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BFD Expert Voices - Health Tech Deals

BFD Expert Voices

SpecCheck, a provider of optical billing and customer management tools, closed a $3.7 million seed round, CEO Joe DeMaria tells Erin exclusively.

Why it matters: Optometry still largely runs on handwritten and faxed orders, and SpecCheck hopes its tools can help modernize the sector.

Details: Initialized Capital led the round and Y Combinator participated.

Funds will go towards growing the team, expanding its network of labs and eye doctors, and adding more features to the platform.

DeMaria declined to say when he foresees SpecCheck collecting a Series A.

How it works: The Los Angeles-based startup offers billing, ordering, and customer management software to optical providers, labs, and patients. It includes tools for...

Lab payment, order submission and status updates, communication with lab partners via live chat, and one-click patient email notifications.

Optical labs pay to join SpecCheck's network, and SpecCheck takes a fee when the lab receives orders and when payments are made through the platform.

The backstory: DeMaria, a trained optician, pitched the idea for SpecCheck to co-founder and CTO Arnold Villatoro in Los Angeles, where he was working on payments infrastructure at Lyft as an engineer.

State of play: There are few startups in the optical software sector, but several companies are working on eye care in other ways. For example...

Digital-first vision benefits startup XP Health last November raised $17.1 million in Series A financing.

Bausch + Lomb, a Canadian maker of contact lenses and eye care products, was one of the first mega-IPOs in January 2022.

Olympus Partners last September agreed to acquire EyeSouth Partners from Shore Capital Partners, valuing the eye care services organization at just under $1 billion.

1 big thing: SpecCheck wants to modernize optometry

Affordable housing-based health care startup Ounce collected $5.2 million in seed funding, CEO Rachel Munsie tells Erin exclusively.

Why it's the BFD: Washington, D.C.-based Ounce is using housing as a toehold into the care ecosystem, eyeing the tens of millions of people losing Medicaid coverage as the public health emergency ends.

Details: Meridian Street Capital and Flare Capital co-led the round.

Chelsea Clinton's Metrodora Ventures, Wilshire Lane Capital, Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta, and Unite Us co-founder Taylor Justice participated.

Funds will go toward internal growth and planning for expansions throughout D.C. and other cities and states.

Munsie declined to say when Ounce plans to raise a Series A.

How it works: The startup embeds its team of community health workers inside affordable rental properties, utilizing extra leasing office spaces, community rooms, and lobby offices.

Those workers have access to tools and tech enabling them to develop one-on-one relationships with residents, host on-site health screenings and pop-up clinics, enroll residents in public benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and disability, schedule primary care and pediatric appointments, and help residents apply for rental and utility assistance.

Ounce currently serves roughly 2,000 affordable housing residents across nine properties in D.C., per Munsie.

Zoom in: In an effort to foster trust, Ounce includes as criteria in its hiring process whether candidates have lived in the neighborhoods they seek to serve.

"When you're working with a lack of trust in the traditional health care system to begin with, overcoming that takes some level of community knowledge and frankly, just familiarity you can't train for," Munsie says.

Be smart: Medicaid serves nearly one in five U.S. residents and represents  $671 billion in yearly spending, per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Plus, Medicaid enrollees have adopted virtual care tools at rates similar to those on commercial insurance, a recent Rock Health report found.

State of play: A small but growing cohort of health care startups is building for the Medicaid market, including:

Galileo, a NYC-based virtual care company focused on Medicaid members, last November raised $18 million in Series A financing.

Cityblock Health, a NYC-based hybrid primary care company focused on Medicaid patients, in 2021 raised $400 million in Series D funding at a $5.7 billion valuation.

What they're saying: Compared with care providers like Galileo or Cityblock, Munsie says Ounce sees itself more as a community-based coordinator than a "full stack clinical care" startup.

⚖️ One fun thing: Ounce's name alludes to the saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

🏘️ The BFD: A $5M Ounce of housing-based care

Illustration of a stethoscope tube making the shape of a house.

Want more health tech deals? Check out the Axios Pro Deals Tracker beta.

• Cortica, a San Diego-based physician-led, whole-child, value-based autism services company,  raised $40 million in a Series D extension, led by CVS Health Ventures. https://www.corticacare.com/ 

•  Ascend Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Seoul Medical Group, a Honolulu-based national network of independent community physicians. http://www.seoulmedicalgroup.com/

• VSS Capital Partners made a growth capital investment in Eximia Research Network, a Dover, Del.-based multi-therapeutic, clinical trial research company. https://eximiaresearch.com/

• Guardian Pharmacy Services, an Atlanta-based provider of pharmacy services for long-term health care facilities, filed for a $115m IPO. It plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol GRDN. Raymond James, Stifel, and Truist Securities are the joint bookrunners on the deal. https://axios.link/3RL4Dzl

3. Deals o' the day

• Kristina Campbell left a post as CFO of Ripple to become CFO at Maven Clinic.

4. It's Personnel

🏥 Controlling labor costs will be key to NFP hospital margin improvement — Fitch Ratings 

5. Your daily dose

Illustration of a Axios brand medicine bottle that says "your daily dose" next to a spoon.

💰 Situational awareness: Carlyle is seeking to arrange debt packages of at least $2.5 billion to finance its potential $7 billion acquisition of Medtronic business units, per Bloomberg. 

🎤 Programming note: Axios BFD returns to NYC next week on Oct. 12. The half-day event, led by Aaron, Erin, and other reporters will feature exclusive conversations with industry leaders including the Boston Celtics' Wyc Grousbeck, OnlyFans' Keily Blair, Inflection AI's Mustafa Suleyman, and more. Register to livestream the event.

🩼 Erin injured her knee chasing a neighbor's dog and is trying to recuperate before the insanity that is HLTH next week.

💕 Thanks for reading, and extra thanks to newsletter editor Claire Rychlewski and copy editor Mickey Meece. Please ask your colleagues, friends and family to sign up.

October 04, 2023

1 big thing: SpecCheck wants to modernize optometry