Earlier this year, Kaiser Permanente and Village Capital, a venture capital firm, revealed the 10 startups participating in their Health: US 2018 initiative. The venture development program zeroed in on companies that address the needs of the country’s aging population.
Now, two peer-selected startups have been named finalists. Each earns an offer of $75,000 in investment capital from VilCap Investments.
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The companies are Chicago-based Advocatia and Madison, Wisconsin-based TCARE (formerly known as Tailored Care Enterprises).
Advocatia gives hospitals tools that help their uninsured and underinsured patients. For example, one of its solutions lets health systems inform patients of their financial assistance policies. TCARE, which also has an office in St. Louis, Missouri, has a platform that supports unpaid family caregivers and seeks to prevent caregiver burnout.
In a recent phone interview, Allyson Plosko, the manager of Health: US Ventures at Village Capital, explained how the Health: US 2018 program works.
The 10 startups were put through an investment readiness camp, which consists of three four-day workshops spread out over the course of a few months. The goal, Plosko said, is to “help the entrepreneurs develop the lens of an investor.” The workshops not only prepare the companies for immediate fundraising, but also ready them to raise additional funds after they grow and scale their business. Throughout the process, the participating companies also receive feedback from each other, which can help uncover certain blind spots in their models. Ultimately, the finalists were selected by the other startups in the cohort based on their go-to-market readiness.
But being a finalist and earning $75,000 isn’t the sole sign of success for participants.
“The funding is a little bit of icing on the cake,” John Vu, Kaiser Permanente’s vice president of strategy for community health, said in a phone interview. “The cake is really the network that they build, the exposure that they have to funders and their relationship with Village Capital experts.”
Notably, both winning startups are headquartered in the Midwest. Plosko said this highlights the importance of ensuring a unique group of people is sitting at the table and working to solve issues like aging.
“You can’t just have people in San Francisco or New York developing solutions that are meant to work across all geographies,” she said.
Plosko and Vu were happy not only with the geographic diversity of the companies but also with the diversity of the 10 startups’ founders.
Looking ahead, both Kaiser Permanente and Village Capital plan to stay in touch with the Health: US 2018 cohort.
Photo: D3Damon, Getty Images
