Cédric Kovacs-Johnson

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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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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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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There is an astounding opportunity right now for small-mid cap PE firms to buy legacy B2B services businesses. Acquihire a team of 3-10 motivated hacker-type engineers. Treat them like they’re at a startup. Give equity so they have skin in the game. Ask them to meet with your portco CEOs and figure out what’s slow/manual/expensive in the business. Then ask them to fix it. Language models just made this 100X cheaper/easier/more possible. Rinse and repeat.

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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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Another large funding round in the virtual behavioral health space. It's interesting to note Talkiatry's focus on a physician-centric care model with W-2 providers, as opposed to most of the other players who are delivering care with 1099 mid-level therapists. However, it's still not clear to me how they are measuring care quality and outcomes, which is the foundation of true value-based care.

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In this essay, we analyze this history of vSaaS exit performance to begin answering a critical question the macro numbers gloss over: using outcomes as a guidepost, what factors drive vertical startup success? As we share below, there is a strong quantitive case that the answer lies in the makeup of founding teams. At Euclid, we have found repeated success with a founder type we call the “Industry Insider.” These are domain experts with deep connectivity to their field, usually from industry roles or sector-specific experience from past startups. While many early-stage VC funds highlight the importance of founder-market fit, we saw little to no data-driven exploration of ideal founder profiles in vertical software. This led us to dive into the numbers to stress test our thesis—anecdotally informed to date—that founders with an Industry Insiders profile have a measurable advantage in achieving winning vertical software outcomes.

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When I ask founders to send their deck ahead of a call, I rarely understand what the startup does until I speak to the founders. Deck's are terrible ways to communicating what you do. I actually send prospective investors our website + the deck (as obvious as that is) as the website actually explains what we do in a clearer, shorter way because customers are clearly buying from it. I even send links to different parts of the website to explain things. We also try to do this in the deck, but the deck is so easy to click through that it defeats the purpose of even having a deck. Sometimes it's not worth sending a deck ahead of a call as it won't make sense to the investor who's reading it until they hear it directly from the founder. That's why those who use Docsend notice that investors (who are interested) spend more time on the deck after the call, than before.

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Hot off the pre-print server – an important publication authored by the Atropos Health team exploring the performance of LLMs in answering real-world clinical questions. LLMs excel at summarizing and contextualizing existing literature, but cannot generate de novo medical evidence today. The results of the study highlight performance gains attributable to injecting novel, relevant, and up-to-date medical evidence into LLM-powered clinical decision support systems. Brigham Hyde Nigam Shah Saurabh Gombar Read the study here: https://lnkd.in/ecuU25Pq

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🚀DEMO DAY is coming soon! Want to come see what our founders are working on?🎉 Cohort 10 of the What If Fellowship is coming to an end May 17th! We will be showcasing 21 #digitalhealth startups at the earliest stages during demo day! We would love for you to attend. If you'd like to receive an invite, just fill out the typeform below. Who should attend❓ 1) Investors - those looking to invest in healthcare startups 2) Strategic partners / advisors - those who want to advise, help, or partner with digital health startups Demo Day will take place on May 17th at Noon ET remotely via Zoom webinar. We have limited spots, so please sign-up soon if you want to see what our #founders have been working on for the last 2 months! Attendees will see 21 healthcare #startups pitch for 3 minutes each and answer a few investor questions live in front of our audience. This is a great chance to find investment opportunities, and learn more about what the earliest of companies in our space are working on. This is about more than money - some of our founders need advice, advisors, Board members, co-founders and more. So come look for your opportunity to get plugged into the mental health hashtag #startup ecosystem with one of these early stage companies. One thing to point out - we highly encourage investors to attend, and pursue investing directly in these companies. We will NOT stand in the way nor require anyone to invest through What If Ventures to get access to any of these companies. So, please don't feel like we're trying to recruit you to give us money! Sign-up to attend demo day: https://lnkd.in/gEFt5YrY

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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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We had an incredible time at the Northwest Pharmacy Convention 2024! Some key learnings and discussions from the conference as the MedMe Health (YC W21) team spent a few enlightening days in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho:: 🩺 Standard of Care Model for Autonomous Prescribing Jennifer Adams highlighted the continuum of pharmacist prescribing authority, from most restrictive to least restrictive across all the states, starting from: 1) Collaborative Prescribing: Patient-Specific CPAs 2) Collaborative Prescribing: Population-Specific CPAs 3) Autonomous Prescribing: Government Protocols 4) Autonomous Prescribing: Standard of Care States like Idaho on the Standard of Care model are leading the charge with the more standard and sustainable way for pharmacists to prescribe, rather than more restrictive and highly-specific models that make it difficult for even patients to know what pharmacists can and cannot do. 🌐 Diverse Approaches to Clinical Services We observed a wide range of progress among pharmacies in their clinical services journey - from those just beginning to implement clinical services to those with fully established systems, multiple consultation rooms, and dedicated clinical staff such as Alexandra (Sasha) Heyneman, PharmD, MS, ANP and Scott Herzog doing services like compounding, prescribing, PrEP, Travel, Hormone Therapy, etc. 💊 Emergence of Cash Pay Pharmacies Innovative models like cash pay pharmacies, where patients pay a fixed monthly fee for unlimited healthcare access, are gaining traction. There was an interesting case we heard where a pharmacy was able to retain 50% of their patients after transitioning Caremark patients to this model. This approach is particularly valuable for patients caught between Medicare and Medicaid or those with high deductibles and copays, making out-of-pocket payments more affordable. Extremely grateful for all the insights from other leaders as well including Alex Barker, PharmD, Chris Schaffner, Pharm.D., Mylinh Nguyen, Pam Eaton, and many more! #pharmacy #healthtech #NWPharmacistConference2024 #digitalhealth

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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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Is that really a death sentence for smaller startups? I don't think so. Alright, let's take a step back and look at this DTC healthcare situation from a different angle… Sure, the market is tough right now, and big players like Hims are trading at lower multiples than we'd like. But here's the thing: tough times are GOOD. Tough times are when the real innovation happens. It sucks in the moment, but it forces you to get creative and build something sustainable. The same goes for DTC healthcare startups. Instead of relying on endless rounds of VC funding to fuel growth at any cost, these companies now have to focus on the fundamentals — just like every other medical practice and healthcare system out there. All things must eventually survive without huge churn. They have to figure out how to; acquire new customers efficiently, retain them for the long haul, and actually turn a profit. 👆 Crazy concept, right? Some startups might not make it through this rough patch. I’m not one to sugarcoat that. But the ones that do will come out stronger and better equipped to tackle the real challenges in healthcare. With proven business models, loyal customers, and the grit to keep pushing forward even when the going gets tough. Before Side Health I was aggregating, building, and running ENT practices. There was no VC money coming to save the day. Build a proper business plan or die. The same principles apply to DTC health tech. If the current market conditions lead to more startups actually delivering on the promise to make healthcare better for patients while reducing costs, that’s fantastic. So to all my friends out there grinding away at DTC healthcare startups, don't lose hope. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep listening to your customers, and keep believing in the power of innovation. The world needs what you're building, even if the valuations don't always reflect it. And to the VCs who are suddenly getting cold feet about DTC healthcare, I have just one thing to say: you're missing out. The startups that emerge from this crucible will be the ones that reshape the industry and deliver outsized returns.

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This week Mikal Ventures brings you a 4-week breakdown of the US capital market with an emphasis on the Mikal verticals. Over the 4-week period ending July 8, 728 new companies were added, resulting in just under 96,400 companies included in the US Health Tech, Med Tech, Fin Tech, AI Tech, and Ed Tech verticals. AI Tech maintained its most active status, seeing the greatest percentage of growth in new companies, transactions and news articles. The US Fin Tech vertical led the way in SEC Filings. Mikal Ventures publishes these stats to provide a perspective on how the verticals and new startups move through time. We hope you find them informative and thought-provoking. VC Investors are always adjusting their "Play Book" with a variety of options for investing. Mikal Ventures is one of those alternatives, offering curated solutions to real world problems. Reach out if you have questions on how we can be of assistance and bookmark https://mikalventures.com/ for additional insights and information.

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What an amazing discussion! From regulations and implementation to finding news ways to utilize AI to save money, hyper scale your business and dominate your market, AI has tremendous potential if used judiciously. Gentreo @Alineaventures AuditMate

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The opioid crisis was a sad hallmark of my years working for the Baker Administration. In a time of extreme partisanship at the federal level, this was one area where public policy, civil discourse, and private enterprise seemed aligned and sufficiently motivated to find a solution. What we learned, however, is that dollars and access only go so far in combatting a disease that knows no so specific demographic. Instead, it's apparent that a battery of tools is needed to combat and prevent addiction--ranging from strong safety nets, to novel non-addictive pain therapies, and better technology. Introducing Marigold Health. Shrenik Jain, Ravi Shah, Tracey Cohen, MD, FASAM and team have built a proprietary NLP-based platform that--most significantly--improves the lives of those suffering from SUD/SMI. One customer we spoke with noted, "We needed a unique treatment intervention that had supportive research, fit into a CMS established model with a recognized service code, and that would provide positive clinical outcomes in an efficacious and fiscally responsible manner”. Another plainly said: "Marigold is our best hope to reach into the lives and help those who many have already given up on." Honored to join Bill Evans, Sean Day, and the entire syndicate in doing our part to scale a tool we believe will become essential in the fight against addiction. Marigold Health Innospark Ventures Rock Health KdT Ventures Matt Fates Lily Zarrella Venkat Srinivasan

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Last week, I sat down with Vator to discuss AI applications in the workforce, and how founders in key industries like Healthtech, Fintech, and supply chain can apply AI in meaningful ways to reduce friction in day-to-day life. We have literally seen a usable, value-generating case of artificial intelligence inside pretty much every major vertical that exists in the last year or so, but many people are still not using AI to its full advantage. At Forum Ventures, we see thousands of B2B AI companies a quarter, and we are increasingly bullish on AI-powered verticalization. Read on to learn more about some of the exciting AI applications we see founders utilizing, the nuances we consider when finding great founders across diverse industries, and the importance of founder-market fit. https://lnkd.in/gh-hDSSG

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