We’ve reViVEd from ViVE and the HIMMSanity is over! Jess and I are back to discuss more multimillion-dollar deals: Fresenius/Interwell/Cricket Health is merging to 2.4 billion valuation; Embold Health gets $26 million; Canopy gets $13 million; Vira Health gets $12 million; and Woebot gets $9 million.

-Matthew Holt

Jess DaMassa:

While we revived from Vive and the HIMSS-sanity is over and all that’s left is boring old Matthew Holt and I to pick up the pieces. It can only be the March 22nd episode of Health Tech Deals.

Matthew Holt:

So Jess, I had massive HIMSS FOMO. First time hadn’t been in like 428 years and everyone else was there. And did you care? No?

Jess DaMassa:

I’m two hours away and I’m like, “Nope. Not for me. Not right now.”

Matthew Holt:

Well…

Jess DaMassa:

I heard next year, it’s in Chicago.

Matthew Holt:

My kind of town. The good news is next year Vive is in Nashville in early March and HIMS in Chicago, which is their hometown. But it’s also because Chicago, Chicago they can’t have it. They have it in April and have to hope it doesn’t snow. So there’s a good amount of time between them. So we can get them both.

Jess DaMassa:

I mean, I’m from Chicago. I’ll absolutely go but Chicago in April is dicey.

Matthew Holt:

I was there the last time they had in Chicago, whatever the hell that was some years ago when they had 45,000 people. And I missed my plane on the way out because the taxi got stuck in a snow storm.

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah. April is iffy. I don’t go back. I go for Christmas. And then I say goodbye to my loved ones and don’t see them again until June when it’s safe.

Matthew Holt:

Well we’ll have to see. I’m going there in May for another conference, so hopefully it’s all okay by then. Alright. Let’s do it.

Jess DaMassa:

Big news today. Lots of big news. Oh, takeout merger. Triple merger, Cricket plus Fresenius Health Partners plus InterWell Health a giant chronic kidney disease merger valued at 2.5 billion. Matthew Holt, what are your thoughts on this?

Matthew Holt:

Well, Cricket Health was started by my former roommate, Arvind Rajan who some years later he was at LinkedIn. He said, “I’m going to get into healthcare.” And he said, “I’m going to do pediatrics.” Then he came back to me and he said, “No, I’m doing kidney care.” And he actually launched at Health 2.0, it was a really interesting thing about, can we do better care for people with kidney disease before they have to get sucked up into the kidney dialysis duopoly of Fresenius and Davita and clearly Fresenius decided that it needs to buy this thing to kill it. So it’s bought Cricket. . It’s bought this medical group Interwell It’s merging into a small part of itself into 2.4 billion valuation. The whole company is worth 20 billion. So it’s only small. And I suspect we will never hear, I mean, maybe I’m wrong. I suspect we will never hear from them ever again is my guess.

Jess DaMassa:

Okay. EMBOLD Health gets 26 million in another B round. I think it’s their second one. Research total up to 72.4. Echo Health Ventures and Morgan Health are in this one.

Matthew Holt:

Didn’t we just do these guys in December for their first B

Jess DaMassa:

Exactly. It was in a B then, 20 ish million dollars there.

Matthew Holt:

So this is like a provider analysis selection with data or provider. They were trying to like some bullshit…

Jess DaMassa:

Centers of excellence, kind of thinking to individual doctors and specialists. Go.

Matthew Holt:

Sounds possible. Ex CEO is ex Walmart. We think Walmart’s a customer and maybe it’s going to help people choose better, maybe.

Jess DaMassa:

Okay. Canopy Health gets 13 million. This is an oncology platform for cancer centers. Matthew Holt, what do you think?

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. This is good. This is one of things where up getting all the tools to cancer patients outside of the time they’re being actually treated for cancer to help them manage their lives and distributing that to current oncologists instead of making a special company to do it. I like it.

Jess DaMassa:

All right. Menopause startup, Vira Health. They get 12 million brings their total up to 14. They’re EU based. Octopus and Optum is in this one.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, this is interesting. So there’s a couple of companies. This is in that FemTech area for women of a certain age who are dealing with menopause. It’s obviously a very big market. There are a couple of others that I can think of. Of course, I don’t remember their names because I’m getting of a certain age myself with some other issues. This has an app called Stella, which is quite popular in the UK and they’re raising a bit of money to come to America because like Eddie Murphy says, “Coming to America” is the most important thing. And Optum being in this is quite interesting, right? You don’t know what the deal is but if the joke is one of their other venture funds called Octopus, which has lots of arms and a big reach and Optum has lots and lots of arms and very big reach and maybe they’ll help them figure out, get into the Optum network, but more attention to women and their aging into menopause and aging into lots of issues with them, obviously and health conditions. And so I lik e the idea of ??building the startup for those folks. And there aren’t enough there. There are 28,000 mental health startups and about three doing…

Jess DaMassa:

Menopause startups. Half the population is headed there, but it’s a niche market.

Matthew Holt:

The latter part of half the population; medicine ignored that half the population anyway for the first 8,000 years of medical care, because they didn’t drag them in clinical trials and they couldn’t have anybody who either had pregnancy or period getting anywhere close to a clinical trial. So because they might have messed up the data or you know, there’s all this kind of bullshit reasoning. And perhaps about time we got past that. But by the way, we didn’t get that while we’re criticizing mental health companies between too many, your friends at Leaps by Bayer put more money into another round. Another late B…

Jess DaMassa:

You’re just going to shove this in at the end right now.

Matthew Holt:

Should have got that. But I mean, it’s like another round for you.

Jess DaMassa:

Are you going to say, well, if we’re going to do it, let’s just do it. Woebot that’s 9 million, Leaps by Bayer. I don’t know why they couldn’t jump into the 90 million dollar funding round that happened in July. But here they are.

Matthew Holt:

Those German folks take a long time to make up their mind.

Jess DaMassa:

I love it. No, Woebot a great company.

Matthew Holt:

Well, we know that Monique Levy was hanging around with the folks at Bayer and enjoying herself. I’ve used it a bit and I’m no longer depressed! Actually I wasn’t depressed to start off or my depression is so deep that the PHQ test can’t spot it. I should do one of those verbal analysis things and see what they think.

Jess DaMassa:

Right. Cause you’re so clear to understand.

Jess DaMassa:

We’re still looking for a subtitle sponsor, folks.

Matthew Holt:

So I don’t think my inability to articulate and my level of depression are actually connected. Maybe they are, maybe I’ve been depressed my whole life.

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah.

Matthew Holt:

Alright.

Jess DaMassa:

Maybe.

Matthew Holt:

Before I depress you any further, we should go.

Jess DaMassa:

If you want to sponsor subtitles so we could finally understand what Matthew Holt is saying. Please head on over to Twitter and DM me. I am @jessdamassa and to engage with him in written format, which is usually better except for all of the typos he’s over there on Twitter @boltyboy. Oh, you. Maybe the talk to text doesn’t understand you either who knows. And to never miss an episode of Health Tech Deals, sign up for our email newsletter over there at thehealthcareblog.com. You get the best of the blog delivered directly into your inbox every week or whenever we remember to send it out. That’s now part of the marketing so it seems like it’s intentional.

Matthew Holt:

I’ve actually got one in my inbox to deal with. I was doing a big webinar for the Europeans yesterday

Jess DaMassa:

The Europeans and their webinars.

Matthew Holt:

Anyway. Right.

Jess DaMassa:

Alright. See you guys later. More deals to come. Bye.