Calvin Carter: D CEO’s Emerging Company Leader of the Year

Congratulations to Matic CEO Calvin Carter, who was named D CEO Magazine’s Emerging Company Leader of the Year, part of the magazine’s Leadership Excellence Awards. D CEO announced the winners at a private event in Dallas.

The program drew more than 400 nominations from executives across North Texas this year. This category recognizes leaders of early-stage companies who have shown the creativity and decision-making it takes to scale something from the ground up.

Calvin took a different path. Most health tech starts with the software. Matic starts with stakeholders: physicians, practices, and patients. The team shadowed all three, felt the friction alongside them, and designed a better experience for each, with one conviction at the center: serve physicians completely, and the value reaches everyone.

From there, Matic wins with engagement. Joy drives engagement, engagement drives usage, and usage drives performance, so Matic is built to be something stakeholders love using.

Before the App Store Existed

It’s not the first time Calvin has spotted an opportunity before everyone else did. He launched Bottle Rocket in March 2008, the day after Steve Jobs announced the iPhone would open to third-party developers, months before the App Store even existed.

He grew the company to more than 300 employees and more than 500 digital products for brands including NPR, PBS, LEGO, Southwest Airlines, and Chick-fil-A. Bottle Rocket earned four Apple App Store Hall of Fame awards, and Calvin was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Where Trust is Hardest to Earn

Healthcare is where the margin for error is thinnest and trust is hardest to earn. Matic started with an unusual pairing. Dr. Alexander Sheppert, a physician with an MBA and a PhD in AI, lived the problem firsthand: shrinking time with patients, diagnoses slipping through the cracks, lost revenue, and late nights charting. So he built the fix from the inside out. Calvin brought three decades of building digital experiences that take the friction out of complex systems. One knows what it feels like to deliver care. The other knows how to make complex systems feel effortless.

In one year, Matic grew its revenue 15x, cut after-hours charting 83% for physicians, earned a 100% would-buy-again rating from KLAS Research, and evolved from a single ambient scribe into an AI-native ecosystem built around patients, practices, and physicians across healthcare.

“When you serve the physician first, everyone benefits. Physicians deliver better care. Patients get better outcomes. Practices thrive. We give physicians the superpowers to deliver the care they wish they could, and it’s working,” said Carter.

See what Matic is building next at maticinside.ai.