1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital (Part 5)

Julianne Zimmerman: At the conference, I was approached by several women. The conversation we had is a conversation I have with far too many founders from MIT and many other alma maters.

I have formed a really spectacular team around me. I have customer demand. I have contracts that are waiting to be filled. I have significant inbound interest from customers, but I cannot get a meeting. When I get a meeting with a venture capital partner, the questions I get are about my children or husband.

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that even though a significant fraction of investment capital is concentrated in the neighborhood surrounding MIT, there’s a very narrow lens for the kinds of founders who are considered investable.

Shortly after that conference, I had a conversation with someone at MIT who said to me, “Surely there is not enough qualified talent for an investment strategy like Reinventure.” I said to him, “Look around you. MIT just had commencement and is conferring degrees on women, people of color, and people who are born outside of the US.” He said, “Yes, but that’s not really enough.”

But so did Harvard and other universities. He really found this hard to grasp even though he was based at MIT and interacted on a daily basis with that diverse population. That is indicative of the kinds of unconscious blindness that we see.

An example of a company that we like very much is based in Baltimore. It’s a company called Warrior Centric Health. We met them by way of outreach. They are founded and led by all active-duty service veterans. The founding CEO is an African-American man who is highly-decorated in his military career.

The Chief Medical Officer is an African-American woman who is also highly-decorated in her military career. The Chief Operating Officer is a white woman.

Several years ago, NIH had recognized that veterans and their families comprise 25% or more of the civilian hospital patient population and are treated as civilians in the United States.

When you return from military life, you have private health insurance through your employer. You are not recognizably different from other patients and yet, veterans and their families have very different health trajectories and concerns.

This presents a real challenge for their own health and quality of life. It also presents a challenge for hospitals who don’t necessarily even know how to recognize those patients and, let alone, understand their health concerns and how to treat them appropriately.

This team developed a new standard of care around veterans and their families under guidance and grant funding from the NIH and the United States DoD. They validated that with medical review. They prepared a platform to roll out standard of care and certification for hospital systems for all of the medical staff in hospital systems.

They rolled out the initial pilot with half a dozen hospitals in 2019. It was enormously successful. Chief Medical Officers of the hospital systems loved it because it improved their patient outcomes. The Chief Financial Officers of the hospital systems love it because it reduces their cost from readmission and retesting. Of course, the General Counsel loves it because it reduces their exposure to legal risks for malpractice.

Warrior Centric Health was recognized as the best new product award by the American Hospital Association. They’re now rolling out this platform. It has a $4 billion market in the United States alone. They had pitched several times to the mainstream venture community that doesn’t see it as a real opportunity partially because of who the founders are.

They have had the same kinds of experiences. People have said to them, “How can this even be a business?” The founders appealed to us because these are accomplished, knowledgeable, capable, and disciplined founders who have demonstrated to us that they not only understand their customers and what they need, but they also have that validation from their customers.

Also they have a profitable business model. They are not profitable yet. When they get to that breakeven point, we hope to be the first in line and first on their side as well to be able to work with them.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful conversation. This is a good insight into a corner that you have identified as underserved. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital
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