The Secrets to Impressing Health Investors: Insider Tips from a Healthtech Startup

We’re incredibly proud of Giant Leap’s digital health portfolio made up of 11 outstanding healthtech companies to date, driving improved patient outcomes and disrupting traditional models of healthcare delivery. 

Since 2016, our portfolio companies have delivered over A$164 million in savings to the healthcare system and helped over 60,000 people improve their health and wellbeing. 

We see high volumes of health tech startups (300 health tech startups in 2023 alone), and the founders we meet along the way are always keen to understand more about the lay of the land. So, we’ve shared some thoughts here.

‍What kinds of health startups does Giant Leap invest in?

Giant Leap invests in Seed and Series A stage startups working across a wide range of health verticals. Some of the kinds of health solutions we are really excited about include:

• Digital health: for example, Digital Therapeutics (DTx) tools like Mindset Health, Perx and MoreGoodDays and telehealth platforms like Coviu. 
• Personalised healthcare: people increasingly want more control over their health and we’re interested in startups working in this space, including in wearables, lifestyle habit and health tracking, and at-home diagnostics. 
• Non-invasive medical devices: for example, diagnostic devices like Seer Medical that help improve patient wellbeing while saving hospital time and enabling significant savings to the public health system.
• Research: systems and software that improve research processes that ultimately lead to better health outcomes. 

If you’re not sure whether your startup is a fit, we’d still love to hear from you - submit your pitch deck through our link here and you’ll hear back from us within a fortnight.

‍I’m a healthtech founder and I want to raise: How can I set myself up for success?

Preparation is key for starting any raising process. Aside from our general tips on how to best prepare when approaching investors (check out our Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Pitching to Giant Leap 2.0), we thought we’d give you insights from one of our very own portfolio company success stories. 

No one knows what it takes to raise as a healthtech startup better than those who have actually done it before – so we interviewed Mindset Health co-founders Alex Naoumidis and Chris Naoumidis about their experience. This Giant Leap portfolio company has done it twice, having raised a successful Seed round, followed by an oversubscribed $17.8m Series A round in early 2023 from leading Australian and US investors

Check out our Q&A with Alex and Chris below. 

Q&A with the founders of Mindset Health

Giant Leap: We all know that bringing a new investor onto the cap table is just like diving into a long-term relationship – what are the key questions you think health founders should be asking their investors before they commit?

Mindset: Knowing that partnering with investors is like a marriage, we like to understand how active they like to be with their investments. This includes whether they are aligned with our vision for the company, how they help their portfolio companies, what their investment horizons and expectations of us are. 

Essentially, you're trying to figure out if you're going to enjoy working with them and if they will add value. The baseline for a good investor is just someone who invests and doesn't make life difficult during the journey - the rest is just the cherry on top.

Giant Leap: On the flip side, what are the top questions that investors asked of you as healthtech founders during the raise process? How did they differ between your Seed and your Series A raise?

Mindset: I don't think healthtech investors ask questions that are too dissimilar to other investors - they want to know if your product actually works, how you'll grow, if there are any regulatory considerations, what the long-term vision is and why you're the founders to achieve that.

The jump from Seed to Series A means that you likely have a lot more data on what has worked to date, so due diligence was far more intense around growth channels, metrics, engagement data, contracts, risk and IP protection. 

At the Seed stage, investors are investing more on the vision and less so the traction, but the later you go, the more traction and metrics matter more than just the vision.

Giant Leap: What are the things your most helpful investors have been able to support you with as a healthtech startup?

Mindset: There are probably 5 key things here: 

1. Introductions to investors - Our investors have been invaluable in helping us raise more money and this is one of the best things they can do. 
2. Emotional regulation - Hype you up or temper expectations!
3. Intros to customers/advisors - Our investors have introduced us to customers, health plans and partners, executives, key advisors, and more.
4. Strategy - Supporting us to ideate on go-to-market strategy, plan raises, and question and test our strategic approach as it evolves over time.
5. Holding us accountable - Pushing us to be better, grow faster, and checking in when we miss. 

These are the things you should be keeping in mind and asking whether you think an investor will be able to help you with. 

Giant Leap: What do you think are the most meaningful metrics for growth that early-stage healthtech founders should be focusing their attention on? What is important and what's really just noise?

Mindset: Y-Combinator (YC) always talks about the fact that you should really be focused on revenue or the closest proxy for revenue. It's easy to deceive yourself about why certain metrics are important, but at the end of the day, if revenue isn't growing (or proxies like daily active users for a social media startup), then the meaningful growth isn’t really there. At Mindset, we focus on key metrics including revenue growth, clinical outcomes, net promoter score (NPS), and the ratio of customer life-time value to customer acquisition cost (LTV:CAC).

A common mistake is when founders focus on 'vanity metrics' – metrics that feel good, but don't actually say anything about the health of the business. Examples of vanity metrics include app downloads, press mentions, and cumulative sign-ups. 

Giant Leap: What’s the single biggest lesson you’ve learnt along the way when it comes to engaging with your customers, and with getting clinicians on board as referral partners?

Mindset: Build a product that people love. Clinicians refer our programs, and members use them, not because of any specific growth hack (although they can help amplify), but due to the fact that our programs solve a core problem for people, in a differentiated way and with an experience that users love. 

If the apps didn't work and users hated them, clinicians wouldn't refer them!

Our tips for crafting your health pitch deck 

To help with your raising journey, we’ve put together our Guide to Creating Your Health Pitch Deck! It’s intended as a general guide on the kinds of questions we recommend thinking about when you’re building your deck. 

We emphasise that this document is intended as a guide only. It is important to note that there are many different approaches to preparing pitch decks and there is no right or wrong answer regarding structure and content!

So, what’s next?

Giant Leap knows that urgent and pressing global problems, like those faced in healthcare, require solutions at scale. That’s why we invest in companies harnessing technology and innovation to reimagine the health industry and create transformational change. 

If you have a solution that addresses a painful health problem that has early traction, we'd love to hear from you and learn more about what you’re working on.

Let's build the stuff that really matters, together!

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