What If Ventures

At Town Hall Ventures, we seek to partner with entrepreneurs who are as passionate as we are about changing our health care system. When we invest, we will make a substantial commitment of our time, network and resources to support entrepreneurs and their investors through the ups and downs of building successful companies. It’s why we choose to invest in fewer opportunities than most and only in the most impactful - focusing all of our energy working side-by-side with our partners to create and scale the breakthrough companies that will transform health care. Our Mission Using innovation to fix health inequities. Those fortunate enough to be born in the right zip code live longer and healthier lives than those in communities next door. Systemically, people who represent diverse racial, ethnic and gender identities, especially when combined with lower socioeconomic status, experience substantially worse health outcomes in the United States. These inequities in health - physical, mental and social determinants - result in individual, community and national struggles. When we provide great health care to the least fortunate, we are benefiting our entire societal fabric. We have an opportunity to shift investment away from nice-to-have ideas to proven solutions that improve care for populations that have long been underserved. Innovations aimed at improving care have been slow to come to areas that need it most, including: primary care, mental health, addiction, end-of-life care, kidney care, maternity and newborn health. The costs of ignoring these issues are carried by everyone. Enter the mission-driven entrepreneur. Over the past few years, innovative health care delivery approaches that serve Medicare populations have begun to emerge. Entrepreneurs have brought a new focus on reinvigorating primary care and pushing care into more comfortable settings. These models are just getting started, touching only 2% of the Medicare population today, but have tremendous potential to transform health for millions more. Thanks to an improved set of incentives, similar innovation is now coming to Medicaid. Entrepreneurs are beginning to focus on the needs of this population with the goal of dramatically improving health outcomes for patients and providing value to the hospitals, managed care plans, and State and Federal governments who care for them. Companies who create effective solutions to these challenges have the opportunity to improve the lives of 120 million Americans.

At the foundation of each of our investments is a commitment to helping our portfolio companies grow so they can better serve employers of all size. Employers make significant investments to make health care more accessible and easier to navigate. Our portfolio companies bring innovations to market that meet some of employers’ most pressing health care needs, including care navigation, advanced primary care, fertility planning and advanced analytics. Here are some of our current key areas of focus: Drug Management: Prices for drugs – particularly in high-cost categories like oncology, obesity and cell gene therapy – are outpacing inflation. We seek investment opportunities that address drug spend and access, with a specific focus on high-cost drugs or conditions that are highly prevalent in employer-sponsored insurance populations. Data and Analytics: Employers need solutions that make the vast amount of available health care data actionable and tailored to their insured populations. As such, we consider investment opportunities that provide the necessary infrastructure and analytic capabilities to impact administrative efficiency or drive improvements in health care quality and price transparency. Small- and Medium-Sized Business (SMB) Solutions: Rising health care costs place a severe burden on SMBs. In fact, the smallest employers are facing the biggest hikes in premium costs. Employers with just 1-10 employees saw a 12% increase in average family plan premiums in 2022. To help navigate this challenge, we weigh investment opportunities that enable SMBs to provide more affordable, high-quality, and equitable health care to employees through new purchasing and coverage models. Behavioral Health: Fragmented solutions have proven ineffective in addressing the behavioral health needs of patients. To help drive change in this area, we’re considering investment opportunities that approach patient care holistically, with behavioral and medical spend linked to create a comprehensive and unified view of the patient. Women’s Health: Despite deep investments in this area from employers, too many gaps in health and access to care still exist. There are opportunities to solve for the discrete, largely unmet, needs of women in the workforce, including but not limited to maternity, menopause, and comprehensive women’s primary care.

As part of our investment approach, we developed a structured evaluation process, the “FemHealth Framework.” The first element (re)imagines women’s health as conditions appearing only in women, mostly in women, and differently in women. This concept from the FemHealth Framework (© 2019 FemHealth Ventures) was first published in 2019 and is increasingly thought of as a new lens through which to view women’s health. At FemHealth Ventures, we are excited about the increasing adoption of this broader definition of women’s health and the exciting new treatments it will engender. Only in Women Some conditions appear only in women. Examples include: endometriosis polycystic ovarian syndrome cervical cancer Mostly in Women Some conditions appear mostly in women. Examples include: breast cancer lupus multiple sclerosis Differently in Women Some conditions appear differently in women. Examples include: heart disease diabetes asthma Every cell has a sex A universe of possibilities is opened in women’s health when we start with the most basic building block: our cells. Each of the 30 trillion cells in a woman’s body has a different chromosomal makeup than a man. For example, a skin cell from a woman will have XX chromosomes, but a skin cell from a man will have XY chromosomes. This difference between women and men holds true throughout every single cell in the body. As a result, even the same disease can present differently in women versus men and require distinct treatment paradigms. Women’s health is more than “bikini medicine.” The term “bikini medicine” generally refers to conditions treated by obstetricians or gynecologists. We’ve (re)imagined women’s health as a broad spectrum of conditions that can impact the whole body, ranging from ovarian cancer, to autoimmune disease, to cardiovascular disease, and everything in between. A multitude of possibilities for innovation in women’s health exist. And we are here to help bring them to life.

It is time for a new paradigm. Technology and business needs to be in service to humanity, not the other way around. We invest in entrepreneurs and early stage companies that are creating ways to… Nurture human connection, not division. Help heal our addictions, not create and profit from them. Enable us to live more mindfully, not be a source of distraction. Support equality and social justice, not economic and social division. We are currently raising our first fund. If you are an accredited investor who wants to be a part of the fund, let us know.

Pivotal Ventures (“Pivotal”) is an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates. We partner, invest, and advocate to remove barriers that hold people back, concentrating on areas where progress and opportunity have stalled for millions of Americans. The pursuit of a more equal and equitable United States - not just for some of us, but for everyone - is what drives us forward. It's the why behind every problem we tackle. We approach partnership with big ambitions and open minds, embracing what’s already working and innovating beyond traditional philanthropy. Some areas we focus on: women in technology and innovation; Women in public office; women and girls of color; adolescent mental health; paid family and medical leave; and caregiving. Inspired by our founder, we reach across communities and sectors to bring together changemakers who can scale up proven ideas and catalyze new ones. We learn from their experiences, amplify their resources, then step back so they can lead. Our impatience with the status quo is fueled by an optimism that progress is always possible.

PsyMed Ventures is an early-stage venture fund investing in frontier mental health technologies. Our mission is to provide capital and support to companies that align healing, responsibility, and profitability. PsyMed’s focus areas include psychedelic medicine, neurotechnology, and precision psychiatry.