HealthTap

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 19, 2011

HealthTap+ has reinvented the way people all over the world manage their health and well-being. Our free web and mobile apps enable 24/7 access to personalized, relevant, and trusted health information in the form of answers, tips, checklists, and news from over 67,000 U.S. doctors.

Members can get expert answers to their personal health questions, read personalized news and tips, and access expert reviews of health apps from HealthTap’s Medical Expert Network of more than 67,000 doctors for free.

In July 2014, HealthTap launched its premium HealthTap Prime subscription service. Prime members pay a monthly subscription fee for unlimited live consults with physicians via HD video, voice, and text chat. The service is available via any mobile device or personal computer.

HealthTap then launched HealthTap Concierge in October 2014, which connects members with their own doctors, via HD video, voice, and text chat for a low, per-consult fee. No monthly subscription is required to use HealthTap Concierge.

HealthTap released its first annual AppRx Report in January 2015. Thousands of doctors on HealthTap independently reviewed tens of thousands of health and wellness apps available in the iOS and Android app stores and provided recommendations for those they deemed the best.

In March 2015, HealthTap launched RateRx, the first free, large-scale resource of doctor ratings and reviews for over 4,000 drugs and medications. It was created by doctors to help consumers understand the effectiveness of drugs and treatments based on doctors' real-world experience.

 

The company is backed by leading investors such as Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Mayfield Fund, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Twitter

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 9, 2008

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.

Norwest Venture Partners

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on June 24, 2014

Our experience makes us realistic about how businesses unfold, and we can advise our portfolio companies at all phases of growth. Our size, global presence and heritage enable us to offer our venture capital and growth equity portfolio companies high-level, long-term assistance.

Bessemer Venture Partners

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on August 5, 2008

In 1911, Henry Phipps founded Bessemer Securities to reinvest the proceeds of his sale of Carnegie Steel for the benefit of his descendents. The start-up investment operations were spun out into Bessemer Venture Partners, which now operates out of seven offices around the globe.

Change Healthcare Corp

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 21, 2015

Name of the company

Misfit

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on February 10, 2015

Misfit invents and manufactures wearable and smart home products.

Practice Fusion

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 25, 2009

Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based EMR  system to physicians. With medical charting, scheduling, e-prescribing (eRx), lab integrations, referral letters, Meaningful Use certification, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion's EMR the complex needs of today's healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo. Practice Fusion is the fastest growing Electronic Medical Record community in the country with more than 150,000 users serving 40 million patients. The company closed a $23 million Series B round of financing led by Founders Fund in 2011. For more information about Practice Fusion, please visit www.practicefusion.com

Reuters

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on February 21, 2014

Name of the company

Viewics, Inc.

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 31, 2015

Viewics is an analytics platform which enables healthcare organizations to increase profits and improve quality. Our flagship business intelligence solution, Viewics Health Insighter (VHI), addresses the clinical, financial and operational needs of key departments in the hospital.

Viewics provides a secure multi-departmental data platform that scales across a department's information needs and puts insights and analytical capabilities in the hands of key decision makers. 

VHI is a fully managed end-to-end solution, from data extraction to interactive dashboards that can be easily understood, customized and shared. With Viewics' rapid implementation process and robust support, organizations are able to drive value immediately.

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Viewics Explainer Video

Luminate Health

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on December 18, 2014

Luminate Health provides labs and healthcare providers with a first-of-its-kind, digital platform for their patients to access and understand their lab results. The company is a SaaS provider, and is partnering with commercial, specialty, and hospital labs across the US. Luminate Health is also helping these labs satisfy a major new federal rule from HHS, which now requires all US labs - commercial, specialty, and hospital - to provide patients with direct access to their lab results.

Luminate Health now counts a number of top-150 US labs among its customers, and continues to see a very positive response to its product from both patients and physicians.

Luminate Health is focused on leading the shift toward patient-centric healthcare by engaging patients to actively manage their own health, and leveraging the growing volume of available health data to improve patient care and outcomes.

The company is venture-backed, and includes KEC Ventures and several prominent healthcare-focsed angels as investors.

InterWest Partners

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on December 11, 2013

InterWest’s primary focus is providing venture capital to early-stage Healthcare and Information Technology companies. Our Healthcare team invests capital in a wide array of early-stage companies including preclinical- and clinical-stage firms with great potential, as well as companies with commercial-stage assets. The InterWest IT team typically favors funding development-stage companies, but also provides capital to early-stage companies with near-term ROI potential.

Although we generally invest in the early stages of a company's development, we evaluate companies on their individual merits rather than their investment stage. We invest an average of $10 to 15 million over the span of our involvement with each company in our portfolio. - See more at: http://www.interwest.com/about/interwest/how-interwest-works#sthash.c0ITX2RY.dpuf

Mansa Capital

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on February 3, 2015

Name of the company

Canvas Venture Fund

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on January 31, 2015

Privail, Inc.

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 9, 2014

Privail is developing point-of-care (POC) diagnostics for the early detection of infectious diseases, with an initial focus on HIV. Unlike current POC diagnostic methods, which focus on the detection of antibodies or nucleic acids, Privail's proprietary technology directly detects the virus itself and is available in a simple, low-cost and portable device. By getting tested immediately, patients can receive earlier and more effective treatment, and ultimately reduce the spread of disease.

 

The Problem

There is a lack of early HIV identification and treatment. Today, over 54% of the 35 million HIV+ population are unaware of their disease status until symptoms appear, and as a result, are 11 times more likely to die within their first year of infection. This unawareness also increases the risk of spreading HIV. Current diagnostics, which rely on the detection of antibodies or nucleic acids, present barriers to early testing because of their high costs and long window periods. Additionally, in regions such as Africa and India, where more than 80% of the HIV population resides, social stigma associated with getting tested creates an additional barrier.  

 

Privail's Solution

Privail is developing simple, low-cost, and portable POC diagnostics for the detection and monitoring of infectious and inflammatory diseases. Our device will lie at the intersection between a pregnancy test and diabetes test, where all that is required is a small amount of blood from a finger prick, and within minutes, a patient will obtain easy-to-read results in the form of a color output (red or blue) or a digital output (“+” or “-“). Similarly, we will also be providing a laboratory test for hospital/clinical use, where a small patient blood sample can be mixed with Privail’s testing solution, and within minutes, results can be read with standard laboratory equipment. Furthermore, Privail’s proprietary technology is a platform that can be easily adapted for the early detection of a spectrum of diseases. Hence, there is huge future potential to impact the lives of those at risk for common diseases as well as upcoming threats.

 

Global Impact

By providing affordable tests that can be conducted in the privacy of one's home, we set the stage for enhanced health outcomes on a global level. The earlier a disease is detected, the better patients can enhance health outcomes and avoid disease transmission.

HealthPrize Technologies

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on February 2, 2015

HealthPrize offers a digital medication adherence platform that leverages rewards, education, and gamification to motivate patients to stick with their prescription medications. Patients on HealthPrize are highly engaged: they log in over 4 times per week and demonstrate mean prescription fill rates that are 50% higher than average. Its proprietary prescription verification system verifies each prescription fill for accuracy in adherence tracking. The company currently sells its platform on a SaaS basis primarily to pharmaceutical companies. 

Doximity

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on December 11, 2013

Doximity is the largest and fastest growing verified network for physicians. It’s a secure place for doctors to collaborate with each other and grow their own professional profile. The network currently boasts more than 220,000 members and aspires to fill distinct needs for physicians, providing:

• Powerful networking and professional growth opportunities across specialties and regions
• A place to manage their identity and reputation
• A secure platform for meeting, messaging, sharing information and collaborating on cases 
• Technology that goes beyond the fax machine and phone calls
• Continued education opportunities that allow professionals to stay up-to-date on the latest medical news and research

 

 

Casper de Clercq

Joined Vator on February 9, 2015

Nate Gross

Joined Vator on February 2, 2015

Nina Kjellson

Joined Vator on January 7, 2015

Board Member, Essential Access Health

Adam Jackson

Joined Vator on February 4, 2015

Adam Jackson is co-founder and CEO of Doctor On Demand. He began his career as a software engineer and architect, and soon went on to found several companies that have since been acquired.

Bambi Francisco Roizen

Joined Vator on June 28, 2008

Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.

Dhiren Bhatia

Joined Vator on February 4, 2015

Dhiren is the CEO and Co-Founder of Viewics, Inc., which was founded in 2009. Prior to Viewics, he spent a year in IT Strategy at Sutter Health.

Kevin King

Joined Vator on March 16, 2010

Jason Wreath

Joined Vator on April 15, 2011

Ron Gutman is an inventor and a serial technology entrepreneur who has built several successful companies in digital health. He's currently the Founder and CEO of HealthTap. He's also a writer, speaker, angel investor and advisor to tech startups.

Tom Lee

Joined Vator on January 16, 2015

Founder / CEO of One Medical Physician Entrepreneur

Jason Torres

Joined Vator on January 12, 2015

Investor in disruptive healthcare companies looking for growth capital.

Christopher Parks

Joined Vator on January 21, 2015

Ryan Howard

Joined Vator on February 3, 2015

Ryan is the founder, chairman and CEO of Practice Fusion. He founded the company in 2005 and has grown it into the largest physician-patient community in the US.

Sonny Vu

Joined Vator on February 10, 2015

Katrina Firlik, MD

Joined Vator on February 2, 2015

Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of HealthPrize Technologies. Prior to founding HealthPrize, Katrina was a neurosurgeon. She is also the author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside. @KatrinaFirlik