Start Local, Go Global

One of the most exciting developments in health innovation is the growing wave of startups emerging from dozens of new health hubs around the world. We’ve worked to accelerate this trend over the past decade by making investments in Health Transformers spanning 27 countries and six continents; from Helsinki to São Paulo, we are thrilled that more Health Transformers are starting local, then going global. In the After-Covid world, we see an extraordinary opportunity to exponentially accelerate this global impact. When we launched StartUp Health in 2011, not only did we see the pressing need to transform health across the US, we realized there was no one responsible for the transformation of health at global scale. No government, company, or foundation was focused on organizing long-term global collaboration to solve the most universal human challenge of all: how to improve the health and wellbeing of all people, everywhere. We soon realized that the only way to do so was to help build a global ecosystem to focus on this challenge. Our health moonshot vision was born and ever since we’ve been organizing Health Transformers to solve big health challenges that impact billions of people. With 7.5 billion people in the world – most with limited or no access to quality care – creating solutions to address the health of humanity is a moral imperative. What’s so striking however, is how few investors yet realize how big of an opportunity it is to think exponentially and systemically about the health impact that can be made at global scale. Some of the world’s wealthiest families have pledged fortunes to solving important global challenges and there are governments, foundations, and NGOs tackling pieces of the puzzle for sure. But judging by the still nascent institutional funding for earlystage healthcare startups in global markets, too few investors seem to have assessed the tremendous opportunity to invest globally. We plan to help change this dramatically over the next decade. Healthcare is, of course, regional; and in terms of fundamentals like regulatory process, business models, and care delivery realities, locality certainly matters. But as we have seen in other industries facing complex challenges from banking to mobile, it’s possible to leverage technology, rethink business models, and deliver essential value in order to leapfrog legacy systems and solve big problems. Using this playbook – across the world – let’s do the same for healthcare and accelerate global impact.