Jumpstart Foundry Announces First Round of 2021 Portfolio Selections Procuring Largest Fund and Round of Selections to Date
Jumpstart Foundry, one of Tennessee’s most active healthcare venture capital firms, has announced its latest round of new investments. The Spring selection consists of 17 innovative healthcare startups chosen from an applicant pool of nearly 200. Jumpstart Foundry plans to make a record number of investments this year from its largest fund to date, totaling 34 deals, with their second round of offers to be made in the Fall of 2021.
The 2021 portfolio includes healthcare startups with solutions in the areas of employer cost savings, mental & behavioral health, and telemedicine to name a few.
“We’ve identified solutions that support a new era of care and delivery that, as a result of Covid-19, arrived more quickly than anticipated,” said Eller Mallchok, Managing Director of Jumpstart Foundry.
Eller also recognized an increased need for health & wellness solutions that meet consumers where they are. “Through our investment themes, we have identified opportunities that engage and empower the individual on a deeper level. The rise of the ‘activated patient’ has resulted in a wave of new tools that allow people to take control of their own mental and physical health, data, and outcomes,” stated Eller.
The companies include Aila, Clinical Platform, Eggschain Inc., Etta, Health Cost IQ, Healthiby, Hippo Health, Inc., Hue Health, iHealthAI, InovCares Connected Comprehensive Healthcare, LLC, Lifemesh, Medecipher Solutions, Prezence, SageSurfer, Samata Health, The Natural Nipple Corp., and Vascugenix.
Aila
Gone is the age of being overly caffeinated, lacking nutrition, and being inundated with chemicals that have no place in our bodies. Aila is a women-owned active wellness brand, ushering in a new source of energy through superfood and vitamin blends to support your active lifestyle. Aila sets the stage for your most free and powerful state – giving you the energy to unlock what’s already inside and letting you just run with it.
Clinical Platform
Clinical Platform is a Pittsburgh based digital media platform provider of mission critical, patient education material and clinical trial recruitment services. The company is dedicated to improving the lives of patients via short – form video patient education information on the diagnosis of, treatments for and living with any chronic disease or illness. For pharmaceutical and medical device companies we offer a solution to the industry wide problem of accruing patients for clinical trials. For hospitals and caregivers, health plan providers and advocacy groups we offer white labeled videos libraries that can be used to educate patients outside of the hospital or practice setting. These libraries are the perfect solution to before, during and after tele-health visits.
Eggschain, Inc.
Eggschain is a digital health company that is a thought leader in the fertility, female-Healthtech, family-building and cryogenic preservation industries. Patent-granted and cloud-based, Eggschain provides an intermediary that facilities IVF procedures, egg-freezing, sperm-freezing, and donor process. We lead the thinking on chain of custody tracking of bio specimens, include sperm, eggs, embryos, genome, stem cell, tissues and organs, and other genetic material. We provide fertility doctor approved information and educate women, men, family and partners on how best to have a baby, and how to make decisions.
Etta
Etta is an AI-Dermatology decision support tool company started by 2 engineers and 3 dermatologists, that instantly identifies, screens, and scores the whole body for cancerous lesions and rashes. Etta is used by clinicians for Dermatology triage purposes, and is used by patients at home to map and monitor skin lesions and diseases in between appointments.
Health Cost IQ
Health Cost IQ is a SaaS ecosystem that helps minimize excessive healthcare spending through a proven methodology that identifies costly and avoidable risk factors present in medically insured populations, analyzes the risks, and provides clear solutions to help clients minimize those risks, thus reducing unnecessary costs, increasing operational efficiency, and saving organizations significant amounts of money.
Starting with the advanced predictive models and sophisticated algorithms embedded in our flagship Health Data IQ platform and utilizing our trademarked 3-step PIA® intervention methodology, employers, health plans, and other fiduciaries can now gain peace of mind in all key operational areas, including future cost and risk modeling, cost management, population health, opportunity discovery, and more.
Healthiby
Healthiby empowers and incentivizes people to prevent, better manage and reverse chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol.
Hippo Health, Inc.
Many would say that the modern healthcare experience is broken – in part due to lack of easy communication. Hippo Health makes it easy for you to talk to your doctor and care team, but then also allows that care team to talk easily with other care teams in the community for better care coordination. Through better on demand team-to-team communication, Hippo Health is changing healthcare for the better for patients and providers while saving payers money.
Hue Health
Hue Health is changing the way patients pay for and experience healthcare. Hue Health is a network of high-value providers that are paid based on performance and outcomes, not volume of services. Their goal is to build the largest network of value-based providers in the world.
iHealthAI
iHealthAI makes healthcare more efficient and more affordable, and eliminates unnecessary work for today’s workforce.
InovCares Connected Comprehensive Healthcare, LLC
InovCares is a behavior change platform for women, particularly women of color, that provides access and treatment to culturally-sensitive clinicians. InovCares combines real-time metabolic health data gathering with telehealth, computer vision, artificial intelligence, patient engagement rewards, and a sense of community.
Lifemesh
Healthy Practice, Happy Patients. Lifemesh helps traditional & alternative medical clinics rapidly deploy digital health and realize streamlined patient experiences, with optimized provider allocation.
Medecipher Solutions
Medecipher has introduced an online decision support platform for emergency department nursing managers to proactively staff and schedule nurses to meet patient demand. Medecipher’s flagship platform Flo is a cloud-based solution to drive annual, monthly, and daily nurse staffing decisions from a single operations-focused source of truth that incorporates each hospital’s unique position control, budgetary, nursing preference, and ease-of-use constraints. Flo is proven to reduce staff churn, improve operations, maintain safer staffing levels, and improve staff and provider satisfaction. Our leadership team is made up of industry veterans in operations research, hospital operations strategy, and IT/Informatics. Medicipher has a technical staff of engineers and data scientists. The team has extensive experience in clinical operations management, health IT, and data privacy and security. Medecipher’s sophisticated mathematical approaches will become the turning point in optimizing health system operational performance.
Prezence
Prezence is on a mission to be the #1 wellbeing solution for every body. Whether you’re a tech executive, a stay at home parent, or a laborer on a job site – we meet you where you are with mindful strategies to experience the present moment. Access mindfulness, meditation, movement, mental health, and more through the Prezence platform.Live, work, and gather mindfully with Prezence.
SageSurfer
SageSurfer is a National Science Foundation-backed HIPAA COMPLIANT Behavioral Healthcare digital care coordination & member engagement platform (web and mobile) that connects members with their full circle of the care team and helps them stay on track between visits. By combining an integrated care model using AI, personalized tools, and pre-built 150+ workflows, including culturally relevant, we’ve helped underserved members across the country to stay in treatment while unlocking millions of dollars in reimbursements and cost savings for providers.
Samata Health
Samata Health is a more progressive, affordable employee mental health benefit. Through our digital platform, we make it easy for companies of all sizes to support their teams and foster happy, healthy workplaces with our premium benefit at affordable, monthly, usage-based rates.
The Natural Nipple Corp.
The Natural Nipple was designed for seamless and stress-free breast and bottle feeding, with the only nipple that is researched and designed to mimic a mother’s shape, feel, and flow. By providing bottle to breast continuity, reducing latching problems, and promoting breastfeeding- The NaturalNipple solves the pain points both families and hospital supply are challenged with, so both caregivers can introduce a bottle without consequential latching problems or fatal complications from un-natural flow rate- reducing hospitals’ length of stay cost while improving health outcomes for future generations. Our business model and IP has received $400,000+ in grants & investments.
Vascugenix
Vascugenix is a medical device company developing innovative products to improve the safety and efficiency of interventional vascular procedures.
Each selected company receives an investment of $150,000 via standard post-money SAFE notes. In addition to JSF’s capital investment, the 17 startups will participate in an exclusive program for JSF portfolio founders, Jumpstart Insight. The 2-year program combines virtual learning with access to resources and a community of peers to give founders the edge required to succeed as healthcare entrepreneurs.
“We’ve partnered with leading institutions to curate strategic leadership, management, and healthcare programming that is tailored for the journey of an early-stage healthcare entrepreneur; making ‘Insight’ a truly impactful resource our founders can leverage,” said Krystin Devita, Community Manager at Jumpstart Foundry.
Jumpstart Foundry is a healthcare-focused private investment firm based in Nashville, TN. The JSF fund now includes 125 companies in its portfolio and was reported as one of Tennessee’s most active venture capital firms.
Hope Helmintoller
hope@jumpstarthealth.co
Content Marketing Manager | Jumpstart Foundry