Julia Hu

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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The (Healthcare) Ground Beneath Our Feet… This year it is likely that over $10 billion will be invested in the digital health sector – a robust amount, no doubt, but inconsequential when compared to the amount of capital tied up in healthcare real estate assets, which is estimated to be $1.2 trillion by Jones Lang Lasalle. Of that amount, approximately $790 billion is in the hospital sector while the remaining $490 billion is in medical office assets. It is estimated that there are 48.6k facilities with 3.4 billion square feet of healthcare real estate, 42% of which are owned by REITs and another 33% held by other private investment vehicles. Much of the digital health investment is meant to make the physical healthcare infrastructure more productive: greater operating efficiencies, greater patient throughput, more relevant personalized care models with better outcomes. As the healthcare system is being pushed to be more distributed to lower cost sites of care, accelerated now by the rapid proliferation of automation and AI capabilities, the potential impact on healthcare infrastructure assets will be profound. Thoughts on what that might look like... https://lnkd.in/eTfAdUbS #digitalhealth Flare Capital Partners

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Today’s healthcare policymakers are focused on their favorite boogeymen: physician compensation, biopharma, and new medical technologies. The real villains are ‘benefit managers’ and administrators’ who lurk in the shadows extracting 25 cents of every healthcare dollar. The reality is, in fact, in plain view if you look: administrators have grown 3200% while physicians have grown 200% over the last two decades; physician compensation is down, net of inflation. Admin comp is up, way up. PBM (pharmacy ‘benefit’ ‘management’) revenue has outstripped Pharma revenue growth in the last 20 years. Pharma extends life and improves quality of life, and extends working lives of taxpayers. PBMs - who knows… People grasp onto things they understand like doctors and drug companies. ‘Administrators’, ACOs, VBC, VBC, PBMs, spread pricing are more challenging to grasp and are allowed to obsfucate people about what they do from the shadows. America’s healthcare landscape is burdened by ‘administrators’ and ‘managers’ who extract rents from an otherwise highly innovative system. https://lnkd.in/gK3mCme4 https://lnkd.in/gPC9vKB9 DocVader puts it aptly: ‘thoughts and prayers’ https://lnkd.in/gUfnSXGV Technology is one answer. Physician and nurse leaders are another. If your company is about literally decimating administrative costs in the back office or front office of healthcare, I applaud you. As Americans we need this. Return care to the people and shrink administration and management bloat across the system. Medicare deserves this and so do the commercially ‘insured’.

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M13 is thrilled to lead the Series A in RadiantGraph which is focused on personalization in healthcare. As we continue to invest in early stage companies it is abundantly clear that the biggest indicator of success is the founder and his or her ability to execute on their vision of the future. In this case, I don't think I have seen much better founder-market fit than we have with founder and CEO Anmol Madan. We believe in his vision: in order to have the best patient outcomes in healthcare we need increased personalization and AI is the breakthrough to get us there. Anmol started one of the pioneering digital health companies Ginger and then was Chief Data Scientist at Livongo and Teledoc. He has done it all: early stage, late stage, public company. And he deeply understands the nuances of the healthcare market from all angles which is critical for success. While there are many players building healthcare-specific AI capabilities, RadiantGraph is focused on outcomes: The platform is already processing personalization models for more than 3.5 million people, despite launching just last year. Excited to partner with my friend Adam D'Augelli and the great True Ventures again and Morgan Blumberg who has been deep in the healthcare market with me for many years. More on our thesis in the blog below. https://lnkd.in/evDDmC3W

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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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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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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, 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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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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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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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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After 2.5 years we are excited to finally talk about Seen Health! One of Virtue 's earliest investments. Seen Health is building a tech-enabled, culturally-focused PACE program to serve high-needs seniors in Asian communities who have historically been underserved due to language and cultural barriers as well as a lack of geographic coverage. A few reasons why we are excited for Seen and the PACE opportunity: 1. Seen Co-founders Xing & Yang Su. Brothers Xing S. and Yang Su are hands down one of the most impressive teams I’ve ever had the privilege of working for. While both are impressive - insanely sharp and are incredibly fast learners (says a lot for PACE) they blend their commercial savvy and technical pedigree with a deep empathy for the seniors and communities they serve. Few teams have put in the hours that these two do — they simply do not stop! 2. The PACE Market Opportunity. PACE represents a unique global capitation model designed to serve older, sicker individuals (think low income Medicare poly-chronics) however for a variety of reasons PACE is a largely untapped care model. For instance, when we originally invested in ’22 we saw that the existing PACE market only served ~64K active members (~$4B market size) vs an addressable market of ~2.3M potential members (~$150B market size). PACE also does not represent a ‘winner take all’ market — we expect new entrants in the coming years though admittedly expect Seen to be the leader. 3. PACE — The Ultimate VBC Test Bed. The nature of global capitation means that Seen can run a true ‘test bed’ whereby they have totally reimagined the PACE experience, both for its patients and care team members. Seen has developed its own extensible PACE specific EHR as well as CareOps platform to streamline workflows and data exchange for relevant IDT team members (think IDT assessments, care plans, regular and unique service requests). By incorporating relevant real-time data, automation and intelligence into its clinical model Seen is able to prioritize actionable care by frequency and impact in order to augment clinical team member output, improve patient outcomes and enhance care margins. And, just wait until you see their initial Los Angeles clinic — the attention to detail is unrivaled — this place will win awards for its beautiful aesthetic! Read more on Seen in today’s Axios exclusive: https://lnkd.in/gHEUx9G3 

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What I learned this week…. As the economy works to eliminate the healthcare cost of poor nutrition, there is no simple set of instructions to follow. There is an abundance of AgTech, FoodTech and HealthTech innovations touching a piece of the bigger equation. But each is driven by divergent signals (GLP-1 vs. sustainable fuels). If this were a large corporation, its R&D group would coordinate the various parts to fit a broader objective. But there is no Bell Labs of longevity or nutrition. The master architect is 350k years of human evolution encrypted in our DNA. Without a large R&D lab or a master plan, it comes down to early adopter customers as our guide. And up to capital providers to see the knowledge arbitrage and invest. We are assembling Food is Health from a pile of Lego blocks. 1) The most legitimate startup investor is a customer. Why don’t we have a tool like PitchBook to find early adopter customers? 2) Nutrient test assays, and many assays, measure a proxy attribute to estimate the target nutrient (i.e. protein). NIR and other spectroscopy are non-destruction and measure a wider array of orthogonal attributes. With the addition of AI, increasing correlations expect an acceleration of valuable insights linking soil, crop genetics, bioavailability, nutrients, health, and longevity. And ultimately, affordable nutrition. 3) Intermittent fasting plus protein pacing (consuming protein at consistent intervals), may boost weight loss and gut health. Perhaps important to GLP-1 treatment and boost to Fairlife Core Power Elite. 4) If we can monitor crops for expression of nutritional qualities (Macro and Micro) during the growing season, we could dynamically modify inputs to modulate nutritional density in season or as a training set for the next season. (John Kempf) 5) Architectural Innovation: Vogue wasn’t replaced by a fashion media company, it was replaced by 10,000 influencers. Salesforce will not be replaced by another CRM. Clayton Christensen and Rebecca Henderson are both right. 6) Taylor Swift’s tour in the US generated $5 billion in consumer spending over 6 months. Who is the Taylor Swift of nutrition? 7) The net demand from the addition of New York to California’s Renewable Diesel standards, by some estimates, would consume the entire US production of soybeans. 8) United Airlines is using the 100k seat back video screens to micro-target consumers with advertising. 9) A plane uses 15%-20% of its fuel during takeoff 10) People who majored in Journalism in the 90’s have seen social media decimate their industry. What college majors will disappear with the Creative Destruction of AI? 11) When playing with Legos, some people follow the instructions precisely, and some do not. I never did. H/T: Erin Martin Ellen Brown Brad Fruth Katie Stebbins More commentary on Creative Destruction: https://lnkd.in/g-vQpF9d

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Still feeling energized from last week's roundtable on building successful relationships with hospitals. We invited 7 portfolio companies and health system leaders from Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai and UCLA Health. The founders shared their questions ranging from the strategic to the nuts and bolts of closing partnerships. For example, how do you determine what measures of effectiveness help drive alignment? And how do you get all the stakeholders together to actually drive a decision. Answer: put them all in a room for half a day! “I think we're in a pivotal moment regarding how we assess AI. There are numerous risks currently dominating AI discussions, particularly those concerning bias and other associated risks. However, there's a notable absence of focus on evaluating the proactive value of AI. We need to consider what AI actually offers and what we want it to offer. It's not solely about determining whether it will cause harm; people are apprehensive about how this technology will be implemented. One perspective gaining traction involves ensuring the product's validation process is robust enough to prevent risks to various populations.” -Vladimir Manuel, Medical Director at UCLA Health From Vlad's comments above to perspectives others shared, we heard a sense of excitement for the promise of #AI and other new technologies. But we're also in a unique moment where the risks are not well understood. Still much to do here.

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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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Thanks Girls Into VC for inviting me to be your 1st #startupfounder guest on your podcast 💓 I chatted about some of the following topics: 1️⃣ Founders should get really good at prioritizing rather than chasing “shiny things” that may not be as productive at the current stage of your startup.   2️⃣ Travel and consumer spending is picking up and surpassing pre-COVID levels, and Wander Health is innovating right in the middle of it. 3️⃣ Time is currency and how you spend it matters more than you think. Listen below 👇 #startupjourney #travelhealth #womenfounders #globalhealth

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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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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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