Vator contributor stories

The next era in mobile content discovery

by Steven Loeb, December 11, 2018

Mobile Posse turns phones into concierges making recommendations

A look back portends a new opportunity The smartphone has changed just about every aspect our lives. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. From the way we travel, to the way we access information, calm or entertain ourselves to the way we share memories with loved ones - it’s been dramatically altered by simply having this robust computer in our ...

Online car retailer Vroom raises $146M, adds AutoNation as investor

by Steven Loeb, December 11, 2018

The company has now raised $440 million and will likely be going public in the next few years

The IPO market is heating up right now, with some of the biggest companies in tech announcing within days of each other their plans to go public in 2019: Uber, Lyft and Slack. That will no doubt spur other tech companies, even those that haven't raised $1 billion in funding, to also take the plunge. One of those is likely ...

How does EverQuote make money?

by Steven Loeb, December 7, 2018

EverQuote charges a referral fee to life, auto and home insurance agents

The InsurTech space is having a moment right now; in just the first half of 2018, global investment in reached over 85 percent of the total invested in all of 2017, which itself was a record year for the space. That includes companies like Medicare Advantage provider Devoted Health, which raised $300 million in October; Oscar Health, which raised $375 million from Alphabet in August; ...

Walgreens partners with FedEx for its next-day prescription delivery service

by Steven Loeb, December 6, 2018

The company is competing against the likes of Amazon, which bought PillPack for $1B this summer

There seems to be a race right now in the pharma space to offer the fastest on-demand delivery option. And the competition is heating up. Not only do you have startups raising funding, such as Alto, which just this week raised a $50 million funding round, and Capsule, which also raised $50 million over the summer, but you also have ...

Accelerators targeting retail technology companies

by Steven Loeb, December 6, 2018

They include METRO Accelerator for Retail, Techstars Retail and RetailXelerator

For startups, there are numerous paths for getting their name out there. One way, which Vator has been covering recently, are startup competitions, but another popular method to get a foot in the door, as well as some funding and traction, are accelerators. These are programs that provide companies advice, guidance and various forms of support for startups in their early ...

Alto Pharmacy raises $50 million as it looks to make drugs cheaper and more convenient

by Steven Loeb, December 5, 2018

The company will use the funding to expand its services to markets beyond California

Medication is expensive, there's no getting around that. Medicare drugs are rising at 10x the rate of inflation, while, for every drug that saw cost go down in 2018 there were 96 drugs that saw prices go up. Even though insurance is often paying out a big chunk of the cost, people stil often simply cannot afford their often life saving drugs. ...

Alphabet's DeepMind unveils AlphaFold, an AI program creating 3D protein models

by Steven Loeb, December 4, 2018

AlphaFold recently won the the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction contest

Health has long been a key component of Google's business, whether that be trying out a smart contact lens to measure glucose levels in the wearer’s tears to the founding of Calico in 2013 with the aim of taking on the aging process. The company has no shortage of health initiatives it has tried out over the years. Now DeepMind, a ...

As the InsurTech space heats up, Bright Health raises $200 million

by Steven Loeb, November 30, 2018

The company has a unique business model where it only works with one health system in a given area

In just the first half of 2018, global investment in the InsurTech space reached over 85 percent of the total invested in all of 2017, with companies raising big funding rounds. That includes Medicare Advantage provider Devoted Health, which raised $300 million in October, and Oscar Health, which raised $375 million from Alphabet in August. If the pace keeps up for ...

Meet Keith Figlioli, General Partner at LRVHealth

by Steven Loeb, November 30, 2018

LRVHealth is a collaborative investing platform for healthcare insiders, by healthcare insiders

Venture capital used to be a cottage industry, with very few investing in tomorrow's products and services. Oh, how times have changed! While there are more startups than ever, there's also more money chasing them. In this series, we look at the new (or relatively new) VCs in the early stages: seed and Series A. But just who are these funds ...

Amazon takes a big leap in healthcare: using patient data for diagnosis

by Steven Loeb, November 29, 2018

Called Comprehend Medical, Amazon will use machine learning to extract data from EHRs

The promise of big data in healthcare has been that technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, would make it easier for a doctor to diagnose a patient and personalize care to ultimately improve outcomes. Not that the technology would supplant the doctor, necessarily, but that it would look at a patient's medical records or their test results and ...

Startup competitions seeking retail technology companies

by Steven Loeb, November 27, 2018

They include Retail Innovation Pitch Event and Retail Disrupt Startup Competition

If you're a startup seeking opportunities to get funded, educated or connected, startup competitions are a great resource. Vator has been holding its own competitions, using VatorX, to find and filter for the best startups. We've had some very successful and notable winners in the past that have gone on to raise big funding rounds including Thumbtack, DogVacay, Pokitdok, Grovo, Udemy ...

I'm thankful that some of the luster has come off of tech

by Steven Loeb, November 21, 2018

Now that the problems have been exposed, maybe we can finally fix them

Every year, around this time, I like to share something that happened in tech that has made me thankful. It's usually a piece of technology that has improved our lives or a positive trend in the industry. This year, it's different. Something has changed in the last 12 months or so; there's been a definite shift in how people look ...

How Cigna is tackling the mental and behavioral health spaces

by Steven Loeb, November 19, 2018

A conversation with Eva Borden, Senior Managing Director, Behavioral and Medical Solutions at Cigna

Earlier this year, Vator and HP's held a salon called SplashX Invent Health: Mental and Behavioral Health, in which entrepreneurs and investors discussed what is happening both in terms of technology and investments in the mental and behavioral health space. What we found was that it's a space that is growing quickly, with the number of companies getting funding, and the ...

Today's Entrepreneur: Emi Gal

by Steven Loeb, November 15, 2018

The quality of the startup is directly proportional with the quality of the team

Today's Entrepreneur is Emi Gal, co-founder and CEO of Ezra, a company that uses AI to screen for cancer. Emi started his first company, Brainient, when was was 19 and spent the following 10 years building it into one of the leading ad-tech companies in Europe. Brainient was acquired by Teads in September 2016 and he then spent two years ...

Direct-to-consumer cancer screening platform Ezra comes out of stealth with $4M

by Steven Loeb, November 15, 2018

Ezra looks to change cancer screening with MRI scans and artificial intelligence

Cancer screenings are so important to the lives of so many people, but the effectiveness of those tests is alarmingly low. With lung cancer screenings, for example, 56 percent of tests have false positives, meaning that those patients are exposed to more testing and radiation as a result. Ezra is a new company that is looking to put an end ...

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Steven Loeb