Ep. 18: What Forces Are Reshaping Early Stage Digital Health Funding?

 

If you think about it, investing in digital health solutions can be quite unhealthy. Reasons:

1. Healthcare systems are complex and heavily regulated complicating expansion to different markets.

2. If the consumers/customers are patients, they will not necessarily be payers of solutions, complicating the design of business models.

3. Medical innovation is affecting human lives, making adoption slower, more careful, sales cycles and development longer.

This brings a lot of stress, struggles and roadblocks to innovators and investors and for many the conclusion could be: if you want to live a peaceful, happy life, don’t go into healthcare.

Luckily for patients, many investors do.

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Digital Health Investments are estimated to reach $10 billion by the end of 2017.

Funding options for startups span from accelerators, incubators, loans, Family Offices, crowdfunding, ICOs… How are VCs looking at the changing landscape of investment opportunities? This was the topic at the Early Stage investments panel at mHealth Israel Conference, held in Jerusalem in September 2017. The included speakers were (from left to right):

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  • Christian Seale, Partner, StartupBootcamp, USA

  • Matt Storeygard, Investor, Connecticut Innovations, USA

  • Kyoko Watanabe, Managing Partner, Defta Partners, USA

  • Alexander Hoffman, Merck Ventures, Germany

  • Clara Leonard, Partner, Digital Health Ventures, Germany

The discussed topics in the podcast:

  • Is digital health really that much different from other industries when it comes to investment?

  • How long do investors stay with digital health companies? 

  • What are VCs looking at in early stage companies, since investments in the riskiest? 

  • Which funding models are becoming obsolete?

  • According to Coinschedule 2,1 bn USD have been raised this year alone with ICOs by September. What are new forms of funding such as crowdfunding and ICOs bringing to the market?

 
Startups, EntrepreneurshipTjasa ZajcDigital Health, Health, Investment, Startups, VentureComment