Erik Lumer

Excited to announce Frist Cressey Ventures' investment in Qualified Health and privileged to partner w/ SignalFire, Healthier Capital, Town Hall Ventures and others!   Healthcare costs are increasing at a faster rate than ever before, with the US spending nearly twice as other wealthy countries and still ranking bottom in outcomes. It's a story you've all heard - - US healthcare is known for astronomical inefficiencies, waste, workforce supply constraints, fragmented access, appalling patient experiences, and driving patients and businesses into debt.   Yes these problems present opportunities. But opportunities are limited to the system's appetite for change, desire and incentive to try something new and the innovation available. At FCV we believe we've hit the trifecta with Generative AI. Generative AI has given us truly transformational tools in the toolkit and the healthcare ecosystem is demanding to absorb its benefits. This perfect collision of supply and demand means healthcare is poised for big change.   Generative AI is everywhere, it's buzzy, it dangles hope and opportunity. But many things need to be true for the Gen AI transformation in healthcare to take hold, such as but not limited to:   💡 Patient lives and data need to remain safe: We believe in a highly regulated and human life-touching sector such as healthcare we must ensure Gen AI can drive to unrivalled savings and improvements in the quality of care WHILE not putting patient lives or data at risk.   💡 Systems need to own their utilization of Gen AI: We believe systems will use some hybrid of external partners and homegrown solutions but importantly will want full control of data provisioning and utilization as well as the ability to solve an unlimited number of nuanced issues and not cookie cutter algorithms.   💡 Costs need to be looked at on an enterprise level: We believe the speed of innovation in Gen AI means costs will continue decreasing dramatically but at an enterprise level this will still not be a small detail. Systems will want the ability to understand costs and delegate as needed for the outcomes desired at the organizational level.   Enter Qualified.   We knew when we met Justin Norden, MD, MBA, MPhil and team we were standing in front of changemakers. These individuals have lived and breathed the true application and implementation of Generative AI far before we were asking ChatGPT to write our emails. In fact, if you’ve ever driven in a Waymo you’ve benefited from past products this team has built.   Qualified Health is on a mission to enforce governance in Gen AI, allow systems to rapidly build for their needs, monitor and make decisions for all GenAI (homegrown and external) and accelerate the value the sector can glean from these new technologies.   Huge shout out to William T., Tommaso Auerbach and Jamie Kuntz for their hard work!

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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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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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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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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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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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The best way to make progress on improving outcomes for diseases like #breastcancer is to foster collaboration between different healthcare organizations - working together to share knowledge and leverage data in a privacy preserving manner. That's why this partnership between Rhino Health and International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM)'s learning collaboratives is especially exciting.

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Today, I’m incredibly proud to announce a major milestone for PayZen: we’ve just closed a $232 million Series B round in equity and debt, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). This round includes $32 million in equity and a new $200 million credit warehouse from Viola Credit and a syndicate of insurance companies. I’m thrilled to welcome Mohamad Makhzoumi, NEA’s Co-CEO, as a PayZen board member! Partnering with the right investor at each stage of our company’s growth is both an art and a science (with a bit of luck thrown in). We were fortunate to find strong alignment with the NEA team in terms of business philosophy, mission, market, and strategy. With their extensive experience and stellar track record, I look forward to collaborating with the NEA team as we guide PayZen into the future. This funding will enable us to continue leveraging our AI-powered platform to tackle healthcare affordability. Our proprietary AI/ML models and seamless EMR/EHR integration simplify patient payments for health systems while making it easier for millions of patients to access and afford the care they need. We’re committed to driving innovation in the Revenue Cycle Management market and are excited to expand our affordable, customized healthcare payment options to even more Americans. This partnership with NEA brings back memories. Twenty-five years ago, I fondly recall pitching Webex Communications to NEA alongside my then CEO and mentor, Subrah. That investment certainly worked out for everyone! Time seems to fly, but it’s comforting to know that some things remain constant. I want to thank all the investors and individuals that supported us along the way (Viola Ventures, Omry Ben David, SignalFire, Chris Scoggins, 7wireVentures, Lee Shapiro, Alyssa Jaffee, Ido Vigdor). Mostly, I want to thank my team for raising the bar every day, creating magic and making all of this possible. #healthcare, #fintech, #affordability, #RCM,

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Big Week for Our Portfolio: New Heart Failure Candidate & “Synthetic Workers” Launch I’m excited to share two key updates from our Vibe Capital Fund I portfolio, each representing major steps forward in biotech and AI-driven automation: 1. Fauna Bio: First Development Candidate for Heart Failure Big News: Fauna Bio just announced Faun1083, a potential first-in-class therapy for Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF)—a significant and often underserved area. Learn More: Press Release: https://lnkd.in/gvxhUp7W Fauna’s LinkedIn Post: https://lnkd.in/g8mEDzWa Why It Matters: HFpEF makes up roughly half of all heart failure cases, impacting millions worldwide with few effective treatments. This announcement underscores how Fauna’s unique comparative genomics approach is yielding tangible breakthroughs. 2. Mission Control AI: “Synthetic Worker” Cohort Opening What’s New: Mission Control is inviting applications for Cohort 2 of its Design Partners Program, where enterprises can explore fully autonomous AI colleagues (a.k.a. “Synthetic Workers”) over 12–15 weeks. Learn More: Ramsay Brown’s LinkedIn Post: https://lnkd.in/g6TrwF97 Whitepaper: Available at https://lnkd.in/gczus98C Why It Matters: As AI usage explodes, Mission Control is helping organizations adopt and govern autonomous workflows in a responsible, real-world way. What This Means for Us At Vibe Capital, we prioritize startups tackling pressing challenges—whether it’s novel treatments for hard-to-treat conditions or AI infrastructure that redefines how we work. These milestones exemplify that ethos and highlight the incredible teams we back. If you’re a Founder: We’re always open to connecting with bold entrepreneurs in biotech, deep tech, AI, and more. Let’s chat. If you’re an Investor/LP: We welcome discussions about how we source and support companies pushing boundaries in healthcare, automation, manufacturing, and beyond. Congrats to both Fauna Bio and Mission Control on these big steps. We're proud to be part of their journey and can’t wait to see what’s next. #VentureCapital #Biotech #AI #HealthcareInnovation #Startup #SyntheticWorkers #FutureOfWork #HFpEF #DeepTech #Innovation #vibecapital #vibecap

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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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Presenting at the Senate as part of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) "Day on the Hill" wasn't on my 2024 bingo card, but I'm feeling energized by the bipartisan discussions on healthcare AI. The numbers tell a compelling story: while nearly 2,000 healthcare AI startups have received funding over the last two decades, only 1 in 20 provider-facing companies reach late-stage maturity. Beyond natural market dynamics, two critical barriers are holding back AI's full potential in healthcare: unsustainable payment models and inadequate evaluation infrastructure – only 5% of research studies on LLMs in medicine utilize real patient care data, and studies advancing our understanding of performance beyond medical licensing exam benchmarks remain anemic at best. At CHAI, we're advocating for essential foundations: • Rigorous technical model performance evaluations • Comprehensive bias assessments across diverse patient populations • Thorough pre-deployment simulations and prospective studies • Robust ongoing local monitoring The path forward demands strong reporting infrastructure, advanced healthcare AI benchmarks, and meaningful public-private partnerships to drive real-world AI deployment in healthcare. Stay tuned for CHAI's upcoming initiatives in 2025 as we expand our engagements with the startup and investment ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/enw-GQcA

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#hiring If anyone knows an awesome engineer that would be interested in joining an emerging #AI company doing important work in #healthcare, please drop me a line! Andy AI is backed by General Catalyst, YCombinator, Greater Ventures, and others, and they’re looking to hire a full stack engineer (US based) who's excited about using AI to improve healthcare and reduce nurse burnout. Andy is AI software that automates clinical documentation for nurses who do home visits. A nurse makes an audio recording of the visit and Andy automatically generates a form that usually takes nurses 90 minutes to complete. Nurses love the product because it potentially saves them 15 hours of charting a week! The founders previously built healthcare AI at Google Health and Apple, and are now building their vision to transform home health. More about Andy AI: https://with-andy.com/ Nurses love it: https://lnkd.in/g9XqZrUq #GenAI #digitalhealth #hiring #engineers #healthtech

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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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Ro is empowering patients and providers with world class technology to achieve life-changing outcomes. https://lnkd.in/eviAMUBQ - Avg weight loss: 15.8% after 12 months on GLP-1s through Ro - 80% of patients with metabolic risks significantly improved their lab results These numbers represent lives changed: Patients are reducing their risks for chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes. They are feeling more confident. They have more energy to pursue their passions. This data shows that Ro is building the technology to deliver high-quality obesity care at scale. We’re breaking down barriers, from stigma to insurance hurdles to medication shortages, so patients can reach their goals.

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Welcome Pranav Kuber, Co-Founder & CTO at Piction Health on this episode of 🔥 The Lantern 🔥 Piction Health is a virtual dermatology practice that uses AI to help dermatologists do cases faster. 2.3B people in the world have skin issues every year and wait times can sometimes exceed 6 months. The mission of the company is to get patients expert care when they need it. 🔍 What’s going on inside Piction Health heading into 2025? 🔎 Piction Health has grown their patient base to 3000+ patients and are in-network with 9.2M lives across 5 states. They are excited to release a couple new software tools using AI to help providers treat cases faster and cut down on documentation. They’re also working on new tools for patients to provide a better experience for the care they need 🤔 What has Pranav learned from his startup career building Piction Health? 🤔 Follow your core metrics and make sure you stick to them! It is very attractive to work on complex tech problems but it should actually solve real problems you’re getting paid for. Not the other way around. Startups are very hard. Celebrate your small wins, they’re important! 🤝 How can we help? 🤝 Get your skin checked! Don’t wait! Piction Health is currently accepting more patients. Also, let’s spread awareness about the problems we face with our skin here in the U.S. The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston

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If you are in the VC space, you should know one of the early drivers of "Moneyball for VC". That's Gopinath Sundaramurthy, Ph.D Gopi partnered with the Kauffman Fellows Fund on implementing these concepts in their investment process. The results were staggering. 50% of the investments the fund made became unicorns. In Gopi's words 👇🏻 "We knew something was working, so we thought: Let's build this a little bigger." What did that look like in practice? 1️⃣ Gopi's firm uses a single ‘source of truth’ platform to centralize information, improving decision-making and consistency. 2️⃣ They maintain an even 50/50 split between data engineers and investors to ensure they leverage data to gain insights into teams, markets, and products. Want to learn more about what Gopi and the team at Ensemble VC has implemented at their firm? Check out the case study that our sponsor Harmonic published about the firm -->

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Excited for this one. Congrats to Alex Cohen and Hello Patient on their seed round announcement. Hello Patient stands to change the communication paradigm between patients and providers forever. Their generative AI call agent technology is tackling the tremendous admin burden of patient facing comms (scheduling, follow ups, referrals, prescription refills, etc). Massive opportunity and we think Alex and his team are expertly positioned to become market leaders. Max Ventures is thrilled to co-lead the seed round with 8VC and Bling Capital A great quote below from Alex highlighting the concept of "service as a software". Healthcare is a heavily service oriented industry - so the opportunity for step change is even more profound. The startup's approach is part of a paradigm shift where AI companies are offering service as software. "I'm a big believer that the right way to do this is through a managed services business. We're not building SaaS. I believe we can do this services as software where what was traditionally a services business now has software margins because I don't have to go employ a whole bunch of people to do the services under the hood," Cohen noted. https://lnkd.in/ehNN2AmW

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A little late, even though this process started in July.... Excited to share our latest investment in Heads Together Health!! We met Steve DeVrieze in October last year, and we think they are poised for impressive growth! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ecYcqqkn #earlystagestartup #earlystageinvesting #VCinvestment #ncstartups #nctechstartups

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