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Looking forward to discussing how changing demographics and culture norms are affecting investment opportunities in longevity, health and well-being at The Care Summit today Alongside Cake Ventures' Monique Woodard, Ziegler's Dan Hermann, Oak HC/FT's Billy Deitch and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jennifer Edwards, we’ll dive into the trends shaping how we are investing in the space: - Last year marked one of the most significant social and economic moments in modern times: The number of older adults—those aged 50 and over- surpassed the number of children under the age of 15 for the first time. - In 2020 the 50 plus population contributed $45 trillion to global GDP, or 34% of the total. That equates to about 3x the revenue of the world’s 100 highest- earning companies in 2020. - The U.S. population grew by 24.5 million from 2010 to 2022, and Hispanics accounted for 53% of this increase – a greater share than any other racial or ethnic group. - Women around the world and across all ages drive 64% of consumer spending

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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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Today marks a groundbreaking moment for BLCK VC and our fellow collaborators—Diversity VC, All Raise, 2Gether-International, SomosVC, StartOut, and VetsinTech—as we proudly announce the launch of the Diversity Data Alliance. This important alliance underscores our unwavering commitment to nurturing a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem abundant in equity and inclusiveness. By standardizing and linking our data, we empower ourselves with the essential tools to track deeper trends that have, until now, eluded us to identify and fill funding gaps for historically excluded investors, founders, and operators. We can’t change what we do not measure, and now with the Diversity Data Alliance, we're now equipped to do both. Join us in this mission. Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/eEZKdrac #DiversityDataAlliance #BLCKVC #VentureCapital #MeasureToChange

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Today, Two Chairs announces $72M of new funding to continue building a world where everyone has access to exceptional mental health care. Since late 2017, when Maveron led the Two Chairs Series A, the need for mental health services has grown considerably as our society has become lonelier and more isolated than ever. At the same time, our culture’s willingness to openly acknowledge these challenges is greater than ever. Sadly, the rapid growth of Two Chairs affirms the fact that our society is in desperate need of better mental health support. Two Chairs has built a business that believes clinical quality is the defining characteristic of success. Alex Katz has always emphasized the paramountcy of measurement-based clinical outcomes, which the team works tirelessly to achieve. In the process, Two Chairs has illustrated that embracing the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality doesn’t always work. Instead, Two Chairs opted for a different approach: they went slow to go fast. They built a proprietary algorithm that matches patients with the perfect therapist at the onset and hired a team of W2 clinicians oriented toward providing the highest quality care available. Even as the Two Chairs team has grown, their culture has remained small. This has enabled more intimate relationships within the team and between clients and clinicians. Reflecting on this milestone brings me back to the founding of Maveron and the values we hold dear. In 1998, my friend Howard Schultz and I founded Maveron to help entrepreneurs build companies that improve the lives of everyday people—their employees and their customers. There is perhaps no better example of this than Two Chairs. *** Thank you to TechCrunch's Marina Temkin, CFA for the great write-up. https://tcrn.ch/4aMt7yG

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An interesting article below, that demonstrates out how San Diego is punching above its weight.  And how Connect's strategy and execution over time, contintues to be central to that success. The article describes the current state of the market in Seattle.  (And i love Seattle.) It's a market that we tend to track with relative to venture fundings.  They used to kick our butts, we outraised them each of the last three years.  This despite the fact they have 3x as many funds there, and 9x the amount of resident capital there. (per pitchbook) Some key takeaways:  * They continue to compare themselves to SIlicon Valley. Instead, we leverage our proximity. *They whine there's not enough local investors (see note above - they have more than us). We bring over 200 VCs to SD annually! * They say founders are not connected with one another. We bring CEOs together regularly, in a variety of ways - private dinners and through our Springboard program. * They say they need to elevate their image on a national & international stage. Why we created and continue to build Five.Ten.Thirty (aka Inno Day).  * And the last paragraph - they need to concentrate on making their region a great place to live. Our mantra: "It's about Better, not Bigger." (See XEO, TL Fund). THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. WE ARE ON A MISSION TOGETHER!!!  (Comments, whining, suggestions on SD always welcome.) https://lnkd.in/g6Rq_f2Y

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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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Over the years, we at GFR Fund have solidified our investment thesis, which is that we invest in "emerging digitally native communities." These communities can be built around games, social media, and any consumer applications. Now, founders have many easy-to-use tools to build user communities, such as Discord, X/twitter, Instagram, etc, and we believe the founders should start building communities even before they launch a product. The communities can help founders: - reach PMF faster - acquire users cheaper - retain and engage users longer - build better UX/UI, and - hire early employees Below, you can see how RTFKT and Omeda Studios built the community and then worked with them to create a product the users really wanted. We would love to talk to the founders who think the community is essential in building a product!

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I am joining dynamic Victoria Yampolsky to talk about "Where's the Money for Women" funding their businesses. Join me today at noon EDT - registration below. 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐢𝐚𝐬 🚀The current fundraising landscape is less favorable for female founders, but it doesn’t have to be this way. 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬: ➤ 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬: Female founders often spend 65-75% longer fundraising compared to male founders. ➤ 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝: Women-led startups typically secure less funding, limiting their growth potential. In 2023, women founders were the only group who raised less than $500K on average, according to the DocSend Report. ➤ 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐢𝐠: Female founders often set less ambitious goals, making their ventures less attractive to investors. When evaluating teams, VCs often make decisions based on intuition and subconscious biases rather than rationale. These obstacles can be disheartening, but many female founders succeed, and you can join their ranks by being prepared. 𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐞, 𝐚 𝐯𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐮𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐆𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮: “𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐃𝐨 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐄𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬?” 📅 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐃𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬: 🗓️ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞:June 27th 🕛 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞: 12 PM EST 📍 𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Zoom (Link to be provided upon registration) 💡 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝? ➤ 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐮𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: Learn which questions investors ask to evaluate teams and what they are looking for, and leverage that knowledge to better navigate and counteract the subconscious biases. ➤ 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧:Discover what you can do NOW to improve your chances of successful fundraising and building a great company. 🔥 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐨𝐰 - 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐲 3 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭!🔥 Don’t let these barriers hold you back. Secure your spot today and take control of your fundraising journey and the success of your venture. 🔗 𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 https://lu.ma/lse01zqw Let’s turn your vision into reality! 🌟

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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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Topics: Growing investments in impact, growing the number of #femalefounders and #femaleinvestors in #impact and #deeptech. Critical in light of the disparity between rich and poor and government and the people's interests. Grateful to RevHubOC - The Orange County Center for Innovation & Social Enterprise and Julie Cranston for the opportunity to address women and men #impactfounders and speaking alongside rockstar #womeninvestors @shannoneusey @katelafleur @katiengyenkalvoda @laurengrattan.

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How does the American Cancer Society innovate & scale the mission, by launching its own VC fund & accelerator. Tomorrow on #AustinNext, I chat with Alice Lin Pomponio, who is leading these efforts. Venture & a non-profit are an unconventional combo, but could lead to fascinating results. #VentureCapital #Cancer #Innovation #AmericanCancerSociety #AustinNext

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👀 Great read by The Mandarin journalist Julian Bajkowski about the Productivity Commission’s new research findings that $5B+ a year could be saved by better integrating digital technology into everyday practice, not to mention easing pressures on our heaving healthcare system. Bajkowski touches on the “adroit” defence of data silos by the medical profession. It is true that software vendors (primary and hospital focussed) all have their own way of doing things which frustrates the health information exchange and #interoperability. We've had first hand experience of this, having worked with pretty much every healthcare application available in Australia and New Zealand over the last decade - our Mantel Group health technologists have seen it all, the good, bad, and ugly. Alleviating this “clunky interoperability” as the Financial Review’s government editor Tom Burton calls it, doesn’t need to turn into a turf war, or dissolve into a case of picking winners. You don't want to back one horse in the acceleration of digital health. What you want is common standards. That’s what enables health information exchange. It also allows #innovation and #interoperability, both of which are vital to the sector’s sustainability. The Productivity Commission report refers to “sharpening incentives for software providers to make [health information exchange] more seamless” to encourage #interoperability. Countries like Singapore and the United States are well on the path to doing this effectively - some approaches use a regulatory stick, others are private enterprise lead. Both head in the same direction - a direction Australia will have to follow to transition to value-based models being adopted abroad, which reimburse providers for quality interventions as opposed to activity-based measures. An important consideration for the NSW Government's Special Commission of Inquiry into Healthcare Funding led by Richard Beasley SC for its work is to have longevity. 👉 Read Mantel Group’s submission on #interoperability in healthcare here: https://lnkd.in/g5zhMUnr 👉Read the Productivity Commission’s Leveraging digital technology in healthcare research report here: https://lnkd.in/gsjHgQHQ 👉Read Tom Burton's AFR story here (behind paywall): https://lnkd.in/g3-99xHj Paul Caon Mark Gillard Andrew Wayland Linda Connolly Samantha Scott

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I echo and a firm believer of Laurel Mintz take on Diversity - "Diversity in thought, diversity in boards, diversity in public companies, diversity in all of this is what creates a better culture. It's what creates better outcomes, both financially and emotionally. Ultimately, it's just a better approach to creating a more well-rounded society.” #ImpactInvesting #VentureCapital #PurposeDrivenInvestors

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We at Female Founders Fund started investing in #womenshealth 10 years ago and continue to believe that there is a huge opportunity through digital innovation to improve care by building targeted solutions for all women.  Over the past few months, it has been promising to see government funding being directed for the first time towards clinical research focused on understanding the critical life stages of a woman's reproductive journey and creating better solutions for the female patient. In honor of #Women’sHealthMonth and to shine a spotlight on the investment opportunity that exists in #menopause, I’m sharing key takeaways from a 2020 study we published with Fortune below:  💰 With 100% of women as the target market, menopause to be a $600B market opportunity, with a need for better products and solutions catering to this life stage.  📈 On average, women spend $2k per year on menopause treatments, doctor visits, devices and products, and 1 billion women are expected to be in menopause worldwide by 2025  👩‍⚕️ 80% of OBGYNs are not trained in menopause as part of their medical training 👯‍♀️ 75% of women in menopause get their information from their friends / community 💗 The biggest opportunities for innovation exist across products such as supplements and hormone creams targeting specific pain points & hormonal shifts, telemedicine, and digital communities for women. It is exciting to see start-ups and government funding paving the way for promising solutions in women’s health. We’re proud to be early investors in companies like Maven Clinic and Kindra that have been at the forefront of providing menopause care. Still, we recognize that there is room for more development, funding, and attention to be brought to this space. With advancements in testing and medicine underway, we believe there is opportunity for more preventative solutions that are increasingly personalized and targeted to address the unique needs of each woman. Full study: https://lnkd.in/ecBaQzC

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We must learn from past crises. These insights from the President of the National Academy of Medicine, Prof. Victor Dzau are fundamental. We are in an era when extreme events are becoming more frequent and more intense. It is essential to build #resiliency and to distill lessons from past crises that can be applied to face #future shocks but also advance #innovation outside periods of crisis. This post results from a joint initiative between GFCC | The Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils and Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Thanks for the partnership Kazuyoshi Shimada & Osamu Kobayashi, and the work in this piece Elaine Rodriguez, Sc.D..

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On the latest Vital Signs, Nikhil Krishnan and I had a ton of fun chatting with Dr. Atul Butte. Dr. Butte is a professor at UCSF, Chief Data Scientist of the UC Health System, and a co-founder of numerous healthcare startups. In our conversation, Dr. Butte shared his takes on healthcare AI opportunities, challenges, hype, and more. A few highlights: ⚡LLM use cases, data, and growth LLMs are already helping to solve the “drudgery” aspects of medicine, such as automatically drafting SOAP notes and patient messages. Dr. Butte is excited about future applications of LLMs that can help with the “cognitive” aspects: with difficult medical problems an LLM might be able to stitch together disparate pieces of information to generate a potentially novel solution. He also highlights that prompt engineering will become the next “coding language” as so much of leveraging LLMs is knowing how to ask them the right questions. Additionally, Dr. Butte discusses how since 2016, UCSF has been working to deidentify its patient notes so that it can query them to answer clinical questions and ultimately enhance patient care. ⚡The need for patient-facing AI As patients are increasingly able to access their own personal health data in nicely structured formats (e.g., EHRs, wearables), they desperately need more tools to help them interpret and make decisions using that data. Dr. Butte understands that these patient-facing solutions are challenging to get funded but he emphasizes that patients need to receive the benefits of AI sooner. ⚡Evaluating healthcare AI solutions In order to evaluate AI solutions, we often put human specialists – such as medical professionals – on the same tasks. Understanding that specialists often disagree with each other, a significant challenge arises in figuring out how we can evaluate AI considering we can’t just “average” all the specialist opinions. Dr. Butte points out that there still remains a massive gap in AI evaluation tools. Additionally, there are so many organizations that want to have a say in how healthcare AI is regulated that the landscape is uncertain. An awesome conversation with an expert on all things AI meets healthcare. Listen to the full episode below: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Wr3643 Apple: https://apple.co/4acwgan

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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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Join me Thursday, May 9 at 9amET, and Microsoft for Startups company founders, Stead Burwell, Lana Feng, Ph.D. Andrew Gostine, MD, MBA and Ankur Teredesai for a lively, *real-world* conversation about applying #AI to improve #healthcare. In addition to hearing these leading #innovators discuss the challenges, value, and future of AI, you'll learn how: 💲 Outbound AI uses AI to improve #RevenueCycleManagement 💊 Huma.AI uses #GenAI to provide meaningful and actionable #insights for #lifesciences companies 🛌Artisight uses #AI and #cognitiveservices to streamline #patientcare and #safety 😷 CueZen uses #AI and #GenAI for hyper-personalized management of #chronicconditions 👉 Registration is below. Stelios Hatzakis Tony Kountz Derek Haynes Bethany Cordes Tom Davis Ted Roduner Microsoft for Healthcare

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