672. What Makes Judy Faulkner Run?

Raised in New Jersey by a pharmacist father and peace activist mother who later won a Nobel Peace Prize, Faulkner was charged with the Hebrew concept of 'tikkun olam'—making the world a better place. She stumbled into computer science and healthcare almost by accident, finding programming to be 'fun and games' while earning her master's degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1967. Her mother's directive to help people became the foundation for how she would eventually build Epic Systems.

• Faulkner's mother, Adele, was a peace activist who directed the South Jersey Peace Center during the Vietnam War and later worked with Physicians for Social Responsibility
• Her mother was arrested in her 80s for protesting at a nuclear site, with a photo showing her smiling with the policeman writing the ticket
• When Faulkner went to college, her mother told her to 'make the world a better place, try to help people'—a burden she initially found overwhelming at 18
• She discovered programming by chance during a summer job at University of Rochester, where they gave her a Fortran book and a week's access to the computer

Faulkner resisted starting a company for years despite receiving four calls a week from colleagues wanting her to commercialize her healthcare IT work. She finally agreed in 1979 after meeting someone who simplified the process into three steps. Epic began with three part-time people in a basement, bootstrapped without venture capital or private equity, focusing on creating integrated healthcare software systems when the industry was fragmented.

• Colleagues would travel the country showing Faulkner's work and call asking her to start a company, but she repeatedly refused for a couple years
• A man who had spun off a lab system told her there were just three things to do: get a good lawyer, get a good accountant, get permission from the university
• Epic started with people working in their off hours to help build the initial company
• Faulkner's integrated approach meant building one comprehensive system rather than 250 separate applications that competitors used