Most companies begin with a pitch deck RingMD began with a working build and no name. Justin Fulcher, who had been traveling through Southeast Asia in his late teens, started coding the prototype on his own. “For a number of months, it was essentially a hobby project,” he has said. Investors found him before he sought them out, and their interest formalized something that was already functioning.
Roots in South Carolina
Fulcher grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where he taught himself his first programming language at age seven. Justin Fulcher launched his first business at thirteen. During high school, he turned a side arrangement fixing IT problems at his school into a profitable operation. When he enrolled at Clemson University, the structured pace of academic life did not suit him. He left and booked a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia at nineteen.
The region offered problems worth solving. Fulcher saw people with smartphones but no access to a doctor, no reliable clean water, and no local infrastructure capable of connecting them to either. The image of a man drinking from contaminated ground while holding an Android device stayed with him. It clarified the purpose behind what would become RingMD.
Building Across Continents
By 2018, Justin Fulcher had built RingMD into a platform with reach across Asia and growing operations in North America. He sold the company that year and framed the move as a step forward rather than a departure. “This is a continuation of the vision rather than a departure from,” he said. The platform relaunched in the US in 2019. When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, Fulcher made the white-labeled version available at no cost to healthcare providers. By the time he stepped back in January 2025, RingMD was operating in more than fifty countries and held 1.5 million patient records. See related link for additional information.
More about Justin Fulcher on https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrjustinfulcher