Built by people who actually care

When people ask us how Durate started, the truth is that it didn't begin with official business plans or polished pitches. It all started back in 2023, when we were just a group of college students who met from our shared love of coding.

Coding wasn't just a shared interest—it genuinely consumed all our spare time. At one point, we even took over an abandoned office we found on our college campus, turned it into our little headquarters, and lived out of it for a few days. We'd spend every day there, from Friday nights to Monday mornings. Soon enough, skipping classes and developing software together took all our time.

While working on a separate project, we noticed something: the people we loved—our parents, siblings, and other family members—who are physicians themselves, were constantly frustrated with the tech they had to use.

It was completely opposite to our experience. We'd hear all the time about their software, that was older than us, always crashing or breaking in some new way. Watching that disconnect made us determined to switch directions and create something better for them—something our families would genuinely look forward to using.

After a few months of tinkering and designing in between classes, we decided to take a leap that following summer. We skipped our internships, rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment over the summer, and dove into building something we'd be proud to show our families. Something they would actually want to use. Watching them use our product for the first time—actually smiling as they interacted with it—made us realize we'd stumbled onto something special.

By the end of summer, we got an invitation from Y Combinator offering us a spot in their Fall 2024 batch. From there, we turned in our drop out forms, packed up all our belongings, and set out to take on the mission: using our love of software to build something meaningful for the people we cared most about.