The National Nurse Practitioner Entrepreneur Network (NNPEN) was born from a nurse-led startup failure. Our founder tried to start a regional nurse-led primary care practice and failed. She couldn’t find an NP CEO with fire in the belly and a business brain. She couldn’t find investors interested in lending money to a business with razor-thin margins. Even with a business plan, she didn’t know enough to realistically evaluate the start-up’s probability of success. But she was smart enough to recognize that it wasn’t just what she didn’t know; the educational system for NPs was flawed.

Nurse Practitioners are taught to be change agents — not risk-takers or business owners. Recognizing that it may take years for nursing school curriculum to adapt, a consortium of nursing leaders founded NNPEN to be the link between NPs and with needed business resources. NNPEN is committed to accelerating the growth of sustainable nurse-led start-ups. Why? Because we know successful NP businesses increase work force satisfaction, increase NP revenue opportunity and increase consumer access to nurse-led high value, high quality health care–the ultimate win/win!