A Collaborative Strategy for Achieving Deep Impact

StartUp Health’s vision for achieving health moonshots – solving big audacious and seemingly impossible health challenges – has always been driven by our belief that transformational progress is most effectively driven through collaboration and leveraging the power of network effects to speed up impact. Our premise is that by uniting a global army of Health Transformers and marching together, we can accomplish even the most complex missions. For more than a decade, we have used this model to focus on a broad list of integrated health moonshots ranging from Access to Care to Curing Disease to Mental Health to Longevity. After more than 400 investments, and years of working with a vast network of stakeholders, we’ve learned a lot. It turns out, the hard part in this plan is not in defining big goals, or inspiring the world’s most extraordinary innovators to action, or even advancing technology or science. The biggest opportunity is in breaking down silos and driving a level of collaboration the world too rarely sees. For too long the forces and funds needed to address the greatest health challenges of our time have been separated, and often competing. Yet at the core, collaboration is essential to achieving any moonshot. Collaboration sounds good, but in practice it isn’t easy. We all know this from our day to day lives. Take any large group, and it’s not long before basic decisions and simple tasks start to take longer than necessary. Conflict often ensues. Transformational progress is stunted. The clear-eyed reality is that the vast industry of healthcare is driven by competition, and what’s disturbing is that the system’s core business models and incentive structures are often at odds with what we believe should be the ultimate goal of keeping people healthy and well. Today, the baseline in the world of healthcare can be summed up as fragmented, complex, confusing and competitive. Not exactly fertile ground for innovation to thrive. That’s why we are steadfast in our belief that what’s needed more than ever is to double down on the equation that has defined StartUp Health from the beginning: Health Transformers x The Network Effect = The Transformation of Health. Our biggest learning, however, is that to really break down silos that are slowing progress we must go deeper into our health moonshot framework by uniting disparate (and sometimes competing) stakeholders from patients and families to caregivers, clinicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, industry, investors, governments, foundations, and donors. To date we’ve done this broadly in an effort to cross-pollinate thinking and wisdom across health moonshots. Now we must go deeper to connect and align stakeholders within each moonshot.

A mission control to guide collaboration and drive deep impact If the first required element is to foster meaningful collaboration in order to achieve health moonshots then you need an organizing platform to set the targets, manage the process, and ultimately simplify and unite the fragmented pieces. Over the past decade we have built one global mission control (StartUp Health’s global platform and community) to chart this course and make tremendous impact. Now it’s time for us to expand by going deep which is why we are launching a family of dedicated health moonshots each united by a specific mission, driven by their own impact board, and fueled by aligned partners. We will supercharge our efforts by supporting even more entrepreneurs and innovators through these dedicated health moonshots, and work toward bridging the gap that still exists between R&D and commercialization so we can deliver innovation to the world in a direct and tangible way. Too many good ideas are still trapped on the shelf or locked up in a lab. And too many parties are still marching forward alone. We intend to change that.

Starting with a dedicated moonshot for Type 1 Diabetes to demonstrate this approach to dedicated health moonshots, we are starting by launching a focused 25 year mission to prevent, manage, and cure Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Soon we will follow with the launch of a dedicated Alzheimer’s Moonshot with many more to follow. With the launch of the T1D Moonshot, StartUp Health will leverage its same global platform, yet lean in with a dedicated fund to support a generation of solutions developed across academia, nonprofit, and commercial environments and be built on a level of collaboration that the world hasn’t seen before. We’ve started this mission by assembling a world-class T1D Moonshot Impact Board that unites patients, caregivers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, funders, and innovators from many groups who have already made tremendous impact and contributions to T1D. For the first time, these leaders will all be sitting on the same Impact Board, aligned by the same health moonshot mission. Together we will combine the energy of passionate entrepreneurs with the world’s top investors and institutions who care deeply and are aligned on the same global impact metrics. StartUp Health’s T1D Moonshot builds on a series of investments StartUp Health has already made in the diabetes space more broadly and we are proud to share that the Cecelia Health, founder David Weingard, who has been a Health Transformer in our community for many years will serve as Chief Impact Officer of the T1D Moonshot. This launch of dedicated health moonshots is also an invitation to all stakeholders and funders who can fuel more health moonshot missions with us. If you believe in a collaborative, global approach to solving big audacious health challenges like preventing, managing and curing T1D or eradicating Alzheimer’s, we want to meet you. Email us at moonshots@startuphealth.com. To partner with us on the Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, email T1D@startuphealth.com.