Define Ventures

Health tech has always been an industry filled with potential, but in the last five years, it has truly proven itself. In 2020, health tech reached 10% of all venture investment for the first time, marking its distinction as an emerging sector. Since then, it has maintained that momentum — securing billion-dollar exits, delivering strong returns to investors, and performing at similar trajectories as more established sectors like fintech and consumer. Our latest report, Health Tech’s Defining Decade, outlines how the industry has evolved and where it’s headed next. Some of the key insights include:  ✔️ How health tech grew into a dominant venture category ✔ The trends that are shaping the next phase of investment and innovation ✔ Why companies in this next wave are scaling faster and reaching exits more efficiently If the last five years was about proving health tech’s potential, the next five years is about realizing it. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/g72dvBu3

What will our healthcare system look like in ten years, thanks to AI? Our founder & managing partner Lynne Chou O'Keefe will be breaking down this topic and more at ViVE next week, sharing the stage with Ankit Jain, Brigham Hyde, Christine Tsien Silvers, MD, PhD, and Kit Yee Au-Yeung. Monday, 2/17 at 2:25 pm on the Jazz stage - we'll see you there!

AI is transforming healthcare, but founders still face tough hurdles, including securing early customers. That’s why we launched the Define Ventures AI Fellows Program—a five-week, high-impact experience for health tech AI founders, designed to provide them with unfair advantages to build the future of healthcare. Last week, we brought together our first cohort for a kickoff event to connect with each other and hear from Define Principal Hong Truong and Define AI Advisor Jia Li, who shared key insights on where AI in healthcare is heading. Over the next five weeks, our AI fellows will take part in: ✔️ Direct mentorship from top healthcare CEOs ✔️ Investor office hours for fundraising strategies ✔️ Access to C-suite leaders from payers, providers, and pharma ✔️ In-person networking with AI peers & industry experts This is the kind of community that helps turn bold ideas into real impact. We're looking forward to the journey ahead!

💡 Capital Efficiency in Health Tech: A Critical Metric for Sustainable Growth 💡 One of the most telling indicators of a sector’s ability to scale sustainably is capital efficiency—how effectively companies turn investment into meaningful exits. In our latest report, we evaluated health tech's $1B+ exits from 2020 onward (the first time health tech surpassed 10% of all venture funding). We found that these companies exited at 9.4x to 11.2x the amount of total capital raised, a very strong multiple. This is a critical metric for assessing the ability to grow sustainably, manage resources wisely, and deliver value to investors. Interestingly, health tech’s capital efficiency at scale mirrors what we saw in consumer (2011) and fintech (2016) when those sectors reached the same key inflection points as health tech, when those sectors reached their 10% venture funding milestones. https://lnkd.in/g72dvBu3

Like so many health systems, El Camino Health experienced the dual problems of having elevated employee retention challenges and overburdened nurse managers. After partnering with Laudio, El Camino was able to offer their nurse managers a novel centralized workflow hub, designed specifically to streamline, automate and help prioritize their work. Ultimately this helped the health system decrease RN turnover by seven percentage points while increase employee engagement indicator scores. https://lnkd.in/evigmwXH

Define Principal Chuka Esiobu recently joined the Real-World Wednesdays podcast to share key considerations for those investing and raising capital in the RWD/RWE sectors.

If you're looking for a wide-ranging discussion on the rapid evolution of the supplemental-benefits market, tee this up for your next podcast episode. Robby Knight, CEO & co-founder of our partner company Soda Health sat down with Bloomberg Vanguard to unpack how he went from social worker to building an all-in-one platform to design, launch and scale benefits programs — creating incentives for members, retail partners, and health plans.

Big product news from our partner company Cohere Health, addressing the unique complexities of prior authorization. For example, enabling providers to initiate the prior authorization process right from their EMR.

Three things to know about our partner company Tia's big plans for 2025: *Tia, which now serves 40,000 members, is looking to expand its footprint to Chicago, Boston and Atlanta. *Tia now has the "blueprint" for working with health systems to expand access to primary care and women's health services thanks to its partnerships with Cedars-Sinai, UCSF Health, and CommonSpirit Health * Tia's model helps to fill critical preventive care gaps with higher rates for cancer and mental health screenings among its patient populations and better chronic disease management https://lnkd.in/gFJEzrmf

Last week at #JPM2025 we hosted an exclusive and intimate fireside chat with Anthropic's co-founder and president Daniela Amodei. Her take on AI's opportunity to transform healthcare? The technology is there, but it's up to the industry to adopt and integrate it throughout the system.