Healthcare startups face unimaginably complex challenges — from privacy requirements to FDA approvals and more — that are unique to this industry. They require specialized skills, experiences, advisors and investors to go from idea to product to company. We provide the right counsel and capital to help you embark on that journey.
Gabe is CEO and Co-Founder of Freenome, the leading AI genomics company.
At Freenome, Gabe draws on broad experience in chromatin biology, epigenetics, and technology to advance the company’s mission of giving everyone the tools they need to detect, treat, and ultimately prevent their diseases. Gabe has helped secure over $77 million in capital from top-tier investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Polaris Partners, and Founders Fund.
He strives to be a different kind of CEO, one who approaches his work with humility in the course of empowering his company’s employees to strive for greatness. From his early days as founder to established CEO today, Gabe has always believed that forging a strong culture is essential to helping Freenome achieve its goals—normalizing mistakes in order to better learn from them, and incorporating empathy, integrity, and trust into every aspect of Freenome’s work.
Gabe joined the Healthcare Co-op to help other founders navigate the opportunities and challenges of building healthcare companies. He hopes others can benefit from the lessons he’s learned at Freenome’s various stages of growth, and he also expects to learn alongside them as they encounter issues specific to their companies and sub-sectors.
Dr. Connie Chen co-founded Vida Health, a digital coaching platform for chronic disease management.
As Chief Medical Officer at Vida, she was responsible for all clinical operations, including management of clinical/coaching staff, clinical protocol/product development, and clinical trials. She also played a key role in scaling business development, sales, and marketing.
Prior to Vida, she was an innovation principal at Kaiser Permanente and served as Medical Director at the Stanford accelerator StartX where she founded its digital health program. She has been a practicing physician for 6 years with a primary care practice at St. Anthony's Clinic (SF) and Fair Oaks Health Center (Redwood City) in addition to seeing patients at Stanford Hospital. Dr. Chen has published on topics ranging from open frameworks for mobile health to the design of clinical trials for cardiac devices in leading medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Chen joined the Healthcare Co-op to help early-stage founders build clinically sound products and navigate the unique complexities of getting paid in healthcare. She loves helping teams recruit key medical hires. She is excited to share what she has learned along the way as a physician, patient, and entrepreneur.
Kiran is Chief of Staff at Clover Health, a health insurance startup combining technology and preventive care to lower costs and increase the quality of life for those who need it most.
As Chief of Staff, Kiran works on strategic initiatives across the company. He initially joined Clover as the second product manager, a role in which he helped build technology for different areas of the business including fraud, waste, and abuse, clinical quality, and bid design.
Kiran joined the Healthcare Co-op to help founders from a range of backgrounds inside and outside health care navigate the payer and government landscapes. He learned through his own experience joining Clover Health as someone new to the industry that while understanding and navigating the world of insurance companies and government health care programs may seem daunting, the right kind of systematic and methodical approach can help make it easier.
He's excited to work with founders to share what he's learned — particularly from the many, many mistakes he's made along the way.
Co-op partners know how to fundraise in healthcare, having raised money for digital health products, FDA-regulated diagnostics and screens, and insurance startups – from seed to large growth rounds.
At Freenome, Gabe has built a team with expertise in science, tech, clinical development, regulatory affairs, reimbursement, operations, and commercial growth. Connie served as Vida’s Health first coach, before scaling the organization to over 30 coaches.
At Vida, Connie negotiated and signed contracts with key partners including United Healthcare, AstraZeneca, Fortune 500 employers. Kiran built many of Clover's initial data integrations across primary care, lab, and hospital providers.
Kiran navigated several government submissions across quality ratings and plan design as part of Clover's work with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Connie was co-primary investigator on numerous clinical trials at leading hospitals.
We make angel-sized investments together as a group and partner closely with exceptional entrepreneurs. While we have First Round's financial and operational support, we invest independently and hope to make our share of daring and different choices.
We're excited to meet healthcare founders early. Before your first hospital pilot, insurance partnership, or proof of concept – even before you are thinking about fundraising. If this describes you, we may be a good fit.
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Our partners have observed and worked in our healthcare system from all sides. We've navigated the complexities of government healthcare programs, built partnerships with the world's largest health insurers and pharmaceutical companies, and led teams of health coaches, research scientists, regulatory affairs specialists, and software engineers. We're developing FDA-regulated products, treating patients, and building data integrations with hospital systems. We can give you the tactical help and support you need day one.
We invest up to $50k in startups at seed stage and earlier.
Our primary focus is the intersection of software and the legacy healthcare system, but our passions cover a broad range of healthcare sub-sectors – from innovative care delivery products, to new insurance models, to the intersection of AI, genomics, and diagnostics.
Yes! While we're based in San Francisco, we invest in startups across the country.
The Healthcare Co-op is powered by capital and operational support from First Round, a venture firm in San Francisco, New York and Philadelphia that invests in tech startups at the earliest stage. In addition to First Round's backing, we can choose to invest our own capital as well.
For more on our story, take a look at our post and First Round's announcement of our launch.
The best way to start a conversation with the Co-op is to reach out to one of us through your network. If we don’t have mutual connections, you can email us directly at healthcare@co-op.vc, and we'll do our best to respond.
