Description
Few industries in the world are as complex and entrenched as American health care. Even its most well-meaning and redemptive actors are caught in a byzantine, manipulative, and exploitative system of misaligned incentives that prioritize financial outcomes over health outcomes. While it is tempting to lose hope, there are signs of life and possibility.
We are interested in ventures working in places all along the spectrum of system-level disruption of healthcare. Opportunities include uses of technology to greatly reduce administrative expenses (a primary driver of overall expenditures), organizations that protect the poor and marginalized from being crushed by life-disrupting medical expenses, new types of clinics and processes that help make healthcare more accessible, and altogether different ways of thinking about the root causes of disease and health.
In today’s commercially-driven world people are more likely to be seen and referred to as 'consumers' than anything else. Instead of being met with resistance, this shift has often meant that individuals have formed their identity through a composite of brands, and product purchasing can be guided more by the desire to make a statement about one’s identity and values than strict utility. As a result, the lines between social movement, capitalism, and community are increasingly blurry (see: Nike, Whole Foods, and Patagonia).
Given this reality (which is with us for both better and worse), we’d like to support entrepreneurs with a vision for building brands with a counter-culturally virtuous and optimistic view of the world, spreading hope and beauty, eliminating stigma, and most fundamentally, redirecting our identity away from materialistic consumption and toward lasting contentment.
