Marcus Whitney

Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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Today's the day. This has been a long time coming, and Pixlmob v.1 is finally here! We took in our first venture capital from SCRA: South Carolina Research Authority & Founderville in August (thank you to several angel investors who believed in us way before that!). Since that time we have deployed so much and grown exponentially, but now the core product features we were working on building are finally ready. If you've got three minutes, enjoy our mini-keynote as we drop some new tech that will revolutionize the real estate media world's ability to get work done. When work gets easier, more people can build the lives they want. At Pixlmob our "north star" is to build a platform where anyone on the planet is free to find and complete fulfilling work. This is a huge step forward in helping our vendors differentiate their unique businesses to be selected (through ASAP in particular). It's also a huge step forward for our customers to manage their projects with integrations to key platforms and project management tools for nightly production work (and so many more features)! #makeworksuckless

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Platforms are in, point solutions are out as the healthcare AI category leaders come into focus this year. In conversation with Shelby Livingston at Endpoints News, I shared: 1. Why AI-first companies have the greatest platform potential and heuristics for identifying these opportunities at the earliest stages, 2. How companies are differentiating through co-development and distribution partnerships with leading healthcare institutions, and 3. Strategies for navigating anemic budgets and constrained market sizes through business model innovation such as AI-enabled services and pay for performance models Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dJWqv_zC Bessemer Venture Partners Abridge #healthcare #lifesciences #AI #generativeAI

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This news is definitely disturbing. Time to figure out why and what we can do to better level the playing field for entrepreneurs and founders. Is this mostly due to the "anti-DEI" environment? Something else that is being overlooked? Eager to hear reactions and solutions. Thanks to Crunchbase for highlighting this. #dei #investing #impact #fairness #bias #equity #gapclosing

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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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I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

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The obsession with visual assets MUST end... Founders - if you think you need a new website or pitch deck, take a pause. What you REALLY need is a messaging foundation. At least, that's where you should start. The obsession over updating and revamping existing pitch decks is common, especially amongst founders hoping to raise or leaders eyeing acquisition. They fixate on visual tools such as pitch decks and websites but forget that a visual asset can only represent the words, emotions and concepts behind it. That's right... focusing on the pitch deck before you have a clear message to send is like "repairing" your termite infested walls with paint. They may look nice at first, but sooner or later, they'll crumble and leave you homeless. Here's a helpful way to think about it: Each slide must prove its worth with ample white space, limited words and simple language. If it can’t do this, it must be cut. Even the “team” slide which seems straightforward and necessary, must fight for its place. And fighting is tough if you don’t know what the goal is. That's why it's common for pitch decks to be full of text and hundreds of slides. It's not because there is SOO much to say. It's because the company doesn't know WHAT to say. That's the difference. A content strategy is the foundation. It's the foundation of every conversation, every pitch, every hire. It’s the foundation of every icon, website, and visual asset - pitch deck included. So, figure out WHAT to say first. Then, bring on the design team. --------- Hi. I'm Jessi and I'm a content engineer. For 15 years, I've helped healthcare leaders, founders and writers effortlessly engage with their audience to launch a product, manage a complex change and grow revenue, investments, partnerships & more. To book an introductory session, set up a call to learn more (link in my profile).

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Excellent start to the day with Megan Neff at Rev1 Ventures hosting a chat with 2 of 4 Co-Founders Luke Buchanan (CEO) and Jaimin Gandhi (CTO) of Redi.Health. Loved Luke's thoughts on building a company in #HealthTech, "at least double the time you think it will take -- the market doesn't speed up just because you can run faster." Back when we were building CoverMyMeds, we used to say we were 10-20 years ahead in tech relative to the industry. Over 10 years later, the industry is still 10-20 years behind in tech. #cbustech

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🚀 Demystifying Venture: Pathways to More Money and Power 🚀 Last week, I had the honor to be invited to the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies Summit, gathering 4000 tech, business and media leaders from all over the country. One of the highlights of the conference was a fireside chat about the VC industry featuring Candice Morgan, Partner at GV (Google Ventures) and Jana Rich Founder at Rich Talent Group. They shared some invaluable insights on how to break into venture capital and investing. Here are the highlights: 💡 Diversity in Venture: There are multiple ways to participate—angel investing, working at a VC firm, or making smarter decisions about your equity. The key? Access to information is power. 💸 True Wealth = Equity: The biggest driver of wealth in venture is through equity. Understand the risks, follow the founder’s journey, and get excited about areas you care about. 🔑 Investment Pathways: Platforms like Republic and Portfolia are making crowdfunding accessible to more diverse investors. These are great tools for those new to venture. 🎓 Educational Resources: organizations like All Raise and BLCK VC are excellent resources for anyone wanting to dive deeper into venture and investing. Thanks Gemma Allen and Anni Lundy for the invitation! #entrepreneurship #VC

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