Launching a healthcare company is hard. Launching dozens of them is even harder, but that’s exactly what Redesign Health plans to do after raising $175M for its largest fund to-date.
Redesign isn’t a venture capital firm, although it’s funded more digital health startups than most VCs. It’s not an accelerator, yet it’s launched more companies in the past six years than most pure startup studios.
Then what is it? Redesign is a “venture builder” that’s cultivated over 60 healthcare companies by supporting founders across three key areas:
- Redesign’s hands-on approach starts with an in-house research lab / analyst team that helps look into sectors, identify challenges, and validate business cases.
- An established network of relationships with health systems, payors, and other health tech companies gives founders an accelerated path to commercial traction.
- Redesign equips startups with operational resources ranging from executive placements to branding services to fine-tune operations throughout every stage of growth.
The new fund will allow Redesign to partner on companies at the intersection of technology and the investment themes where it believes “innovation can drive the greatest impact”:
- Addressing the healthcare labor shortage
- Accelerating value-based and longitudinal care
- Advancing healthcare interoperability
- Preparing for an aging population
- Eliminating barriers to health equity
- Expanding sites of care
- Growing the insured population
- Driving healthcare personalization and consumerization
Since getting its start in 2018, Redesign’s portfolio has reached more than 15M patients and generated over $1B in revenue, producing some big name players like metabolic health startup Calibrate and VBC cardiology company CardioOne (acquired by WindRose earlier this year).
- There’s been a few bumps along the way – including layoffs as Redesign slowed its launch pace to weather the post-pandemic downturn – but the new fund is a good sign that it expects smoother sailing from here.
The Takeaway
Healthcare startups have high upfront capital requirements, steep steps between business stages, and difficulty recruiting the seasoned executives needed to reach scale. Although those problems will never magically disappear, Redesign now has a $175M magic wand to make them a whole lot more manageable.
