Daisy Wolf’s Post

I had a great time discussing the future of healthcare with Mark Hyman, MD and Vijay Pande, PhD on The Doctor's Farmacy. Check it out ⤵ https://lnkd.in/epGFGQ8z

A few years ago, we at Andreessen Horowitz wrote an article predicting that a consumer health company could become the biggest company in the world. More recently, we’ve argued that building new companies with magical consumer experiences that inspire behavior change is the most powerful way to extend our lifespans. Today, we're thrilled to announce that we’ve led a $53M Series A in Function Health, a company that embodies the vision and excitement we had when writing those theses. The one piece we underestimated is the current state of latent demand among consumers for a new approach to healthcare and longevity. Since launching a beta in 2023, Function has amassed nearly 50k paying members with little marketing. Function aims to integrate all of your health data with all of the world’s health knowledge to best inform what actions you can take to live 100 healthy years. Function helps you fully understand what’s happening in your body, initially through the most powerful data source in healthcare: blood. We couldn’t be more excited to back Mark Hyman, MD, Jonathan Swerdlin, Pranitha Patil, Seth Weisfeld, and Mike Nemke, and to invest alongside Ari Emanuel, Blake Griffin, Jay Shetty, Joel Embiid, Jeff Dean, Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Zac Efron, Kevin Hart, Colin Kapernick, Casey Means, MD, Julie Klapstein, Zack Werner, Draft Ventures, G9 Ventures, K5 Ventures, Wisdom VC, 53 Stations, Able Partners, Cade Ventures, Continuum Health Ventures, Fearless Ventures, Pari Passu Venture Partners, Spacecadet, Wisdom Ventures, and so many more. Vijay Pande, PhD, Zach Cohen, Annie Collins, Bryan Kim

In the U.S., 1 in 10 babies start their life in the NICU. A woman today is more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than her mother was. Pomelo Care is working to change this. Today, Pomelo announces $46M in Series B funding, 3 million lives covered, and published data proving the model is working. We couldn't be more proud to double down on our investment in Marta Bralic Kerns, who is a true force of nature, and the incredible Pomelo team: Sarah Kramarz, Shyamali Choudhury, Isabelle Von Kohorn MD PhD, Charissa Qian, Ian Hooley, Kevin Hobson, Tommy Romano, Rob Martorano, Annalisa Jenner Snider, Sarah (Polio) Maroun and so many more. a16z Bio + Health First Round Capital Stripes Vineeta Agarwala, MD PhD Josh Kopelman Ron Shah Aliza Reisner

Exciting news from knownwell today!

When we think about improving our health, we often focus on moonshot ideas like curing cancer. But – as vitally important as that is – curing all cancer would increase Americans’ lifespan by just three years, still leaving us lagging behind other developed nations. Most poor health outcomes are from diseases we already know how to prevent or cure. 80% of human deaths are caused by preventable lifestyle conditions. Behavior change might sound like a cultural issue, but the best companies change the behavior of millions, if not billions, of people. The most impactful way to improve our health is through building new companies with magical consumer experiences that can inspire behavior change. History teaches us that major step changes in consumer experiences – across industries – are generally driven by outsiders who fundamentally reimagine how things could work. It’s time this happens in healthcare. Read more from Vijay Pande, PhD and me in our latest Andreessen Horowitz piece: https://lnkd.in/eVuQU6qh

In the final (and wonkiest) episode of our Andreessen Horowitz series on GLP-1s, William Shrank, Julie Yoo, and I nerd out with Chronis Manolis, SVP of Pharmacy at UPMC Health Plan. We cover: 💉 How social media has driven the rise of this drug class 💉 Whether insurance companies see ROI on GLP-1s for weight loss at current prices 💉 How we’re currently in a “Wild West, 'explosionary' time" for GLP-1s Check it out: https://lnkd.in/ehu7XPqf