There is a tremendous opportunity to create new value through transformative healthcare investments in tenacious entrepreneurs within the healthcare startup space. Entrepreneurs who will be the founders of leveraging technology that supports the consumerization of healthcare, making it more personalized and more efficient. They are former healthcare practitioners, biomedical researchers, and consumers of health information who just can’t be satisfied by the inefficiencies of the current healthcare system – and they are restless to transform the industry.
Our Investment Conviction: The Transformation of Healthcare
These innovators need support from investors that possess a special combination of prior execution successes and deep domain expertise in the healthcare system. Furthermore, they need investors who inherently understand the clinical context and the ways to win with technology. Xcellerant Ventures aims to match their passion with strong investment conviction in the transformation of healthcare.
In the 2014 publication “Conviction in Equity Investing”, Mike Sebastian and Sudhakar Attaluri defined conviction as “the willingness to take risk and express beliefs through a bold course of action, in pursuit of long-term goals” (Sebastian & Attaluri 2014, Journal of Portfolio Management). The authors contend that very few venture capital fund managers demonstrate true skill in their investment approach, and that the key differentiator in managers who perform well and those that don’t lay in their ability to invest with conviction; to take risks based on the manager’s deeply held belief in the value of a small group of investments with proper portfolio management.
We couldn’t agree more. It takes a long time for technological change to happen in healthcare. Anecdotally, it can take 20 years for a new technology or beneficial discovery to become widely adopted. Even titans of technology such as Google have tried and failed to accelerate adoption. It took the occurrence of a once-in-a-century, catastrophic pandemic to speed up the use of no-brainer solutions like telemedicine and at-home diagnostic testing.
The Time is Now to Invest in Early-Stage Medical Technology
Right now, the timing is ideal to rigorously select early-stage technology-based solutions that can transform wide segments of the healthcare system. Arizona and the entire southwest U.S. are fertile grounds for deploying the best principles of rapid prototyping and human-centered design. Xcellerant will benefit from the highly collaborative business ecosystem here in Arizona that is ready for early adoption. The opportunity to address the need of bending the cost curve of the current $4 Trillion healthcare industry is urgent and must be acted on before that figure doubles and becomes an unmanageable burden for society. Xcellerant Ventures has this bold course of action and will invest with conviction in healthcare startups that are geared towards healthcare transformation now – not later. Xcellerant invests in healthcare-focused startups that matter.
