Backed by two Colorado-based and tech-focused venture capital groups, a California health insurance startup is trying to make it big. However instead of selling plans, Impact Health just wants to tell people about them.
A Digital Health Insurance Startup
According to the The Denver Post, Impact Health is sort of a hybrid between Tinder and Airbnb. First, enter your preferences and medical history, then artificial intelligence and algorithms work together to match you with a health insurance plan. The service provides everything from asking you if you would like your prescription to be refilled to finding a doctor who takes your plan.
Additionally, Impact Health provides information to users for every insurance plan offered in the U.S. To accomplish this, the company had to be licensed and certified as a broker for every plan in all 50 states. Their digital platform includes private health insurance plans as well as Affordable Care Act plans.
According to Christine Carrillo, Impact Health’s chief executive and co-founder, while the company currently serves about 59,000 people, it is seeking opportunities for expansion, and that’s where Techstars Ventures and Foundry Group come in. The two groups announced last week that they will partner up to invest a combined $13 million for Impact Health’s Series A venture capital round.
Techstars Ventures and Foundry Group both hail from Boulder, focus on technology investments, and the two even share the same co-founder, Brad Feld. Techstars claims to invest in the most “innovative and disruptive” companies. For Carrillo, it was important to find investors who shared the same company culture, and that Techstars was their number one choice.
Given the recent national dialogue on health care reform, a health insurance startup could be perceived as risky or even controversial to investors. That said, Carrillo isn’t worried about her company’s future, a sentiment borne from its commitment to consumers. She said, “(Healthcare) is incredibly complex. So whatever happens, all we want to do is be able to add some security and comfort to consumers within all of the chaos that is going on right now.”
