Forerunner

Roon is a company that immediately grabbed us upon hearing their story and how they’re approaching an extremely well-known problem: there’s a deluge of healthcare misinformation online, an increasingly overburdened healthcare system, and no shortage of consumers needing trusted answers quickly for navigating some of life’s most complicated moments. Roon is what you’d get if you combined webMD and Perplexity, but created only with doctor-created content: envision a vast repository of searchable answers, videos, and guides straight from top medical experts related to a deep range of healthcare concerns, from ALS to Fertility, Dementia, Endometriosis, and more. As investors, we know companies have been trying to disrupt “Dr Google” for decades — an estimated 7% of google searches are health related, and AI can either compound misinformation or be a solution. Why Roon stands out: Doctors *love* it. They are flocking to it. They see it as an essential tool for educating patients and caregivers, building their personal brands (in a non-performative way, in contrast to Instagram/TikTok), and saving time and effort with an accessible, efficient format for answering the questions they get every week in their clinics. Finally, Roon fits in with a theme we’re tracking closely at Forerunner: the shift from Search to Service, where the static, unilateral search experience is being replaced by AI-driven, context-aware services that feel much more interactive and personal. There’s arguably no better team than former Pinterest leaders and highly respected clinical physicians and experts to drive this kind of thematic shift in health. Let’s go Team Roon! Deeper investment thesis linked in comments! Vikram Bhaskaran Rohan Ramakrishna, MD Arun Ranganathan

Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $15M Series A to provide a compassionate, reliable health guide for everyone. This round is co-led by Rick Heitzmann from FirstMark and Eurie Kim from Forerunner, with continued support from early investors, including Soraya Darabi from TMV and Jess Lee from Sequoia Capital More than any name or number, I’m so proud of this milestone because we’re building with a team of truly mission-driven people My personal experience as a caregiver to my father during his battle with ALS inspired me to build Roon. Navigating the complexities of the healthcare system opened my eyes: At some point, we’ll all face the challenge of caring for ourselves or a loved one through difficult health issues. And I knew there had to be a better way than turning to "Doctor Google."My co-founders Rohan Ramakrishna, MD, and Arun Ranganathan shared this vision as doctors and caregivers. Many of our investors have a meaningful personal connection to our mission. And most inspiringly, thousands of leading physicians in the country have joined us, eager to make their expertise more accessible and fix how the Internet often falls short for health information. Their enthusiasm to scale their impact beyond their clinics at places like Weill Cornell, UCSF, Harvard, Stanford or Columbia has been deeply encouraging. Finally, thank you to our incredible team Joshua Lang, Fatima Alvi, Alice Chen, Naintara (Tara) Rajan, Mackenzie C., Chelsey Larson, RN, BSN, Patrick E Porché Jr, Kelvin De Los Angeles, Koonal Bharadwaj, Ben Powell, Enid Hwang This funding marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter. With it, we’ll expand our platform to cover hundreds of conditions, including critical areas like women’s health, cancer, neurology, metabolic health, and pediatrics. Roon is more than just a company – it’s a movement to reimagine how we care for ourselves and one another. If you’re passionate about creating a better future for health, we invite you to join us. We are actively hiring! Check out our jobs page here: https://lnkd.in/eMeAbKs3 If you're a doc and want to share your expertise, please drop us a note here: https://lnkd.in/eEKfmKZQ Featured in Techrunch today: https://lnkd.in/eyD8C3pu

The tech industry has long espoused the value of founders building from a place of first-hand experience and passion for the problem they're out to solve. Few builders illustrate this more than Aizada Marat, who is building a modern immigration law firm underpinned by AI. Her recent post on her immigration story is well worth a read. Some highlights: - Her journey from being raised in a village in Kyrgyzstan to raising $5.5 Million in seed funding for Alma - Immigration hiccups and how they helped define the trajectory of her life - How Britney Spears helped her realize her American dream (her words!) - The journey from lecture halls to courtrooms to consulting to founding a startup, and hosting Silicon Valley icons in her backyard—a rollercoaster of events leading up to now https://lnkd.in/gkeUHhcS

When the momentum speaks for itself: Huge congrats to team ōURA on the fresh $75M at a $5B valuation, including a partnership with Dexcom to deepen care within metabolic health! https://lnkd.in/ggVeE3Ku

“The problem is information overload. The amount of input that human brains are getting every second of every day is something the human species has never experienced — too many pages, too many products. At Daydream, the way we’re thinking about solving this problem is creating what’s in essence ChatGPT for shopping. If you have the ability to ask anything you want, we have the ability to help you.” Julie Bornstein and the Daydream are uniquely suited to transform the way we shop for the AI era, a massive opportunity given that the experience hasn't meaningful changed in decades. Look out for Daydream, formally debuting next year! https://lnkd.in/ggCq9fDS

Announcing Leland's $12M Series A led by Forerunner! Forerunner has an incredible track record of backing iconic consumer brands and marketplaces like Warby Parker, Chime, Glossier, Inc., ōURA, Faire, Zola, The Expert, and others. We couldn't be more excited to welcome Eurie Kim to the board and partner with her and Forerunner to take Leland to the next level. Also participating in the round are GSV Ventures, inVest Ventures, and our early investors like FJ Labs, Contrary, Peterson Ventures, and GSBackers. We’re also proud that dozens of Leland coaches and customers participated, in addition to leading marketplace founders, operators, and angels from companies like Instacart, Handshake, LinkedIn, Pluralsight, Mercado Libre, and others. With this fresh capital and support, we're well positioned to accelerate our vision of unlocking human potential by making the world's expertise more accessible. In the past year alone, our coaches have helped hundreds of thousands of people in over 70 countries break into top schools or companies, develop new skills, prepare for interviews or tests, and pursue goals across dozens of unique categories. While a fundraise is never a destination, it certainly represents an opportunity to reflect on the progress we’ve made and thank the community who has helped us get this far. So, THANK YOU! We know the biggest opportunity is ahead of us, and we’re excited to be building a world-class team to go after it. If you want to join us, we're hiring. if you want to partner with us, shoot me a DM. And if you are interested in working with a coach or coaching the next generation, we'd love to have you in our community. Big thank you to Deborah Quazzo, Ben Capell, Kyle Harrison, Eric Tarczynski, Jason Bornstein, Lauri J. Moore, Karen Chi, Glenn Borok, Jeff Weinstein, Jose Marin, Jen Yang-Wong, Jason Chen, Taylor Jones, ilana stern, Aaron Skonnard, Gary Williams, Martin Rudigier, and the many others who have made this possible through your support! Here's to the next chapter of helping people reach their most ambitious goals. (TechCrunch coverage in comments)

Yesterday I joined Chris Britt at Money2020 for a keynote discussion on how he’s steering Chime into one of the most durable, important fintech companies of our time. Many don’t realize that 60% of our nation lives paycheck-to-paycheck, a majority demographic that is very poorly served by the legacy banking industry. Chris often says that he’s not out to disrupt banking, but rather operate within the highly regulated existing banking system to make it work better for everyday Americans. In doing so, Chime has been the pioneer of innovations that are increasingly adopted by larger banks, whose hands are being forced into order to remain competitive. Chime was the first to offer fee-free overdraft features (SpotMe), helping members avoid over $30B in potential overdraft fees, as well as the newly introduced MyPay — an instant payment feature that helps members avoid high-interest credit cards, payday loans, or overdraft fees while waiting two weeks for paychecks to clear (which is 70%+ of the $10 trillion in wages and salaries). By doing the right thing for consumers — and building from a place of fundamental empathy and firsthand experience, with meticulous regulatory standards — Chime has become a generational company. And plenty more innovation, scale, and milestones for this company to come!

Restaurant owners on Table22: "It's like having another week of revenue in a month and I didn't have to pay any additional costs." Big congrats to this team on the series A from Lightspeed, and for extending the revenue of restaurants nationwide: https://lnkd.in/g8qUFzx9

KiwiCo, Inc., one of our earliest investments, is an excellent example of the magic that happens from being heads-down building a fundamentally better product for a highly engaged set of consumers (in this case, moms who are invested in their kids' development). With only $10M raised in their trajectory, they've walked the walk on delivering real, durable growth (long before that was trendy). Congrats to this hardworking and endlessly impressive team! https://lnkd.in/g_tyDbpX

Personalization might sound like a trite concept in Silicon Valley. And it is — we’ve been talking about it for over a decade. But the promise of personalization has never really been delivered on. When I think of highly personalized digital experiences, Instagram’s ads and the TikTok feed are probably the most notable examples. There is still endless white space. With AI, builders have the opportunity to truly (and finally) deliver on the opportunity in personalized services. Because at its core, the promise of Gen AI is to effectively personalize our digital worlds, offering up insights with more comprehensive context than any one person could have themselves and taking broad swaths of legwork off of our plates by effectively performing tasks on our behalf. It was wonderful to join so many talented and ambitious women at The Information WTF Summit this week to share more about this opportunity, as well as the complicated yet optimistic point we’re at in venture, and why I think the exit market might look a lot more interesting over the next year. Well done Jessica E. Lessin and the entire Information team on such a thoughtful and energizing (can't-miss!) event, and thank you for having me and Amy Griffin on stage! https://lnkd.in/g96BCvms