Our Investment In SteadyMD: Powering The Next Generation of Digital Health

I could not be more excited to share that Lux Capital is leading SteadyMD’s $25M Series B to power the next generation of digital health improving individual and population health.

After having spent time with SteadyMD’s co-founders, Guy Friedman and Yarone Goren, it was clear to me that this team has exactly what it takes to catalyze the nascent momentum around telehealth and expand their virtual care platform solution to power and sustain virtual care across specialties, sectors and geographies. Close friends since childhood, both Guy and Yarone share a passion for making healthcare delivery accessible, personalized and equitable. Their virtual care company has a loyal base of patients across all fifty states, a diverse set of providers across specialties, and a rapidly expanding set of enterprise customers who are relying on SteadyMD to provide everything from technological infrastructure to compliance to licensing and diagnostic ordering solutions to direct patient care.

The last year has been a watershed moment for humanity in so many ways, and in particular for the healthcare industry. Telehealth and virtual care have rapidly evolved from niche tools to essential platforms. Healthcare is moving into the home, and it is clear that every major stakeholder group across the spectrum of providers, payers and patients is hustling to adapt to the changing landscape.

Some health systems have seen telehealth adoption spike as much as 175x in recent months. In the VC world, virtual health deal activity hit a record of $2.3B invested across 192 virtual care deals in 2020, according to Pitchbook. And outside of startups, most established hospitals, payers, and pharmaceutical companies are seeking innovative long-term solutions to meet the growing demand for telehealth. In fact, according to Doximity, up to $106 billion of current U.S. healthcare spend could be virtualized by 2023.

With virtual care catapulted into the mainstream, many provider organizations have been scrambling to adopt technologies built for other purposes (e.g. Zoom, Facetime) without an eye toward the nuances of provider workflow, HIPAA compliance or interoperability. As we have heard repeatedly from payers, providers and pharma leaders, many have been frustrated with poorly designed infrastructure, inefficient clinical workflow optimization, and myriad other challenges related to compliance and UI. And even novel care delivery technology companies have been struggling to meet growing national demand for their solutions. As virtual care settles into the “new normal,” with more than 50% of patients and 95% of providers reporting a willingness to use telehealth services post-pandemic, there is a tremendous opportunity for platform technologies to support innovation and adoption at scale: enter SteadyMD.

I know something about these challenges, having helped lead Google’s early efforts to build, launch, and ultimately sunset their first HIPAA-compliant product, a telehealth solution built on top of Google hangouts. I have witnessed the transformation of virtual care over the last decade — as an operator and now as an investor — and I could not be more excited about the potential of telehealth to transform how care is delivered, research is conducted, and ultimately how health equity and health justice are achieved. The industry has only begun to scratch the surface, and the pressures of the pandemic have propelled telehealth into permanence. Guy and Yarone are exactly the type of founders we take pride in backing — mission-driven, execution-oriented, ambitious, and gritty. We are proud to be joining them on this journey to improve human health through technology.

We are partnered on this journey with Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures — which has invested in leading digital health companies including Truepill, Cedar, Calm and Capsule, Midas-list veteran VCs Theresia Gouw of Acrew Ventures and Tim Draper, and a number of leading healthcare founders and operators, including Ann Wocjicki (Founder and CEO of 23andMe). We are also proud to partner again with early backers Pelion Ventures and Next Ventures.

I am particularly pleased to share that the three new VC partners joining the Series B are all women, including Effie Epstein from Sound Ventures, Theresia Gouw from Acrew Ventures, and myself. The cap table also includes institutional and angel investors from diverse backgrounds equally committed to supporting SteadyMD in its mission to improve health equity and access through technology.

This is only the beginning for SteadyMD, and I am honored that Lux will be partnering with them on this journey to advance human health.