journey Orthopaedic Institute (JOI), a direct-specialty orthopedic and physical therapy practice in Fort Mill, South Carolina. He is also the cofounder and CEO of TurnKey AI Practice, a HIPAA-compliant, AI agentic operating system built to help medical practices reduce administrative burden and reclaim time with patients.

Smith serves as technology editor for the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery (JSES), where he is helping modernize and automate the journal’s editorial operations. He is also a writer for Surgery Business Magazine, a platform dedicated to helping surgeons build successful surgical businesses and take better care of their patients. His focus is direct: use technology to absorb the documentation and administrative noise that pulls physicians away from the exam room, so clinicians can return to the conversation, relationship, and continuity of care that define medicine at its best.

Learn more at his website, and connect with him on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

TurnKey AI Practice is a physician-built AI platform designed to restore autonomy, eliminate administrative burden, and bring the joy back to practicing medicine. Built by physicians, for physicians, from the inside out.

Founded by a team of practicing orthopedic surgeons, TurnKey was born from a simple conviction: The best people to build AI tools for physicians are physicians themselves. Its physician investors are not just financial backers. They are beta sites, actively shaping the platform through their own clinical feedback at the point of care.

The company has raised more than $1 million entirely from fellow physicians who believed in the mission the moment they heard it. This is not a tech company that consulted doctors. This is a company built by doctors, owned by doctors, and designed around what physicians actually need.

If you are interested in bringing TurnKey AI Practice to your practice or in investment opportunities, please reach out directly to Todd Walker, MD. Learn more at turnkeyaipractice.io.