When not sourcing and helping to build globally impactful companies alongside their CEOs, the team at DN Capital like to think deeply over where the world is going over the next 5-15 years, and use those insights to define new investment themes.
Most recently, our team has been carefully considering the impact that the dual trends of personalized medicine and aging populations in Western society will have in the near future, and what software and services will be required as a result. To date, DN has made one Series A and one seed investment in this space as well as two “micro-seed investments,” and we expect more companies to join the DN Capital portfolio during the course of Fund IV.
The average life expectancy in the US has increased 10.5 years in 3 generations (from 1950 to 2010) Almost 51 million Americans are 65 or older, and about 1/8th of those (6 million) are over 85; that population figure is set to double in the next 30 years. Healthcare spending per capita for those who are 85 and older is 5 times the national average, and increasingly adults in their 50s and 60s are required to look after their older parents.
Life Expectancy at Birth
Source: CDC.gov
Population by Age Range
Source: Census.gov
Health Care Spending Per Capita by Age
Source: CMS.gov
MAVENCARE
With this as context, DN Capital backed the management team at Mavencare, a company that matches in-home carers with elderly people in Toronto and New York.
Adam Blackman and Nukul Bhasin (Founders)
Founders Adam Blackman and Nukul Bhasin pride themselves on staffing Mavencare with only the most competent and compassionate carers, as both have personally needed to look after their own elderly parents. DN Capital led a $7 million Series A investment round and partner Steve Schlenker joined the board to help the Company expand into more cities later this year.
MEDAL
Our second Fund IV health tech investment is in Medal.
Lonnie Rae Kurlander and Kouki Harasaki (Founders)
As the healthcare market globally moves away from “pay-for-service” to “pay-for-results,” an important component will be getting the right information from the doctor to demonstrate that the doctor’s patients are staying current with preventative care. But it is an expensive and time-consuming nightmare getting that information from the doctor’s notes, to the doctor’s electronic medical record system, to the systems used by insurance companies to reimburse the doctors, and to the systems used by medical analytics companies to identify trends in care. Doctors’ practices can lose over $40,000 a year in profits just on time doctors need to spend on paperwork instead of with patients and on costs of additional staffing to gather and disseminate this data. Not to mention error prone data transfers increase indirect costs and create poorer medical outcomes!
This is where Medal comes in. Medal makes sending data from the EMR system to these other systems, in the correct structured format irrespective of the doctor’s notes, as easy as a single print-screen button for a low-level staff member at the doctor’s office to complete. DN Capital participated in a $4.8 million convertible note backing founders Lonnie Rae Kurlander and Kouki Harasaki, and were joined by 8VC, Founders Fund, Sapphire Ventures and Angels.
LIMBIX HEALTH
In our Fund IV micro-seed portfolio, we invested in Limbix Health.
Ben Lewis and Tony Hsieh (Founders)