Monthly Archives: August 2022

Affectifi’s ThinkHuman Platform Uses Streaming TV to Make Emotional Regulation Easy, Fun, and Accessible



Emotional regulation. It’s a fancy term for something very simple, and something we often take for granted. Emotional regulation is a person’s ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience. We do this work unconsciously all day long, deciding how to respond when we’re cut off in traffic or when we see something we disagree with on social media.

How we respond to emotional situations can have massive ramifications for our lives, yet we don’t typically spend much time thinking about it or trying to improve.

Our guests this week, Melissa Cesarano and Ilya Lyashevsky, got their PhDs at Columbia University studying the science of this field, called social-emotional learning. Now, they’ve poured their academic work into a startup called Affectifi, which StartUp Health backed last year.

In this conversation, we’ll hear from Mel and Ilya about their unique methodology for teaching emotional regulation to young people. It’s a platform called ThinkHuman and it actually piggy-backs training modules on top of popular content on streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+.

Listen in to hear how it works.


Learn more and connect with the team at Affectifi.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com
Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

At Trusty.care, Joseph Schneier Is Building a Better Infrastructure for Medicaid and Medicare Benefits



This week on StartUp Health NOW we’re talking to Joseph Schneier, the CEO and Co-founder of Trusty.care, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2018. Joseph holds a special place here at StartUp Health because not only is he a four-time serial entrepreneur, but he’s heading up his second StartUp Health-backed company.

Joseph’s latest endeavor, Trusty.care, is a platform that makes sense out of the byzantine world of Medicaid and Medicare benefits. It’s not flashy work – which Joseph is the first to admit – but therein lies the opportunity for impact. The chance to build a better infrastructure for health, the pipes and roads that make health insurance a more palatable, patient-centric experience.

Trusty.care is making waves in the Medicaid/Medicare benefits market, and in this interview we pull back the curtain on that success and get a glimpse of what Joseph is planning next.


Learn more and connect with the team at Trusty-care.
Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com
Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Salvo Health: Travelocity and Foursquare Exec Jeff Glueck Has Raised $10.5M to Disrupt the GI Health Market



In health innovation – which is the world we inhabit at StartUp Health – there are certain issues that get the lion’s share of attention. Think wearables for tracking daily activity or new mental health solutions. A lot of attention is going towards interventions for seniors and addressing issues of loneliness and isolation. These are wonderful areas of development. But there are other areas of health that have huge implications across society, yet have a way of flying under the radar. There’s stigma – like our hesitance to talk about mental health struggles – and then there’s society’s reaction to gastrointestinal conditions. GI problems. Irritable bowel syndrome or IBS. Celiac disease. The list goes on. Each year, 62 million Americans are diagnosed with a digestive disorder. Another 30 million go undiagnosed. They’re often too embarrassed to even talk to their primary care provider about it, so they suffer in silence, and it has negative ripple effects across their entire life.

Well, all that seems to be about to change. The virtual healthcare revolution has reached the GI market with the launch of Salvo Health, a company that’s using virtual care to bring the best gut health tools and therapies to millions of people.

Heading up the effort is CEO and Co-founder Jeff Glueck, who is our guest on today’s episode. Jeff is a tech industry veteran, having been Chief Marketing Officer at Travelocity during their meteoric rise, and the CEO of the social app Foursquare. He’s leveraging that experience to disrupt an old school industry and bring relief to millions. The company, which joined StartUp Health last year, has just announced a $10.5M Seed raise to bring Salvo out of stealth mode and start to scale in earnest.

How’s Jeff going to use his experience at Travelocity and Foursquare to disrupt the GI health market? We’ll let him explain in the interview.


Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com
Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Former Dexcom Exec Claudia Graham Joins StartUp Health’s New T1D Moonshot Impact Board



“The more you know, the better you’ll do living with diabetes,” says Claudia Graham. “There’s nothing more important in diabetes than empowering patients.”

If you follow StartUp Health at all, you have seen headlines about our new Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot. To recap, we’ve launched an initiative designed to speed up innovation around Type 1 diabetes by bringing together a cross-disciplinary team of investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, researchers, and other industry experts. At the heart of the effort is an Impact Board – basically our T1D dream team – which brings together the top minds in the field for collaborative working sessions. We wanted to take some time on this podcast to introduce you to some of the inspiring folks on this Impact Board and invite you to get involved in the effort.

On this episode you’ll meet Claudia Graham, former executive at Dexcom, the company that revolutionized the continuous glucose monitor. She served as VP of Marketing and SVP of Global Access. Now she’s putting her decades of experience at Dexcom – and as someone living with Type 1 diabetes – to work as an advisor and investor. We caught up with Claudia over zoom at her home in Idaho to learn about the opportunities and challenges she sees in the Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, how StartUp Health helps get away from institutional thinking to break down barriers and empower patients, and how she thinks about leaving a legacy for the next generation.


Entrepreneurs, are you working on a T1D solution? We want to hear from you.
Investors, want to back an impact-driven fund laser focused on T1D? Contact us.

Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

 


Dr. Toyin Ajayi, Cityblock Health: Building and Scaling a Company With an Impactful Mission



Toyin Ajayi, MD, co-founded Cityblock Health in 2017 with the goal of meeting patients where they are. Cityblock Health, which joined StartUp Health in 2019, provides patients with 24/7 support and care that is affordable and fits complex needs. Their mission is not just to improve quality of care, but to improve the health of whole communities.

In this conversation, Dr. Ajayi, who stepped into the role of CEO this year, shares how their high-touch care concept adapted to COVID. She also explains how their unique model has specialists collaborating on patient care plans and gives some hard-earned leadership advice to founders.


Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com
Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.