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John Sculley-backed health startup Audax raises $21M, SEC filing says

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:58:31 +0000

Audax Health, a digital health startup backed by former Apple CEO John Sculley and a group of established health professionals, has raised $21 million in debt, options and other securities, according to an SEC filing.

The filing, first spotted by the Washington Business Journal, indicates that the funding is part of a larger $45 million round and that the first sale took place in April.

Founded in 2010 by 23-year-old Grant Verstandig, the Washington, DC-based company works with insurance companies, such as Cigna, to offer a social, personalized platform that helps consumers make healthy living decisions while competing with others and earning rewards. After meeting Verstandig, Sculley reportedly become his mentor in addition to investing and serving as an Audax board member. According to a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek story, Sculley said Verstandig could be “the Steve Jobs of consumer health services.”

In addition to Sculley, other board members include Richard Klausner, a managing partner at The Column Group venture firm and former executive director of the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of TIAA-CREF and John Wallis Rowe, a professor of health policy at Columbia University’s School of Public Health. The filing, dated Thursday, comes on the heels of news that the company added four new executives, including former LivingSocial VP Camille Watson and former Meebo VP Tom Perrault.

Audax did not reply to a request for comment but we’ll update when we learn more.

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With HealthYear, Startup Health-backed Greatist takes a page from Codecademy

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:23:35 +0000

One year ago, New York-based Codeacademy sparked a learn-to-code craze with its CodeYear initiative that attracted hundreds of thousands of wannabe programmers (including Mayor Michael Bloomberg). This year, health and fitness site Greatist is hoping it can similarly light a fire under aspiring health enthusiasts with its own New Year’s effort called HealthYear.

Soon after seeing the success of CodeYear, Derek Flanzraich, founder and CEO of the New York-based health startup, said he started buying up domains for HealthYear.

“I was really stuck by the power of New Year’s resolutions and the power of people publicly committing to them,” he said. “[CodeYear] really hit the trend that people are increasingly interested in learning to code… I remember thinking there’s this exponentially growing trend of people committing to their health and building it into their lives more and perhaps we could try for something for health and wellness.”

The program — like CodeYear — is pretty simple: people sign up for one of six different tracks related to eating better, sleeping more, stressing less, running a 5k, boozing less or getting stronger. Each day, they receive a newsletter with general health tips and, each week, they get a message with advice and tips for sticking to their specific resolution.

This time of year, news sites, fitness magazines and morning shows are all chock full of advice for sticking to health-related New Year’s resolutions. But Flanzraich said Greatist’s tips and HealthYear reflect the startup’s overall identity and mission to be a trusted, authoritative site about health and fitness for a new generation of “young, savvy and social” consumers.

Greatist attempts to blend the social media know-how of Buzzfeed with the fun, approachable tone of fitnesss magazines with the scientific integrity of higher-brow health journals. Its in-house editorial team makes sure that all content — even articles about “60 healthier drinks for boozing” or the best foods for curing a hangover — is backed by studies from PubMed as well as vetted by Greatist’s own network of health and fitness experts.

So far, its approach seems to be working. In the last year, the site, which launched in 2011, has grown its traffic from under one million unique visitors to just under two million visitors. It also closed a seed round of funding (it declined to share details on the amount or the names of investors) and was accepted to the New York-based Startup Health Academy. Flanzraich also said the team has grown from five people to 14.

When Codecademy launched CodeYear, learning to code was just a nascent trend, while aspiring to improve one’s health — especially at the start of the year — is so common it can hardly be called a trend. And, so far, HealthYear’s registrants number in the hundreds, while CodeYear’s attracted hundreds of thousands in its first week. But Flanzraich is right that there is groundswell of new interest in health and fitness — at least in using new online resources, apps and digital devices that give people the ability to be more proactive about their health on a day-to-day basis. HealthYear may not help kick off a new movement in the way that CodeYear did, but it could tap into a growing surge of interest in digital health tools — from those that track and monitor fitness to those that keep people informed.

It’s also worth noting that while Codecademy attracted considerable attention at its launch, the company never disclosed how many people stuck with the program. Flanzraich said that even if HealthYear participants don’t follow every piece of advice or lose momentum after resolution season passes, he hopes it can continue to bring more awareness about the healthy steps they can take.

“We’re trying to give people nudges to stick to their resolutions,” he said. “It helps remind you that you’re in charge and that you can choose [to do] one healthier thing at a time.”

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HealthTap buys Q&A site Avvo Health to bulk up its community of online doctors

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 12:30:54 +0000

In a move that will nearly double its network of doctors available to answer patients’ questions online, Palo Alto-based HealthTap is acquiring Q&A site Avvo Health.

The acquisition, which is HealthTap’s first and is set to be announced Thursday, will expand its online community of doctors to 30,000 and enable the startup to provide local services for patients. It will also give HealthTap a directory of hundreds of thousands of doctors and dentists across the country (information that the startup previously licensed), which it can add to its database of more than a million medical professionals.

Through HealthTap, patients can pose anonymous questions to the general network of doctors for free or send text-based targeted messages to specific doctors for a small fee. They can also search the growing archive of questions by topic and see the top doctors in different specialties (as determined by other patients and doctors).

But co-founder and CEO Ron Gutman said that users increasingly indicate that they want to be able to find the best doctor for a particular topic as well as someone close by. The Avvo Health acquisition not only adds more doctors to its network, it increases the number of data points it can use to rank doctors and help pair them with patients.

“We’re able to match the question not only with the right doctor for you but also a local doctor,” he said. “And the directory can help you find a physician even if you don’t have a specific question.”

While HealthTap’s initial pitch was that it can help patients find credible and trusted answers to medical questions online, as it grows the startup is expanding its reach into doctor rankings and reviews as well as other services that help patients select physicians. On that front, it is beginning to compete with other consumer-facing sites like HealthGrades, Vitals and even ZocDoc, which provides patient reviews of doctors in addition to appointment booking services. But the added level of engagement on HealthTap could make it a more powerful marketing vehicle for doctors in addition to being a more complete information portal for patients.

Since 2007, Seattle-based Avvo has given patients a way to ask doctors private questions online. The company, which was backed by Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Ignition Partners, also includes a site for asking questions of lawyers, called Avvo Legal. But Avvo only spun off the health side of the business and will keep its legal arm independent. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal other than to say it was an all-cash acquisition.

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