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BFD Expert Voices - Health Tech Deals

BFD Expert Voices

Bold, a provider of virtual exercise programs for Medicare Advantage members, inked $17 million in Series A funding, CEO Amanda Rees tells Erin exclusively.

Why it matters: The meteoric rise of Medicare Advantage plans and a booming older population have underwritten increased investor interest in healthy aging.

A quarter of older adults in the U.S. fall each year, costing the health care system roughly $50 billion — yet few resources exist to prevent falls.

"We've seen the numbers where Medicare is spending more on falls than on cancer, but you don't hear of companies tackling falls," says Rethink Impact managing partner and Bold investor Jenny Abramson.

How it works: Based in Los Angeles, Bold partners with Medicare Advantage plans, dual eligible plans and health care providers to offer members personalized exercise programs tailored to their needs.

While a member with multiple chronic conditions might get a series of brief seated exercises, someone who is moderately active might be enrolled in longer standing movements.

Plans are delivered in a virtual class format and are designed to be done asynchronously.

In 2021, Bold published a small study of 65 people in the Journal of Medical Internet Research linking participation in the program with increased overall weekly minutes of physical activity and a decreased rate of falls.

Details: Rethink Impact led the round, bringing the company's total raised to $27 million.

New backer Samsung Next and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, GingerBread Capital and Primetime Partners joined.

Bold is putting the funds to use growing its team and adding more partners.

Asked when Bold would collect a Series B, Rees said it was "not the top focus right now."

The backstory: A dancer, engineer and caregiver, Rees knows the power of movement.

Rees became a caregiver for her grandmother in her 20s and learned to navigate the twists and turns of the health care system as she helped her to recover from falls, address dementia and transition her from one place of care to another.

What they're saying: "There's more opportunity in a world that's transitioning to value-based care and taking on risk to actually make a case that's not pay out of pocket," Rees says.

State of play: A wealth of senior-focused venture-backed players are focused on helping seniors navigate existing benefits, but Bold and Mighty Health are some of the only ones offering their own exercise programs.

Mighty in January raised $7.6 million in a second seed round.

Senior benefits navigation startup Duos in June collected $10 million in unlabeled capital.

Senior insurance navigator Fair Square Medicare last August garnered $15 million in Series A funding.

1 big thing: Bold inks $17M Series A for healthy aging

Illustration of a person using an exercise band made from $100 bills.

Sonera, which builds sensors for noninvasive human-machine interfaces, raised $11 million in seed round funding, CEO and cofounder Nishita Deka tells Aaron exclusively.

Why it matters: The company joins a crop of brain-machine interface startups looking to use noninvasive methods.

Details: The round was led by Amplify Partners with participation from Abstract Ventures and other existing investors.

This round of capital brings the company to $20 million total raised.

Existing investors include Spark Capital, Material Impact, Boom Capital, angel investor Josh Duyan, CTRL-Labs CSO and cofounder.

How it works: Sonera's technology seeks to make brain activity easier to measure, to power a new class of consumer wearables.

It measures magnetic fields produced by the electrical currents from neural activity, eliminating the need for direct skin contact while still measuring high-fidelity signals.

"The S1 chip will enable use cases including advanced prosthetics control, continuous monitoring of neuromuscular conditions, discovery of disease biomarkers, and sport performance tracking," says Deka.

The big picture: Fundraising remains tough.

"Fundraising took longer than anticipated, some due to market conditions and some to the nature of company," she says.

"We are building a new hardware and it is a niche area of expertise, so we are trying to get people to understand the big picture."

The intrigue: Traditionally, biomagnetic sensors have not been scalable because they are bulky, expensive and have usability limitations due to high performance requirements.

"Over the next two years or so, we want to start working with partners to develop early-use cases for gesture control, advanced prosthetics and smart apparel with our sensors that are high-performance and easily fit and slot into other wearable devices."

What's next: The funds will go toward building prototypes to build different use cases.

"The prototypes will be designed to sense muscle activity, as a stepping stone to detecting brain activity with further performance improvements."

She noted that the company will fundraise again next fall.

"The runway for this round should last us till spring 2025, as it's designed to last 18-24 months."

What they're saying: "I don't believe the explosion in wearables is abating anytime soon, and while new platforms continue to emerge (see Vision Pro), we're stuck with our current UX and archaic and/or expensive sensors," says Mike Dauber, general partner at Amplify Partners.

"Advancement in brain and body interfaces and understanding has been hampered by the tools we have," says Nabeel Hyatt, general partner at Spark Capital. "Electrical signals are too noisy even with AI, and surgery to implant sensors is niche tech for the rich."

Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink inputs $280M

NextMind ships its real-time brain computer interface Dev Kit

2. The BFD: Sonera snags $20M seed

Illustration of a hundred dollar bill with a brain in place of Benjamin Franklin

Mavida Health, a Los Angeles-based maternal mental health platform, raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding, cofounders Sarah Oreck and Emma Sugerman tell Aaron exclusively.

Why it matters: According to a recent CDC study, mental health disorders are the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths.

Details: The Mavida Health app is clinical care, and it offers one-on-one therapy, group, family and couples therapy as well as the ability to prescribe medications.

How it works: New mothers download the app and onboard via a short questionnaire to assess clinical need and fit.

The company offers community and content nationwide and launched with the company's postpartum offerings.

"We are currently offering clinical care in California but will quickly expand to the full path to parenthood, as well as additional states, including New York, in the coming months," the founders say.

Zoom in: They closed the round in three or four months, or "sooner than they thought," but doing so did not come without surprises.

"For us, some of the biggest surprises came from who our idea was resonating most with and, therefore, who was excited to take a chance on us at such an early stage," say Sugerman and Oreck. "As female founders focused on women's health, we certainly had some guesses that our earliest supporters might be female-led or female-focused funds, but that ended up not being the case this round."

What's next: This round of funding should have a runway of 12-15 months.

"We raised at the beginning of this year and we'll be looking to get back out to market later early 2024, as we are laser-focused on what we needed to accomplish as an early-stage business — bringing a product and service to market that people meaningfully and repeatedly engage with, leading to early but significant improvement in clinical outcomes."

The company has started seeing its first patients and is generating revenue, but Sugerman and Oreck declined to get into specific numbers.

"We built Mavida to really intentionally consider scalability (and profitability) from day one," they say. "For us, that means establishing meaningful relationships with the partners that can provide the broadest, affordable access to those on the path to parenthood."

The funds will be used for building the product and hiring a team to launch. They say they want to fulfill their mission of bringing a product and service to market that people meaningfully and repeatedly engage with, leading to early but significant improvement in clinical outcomes.

3. Mavida Health $1.5M pre-seed

an illustration of a social media notification with a brain on it

Looking for a deal story? Search the Axios Pro Deals Tracker beta.

• Glass Health, an SF-based creator of a digital notebook for clinicians, raised $5m led by Initialized Capital. https://axios.link/3sPx8BF

• Cimarron Healthcare Capital invested in Forward Health, an Owings Mills, Maryland-based provider of sleep apnea tools. www.fwdhealthcare.com

• NMS Capital-backed DirectMed, a Poway, California-based aftermarket diagnostic imaging parts, systems, and service provider, acquired Technical Prospects, a Appleton, Wisconsin,-based provider of parts, training and support for medical imaging equipment. https://nms-capital.com/

4. Deals o' the day

• Alissa Meade, formerly of UPMC Enterprises, became CEO of Together Senior Health. https://www.togetherseniorhealth.com/

• Lexi Henkel left a post as senior director of finance at Tmrw Life sciences to become a principal at Maverick Ventures. https://www.maverickventures.com/

• Elizabeth Canis left a post as Foresite Capital Management to become COO of Wellvana. Also, Andra Hinz left a post as ethics officer at Parallon to become chief compliance officer, and Philip Harrison was promoted to chief strategy and development officer. https://wellvana.com

• Jake Hungarter left a post as head of marketing at Virgo to become a project leader at Digital Health New York. https://www.dhny.co/

5. It's Personnel

⌚ Apple plans "Watch X" overhaul for 10-year anniversary — Bloomberg

⚕️Walgreens makes first health care move since CEO's exit — Axios

🧓🏻 Eldercare startup Papa loses contracts with major insurers — Bloomberg

6. Your daily dose

Illustration of a pill capsule as the bell hammer on an alarm clock.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Situational awareness: Erin, along with with Tachyon Ventures' Cristina Escoda, is moderating a Future Proof session tomorrow at noon PT on investment in AI-enabled medicine. Reply to this post with questions you want asked!

🏈 Aaron is ecstatic that his Miami Dolphins came out with a bang to start the 2023 NFL season.

🙏 Thanks for reading, and extra thanks to newsletter editor George Moriarty and to copy editor Jay Bennett. Please ask your colleagues, friends, and family to sign up.

September 12, 2023

1 big thing: Bold inks $17M Series A for healthy aging