Tag Archives: Health

State of Health Tech with Bessemer Venture Partners

Health Tech Trends: AI, Private Markets, and 2025 Predictions from Bessemer Venture Partners

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On this week’s podcast episode, Steve Kraus and Sofia Guerra of Bessemer Venture Partners joined us to discuss the trends and predictions outlined in their second annual State of Health Tech report.

 Key takeaways include:

  • AI: Health tech dollars invested in AI-focused companies have increased 1.5x in just two years, reaching 38% in 2024 to date.

  • Private market recovery: Mega rounds of $50M+ for later-stage companies with strong fundamentals, alongside a surge of seed and Series A companies scaling to $1M-$10M ARR within three years.

  • 2025 predictions: Adoption of in-house services-as-software, AI enhancing doctors’ capabilities, AI streamlining value-based care, and more companies blending cutting-edge technology with deep healthcare expertise.

About Steve Kraus:
Steve Kraus is a partner at Bessemer in the Cambridge office and a world-renowned healthcare investor. He is the author of Bessemer’s 10 Laws of Healthcare, Benchmarks for Growing Health Tech Businesses, and co-host of the podcast Heart of Healthcare. Kraus currently sits on the boards of Bright Health Group, Headspace Health, Groups, Qventus, AspenRx, HouseRx, Oshi Health, Folx Health, Mural Health, and Alcresta.

About Sofia Guerra:
Sofia Guerra is a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, where she invests in seed to growth healthcare and life sciences companies. She is the co-author of State of Health Tech report, Benchmarks for Growing Health Tech Business, and How to Scale Health Tech Businesses to $100M and Beyond, a study of 100+ best-in-class companies to understand key metrics relevant for scalability in healthcare software and tech-enabled services.

Listen in for the complete chat with Steve Kraus and Sofia Guerra and learn about the key trends shaping the future of health tech.

Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, magazine, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot Community Showcase Membership. To schedule a call and see if you qualify to join and increase brand awareness through our multi-media storytelling efforts, submit our three-minute application. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit. Learn more and apply today.

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Navigating the Longevity Economy: An AgeTech Masterclass with Mary Furlong

Navigating the Longevity Economy: An AgeTech Masterclass with Mary Furlong

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The heart of AgeTech, according to Mary Furlong: “Baby Boomers want a vision of the future, not a memory of the past.”

In this week’s StartUp Health NOW podcast episode, we dive into the booming longevity market with Mary Furlong, a legendary figure in AgeTech (senior innovation). In this excerpt from a Masterclass held for members of the StartUp Health community, Furlong shares her practical wisdom gained from more than 30 years in the industry, raising over $300 million for senior-focused businesses.

In this action-packed Masterclass, you’ll learn:

  • Creative, holistic, and practical go-to-market strategies for the longevity market.
  • How to identify real senior needs – sometimes it starts with a simple happy hour!
  • Proven tips for building socially conscious businesses that serve this rapidly growing population.

Mary Furlong is a leading authority on the longevity market. As the President and CEO of Mary Furlong & Associates (MFA), she’s a champion for companies creating products and services that empower older adults. She was named one of the top 100 women in Silicon Valley and received the first-ever lifetime achievement award from Aging 2.0.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from the best! This is an actionable and inspiring masterclass excerpt – take notes and get ready to take your longevity business to the next level.


Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

AI in Healthcare: Separating Hype from Reality on the Front Lines

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Tired of overblown claims about AI in healthcare?
This episode dives into the real, impactful ways AI is transforming patient care.

Join us as we chat with founders in the StartUp Health community who are using AI to improve healthcare for patients and providers:

  • Jerrod Ullah, HealthTalk A.I.: Hear how his experience as an ICU nurse fueled an AI platform that boosts engagement for both patients and providers.
  • Kavi Misri, Hibiscus Health: Discover how their end-to-end solution empowers people with metabolic conditions to take control of their health.

This episode is for you if:

  • You’re curious about the practical applications of AI in healthcare.
  • You want to hear inspiring stories from healthcare entrepreneurs.
  • You’re eager to learn how AI can improve patient outcomes.

Get ready for a refreshing take on AI in healthcare!

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

How Two Founders Raised Millions During a Challenging Funding Market

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As a healthcare startup, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have the capital to hire the right people, build your product, and survive a long sales cycle, you’re unlikely to have a huge impact. To put it simply, raising funds has been challenging for health startups over the last couple years.

In this StartUp Health NOW episode, we dive into the realm of funding challenges – and despite the hurdles, we bring you tales of hope and inspiration from two founders who successfully raised significant early capital.

First up is Matt Swanson, CEO & Co-founder of Reciprocity Health. Reciprocity Health – which joined the StartUp Health community in 2023 shortly after their launch – offers personalized digital programs with financial incentives for completing health actions, aiming to improve patient engagement. Despite being in business for just one year, Swanson and his team secured more than $5 million in funding to expand their innovative financial incentive program. Swanson shares the critical elements that paved the way for their successful first raise.

Next, we sit down with Anton Kittelberger, Co-CEO & Co-founder of 9amHealth. 9amHealth – which joined StartUp Health in 2022 – offers comprehensive care for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity through a virtual clinic. Kittelberger and his team recently closed a substantial $9.5 million Series A extension, leveraging a unique leadership structure and capitalizing on emerging trends in the healthcare market. Discover how they navigated the challenges and capitalized on opportunities to propel their virtual clinic for cardiometabolic conditions to new heights.

Join us as we uncover the strategies, insights, and stories behind these funding successes. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode offers invaluable lessons and inspiration for anyone navigating the healthcare startup landscape. Tune in and get ready to be inspired!

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Inside the Health Moonshot Impact Board: A Conversation with Margaret Laws and Shirley Bergin

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This week on StartUp Health NOW, we have again handed over the microphones to two members of our Health Moonshot Impact Board and having them interview each other.

At one end of the table we’ve got Margaret Laws, CEO & President of HopeLab, former Director of Innovations for the Underserved at CHCF, and Founder of the CHCF Health Innovation Fund, and at the other end of the interview table is Shirley Bergin, Senior Advisor at ARPA-H, Former CMO/COO of TEDMED, and Advisor to Ellipsis Health and Cure.

The goal of the conversation was simply to hear about the latest projects and passions of two of the most influential and interesting people in health innovation. In the interview, which took place in person at the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Florida, we cover a range of topics, from youth mental health, to the role of AI in diagnostics, to education to address global gaps in the healthcare workforce.

Margaret Laws and Shirley Bergin are thought leaders in health innovation, but they’re also deeply involved in directing funds towards promising programs, so it will be interesting to see how their curiosities and passions as played out here will lead to concrete moves in the future.

Enjoy the conversation.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Learn how you can get one of the last spots in our T1D Moonshot.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Inside the Health Moonshot Impact Board: Esther Dyson & Roger Jansen Get Candid on Health Innovation

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Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW!

We think it’s fair to say that when people think of StartUp Health, they think about entrepreneurs and founders. Over the last 12 or 13 years we’ve supported more than 500 health tech startups and nearly 1000 founders, many of whom have been featured on this show.

Perhaps less well known is what happens behind the scenes at StartUp Health. In this episode we pull back that curtain a little bit, particularly as it pertains to our Health Moonshot Impact Board. We’ve got this advisory team of about 17 amazing individuals across multiple disciplines. These are people like Dr. Toby Cosgrove, former head of the Cleveland Clinic; Chuck Henderson, the CEO of the American Diabetes Association; and Sue Siegel, former head of GE Ventures – just to name three. You can see the whole Health Moonshot Impact Board here on our website.

Recently, we brought together our Health Moonshot Impact Board in real life at the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Florida. Not only did the team get to learn from luminaries like Jeff Bezos, David Feinberg, and Peter Lee, but they got to go deeper on ideas with one another.

In the spirit of encouraging a more radically collaborative impact board, we decided to flip the script a bit and have members of our board interview one another for this podcast. The hope was that this would lead to some unexpected lines of questioning and some uniquely candid moments.

The first conversation in this series is between Esther Dyson, legendary angel investor and founder of Wellville, and Roger Jansen, PhD, the Chief Innovation & Digital Health Officer at Michigan State University Health Care. The conversation was just as wide-ranging and unstructured as we hoped it would be, and it touched on some incredibly powerful topics.

We hope you enjoy.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Learn how you can get one of the last spots in our T1D Moonshot.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

10 Years Later: A Health Tech Investor Reflects on Her Early Days at StartUp Health

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Ten years ago, Irem Rami became one of the first Fellows to join StartUp Health. In her role she helped vet the very first companies to join our community. That was back when it seemed very audacious indeed to have a goal of supporting 1000 healthcare startups. A few years later and we’ve now welcomed 500 startups into the community and are still going strong. In that time Rami moved on, went to business school, and is now a principle health investor at Norwest, a $3B multi-stage fund.

We called up Rami up for this StartUp Health NOW podcast episode to give us that decade look back – you know, it’s hard to understand where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from. She’s got a unique perspective on the durability of the StartUp Health vision and what it means to chase the same seemingly impossible dream for more than 10 years.

We also wanted to hear Rami’s advice for health innovators seeking to raise funds in this difficult market. She evaluates opportunities on a daily basis and had some sage advice to share for our listeners.

Enjoy the episode.

—
Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion
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.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

How These Two Founders Are Upgrading Maternal Health Through Cultural Competence and Remote Monitoring

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Today in the United States, we do an entirely poor job of taking care of our pregnant mothers. If you look at statistics like maternal morbidity and mortality, it’s been going up. And, through the pandemic, it’s only gone downhill. We’re one of the worst – actually the worst – of any advanced country.

Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health.

Today we’ve got two very special guests on the show talking about one extremely important topic: maternal health. This is a topic that has been front and center in health news lately and not for good reasons. In spite of all our progress in healthtech, the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

The World Health Organization reports that a maternal death occurred almost every two minutes in 2020.

What’s worse, maternal health brings to light racial health inequities in a stark and disturbing way. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

But we’re not here just to talk about the problem. Our guests are two Health Transformers who have dedicated their lives to changing the maternal health story.

First, you’ll get to hear from Jade Kearney, CEO & Founder of She Matters, a new platform that trains doctors in culturally-competent care so that – among other things – Black women are heard and understood during childbirth. They also created a virtual community for moms to get support and improve the health outcomes for Black mothers.

Next, we’ll have a conversation with Anish Sebastian, CEO & Co-founder of Babyscripts. Babyscripts is a long-time member of our community that is bringing virtual care and remote monitoring into the pregnancy and postpartum journey so that more women get the care they need when and where they need it most.

Listen in for their stories and solutions for upgrading maternal health.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion
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.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

ChatGPT Was Just the Beginning: Victor Wang on the Future of AI in Healthcare

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Victor Wang, CEO & Founder of StartUp Health company care.coach, is at the tip of the spear of the AI-in-health revolution. He’s got an insider’s understanding of how technology like ChatGPT will shape healthcare. An MIT-trained roboticist who worked for NASA, Victor has created a conversational avatar that cares for seniors and people with disabilities. Currently there’s a human in the loop, but as you’ll hear in the interview, Victor has no trouble imagining a future where conversational AI is able to care for people in a more autonomous, scaleable way.

Perhaps most telling, and timely, about this interview, is hearing Victor’s words of caution about the future of artificial intelligence in healthcare and the burden that rests on companies doing this work to get it right, so that we don’t have an AI backlash and lose out on all the ways this technology can help humanity.

Victor is a brilliant founder and always a pleasure to sit down with, even on the noisy floor of a healthcare conference like ViVE. We hope you enjoy.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion
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.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Is Value-Based Care Finally at a Tipping Point? Cityblock and Enlace Health Share Thoughts from StartUp Health @ HLTH

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Welcome to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators transforming the future of health.

Value-based care has the dubious distinction of being the oldest new idea in health innovation. For decades we’ve talked about the benefits of creating medical payment structures that tie compensation to the patient’s outcome, rather than simply paying for services. It’s pretty clear that if a hospital makes its money off of performing certain tests or procedures, it’s going to have a bias – whether overt or subconscious – towards doing more of those tests and procedures. There’s no financial incentive to give the patient a lower-cost option that’s just as effective.

The alternative to America’s “fee for service” model is one where financial risk is shared by multiple entities, and pricing is bundled in a transparent way. This so-called value-based structure does away with surprise bills, and makes sure that doctors and hospitals are financially incentivized to keep patients healthy. Of course, that’s an oversimplification, and we could have a whole other episode about the role of fee-for-service medicine, but that’s not our subject for today.

Today, we’re getting a look at how value-based healthcare companies are faring through the lens of two StartUp Health companies, Cityblock Health and Enlace Health.

Recently, StartUp Health brought together nearly 100 of our portfolio companies at HLTH in Las Vegas, and while on the show floor, we caught up with some of our top founders in the StartUp Health Studio. That included Bill Nordmark, CEO of Enlace Health, which last year raised a $60M series D, and Dr. Kameron Matthews, Chief Health Officer at Cityblock Health, which is now valued at more than a billion dollars. Both of these companies are making value-based care business models a reality. For Enlace, it’s about building a new infrastructure that allows other companies to operate successfully within a new financial model. For Cityblock, it’s about deploying value-based care at scale in a way that addresses the needs of vulnerable populations.

Listen in for Logan Plaster’s chats with Bill Nordmark and Dr. Kameron Matthews, held in the busy StartUp Health Pavilion at HLTH in Las Vegas.

Learn more and connect with Health Transformers.

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

Investors: Contact us to learn how to invest in Health Moonshots
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.
Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.