Benjamin Lopez

I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement Vertical AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably and unlock generational returns. Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

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What Our Top Performing Investments at SpringTide Ventures Have in Common Our most transformative healthcare startups, including PathologyWatch, OpenLoop, IgniteData, and Tava Health, all share three traits in common: 1. Cheetah CEOs These CEOs are exceptional at: ✅ Speed without chaos. They move fast—but never at the expense of execution. ✅ Hiring with precision. They don’t just hire for skills; they hire for speed and alignment. ✅ Betting bold. They go where legacy players have overcomplicated things for decades—and they simplify. They don’t wait. They don’t overthink. They act and embrace the process of failing quickly, often, and cheaply. They learn from these failures to iterate at rapid speed and quickly orient their way to the north star of success more nimbly than others. 2. No Unpaid Pilots The single biggest trap in healthcare venturing may well be the unpaid pilot. It’s a slow death. Months—sometimes years—of proving your value with nothing to show for it. The best founders? They refuse. They find a way to generate real revenue immediately. They structure deals that prove their worth—without giving away their product for free. They don’t waste time on handshakes that lead nowhere. 3. Integrated Solutions Win Point solutions don’t win in healthcare anymore. The best startups don’t just build products. They build systems. They understand the bigger picture—the way everything connects. They integrate seamlessly into existing workflows instead of fighting them. They don’t just add value—they make their solution the only viable choice. This integration often comes with lower margins in the early years of finding and building out product Market fit, but we gladly accept lower margins for such ambitious visions. Healthcare is brutal. Most startups don’t make it. But the bestredefine their categories. They’re led by Cheetah CEOs like Daniel Lambert, Jon Lensing, Zach Taft, MBA, and Dallen Allred—founders who execute relentlessly, think in integrated solutions, and get to real revenue fast.

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Who’s really building the next generation of $1B+ healthcare companies? At SignalFire, we’ve always believed that founder DNA is the strongest signal of future outcomes. In Health & PharmaTech, where complexity, regulation, and distribution hurdles are the norm, that’s especially true. We turned to Beacon, our proprietary data engine tracking 650M+ professionals, to analyze 300+ HealthTech unicorn founders across the country. Here’s what the data showed: - 70% had 10+ years of experience. Execution and trust matter more than hype here - Nearly half came from outside healthcare, bringing fresh playbooks into a legacy industry - 80% had co-founders. HealthTech usually isn’t a solo game - San Francisco had 5x more unicorn founders than Boston, suggesting the center of gravity for HealthTech is shifting west - And the most scalable companies were led by so-called "Centaur Teams" combining GenAI talent with experienced GTM leaders We’re in the early innings of a historic transformation. With healthcare finally digitized and AI infrastructure in place, we’re seeing the rise of a new wave of #HealthTech unicorns that are faster, leaner, and more multidisciplinary than ever before. In this new report (in partnership with Fierce Healthcare), we break down: 📍 Which U.S. cities have become the new HealthTech hubs 📍 What the new HealthTech founder archetype looks like 📍 Why M&A has overtaken IPOs in this sector 📍 How Centaur Teams are scaling startups into decacorns If you’re an investor, operator, or founder in this space, this is your field guide to what’s next. (Link to full report in comments.)

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Big things happened in the Techstars network in January: →  8 portfolio companies secured funding →  2 portfolio companies were acquired →  2 portfolio companies combined →  1 new global network partner ➕ U.S.-based rare earths processing startup Phoenix Tailings (Techstars 2020) closes $43M Series B funding round. ➕ Tive (Techstars 2017), a startup developing tech to pinpoint freight shipments in real time, raises $40M Series C. ➕ The Helper Bees (Techstars 2016) raises $35M Series C for home care. ➕ First Ascent Biomedical (Techstars 2021), a personalized oncology drug prediction platform, gets $6M to accelerate lab openings. ➕ Crypto tech startup Dfns (Techstars 2021) raises $16M to increase its workforce and expand in the Middle East. ➕ AI-powered mass tort company Parambil (formerly MedThread; Techstars 2023) announces $2M in pre-seed funding. ➕ Accenture Ventures invests in QuSecure (Techstars 2021) to advance PQC solutions for government and business. ➕ Vessl Prosthetics Inc. Prosthetics (Techstars 2023) secures a pre-seed round to drive innovation in prosthetic solutions. ⭐ Infinite Reality will acquire virtual shopping platform Obsess (Techstars 2017). ⭐ Hook Security acquires Haekka (Techstars 2021), a Slack-first training platform. ⭐ Transmute (Techstars 2018) and mesur.io (Techstars 2018) announce a strategic combination to remove disruption from global supply chains. https://lnkd.in/gn5wJZur 

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Cohere Health’s Series C: Case Study… McKinsey estimates that there is nearly $1 trillion of healthcare administrative expenses each year, of which $200 billion is just on financial transactions. There are a staggering nine billion medical claims processed each year. A hornet’s nest of policies and procedures have evolved to manage these expenses from complex formularies, deductibles, co-pays, and prior authorizations (PA). Just in 2023, there were over 50 million PAs, 99% of which were for procedures for Medicare Advantage members. It was this market opportunity that Cohere Health was created to address. The vision of the company has always been to drive deeper payer/provider collaboration and in so doing create a “touchless authorization” business model. The company has successfully commercialized a suite of next-generation PA products that significantly rearchitect the way care pathways are delivered. Recent advances in AI have further catalyzed a drive to meaningfully improve clinical and administrative efficiencies for payers. In order to continue its rapid scaling and development of additional products, Cohere Health today announced a $90 million Series C financing, led by Temasek, a close partner of Flare Capital. Other thoughts/observations... https://lnkd.in/eAB-JvUp Flare Capital Partners

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Seed VC isn’t just in a downturn—it’s facing extinction unless it evolves fast. Great read from Rob Go & David Beisel at NextView Ventures... - YC and mega-funds now dominate the early-stage landscape, squeezing out traditional seed investors - Power law thinking has gone mainstream—everyone’s chasing trillion-dollar outliers - AI isn’t helping seed VCs—it’s raising the stakes, crowding the field, and disrupting VC itself - The middle of the market has collapsed, and excess profits are gone - Hope isn’t a strategy—seed needs a new model, now Link here... https://lnkd.in/ek2MZGhm And if you like this topic, I wrote a piece on venture bifurcating into inception funds and mega funds here: https://lnkd.in/eJz5DmX6 #ai #venturecapital #vc

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Villi Iltchev on the importance of track record in VC. Seems obvious, but a lot of young VCs don't have this sorted. It's proprietary info and many leave their venture gigs without access to it. That can be a major handicap for landing future venture jobs or raising their own fund. Good interview with Turner Novak. 👍🏻

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“30% of every $1 in US health care goes to admin fees of some kind.” In theory, this should be able to go down to 3% over the next decade as AI Process Platforms disrupt SaaS & bureaucratic 20th century enterprise services - in most other industries transaction costs have dropped to this level.

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Great HLTH 2025. Some big trends I saw: - Drug distribution is going direct - Payers want vendors to take risk - Everyone has a chatbot - Behavioral health is maturing - FDA clearance is the new Series B - Post-discharge is a big opportunity - Diagnostics are becoming portable and ROI-oriented - Provider workflows are becoming consumer-grade

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