Define Ventures, a digital health venture capital fund, is training a new generation of healthcare AI leaders through its AI Fellows program—a program designed to shape startups focused on AI’s application in healthcare.
The eight-week, free program helps future founders with AI business ideas hone their business strategy, connect with sellers and customers, and network with C-suite executives at major companies. Past guest speakers at the program have included executives from Humana, Sutter Health, Ochsner Health and Centene Corporation.
The AI Fellows program is designed to help founders navigate the complexities of healthcare like its robust ecosystem of players, the needs of providers versus pharma companies and where innovation is trending.
“You might have someone like Bruce Broussard,” Karsten Vagner, chief people officer at Define Ventures, said in an interview. Broussard was the former CEO of Humana. “So you get to sit down and speak with Bruce for a certain amount of time. And then right after that, you're talking to somebody who has been a commercial leader and sold into payers for decades, because we want people to understand … how commercial leaders have been successful or not, and what they've learned along the way.”
The coordinators of the program also tailor the course for the incoming cohort of fellows. In the application process, the program coordinators identify which parts of the healthcare market the fellows want to focus on, and they bring in knowledgeable executives from those sectors. They also tap customers in those markets to help fellows understand what makes a good partner for those customers.
Past fellows have been developing AI solutions for payers, providers, life sciences, employers and consumers, including administrative solutions and clinical decision support tools.
The program is not a generic course on how to pitch investors, Carolyn Magill, venture partner for pharma at Define Ventures and former Aetion CEO, told Fierce Healthcare. Rather, it focuses on concrete tactics for startup success.
“How would you navigate situations like land and expand within a customer?” Magill asked. “How do you know when you can sell your product into multiple teams across pharma, throughout the therapeutic areas, as an example, versus you should be selling them an enterprise license, and how might you construct that partnership? How might you price that partnership? These are the kinds of things that I think, oftentimes, can serve as obstacles for people trying to get a company off the ground.”
She continued: “Even if you come to founding a company understanding healthcare … Taking the leap from that understanding to launching and scaling a company is significant and difficult, and so much of what the program does is help founders understand how to put one foot in front of the other and, tactically, understand how to put a strategy into practice.”
Vagner explained that another differentiator of the program is the ongoing support that AI Fellows can get by being welcomed into the “family.” AI Fellows have access to open communication channels with Define Ventures staff and fellows even after the program ends. The network can be a rich resource for job opportunities, advice, networking and consulting, Vagner said.
“We think about this as ongoing relationships, and I'm really proud of that, because there's so many fellows programs out there that really just end up being about how to pitch a VC,” Vagner said. “Pitching investors before you even know what your company is and who it is for might not be as valuable. So we saw a gap in the market there, and are just really glad to be able to fill it.”
Magill added that the Define Ventures community could be useful to find anyone from a recently graduated project manager up to a chief financial officer with deep experience in pharma and payer, for example. “The community that Define has built and is continuing to build is absolutely critical to founders for the knowledge share that we've just been describing, also for hiring the best talent for all kinds of roles,” she said.
The program has components that are conducted virtually and in person in San Francisco. Applications for the second cohort are open and are being reviewed on a rolling basis.
Define Ventures manages about $800 million in assets, and its companies are at incubation, seed funding, series A and series B stages. The more than two dozen companies in its portfolio include 9amHealth, Cohere Health, Hims & Hers, Laudio, Tia, Unite Us and FOLX Health.