Lauren DeVos

Couple of weeks ago had the pleasure of sharing my story to Alexander Benkendorf about starting CastPrint and later moving on to join Verge HealthTech Fund and the learning along the way. Some topics we discussed: 💡What does it take to bring innvation in healthcare 💡How did my startup background help me better prepare for VC work 💡How founders can better engage with VCs and what are the tips and tricks from the "other side" Thanks Alexander for having me!

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The most talked about AI x Medical startup Abridge is working to rescue doctors from the never-ending admin grind (which causes burnout and less patient face-time). Abridge's AI listens to patient visits and generates precise medical notes, slashing the clerical workload. Now, doctors can focus on what truly matters: patient care. Major health systems like Yale and Emory are already on board and raving, calling it "life-changing" and "magical." 🔷 A big reason --> Payback of the scribe tool is easy to measure. It supports 14 languages including Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, and Punjabi. An ongoing criticism of generative AI is that it still has few substantive business applications. This seems to quash that. Question: is a dedicated medical LLM needed to be successful in the space? Or will the huge foundational models (GPT-4o, Google, and Meta) ingest a plethora of medical notes and kill the competition with performance? We're dealing with a fast and furious pace, and today's edge may not be relevant tomorrow. Competitors include Microsoft-owned Nuance Healthcare , Ambience Healthcare, Nabla and Suki. I'm excited to continue to see this field revolutionized. 🌟 #AI #MedTech #Abridge #HealthTech

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I recently sat down with Michael Batko, CEO at Startmate and Founder of Puddle Pod for Episode 11 of Insane Ambition. Startmate has invested in 230+ startups, much of it under Michael's leadership, and now has $3.5b in value across its portfolio companies. In this episode, we discussed: - Michael's journey from consulting, then living in the Amazon rainforest, to leading Australia's biggest startup accelerator - The future of Australia's startup ecosystem - The labour government's very stupid plan to make it harder for people to qualify as sophisticated investors (now thankfully shelved) - Startmate City! Startmate's plan to build Australia's first startup city. Probably the most ambitious idea I've ever heard from a startup accelerator. - The balance between visionary thinking and traditional startup advice (think Elon Musk's plan to colonise Mars, vs Y Combinator's problem/customer obsession) - "The Courage to Be Disliked", and its influence on Michael's approach to life and business. Links in the description below 👇

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To my amazing network - I am thrilled to announce the launch of Pave Health Ventures, an early-stage venture fund dedicated to broadening access to healthcare and improving the overall well-being of our communities. I’ve been very fortunate in my healthcare career. As the Founder & CEO of MedPilot, we capped off a seven-year journey with a successful exit when we were acquired by Vytalize Health. For the last three years, serving as Chief Innovation Officer, I’ve had the honor to contribute to the remarkable growth at Vytalize, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients by enhancing the quality of care they receive. I am immensely grateful to Matt Buder Shapiro, not only for being the perfect partner and co-founder but also for being an incredible friend. Additionally, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to Faris Ghawi, Amer Alnajar, and Jordan Brown for their outstanding leadership and for broadening my perspective on the significance of value-based care. This journey has not only provided me with industry expertise but has allowed me to cultivate invaluable relationships and an incredible network. As I embark on this new chapter, I am profoundly grateful to be supported by top executives and thought leaders in the investment, wellness, and healthcare industries. Within the healthcare ecosystem, we are represented by key stakeholders from health systems, insurers, governmental organizations, retail health businesses, provider groups, and value-based care organizations. At Pave Health Ventures, we believe the timing couldn't be more opportune to help support health-focused startups. With the growing prevalence of illness and chronic health conditions impacting our communities, consumers and key Healthcare Stakeholders are increasingly prioritizing proactive and preventative care. This shift in focus is fueling demand for technology, products, and services aimed at improving health outcomes, unlocking trillions of dollars in growth potential within the healthcare landscape. Pave Health Ventures is all-in. We are actively seeking solutions that tackle the root causes of illness, manage chronic conditions, and optimize care and care teams. Please support us in our mission by opening your networks and introducing us to amazing founders and entrepreneurs. Together, let's help pave the way to a healthier tomorrow. Jacob Myers

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Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X+Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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As I said right at the start of this week's The Heart of Healthcare Podcast, Shivdev Rao is one of the most exceptional founders I have ever worked with. He is also a great human being. In this week's episode he shares what is it like leading the 🚀 that is Abridge and some awesome life lessons. IMHO this is a great listen for founders building in both the AI and healthcare fields!

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One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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Hot take on a lot of early-stage digital health companies out there: You're not a tech company. Most tech-enabled care companies I've seen over the past two years are only tech-enabled in the sense that they use telehealth as their delivery mechanism for care. There are exceptions to this, of course - companies who build computer vision and applied AI tools to better the doctor-patient experience, companies who build tooling around risk scoring and stratification to enable more personalized medicine, companies who build truly novel intakes to better route patients to the appropriate care, etc. These companies have real technology chops and, if they sell it right to the market, can get credit for this from investors. But if you're truly a telehealth provider, you need to realize now that the goal post has shifted dramatically from 2021 and you're going to be valued at maturity at something like 3x EBITDA. That's profit. Not revenue. Throw a revenue multiple out the window. That's not the world we live in if you're a virtual doctor's office. Think of how that impacts venture math. If you're raising a seed round at $15M post-money (or $12M pre-money), it means you'll have to generate something like $150-200M in annual EBITDA to be a fund returner for your seed investors. Maybe even more with dilution, since telehealth businesses are not traditionally capital efficient and will likely need to raise material additional capital to reach that scale. You need to be ridiculously profitable (probably on $800M-$1B in annual revenue since you're likely going to be a 40% gross margin business). Here's the good news: you can set yourself up well (and probably be a contrarian founder relative to your peers), by talking about EBITDA growth and how you can grow into a fund-returning outcome based on realistic mature market comps. This will stand out for the investors you're pitching, even at the early stage. This is how you can beat the malaise of the tech-enabled care market. Focus on the right metrics and the right type of growth. You don't have to have all the answers (no founder does), but you need to make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. A focus on profitability for "tech-enabled care" (*ahem* telehealth) businesses is a good first step.

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☀ Frequently Asked Questions - Summer 2024 ☀ (1) What are you up to right now? This is my third year working as a fractional commercial executive to health tech startups, VC and PE firms, and new ventures teams. I’m helping my current clients with solution definition, go-to-market strategy development, and strategic partnerships management. (2) How can I help you? Thanks. I’m always looking to connect with additional health-focused startups and venture capital teams that need commercial support now, or in the future. Some teams need support refining and finalizing their GTM plans and messaging over 1-2 months, and other teams are looking for support across multiple commercial initiatives for 6-12 months. I can support both models. (3) Will you invest in my startup? Will you join my advisory board? I currently invest in pre-seed and seed-stage health and climate-focused companies. I view family / parent tech as health, too, because of course it is. Key things I focus on as an investor:  ☑ The unmet need served ☑ Target outcomes (clinical, cost, etc.) ☑ The team’s understanding of the market and target customers ☑ Demonstrated traction ☑ Go-to-market plans and supporting market insights ☑ Thoughtfulness around team buildout and associated timing I am always open to joining the advisory boards of startups when there is a defined need and I think there’s a fit with my experience. When you reach out about advisory board support, please lead with which specific experience and skillsets you’re looking for from new advisors. Many founders are making this ask without doing this thinking first. (4) What are the some of startups you are excited about right now? Thread Health - Adolescent health https://lnkd.in/gx5kkadn Neu Health - Accessible Parkinson's and dementia care https://neu.health/ ArcHouse - Operations software for hospice https://lnkd.in/gkHaYfrH Maribel Health - Making the home the center of the health system https://maribelhealth.com/ ecologicca - Bridging the gap between healthcare and air quality  https://ecologicca.com/ (5) Are you hiring for your own team, or for your clients? Not at the moment. I will share opportunities within my clients directly with people as I learn about them. If you’re looking for your next thing, please let me know which types of roles you’re focused on, and I can stay in touch. #healthtech #climatetech #startups #consulting #investing #summer -- Hi, I’m Brittany Ryan, Founder & Principal at Sunrise Advisors. I serve as a fractional commercial executive to health tech and life sciences startups, investment firms, and venture-building teams. I'll be in Boston for most of the summer. Reach out if you'd like to meet up!

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Severe mental illness remains one of the most underserved areas in mental health, possibly because it is difficult to address with the type of virtual, easy-to-scale models that VCs love to back. We're so excited that Sonia Priscilla García and Stas Sokolin at Amae Health have been able to break the mold, bringing better in-person solutions for patients and families dealing with SMI, and attracting strong venture partners to do so cc: Lisa Jacobs Blau, Alison Ryu, Claire Akkan Quiet Capital, Healthier Capital, Jan Ellison Baszucki, Karin Kissane, Mike Volpi

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Had a blast diving into Amir Dan Rubin's extensive healthcare career on Vital Signs. Amir previously served as the CEO of One Medical and Stanford Health Care, was an EVP at United/Optum and is now the Founding Managing Partner at Healthier Capital. Our conversation spanned payer-provider integrations, lessons learned from leading One Medical, applications of generative AI, and more. Some highlights: ⚡Combining care models We talked a lot about the One Medical/Iora combination. Amir argues that just because two care delivery approaches may occupy the same physical location (e.g., a clinic), that doesn’t mean they necessarily need to conform to the same economic model. For instance, One Medical and Iora were able to combine effectively despite the former being a membership model and the latter being global capitation. Amir emphasizes that much of the overhead resources (e.g., front desk staff, phlebotomy) can be shared across models. ⚡How One Medical uses generative AI to improve efficiency One Medical allows members to message the care team, and then uses NLP to read the message, figure out its content, and triage it to the appropriate team member. Amir is excited about leveraging internal knowledge graphs to get around hallucinations. This approach can point to relevant internal data in helping compose responses, creating more trust and accuracy in the outputs. ⚡Behind the Amazon acquisition One Medical was interested in expanding its direct to consumer offering. However, they recognized that customer acquisition was costly, which is why partnering with Amazon Prime’s existing membership base made sense for them. Amir explains how at their core, both Amazon and One Medical are all about using technology and logistics to create an excellent customer experience. An awesome conversation ranging from health system innovation to startup strategy to health tech investing! Listen to our full episode below: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wrbnol Apple: https://apple.co/3XWOomb

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Some VC investors believe that brick and mortar - referring to a physical presence of some kind - should be avoided at all costs. Yet, the track record of clinic and hybrid care businesses in health care indicates otherwise. ==> One Medical (sold for $3.9 billion to Amazon), Oak Street (bought by CVS for $10.6 billion), Lifestance (IPO at $7.5 billion market cap), and PE-backed Premise Health (acquired by OMERS Private Equity for $1.1 billion) If a clinic is indicated as the optimal way to deliver care for that patient population, there are creative ways to build and operate them. Full article below with advice and strategies on how to build and operate hybrid clinics from my teammate Anarghya Vardhana from Maveron, Amir Dan Rubin from OneMedical Group, Steven Eidelman from Modern Animal and more!

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Exciting news from Monica Chopra, Jeffrey De Flavio, MD, Samantha Adelberg, and the rest of the Auxa Health team as they officially announce their $5.2M Seed round. The team's deep industry expertise and drive for change have led them to solve critical infrastructural friction to providing quality healthcare and adoption of value-based care. Auxa's AI benefit navigation platform is simplifying the complexities of healthcare by streamlining all of the fragmented and siloed data and information to make it actionable in real-time for healthcare organizations. For the 70% of Americans who aren't getting access to the health and social care benefits they deserve, Auxa's solution will be pivotal in enabling equitable care. We're thrilled to partner with co-investors Zeal Capital Partners, AlleyCorp, Laconia, and Chaac Ventures on this journey and look to share many more milestones ahead. Cc K50 Ventures, Ryan Bloomer, Daniel Vásquez, Nick Talwar, Stefanie Ng https://lnkd.in/dPDY7-Db

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Lots of people are asking me how Midi Health is using AI. Yesterday at an event at Stanford, I was introduced to Open Evidence - and told that I could save money by having our providers use it for advice. The founders say they developed OpenEvidence to cut through all the noise and misinformation that is the modern internet and build tools that are unbiased, widely accessible, international, up to date to the day, accurate, and free. I bet it often gets things right. But not always. And I am afraid it will be that way for a long time. I asked Open Evidence whether women with BRCA could use hormone replacement therapy. At Midi Health we know that estrogen is safe for women with BRCA and I was curious about the answer. We also know that If you haven't had your uterus removed, your provider will typically prescribe estrogen along with progesterone or progestin (progesterone-like medication). This is because estrogen alone, when not balanced by progesterone, can stimulate growth of the lining of the uterus, increasing the risk of endometrial cancer. Unfortunately, in this case, the feedback from Open Evidence is just completely incorrect. As far as I can tell - the advice is completely made up - a true hallucination. When we think about how to use AI in healthcare - we are using it to make our providers more efficient and take away easy tasks - but definitely do not rely on it for medical care. You should not either. Zachary Ziegler and Travis Zack, MD, PhD it would be great to get this right!

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The obesity crisis in the U.S. has become unsustainable. We are broken, and we have to change... The prevalence of obesity in adults has grown from 14.5% in 1975 to 41.9% in 2020, and childhood obesity has more than TRIPPLED since the 1970s. The total annual cost of obesity is at a staggering $1.4 trillion. Treatment options range but the emergence of GLP-1's has taken on a national debate. It is our view at 7wireVentures that the growing obesity crisis requires innovative and personalized solutions and digital health companies are rising to meet this challenge. Our team took a deep dive into the market landscape and came up with key predictions on how the market will evolve. ✨ PREDICTION 1: The emergence of high-cost anti-obesity medications and their growing consumer demand will push employers and payers to seek increasingly creative plan design structures that tackle weight management as a discrete disease category.​ 💉 PREDICTION 2: Greater emphasis will be placed on proactive identification and management of patients with an obesity diagnosis 🔬 PREDICTION 3: Key differentiators of successful solutions will include long-term engagement and the ability to address multiple chronic conditions. 🤝 Innovative companies such as 9amHealth, Parsley Health, Transcarent, Everly Health, Foodsmart, Livongo, Season Health, Iron Health, Cylinder, and more. See our full analysis and perspectives on enabling positive change in weight management. 👇 #digitalhealth #obesity #GLP1 #disease #healthcare https://lnkd.in/gUCttSZj

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If you start down the path of #enterpriseimaging – which many health systems are doing (or considering) – "there have to be some objectives and a clear understanding of what you're attempting to do," said Joseph Marion during a recent discussion with Alex Towbin and Lenny Reznik. What you don't want is to go into it with "a false expectation or limited expectation." https://lnkd.in/gg3PkCim AGFA HealthCare #itimaging #healthcareit #enterpriseimagemanagement #patientsafety #patientexperience

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I've been experimenting with modelling healthcare opportunities quarterly vs. monthly... Why? - A lot of healthcare activities come in quarterly frequencies (e.g., Rx's are often given in 90 day supply) - Healthcare moves about 3x slower than most industries - Best practice around patient engagement re: tertiary services (from diagnostics to diet) seems to be every 90 days This slightly longer-term viewpoint combined with a razor-sharp focus on weekly growth is a potentially strong recipe. 

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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Over the last few weekends, I’ve had a ton of fun building a new tool alongside some Ro’ers. The Ro GLP-1 Supply Tracker helps patients find GLP-1 supply, report shortages to the FDA, and track which drugs are currently in shortage. Here’s how it works: https://lnkd.in/eKUfQ9j9 This free tracker does four 4 things: 1) It shows which GLP-1s are in shortage by individual drug and dose. This automatically pulls from the FDA’s website, plus crowd-sourced shortage reports. 2) It makes it easy for everyone to share where and when they find GLP-1 supply (which will notify patients who need supply nearby) or share what drug and dose they are looking for (which will automatically report a shortage to the FDA). Patients can pay it forward to help other patients find the medications that they need. 3) It let’s anyone get on our ‘Supply List’ which means we’ll send them real-time, localized email alerts when GLP-1s are found in-stock near them, including the drug + dose, and pharmacy name, address, and phone number. 4) It enables patients and providers to sign up to receive automated notifications as soon as a GLP-1s status changes on the FDA’s list. This up-to-date information helps them better work together to align on the best possible care plan. The first principle at Ro is to fight for patients. Navigating the shortage is hard. But finding GLP-1s shouldn’t be. Patients deserve better. They deserve easy access to the most effective healthcare. Ro will fight for that every single day.

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