Choosing the right Digital Health Investor is crucial if you want to seek investment for your business or startup. Part of what investors bring to table is a network, expertise and experience in the domain, at least the good ones do.
It’s something that I’m regularly asked about by founders who are at the idea stage (or slightly beyond) and are looking to raise some capital.
Rather than keeping a list internally and sharing it one-on-one I decided to share it for everyone benefit. In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the best 16 Digital Health Investors, along with my top 3 choices and several Notable Mentions, so that you can pick the best one for you.
When selecting the best Digital Health investors, it’s hard to know exactly what the investors are like behind the scenes. Their websites are all seemingly the same.
These digital health investor reviews will give you three simple takeaways:
- How to pick the best investor for you.
- What to expect when first approaching these investors
- A first point of contact
Whether you’re just starting a digital health business, or doing some investor research, let’s pick the best digital health investors that will help you improve patient care as quickly as possible
Let’s get started.
Who are the Best Digital Health Investors?
The best digital health investors for early-stage founders are super active at the pre-seed and seed funds stages in digital health.
With the market under some pressure, digital health funding continues to cool down as investors write smaller checks and focus on early-stage startups. This is actually good news for early-stage founders.
There are plenty of funds that are primarily focused on Series A and beyond, but do make a small number of investments per year in seed and pre-seed. Those are not included in the list.
If you’re looking for capital, please reach out to these funds as they can be fantastic longer-term partners – and if they don’t come in at an early round they may well do so for the next.
My top 3 picks are a16z, 7wireVentures, and The National Science Foundation.
Here are my top 16 picks for the best digital health investors:
1. a16z
As one of the largest and most well-known investors in silicon valley a16z (otherwise known as Andreeson Horowitz) is an active player in the digital health space. From Omada, Komodo to Ribbon Health, a16z isn’t shy in investing in early-stage ventures. Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage start-ups and established growth companies
- Typical Investment Size: $1-10m for pre-seed and seed.
- Number of Deals Per Year: 10-12
- Top Deal Priority: “Uncapped upside if it works!”
- Fund Philosophy: “Ex-founders backing founders, with an operating platform that creates an unfair advantage for them in the market”
- Specialty areas: “Any company building tech platforms that are coming to market as either a horizontal infrastructure play or a full-stack tech-enabled services play. We frequently publish our specific market maps on our blog at a16z.com”
- Past Notable Investments: Marley Medical, Turquoise Health
- Initial Contact: Justin Larkin (jlarkin@a16z.com)
2. 7wireVentures
7wireWentures is an early stage, healthcare venture fund. They help entrepreneurs who focus on empowering the Informed Connected Health Consumer.
- Typical Investment Size: $4-6m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 2-4
- Top Deal Priority: “Amazing leaders”
- Fund Philosophy: “We are all healthcare operators. We’ve done it before and get in the trenches with our founders to help them build.”
- Specialty areas: “We invest in companies empowering Informed Connected Health Consumers – helping people to become better stewards of their own health”
- Past Notable Investments: Livongo and Caraway
- Initial Contact: tunde@7wireventures.com
3. National Science Foundation
One of the best-kept secrets in the world of startup capital is the SBIR Grant. The National Science Foundation has billions of dollars it’s congressionally mandated to give away every year to early-stage founders and small businesses. The NSF offers funding for early-stage R&D and takes no equity in your company — you retain full control over your team, the direction of your work, and your intellectual property. NSF helps startups navigate the earliest stages of technology translation, investing roughly $200 million annually in approximately 400 startups. Each startup can receive up to $2 million to support translational research and development. See the Medtech Founder Guide to Securing SBIR Funding.
- Typical Investment Size: $275k-$2m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 200-500
- Top Deal Priority: “We fund companies based on Impact, Technological Innovation, Market Pull, and ability to Scale.”
- Fund Philosophy: “We support research and development of deep technologies – those that are based on discoveries in fundamental science and engineering. As we review applications, we consider your technology’s innovativeness, commercial potential, and possible societal impact”
- Specialty areas: “From advanced manufacturing to artificial intelligence to biological technologies to environmental technologies, we fund nearly all areas of technology”. Note specific funding topics include Digital Health and Biomedical Technologies.
- Past Notable Investments
- Initial Contact: Multiple Program Directors
4. Rock Health
Rock Health exists to accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge digital health innovation. They do this by shrinking the knowledge gap between early innovators and major corporations that are hungry to lead change in healthcare. They are both a fund and an advisory. They are digital health experts whose clients rely on them to provide them with varied perspectives and strategic insights on the healthcare industry—especially about what comes next.
- Typical Investment Size: $500k-$5m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 4-5
- Top Deal Priority: “I look at the founders first: People with unmatched drive to succeed, the confidence to handle adversity, and the humility to learn quickly”
- Fund Philosophy: “We’re more than investors: We’re market makers. Rock Health Capital invests in early-stage innovators while our sister firm, Rock Health Advisory, sits alongside the fund helping Fortune 500 clients develop digital health innovation strategies. No one else has Tom Cassels!”
- Specialty areas: “Software and data-driven business models in healthcare. We don’t invest in services, drugs, or pure-play Dx / medical devices”
- Past Notable Investments: Omada Health, Collective Health
- Initial Contact: venture@rockhealth.com, bill@rockhealth.com (General Partner Bill Evans)
5. Healthy Ventures
Healthy Ventures is a seed stage fund focused on digital health technologies. They work with founders to build companies that scale healthcare.
- Typical Investment Size: $1-3m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 4-5
- Top Deal Priority: “#1 thing – Team. At the early stages, the ideas change, the markets change, so the team needs to be great and able to adapt”
- Fund Philosophy: “Bringing a pure healthcare and a pure tech operating & investing backgrounds together to understand, develop, and partner with great founders.”
- Specialty areas: “We invest in every area of digital health except for therapeutics and straight healthcare services (but we do invest in tech-enabled services)”
- Past Notable Investments: Season Health and Concert Health
- Initial Contact: pitch@healthy.vc
6. Virtue VC
Virtue was founded in 2021 and is a venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas. The firm seeks to invest in the early-stage healthcare sector.
- Typical Investment Size: $500k-$1m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 8-12
- Top Deal Priority: “Earned insight into strong market pull of large, inevitable markets”
- Fund Philosophy: “Our focus — we exclusively partner with pre-seed & seed healthcare founders. Period. As such, our entire investment strategy, founder services, network relationships and other proprietary knowledge / resources are designed to uniquely support healthcare founders in the first 12-24 months of building their business”
- Specialty areas: “We only invest in the ‘business of care’ which we see comprised of the 3D’s: the data, dollars, and delivery of care & we don’t do traditional life sciences & therapeutics, medical device or biotech”
- Past Notable Investments: Nomi Health, Evvy
- Initial Contact: Sean Doolan (sd@virtuevc.com)
7. Lerer Hippeau
Lerer Hippeau is an early-stage venture capital firm founded and operated in New York City. Since 2010, they have invested in entrepreneurs with great ideas who aren’t afraid to do hard things. their portfolio includes more than 350 leading enterprise and consumer businesses including Guideline, MIRROR, Blockdaemon, K Health, Allbirds, ZenBusiness, and Thrive.
- Typical Investment Size: $500k-$2m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 20-25
- Top Deal Priority: “We like to say that we’re looking to invest in ‘good people with great ideas’ – our community is strong and bringing in founders who will contribute positively (with their outlook and business ideas) is important to us”
- Fund Philosophy: “We’re operators ourselves, so we’ve been there before and know how to give our founders more of what they actually need from investors and less of what they don’t. We invest in companies early and stay late – we’re in our founders’ corners for the long haul. And, though we invest in companies from all over the country, we are at home in New York, so we’re drawn to founders to embody New York’s signature audacity, endurance, and winning mindset. We unlock New York for those founders because it’s the best place in the world to build a business”
- Specialty areas: “We invest in all areas of digital health and are happy to look at various companies in the space”
- Past Notable Investments: K Health, Vibe Bio
- Initial Contact: Graham Brown, Partner at Lerer Hippeau
8. Looking Glass Capital
Looking Glass Capital was founded in 2019 and is a venture capital firm based in New York, New York. The firm seeks to invest in mission-driven founders building enterprise and consumer-facing companies across health, climate, and empowerment.
- Typical Investment Size: $300-500k
- Number of Deals Per Year: 10-12
- Top Deal Priority: “Deep understanding of and familiarity with the market and major players in the category, likely through prior relevant work experience”
- Fund Philosophy: “Deep roster of complementary and relevant portfolio companies that can help one another coupled with compounding experience from nearly a decade investing in the space”
- Specialty areas: “Vertical specialty care, digital therapeutics, healthcare IT / infrastructure; don’t invest in hardware, life sciences, biotech per se”
- Past Notable Investments: Hone Health, Sylvan Health
- Initial Contact: Adam Besvinick; adam@lookingglass.vc
9. RH Capital
RH Capital a Rhia Venturesfund, invests in early-stage high-impact companies that are driving innovation, access, and equity across the reproductive and maternal health landscape while delivering strong financial returns to investors.
- Typical Investment Size: $250k-$1m for an initial check with reserves for follow-on checks
- Number of Deals Per Year: 6-8
- Top Deal Priority: “Ability to address significant unmet needs in women’s health”
- Fund Philosophy: “Deep expertise in women’s health”
- Specialty areas: “We are a women’s health-focused fund across the life sciences, digital health, health services and consumer. We invest in digital health companies with a women’s health focus”
- Past Notable Investments: Ovia, Nurx
- Initial Contact: Thomya Goode
10. Flare Capital
Flare Capital is a team of proven healthcare technology venture capital investors known for their unparalleled strategic industry resources, insight and total commitment to the success of its entrepreneurs. Flare Capital raised one of the industry’s largest dedicated venture capital funds focused exclusively on early stage and emerging growth investments in healthcare technology innovation. Selected investments include Bright Health, Circulation, ClearDATA, HealthVerity, Iora Health, Valence Health, and Welltok, in addition to a strategic partnership with Rock Health, a leading healthcare technology incubator seed fund based in Silicon Valley.
- Typical Investment Size: $100k-$10m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 5-10
- Top Deal Priority: “Team”
- Fund Philosophy: “Deep relationships with health care strategics”
- Specialty areas: “We invest in healthtech and related healthcare services”
- Past Notable Investments: Bright Health, Iora Health
- Initial Contact: Margaret Malone
11. Susa Ventures
Susa Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm, investing in a growing family of dreamers and builders. They invest in businesses with strong compounding moats, such as proprietary data, economies of scale and/or network effects.
- Typical Investment Size: $1-3m at the seed & pre-seed
- Number of Deals Per Year: 20-25
- Top Deal Priority: “Compelling founders building businesses with compounding moats”
- Fund Philosophy: “We provide healthcare founders with capital, customers, and community. We are exceptional at helping seed-stage founders raise their Series A with top-tier firms”
- Specialty areas: “At Susa, we invest broadly in digital health. Areas include care coordination/delivery, data integration/analytics, clinical infrastructure/workflows, and finance operations/insurance. We tend not to invest in pure life science and biotech companies”
- Past Notable Investments: Photon, The Wound Co
- Initial Contact: Derick En’Wezoh, MD (derick@susaventures.com)
12. Lux Capital
Lux Capital is a venture capital firm that makes long-term bets on contrarians and outsiders. They believe the next generation of industrialist titans will be scientists, technologists and inventors who are doing more than challenging the status quo.. Over the past two decades, Lux has expanded from our New York City roots to Silicon Valley, and built a $4 billion AUM firm of more than 30 full-time professionals, with a wide spectrum of technical backgrounds and the versatility to invest at any stage, from $100,000 to $100 million.
- Typical Investment Size: “We do everything from pre-seed to pre-IPO, so wide range in check sizes”
- Number of Deals Per Year: Dozens
- Top Deal Priority: “Founder!”
- Fund Philosophy: “Our hands on, intimate approach — and each partner has a bit of their own flavor of secret sauce”
- Specialty areas: “We have a broad portfolio and have invested in everything from digital therapeutics to care delivery to value-based care, software for R&D and more”
- Past Notable Investments: Alife, Summer Health
- Initial Contact: Any investor at Lux, Deena Shakir
13. General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that makes early-stage and transformational investments. General Catalyst backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are building innovative technology companies and market leading businesses.
- Typical Investment Size: “We have tremendous flexibility in check size, prefer to lead, and seek ownership that is commensurate with how active we are as investors. We help to build companies (which we call “hatching”), or invest from seed to pre-IPO”
- Number of Deals Per Year: “It varies year to year. There have been more than 30 investments made in health tech companies since the first Health Assurance Fund was launched in April of 2021”
- Top Deal Priority: “Passionate founders seeking to build enduring businesses.”
- Fund Philosophy: “Our Health Assurance Network is leading the evolution from a ‘sick care’ system to a resilient, proactive system designed to help people stay well, bend the cost curve, and make quality care more affordable and more accessible to all”
- Specialty areas: “General Catalyst is thesis-driven and invests broadly in healthcare across software, services, and life sciences. Everything is centered around our Health Assurance vision – creating a resilient system that is value-oriented and enhances quality, access, equity, and affordability”
- Past Notable Investments: For seed: Flexpa and Lottie
- Initial Contact: Holly Maloney, Managing Director (holly@generalcatalyst.com) or Mo Punjwani, Associate (mpunjwani@generalcatalyst.com
)
14. Define Ventures
Define Ventures partners with entrepreneurs with the digital health focus and expertise that they deserve to reimagine healthcare that will change all of our lives. They are based in San Francisco.
- Typical Investment Size: $1-20m
- Number of Deals Per Year: No set number
- Top Deal Priority: “Strategic Vision to Build a Meaningful Company”
- Fund Philosophy: “We look to Define partnership”
- Specialty areas: “We look at all areas of digital health”
- Past Notable Investments: Our previous partners include Livongo, HIMS and Unite Us
- Initial Contact: Lynne O’Keefe (Lynne@definevc.com) or Hong Truong (hong@definevc.com)
15. Overwater Ventures
Founded by Kristina Simmons, Overwater Ventures focuses on Early Stage and looks for leading or co-leading pre-seed to seed
Kristian is veteran of lululemon, Andreeson Horowitz as a partner and Khosla Ventures. She served on the boards including Alivecor, Spyce, Daye, Overture Life, Casca, and Ginger.
Kristina noticed venture changing, and an opportunity to better support founders and create more value for early-stage companies. She started Overwater Ventures to do venture differently
- Typical Investment Size: $100k – $2m
- Number of Deals Per Year: 12
- Top Deal Priority: “Amazing team”
- Fund Philosophy: “Helping founders to turn breakthrough tech or science into scalable businesses people love”
- Specialty areas: “Most areas that are b2c or b2b2c. There generally needs to be some science or technology advantage. Some areas: women’s health, family health, cancer + diseases, neuro, longevity. They don’t do anything in traditional pharma”
- Past Notable Investments: Overture Life, Conceive, Fellow, RTHM
- Initial Contact: Kristina Simmons Southwark (kristina@overwater.vc)
16. Jazz Venture Partners
JAZZ Venture Partners invests in companies that extend the boundaries of human performance — improving how we live, learn, work, play, and experience the world.
They seek breakthroughs at the frontiers of technology and science, such as advances in artificial intelligence, neurobiology, augmented reality, and closed-loop human-computer systems.
- Typical Investment Size: $0.5-25M
- Number of Deals Per Year: 10
- Top Deal Priority: “An exceptional team tackling a market with great potential!”
- Fund Philosophy: “The JAZZ team is unique and cross-disciplinary, having deep expertise in neuroscience, technology, healthcare, media, and finance. Virtually all of us have been operators and built venture backed startups before, and we continue to love nurturing company formation projects within the firm. Having symbiotic skills across technology, (health, bio or media, etc), and enterprise, we get most excited about investments at meaningful convergence points across these areas.”
- Specialty areas: “Do: Sustainable Well-being (Consumer and B2B approaches that improve human performance throughout the lifespan from early childhood to aging-in-place) and Digital Medicine (Clinically validated software therapeutics validated by randomized clinical trials, regulated by the FDA, prescribed by physicians, and reimbursed by insurance). Don’t: Traditional pharma (we’re more interested in tech driven biology).”
- Past Notable Investments: Woebot Health, Applied VR, OMA Fertility, Akili, Pear Therapeutics
- Initial Contact: Amanda Way (amanda@jazzvp.com)
Notable Mentions
While our Top 15 Best Digital Health Investors List is up above, there are several other great investors that could be a great fit for your business. The 14 Notable Mentions are not bad investors, they just aren’t as active as the Top 15 or have a more limited investment thesis. Here’s our list of 14 Notable Mentions:
Summary
There you have it. The top 16 Digital Health Investors for 2022.
You’re ready to start your fundraising journey armed with a few more insights about the digital health investor landscape!
Learn more about making a difference in digital health and which resources might benefit you most – Medtech Founder provides in-depth information that helps you succeed in today’s digital health care.
Seeking a NSF SBIR Project phase I funding for a new product development.
Hi Crystal,
I’m happy to help. I have downloadable materials (templates) and a newly launched coaching program that might be of interest!
Hello Christian,
Dr. Anthony Balsamo and I would like to speak with you about a new platform for healthcare that we are creating. We are gaining support of several providers and big name companies with a large reach and we believe this may be of great interest to you.
Is there a phone number and time when we can speak?
Richard Cavalli and Dr. Anthony Balsamo, Geisinger
Just curious why Bessemer Venture Partners is not on the list? They have a large healthcare fund or portfolio for digital health.