New York has long been a hub for healthcare startups - from Cityblock Health, to Oscar Health, to Ro, to Flatiron Health, to Juxtapose companies like Tend. But what may come as a surprise is how many of these companies were also incubated by New York firms.
Last week, Juxtapose and General Catalyst partnered to host an event bringing together nearly 100 healthcare leaders – ranging from investors and board advisors to founders and operators, including engineers, product leaders, and growth executives – to dive into what building healthcare companies from the ground up will look like in an increasingly AI-powered world.
Hosted at the beautiful Nine Orchard hotel here in New York City, the conversation centered around how healthcare technology and services are rich ground for incubation. Juxtapose has been building and capitalizing healthcare companies at the inception-stage for the last decade, and in addition to their global venture investing, General Catalyst has also built several innovative programs to actively foster new healthcare companies, including their creation fund and Healthcare Assurance fund, as part of their Transformation Flywheel.
Michael O'Neil, Jr., founder of the GetWellNetwork, led a panel on Entrepreneurship in Healthcare & Building AI Native Teams featuring Juxtapose partner Benjamin West, General Catalyst partner Tyler Olkowski, and Michael Rochlin, founder of Percepta, a GC Transformation Company. Across the panel and more intimate conversations, a few major themes surfaced:
• In today’s AI-driven market, what’s different about company building?
• How scalable is incubation? How are firms thinking about changing investment models with AI?
• Is now a good time to start a business? What types of healthcare problems are best suited for AI-native approaches versus those where AI is more an operations or efficiency layer?
Coming out of the discussion, several controversial insights about healthcare's future were also explored in a true/false quick-fire round:
• AI as Primary Care Physician by 2030: The panel split on this—consensus leaned toward AI serving as a co-pilot rather than replacing physicians entirely.
• Longevity businesses driving health outcomes: The panel was excited about some of the innovations that longevity-focused businesses would drive with individual patients, but didn't see longevity-focused ventures making a significant impact on population health within the next decade.
• Value-based care adoption: We won't see full adoption in the next decade, but it seems likely over a 30-50 year horizon—suggesting transformation takes longer than advocates hope, yet remains inevitable.
If you are a healthcare builder looking for partnership or your next opportunity, get in touch!
