StartUp Health’s New Rolling Impact Fund Makes It Easy for Clinicians, Patients, and Organizations to Invest in Health Moonshots
New member-driven ‘StartUp Health Moonshots Impact Fund’ enables accredited clinicians, patients, families, and organizations to automatically invest in a global portfolio of private companies dedicated to achieving health moonshots via a flexible quarterly subscription.
StartUp Health has invested in more than 360 companies, and that experience has helped it create a unique and scalable way to assess entrepreneurs and companies. It starts by scoring entrepreneurs and founder teams using StartUp Health’s proprietary “Health Transformer Scorecards” which have been refined over the past decade of investing in and working with healthcare founders. In this process StartUp Health is assessing for attributes like long-term commitment, collaborative relationships, confident ambition, and self-awareness. They then move on to scoring the company on things like moonshot vision, team, partners, and differentiated brand. This scoring methodology, developed over years of reviewing thousands of startups, allows the company to perform a uniform investment process based on data.
Currently, StartUp Health has 245 active portfolio companies, ranging from pre-seed to post-IPO. StartUp Health portfolio companies have raised more than $2.8B in funds from more than 450 co-investors, including many of the most notable VCs in the industry. To date, there have been 27 exits from the portfolio.
“Some of these 27 acquisitions have been lucrative and some have not, but through it all, we’ve gained experience and perspective on the market,” says Unity Stoakes, President, Co-founder, and Managing Partner at StartUp Health. “One of the things we’ve learned that creates opportunity is investing in traditionally under-represented entrepreneurs. We’re proud to say that the StartUp Health portfolio is made up of 32% female founders, 33% BIPOC founders, 25% physician and PhD founders, and 16% serial entrepreneurs.”
Becoming a “member” of the Impact Fund is about more than a quarterly investment. Members of the fund are welcomed into StartUp Health’s community of like-minded entrepreneurs, investors, industry experts, and consumers, committed to achieving 12 Health Moonshots — audacious health goals like improving access to care, ending cancer, curing diabetes, and radically improving children’s health. Impact Fund members get first-look access to allocation opportunities in portfolio companies as well as weekly deal alerts about new funding rounds. Members receive portfolio updates and health innovation insights via StartUp Health’s award-winning media platform. And, Impact Fund members gain access to invite-only events where we celebrate the health innovation progress being made.
In creating the StartUp Health Moonshots Impact Fund, one major goal is simplicity. All relevant information can be found at healthmoonshots.com and accredited investors can sign up to attend an Impact Fund informational webinar. Tiered investment minimums apply for health professionals, individuals, and organizations. Members in the fund can increase their investment at any time, and after four quarters in the fund, they can pause or reduce their investment.
“We believe that one of the critical ingredients to achieving health moonshots is to invite to the table investors and partners who have a similar mindset,” says Krein. “We need families, doctors, and organizations who care as much about these health moonshots as we do. We believe that as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re truly in a unique moment in time for health innovation. The world has changed, and so has the opportunity for investing in health innovation.”
StartUp Health has an Impact Board currently composed of 12 health leaders including people like Dr. Toby Crosgrove, the former CEO of the Cleveland Clinic; Sue Siegel, former CEO of GE Ventures; Margaret Laws, CEO of Hope Labs; and Way to Wellville CEO, Esther Dyson.