Andy Slavitt of Town Hall Ventures
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Andy Slavitt’s Town Hall Ventures invests in healthcare innovations focused on low-income and at-risk communities. With recent funding from investors including John Doerr, the corporate now has total assets of $1.4 billion.
WWhen Andy Slavitt left the federal government, He desired to prove that you would use technology to enhance health look after underserved and low-income communities and still make a profit. The former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and overseer of the successful turnaround of Healthcare.govTo achieve exactly that, they founded the healthcare-focused VC firm Town Hall Ventures in the summertime of 2018.
“I have a little problem on my shoulder,” he said Forbes. “If [investors] If you’re thinking that you could have impact, you get put in that box – individuals who do good things, and perhaps a pleasant family office wants to take a position in you because they have an effect mandate. I at all times resisted that.”
Since its founding seven years ago, Town Hall Ventures has invested in 35 firms and founded seven others, including kidney care specialist Strive and Suvida, which provides primary care to Hispanic seniors and their families. Its first fund posted top-decile performance, with a net internal return since its launch in July 2018 (through June 30) of 33%, in comparison with 12% for the median VC fund. A complete of 10 of his bets exceeded $1 billion in valuation, including Cityblock Health, a healthcare provider focused on low-income communities, which was considered one of his first investments and has since reached a valuation of $6.2 billion; SignifyHealth, a technology-enabled home risk assessment provider acquired by CVS for $8 billion in 2023; and Landmark Health, a startup that gives at-home medical care to patients with chronic illnesses and was acquired by Optum Health for $3.5 billion in 2021.
Buoyed by this track record, Town Hall Ventures said Forbes The firm has since raised $440 million for a fourth fund, bringing its total assets under management to $1.4 billion. While the New York-based company, whose general partners include Slavitt, David Whelan and Meera Mani, stays small in comparison with enterprise capital giants reminiscent of Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst and Sequoia, each of which manages tens of billions of dollars in assets, it’s a respected player within the healthcare sector.
John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins, has been a major private investor in Town Hall Ventures since its inception and has added to each fund since then, including the brand new one. “I believed in what they said they would prove,” Doerr said. “I think the healthcare industry has not been well served by the technology industry. It’s a challenging customer and institutionally conservative. I see that changing in this moment.”
“It was very easy to describe the problem. It was quite another to say that capital, entrepreneurship and innovation are one of the cures.”
Slavitt, 58, who was an executive at Optum Group before his administration, believes technology can close many gaps in health look after low-income and underserved populations. Venture funds have historically shied away from investing in these populations because Medicaid profit margins are razor-thin and patients face additional social problems, from housing shortages to substandard food options, that add complexity to their treatment.
“It was very easy to describe the problem,” Slavitt said. “It was very different to say that capital, entrepreneurship and innovation is one of the cures. It’s one of the things we’re good at in this country. So why not address it?”
In 2023, Town Hall Ventures invested in Marble Health, which provides virtual behavioral therapy for adolescents with a give attention to group therapy. Partner Mani calls the corporate’s founders, who got here from therapy startup Headway, “relentless and ruthless” of their implementation, a necessity for an organization that accepts Medicaid mental medical insurance. In 2024, City Hall launched Habitat Health in partnership with Kaiser Permanente, which helps older adults in low-income communities manage their health in their very own homes. This company began serving older adults in Sacramento and Los Angeles this yr, a lot of whom are dual-qualified for Medicare and Medicaid. “One of City Hall’s superpowers is the combination of mission and track record,” Whelan said.
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This combination has also convinced entrepreneurs of the worth of the corporate. In 2023, the corporate led an investment in Thyme Care, a Nashville-based startup that helps patients navigate cancer treatment using AI to automate documentation and synthesize complex patient data. At that point, Thyme met with 110 potential investors after which reduced the variety of candidates to 5, recalls co-founder and CEO Robin Shah. Despite the undeniable fact that City Hall’s offer valued the corporate at $20 million lower than its then-leading offer of $150 million, Shah convinced his board and existing investors to decide on them. Today the corporate is price $1.1 billion. “I don’t know if we would be there without Town Hall,” he said, citing the health care partners’ expertise and connections.
Slavitt was a strong critic of President Trump during his first term in office, But this time he has a detailed relationship with Dr. Mehmet Oz and was named co-chair earlier this yr of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, a public-private partnership designed to speed up the health system’s transition from fee-for-service to alternative payment models, reminiscent of value-based care, during which providers are paid based on patient outcomes moderately than the variety of visits or procedures. “With any administration, good things will happen and challenges will happen,” he said. “The good thing in this case is that there will be more focus on innovation and data flow, there will be more emphasis on AI and there will be more emphasis on prevention and well-being as this fits with the MAHA theme.”
While the private sector won’t have the opportunity to fill the gaps Millions of additional uninsured people created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Private sector technological innovations may also help prevent people from losing their insurance coverage due to administrative burdens related to proving their qualifications, he said. Technology “doesn’t close the gap,” he said. “I can’t lie and say it is, but it will help people.”
With the brand new funding, City Hall can proceed to take a position to find — and scaling — technology-enabled solutions to health care’s many problems, Slavitt said. Areas of interest include: home look after older adults, pharmacy and prescription drug management, and first care. “These are really big markets and really big opportunities,” Slavitt said. In each of those areas, “If you can solve the problem well, you can build an exceptionally large company.”
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