Why 1616 Ventures Invested in Genial Care

We recently announced our investment in Genial Care , together with General Catalyst , Atlantico , and Canary Genial Care is a platform for the care of children with autism in Brazil.

As with all our investments, our decision to invest in Genial Care started with the founder: Kenny Laplante . I first met Kenny nearly four years ago when we were introduced because we were both American founders exploring the health space in Brazil. Since then, I had the pleasure of accompanying Kenny and watching Genial Care come to life. Kenny is someone I respect tremendously: he is incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and methodical, and also happens to be a genuinely great guy. Kenny also has incredible founder-market fit, having covered healthcare businesses at General Atlantic, including businesses related to what he is building at Genial, and having worked at ACES, which provides care for children with autism in the U.S.

Genial is well-positioned to dominate a market that is becoming enormous very quickly. Several years ago, when Kenny first told me he was going after the market for care of children with autism, I thought “Sounds like a nice business; it's solving something important, but does it have the potential to be massive?” When he pitched us at 1616, he quickly showed how big it could be. While this initial target market may be smaller than others in which we typically invest, Kenny was not the only one to recognize the importance of autism care. The Brazilian National Supplementary Health Agency (Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar - ANS) recently passed a regulation making it mandatory for private insurance companies to cover the type of care Genial provides, making the market large and very quickly-growing. Furthermore, it is an incredibly fragmented market, mainly with small independent providers charging prices that are out of reach for most Brazilian families. Until now, many families were being overlooked, and now the public and private sector are coming together to offer a scalable solution to solve the very real needs of these families. Given the limited competitive environment and Genial’s head start on building an affordable, scalable solution, we believe that Genial can absolutely dominate this market.

We also love Genial’s business model and its attractive unit economics. Its product is high ticket, with high margins and high recurrence. Relationships with insurance companies keep acquisition costs low, as the paying customers (the insurance companies in most cases) are sending their patients to Genial, thrilled that Genial can deliver the recently government-mandated care for a fraction of the price with a much better experience than existing players. Tech helps them scale processes, educate caregivers, and standardize care. Genial’s hybrid, tech-enabled approach is bringing much-need improvements to the care for these children and their families.

Autism care alone is a fundamentally-sound business with tremendous impact, but we believe that in the long run, Genial can go even further, using similar methodologies and their tech to provide similar services for other types of care, especially for children.

With a company like Genial, we cannot talk about the business without highlighting how extremely optimistic we are about the positive impact it will have on society. Genial is truly an excellent business that is undoubtedly making the world a much better place, and we are proud to be early supporters of the team and their mission!