A Neko Health investor on the $700M bet to scan your whole body

Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s Neko Health raised $700 million to build a business around scanning your body, but it’s not the only company centering its roadmap around a new kind of preventative healthcare. Midjourney is building its own body scanner, while Function Health has also raised significant capital to build out its preventative-health platform. Why are investors betting so big on this category? On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis talks with Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures and an investor in Neko Health, about how Neko compares with other consumer-health startups. They discuss what has to happen for body scanning to become part of the broader healthcare system. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: Why Farooq invested in Neko after trying the company's scan himself What Neko's $500 scan actually includes, and how the company keeps the price down Why Farooq thinks low primary-care utilization is one of the biggest problems in U. S. healthcare Why some consumer-health startups may be overfunded, in Farooq's view How better health data could open the door to a new generation of AI-powered healthcare Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You can also follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Chapters: 00:00 — Can Tech Reinvent Preventative Healthcare?01:44 — Why Spotify’s Founder Built Neko Health06:22 — Why Healthcare Is So Hard to Fix08:23 — Inside a $500 Neko Health Scan12:35 — Can Preventative Healthcare Scale?14:20 — The Risks of VC-Backed Healthcare17:28 — How AI Is Changing Medicine22:55 — Is AI in Healthcare Worth the Risk? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode of Equity is brought to you by Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric, your energy technology partner.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. I'm Dominic Mendoza and for Rebecca Valan, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Spotify's founders built a company that scans your body, draws your blood, and tells you your biological age in an hour. The startup, Daniel X Neko Health, recently raised a $700 million Series C, and it's not a loan. Midjourney is building its own body scanner, and Function Health took on a $450 million loan to fund its growth. So is this the future of medicine or the most expensive wellness fad yet? To help us make sense of it, we're joined by someone who has seen this from a few angles. Rukh Abasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures. He's invested in more than 100 companies, including Neko Health, and he's even been

• 0:50Speaker 01

  through a Neko scan himself.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Rukh, welcome to the show.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I've maybe used a little bit of a background, if that's helpful. So yeah, I've been venture investing for about 20 years. And by the way, healthcare and wellness and artificial intelligence is really having a renaissance and revolution, and for a lot of different reasons we'll get into. So Preface was founded in 2016. We're investing out of our fourth fund. We'll invest at seed, and then we'll continue to invest further and further and further into the company, up to the tunes of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions over time. And what's in our buy box and who we're attracted to the most is successfully exited founders. So people like Daniel and like Yalmar, and there's lots of other examples.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  And when they're motivated to take a bigger swing in usually tangential industries or industries they're really passionate about. So yeah, I'm excited to talk more about it and get into it, chop it up.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna ask what drew you to Neko Health, especially because, I mean, it probably makes sense to you as an investor and probably people really deep in the tech world, but because he created Spotify. And so how do you go from Spotify to Neko Health? How was that pitched to you as an investor?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Daniel and Yalmar and Shaq and the people that are involved in that team, they're some of the most talented entrepreneurs that you can find. If you look at their background, they have been successful in Spotify, in Helsing, also in Neko. And these are projects they care so much about. They invest a lot of their own time into it. And I remember meeting Daniel in 2016 or 2015, and he was talking about this then, about how he wants to fix healthcare and how in a lot of parts of the world that preventative healthcare is just not utilized, even in developed countries like in the United States. I mean, in Europe, I mean, I lived in Europe, as you may remember, Dom, from our last conversation. Pretty common to go to the doctor, annual checkup, like clockwork.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  But in the United States, there's such little, and not just in the US and other parts of the world, there's such little emphasis and focus on preventative care. We solve things when things go awry and ER and the sick population. But there's something, and it's something that Yalmar has said, not just to me recently and to groups of friends at the Neko launch party event that happened in New York a couple of weeks ago. But if you look at the Hippocratic Oath, it's prevention is more important than cure. It's been thought about by that team for a long period of time. It's not like a young company. It's like six, seven years old. It just took a while to build something as impressive as Neko is, and we can get into it more.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just really honored and happy to be a small part of the journey. And again, there are other investors in the company, like Lightspeed and OG Partners and a few others, but really happy to support them. Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so how did the deal come across your desk, actually? So you already knew them?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I've known, I've known this team for legitimately like 10-ish years. We've kind of supported each other and kind of in different investing initiatives. And take maybe a step back. I have 35 first cousins who are physicians. My dad and my brother, yeah, my dad and my brother are both cardiologists. And actually, my first role out of college was at a venture capital firm, which was Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Capital Firm. And two really successful companies. One was called Change Healthcare, which went public, I was involved with. One was called Freeja, I also was involved with, went public. It's just an area that I've cared a lot about. I mean, even for some other examples, like Akasa is a business, which I've incubated

• 4:35Speaker 02

  with the Andreessen team, which does artificial intelligence or revenue cycle management that is solving healthcare payment flows and making that whole process a lot better for some of the largest health systems in the world, like HCA, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo. And you'll learn more about them. And well, learn, they've been kind of quieter, but they're secretly very, very successful. You'll hear more about them pretty soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Candor Health as well in the portfolio. And again, very consistently successfully exited founders and experienced founding teams and provider directory. Resilient Health is another primary care business I'm involved with. So yeah, like healthcare has been an area that is just really important that I care a lot about from a personal perspective.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  But I think to answer a question you had earlier, at this point in my career, I'm not like an old, old man or anything, but there are a lot of places to place capital and to partner with people and to have success. In the world right now, people are investing in satellites and in defense and in consumer, like lots of different areas. I'm motivated to work with people that I really trust, and those guys are some of the most trustworthy, talented, kind, honorable people that you can find in terms of entrepreneurial teams. That's one. And then two, from a philosophical alignment, like this should exist. Again, more on a personal level, too. One of the things that I get kind of sad about, I don't know if you've had this experience, Dom, is like, have you ever had a friend who's maybe told you, like, oh, hey, like,

• 6:04Speaker 02

  you know, something's off with my health and I don't know what it is? And like, one of your first responses is like, hey, you should just go, why don't you go get that checked out? And they have a fear, and they have a fear and they don't want to do it. And it's like, it's such a, like, how crazy that we live in a system where there's such a friction about getting the knowledge that you need to take care of yourself? Like, that needs to be solved in the trust. And so.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Why do you think it's so hard to solve that problem? Because it seems like, I mean, there's a lot of healthcare startups, but what is the bottleneck that they're all running into?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Very meaty question. There's a lot of information out there. And also too, I would just sort of say with healthcare data, it's so much information. And then I think when people look historically, like I'll call it the WebMD effect. You used to go on WebMD and it's like, write what your problem is, and it would say, like, you have something, like you're terminal or something kind of terrible. I think there's a little bit of an insecurity with just the human psyche of the unknown. And so that's so critical as their health. That's one. I think from a hospital system perspective, so forget startups for a second. I mean, for those who are fortunate to be insured in the United States, you can sign up for an appointment. It takes time. It takes effort. You don't actually have any cost transparency.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  I mean, that, I think also is like, it's weird to say this and maybe just to admit it now. I think if I, not for myself per se, but I think one of the reasons why people have that fear of the unknown is because they don't know what it's going to cost them. I mean, 67% of bankruptcies in the United States are because of healthcare expenses. You just don't know what your copay is. You don't know what it's going to cost. Like, there's just so much issues and sort of difficulty. And what I'm happy about from, I'd say, like, the next range of startups, you've mentioned a few, right? You mentioned Function Health, and there's a few others. There's a couple of problems that need to be solved. First, it's getting information from the patient in a standard, structured format.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  And then, secondly, it's about translating that information to make it understandable to a layperson and for them to be able to make interventions in their life, whether it's their own lifestyle choices or maybe prescription, et cetera. It's still so unsolved. And so what I love about Neko is, for one, easy to book. Your information is all in one place. It's cost effective.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  How much is it?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  About $500 in the United States.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Does insurance cover it?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  No, it's all out of pocket, but I believe at some points in the future, like, I think it should be reimbursable. I mean, interestingly, if you look at the data behind, they almost had kind of like a Spotify and review anonymized for Neko scans and review. Like, first, those who take a Neko scan, like 90% of them will pay up and want to schedule one for the next year because they're so happy with the ability and the capability to, A, get all this information, book it, access it. And this information, it's a derm scan, it's a strength test, it's an eye pressure test, it's an echocardiogram. That's such a thing that is not done for people who are under the age of 50, but it's super critical.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  How long does it take, the whole thing? It sounds like expensive.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  It is extensive, but it's, but one hour. And what I've loved also too, so you mentioned earlier in my introduction, that I've done one scan, I've done two.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Oh, you've done two scans?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I've done two scans. I've done a generation one scan and then a generation two scan. And again, another reason why I love this team and their philosophy of the business, they've made the cost the same. So in my first generation one scan, it was a blood test with 15 biomarkers. It was 55 this time. And so they're basically adding more and more relevant information and biomarkers for health while doing the best that they can to keep it accessible. I'll say this, and I've even kind of polled a few of my friends. I asked, hey, what do you think it should cost? Or what would you have expected it to cost? They'd be like, easily, it could be like $2,000, $3,000, no problem.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  And they make it accessible for people, which is important.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  How do they make it so cheap, I guess? Or I guess compared to what it should cost? Like, how is all of that only $500?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Well, okay, should. Should's an interesting word choice. I think preventative care and healthcare should be cheap and accessible. First, pretty much vertical integration. So first of all, having the lab onsite. So you get a blood test within the hour, and then in that hour period of time, you have minutes, sometimes tens of minutes, depending with the clinician, with a doctor to actually tell you and have a one-on-one conversation about what's going on, what's not going well, what can be improved upon. Yeah, like, again, using the best and next generation of computer vision to identify and get all these biomarkers. And again, many of these things are going to be approved from an FDA regulatory perspective

• 11:07Speaker 02

  in the coming months or years to be just directional. And so, again, I haven't seen a company that has given such a comprehensive, also just delightful, like, you feel like you're walking into the future, but a comprehensive, cost-effective primary care visit. Like, it is leaps and bounds better than anything I've ever seen.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And well, actually, one thing I do want to know is, so did you, were you doing the scans as part of due diligence? Or was that just like you, you just wanted to, you were just like a regular customer getting scanned?

• 11:38Speaker 02

  I mean, again, I've known, I've known the founding team for like, like almost a decade. I wanted to just try it to support a friend, to be honest. And like, really, the second that I tried it, I'm like, hey, like, this is pretty incredible. Like, I gotta do this. Like, how can I get, how can I get involved? And I was very grateful to have the opportunity to, again, like, deploy capital to incentivize problems that should be solved and that I think are important to solve, like in primary care.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  You know, something that when I think about is like, this is, because right now it's just in New York, right?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it's actually, so home HQ is Sweden, so.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  No, I mean, like, I mean, like, in the US.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Oh, in the US, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Sweden, yeah, I will say Sweden, there's three, four, four, five clinics in the United Kingdom, and then New York, yeah, 300 Lafayette, so please, please come. There's a pretty extensive waitlist, like, quite extensive waitlist. But the plan is, you know, like Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, like many, many, many other cities in the coming months and years.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's giving very LA to me for some reason, because like, I was just wondering, it's like, what is, what is the reality of scaling something like this? Like, could you see this in like rural Mississippi or something? Like, how do you kind of scale a product, not just like Neko Health, but like, all the others who have, who are popping up in this market right now?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  I mean, I kind of hope, and like, again, with the information and knowledge that I have, like, I think there should be Neko clinics like everywhere. I think it's gonna eventually, kind of not speaking for the team, of course, but, you know, I've worked at a, at a, at a payer's venture capital firm before and understand what incentives are and how things work. Like, there should be reimbursed, everyone should do it, like, yeah. So how does one scale it? I mean, I would say, look, the, the company has raised a good amount of capital, which is wonderful. There's some components to equity and debt, which is good, to basically like, launch, launch these clinics. But they, they're, they're run in an economically intelligent way, despite even being kind of cost effective, because,

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I mean, again, these operators, like, Spotify is a hard business to build and to scale sort of successfully, and like, they pulled it off, which is, which is epic. Healthing, again, is going in the right, sort of right direction, as I understand it, and Neko is like, you know, flying so far, which, which is great. So, the key thing is making sure that people use it, and it's a booking model, and there's, you know, operations, and you can manage costs well, but they should be everywhere. And yeah, and, and rural clinics, yeah, hopefully. Or, sorry, rural areas, hopefully, because again, like, primary care utilization is like, ridiculously low in the United States. It's like, under, I think it's under seven or eight percent. That's not good. You gotta fix it.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  It's not good.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Do you think there's any concerns about, like, the increase of VC-backed health startups? Because I was just thinking about how like you, you know, there's this whole thing about like, private equity eating all the hospitals and all these healthcare things. Are there similar concerns with like, the rise of amount of VC-backed health startups? Or, I guess, where else would the money come from in terms of funding all of these things?

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question, Dom. I mean, there's a million problems in healthcare to solve. Like, you know, I, I actually wish there was more, there was more like optimistic dollars, I would say, like, to, to invest in this, like, not just like private equity, squeeze, operations, you know, buying surgery care clinics and spinning a lot, like, it's funny, I would say, in my personal opinion, there are some VC dollars that are in the kind of consumerization of health piece, which are overfunding businesses that I don't think will be successful, like, long-term. And that don't actually, so think about, like, what's the important thing for, in life, is to change someone's, like, healthcare and

• 15:31Speaker 02

  sort of patient outcomes. There are a lot of businesses that are, and I won't name specific names, because I don't throw a lot of shade here. I try not to throw shade in life. But like, the, over medicating people and making it ridiculously easy via telemedicine just to be like, and they, they don't think of them as patients, they think of them as subscribers, which is rough. And so, and, and do they have a comprehensive view of someone's health to say that an additional, I don't know, a GLP-1, or nicotine cessation, or like, whatever you can subscribe, like, easily via telemedicine? Or, you know, or is a, or is a blood test that gives you like, a fancy, like, I don't know, like PDF document, and like, looks pretty, and gives you tons of information about like, possible things

• 16:16Speaker 02

  that could happen, but it's not really understandable? Like, somehow, for me, it shines a light onto a sector, an area of our world that needs more of our best minds to focus on it, and, and better businesses, better business models. I sometimes get a little disheartened, because I'm like, oh, like, one of those things got funded again? Like, no, you know? Whereas, again, Neko, like, obviously very biased, but you know, put, put, put your money where your mouth is, kind of thing. That, that is a company that will save people. I mean, like, there's some, some stats, I mean, they've already saved a couple of people's lives by admitting people to a different hospital system when they needed care, which is pretty amazing.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna ask, who kind of handles the follow-ups to this? Does Neko have its own system of handling follow-ups, or does it all eventually kind of lead back into the traditional American health system?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  It's a better question for the team, for, for the management team, but as I, as I understand it, if something is, has popped up, which is important, and important enough to have an intervention, it goes into the sort of the American health system. But again, they just launched in New York, and they don't have clinics, I mean, there's way more to do. Again, the philosophy of Neko is that it's gonna be like, the place, and the sort of like, the center hub, for people to sort of come back to and benchmark themselves for.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Based off of all the companies that you invest in, this one included, what are some of the hardest things about building healthcare? I guess I kind of asked a version of this in the beginning, but it seems like, you know, Neko Health, it's so good to be true, right? You know, you have this product, and then it just fixes everything. But is this health system, like, too broken to fix?

• 17:55Speaker 00

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• 18:21Speaker 02

  I'm an optimist, and I'm, I'm.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Oh, you're an optimist?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  I'm compensated to be an optimist, to some degree, but I would say, no, like, nothing's broken to, to fix. It's too important of a sector. Look, I mean, the way that I think about it is like, what are problems that, like, that are the most important, that need to be addressed and sort of solved? Primary care utilization is a massive problem, and that is a bet that I have made, and really, like, the Neko team has, has made, to try to fix this. I think another area of, of issue and concern, I described this earlier in our conversation, is around finance and payments, and, and cost transparency. Like, that, that hurts, that, that drives a lot of pain. And so, I think the healthcare VC

• 19:08Speaker 02

  ecosystem needs to sort of support that. And I also think that, like, more people need to come try to solve these types of problems. And I've been really happy, I mean, to, to some degree, that historically, like, 10 or 15 years ago, the kind of investors and folks and minds that went to sort of healthcare, it was very private equity-minded, it was like healthcare services companies. If you looked at what these companies were traded at, even to, like, when they went public, you can get to a lot of revenue, but they don't trade as well as like, some software companies. I mean, if you look at companies like Open Evidence, I mean, like, first, there's, the world is starving for sort of better technology. I mean, are you familiar with Open Evidence, Dom, by chance?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Oh, incredible business, also an investor. It is used by two-thirds of doctors every single day. It's, yeah, recently valued at 15 billion from Andreessen Horowitz, and basically, it is, it's funny to say ChatGPT for doctors, but it's basically like, being able to do this sort of Q and A, and double check, and upload information. Medical knowledge, the corpus of medical knowledge is doubling every year. There is no way that a doctor, he, she, or they, can like, know all of the information. Mind you, is all the new information that gets created relevant. But what, what Open Evidence has done, which is remarkable, is, you know, it is partnered, and has been inclusive of like, New England, New England Medical, Medical Journal, and other publications, to basically, like, use that information,

• 20:33Speaker 02

  train, and work together, to basically make, make everyone a, a super-powered physician or healthcare worker. Healthcare companies used to take like, a long time to build, and they would take 10, 15 years to get to certain scale. I mean, Open Evidence is, is one of the fastest-growing vertical AI companies around. I mean, when you, when you think about, like, in that world, like, you know, Harvey's growing really fast in vertical AI, Glean has grown in vertical app, but vertical applications, you know, Harvey, Legora, you know, Open Evidence, Abridge, maybe, and, and a few others. But everyone has hated electronic health, health records. Like, people have always, oh, God, it's, you know, terrible to work with, we kind of complain. You know, I, I give, you know, credit to

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Obama, and, you know, previous administrations for basically pushing through electronic health records. We have now created a digital work chain of someone's patient, someone's health. And as a result of that sort of standard, relatively standard sort of form of kind of data, and sort of set of data constructs, people are able to use artificial intelligence, and operationalize, and automate, and actually make healthcare even better. So, what was something that was like, not fashionable, now is like, super fashionable? Like, I don't know, maybe like carpenter jeans, or, there's probably a better example. That doesn't date me so much.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. He said the AI word, now I feel like I have to bring it up. Oh, my God. Well, there's, actually, there was something I wanted to ask before asking an AI question, which was, so, so companies like this, and this is like, me asking as like, a civilian. I know in the venture ecosystem, kind of, a win is like, a big IPO. But when it comes to these healthcare companies, is, should these companies stay private? Or, do you see, like, like in Neko Health, or your other investments, the end goal being an IPO, where you kind of, I guess, put people's health on the, the public markets, like, a lot of hospitals? Or, like, what is a win for you here?

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Oh, what a question. There's, the philosophical, philosophical answer is.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  In healthcare, like again, I've been grateful and lucky to have some quite large successes already on the backs of the entrepreneurs that do all the hard work. I want to dedicate and allocate funds to people like working on problems that are meaningful material. I also think that like the company should go public at some point to be inclusive of like the overall population and have people participate as sort of retail sort of shareholders. You know, there is definitely some issue. I think insurance companies being public, that's, that's a little bit sort of like tougher. But you know, again, I have a somewhat of a bias towards free sort of capital markets, but I also have a little

• 23:19Speaker 02

  bit. I think if I could choose, I'd want universal healthcare. So I'm a little Nordic and I'm a little Nordic in this way, you know?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Do you find that people are actually afraid in terms of AI mixing in with the world of healthcare? Or is that just like talk on the internet?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  I think any new technology can have a little bit of like fear associated with it. The problems in healthcare are so remarkably significant. And the impact that one can have is so significant on someone's health and longevity and healthy population and their use of the costs that are associated with staying healthy and being healthy and being a productive member of society. I think the fears that folks have in artificial intelligence in healthcare are probably overblown relative to, relative to the, the upside. Mind you, like if you're using that same filter and framework, surveillance, man, like I'm, I'm, I'm negative on that, right? So I think like that, I think that the downside of these types of things and what's the upside and who benefits? Artificial intelligence in

• 24:23Speaker 02

  healthcare should make care more accessible, have people like live longer. And of course, there's many problems and issues and concerns and edge cases. And, you know, I'm hopeful that the regulatory bodies that kind of monitor these types of technologies and solutions will do the very best that they can. Because again, I think the, the world needs to be healthier.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  So I did want to ask about regulation because do people kind of see this like, or going back to NecoHealth as an example, is so this is like preventative, do people see this like preventative health? Do they see it as like a wellness trend, a wellness fad? Or, or are people, regulators, like the, the big decision makers, are they actually saying like, oh yeah, this is like the next frontier in medicine? How are people seeing this?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  I mean, again, one man's opinion. When I use it, when I hear the term like wellness or like fad or let's just say wellness for a second, I can kind of think about like meditation, recovery, cold plunges, saunas, like that, that, that type of thing. NecoHealth is a medical grade informative, very high bar for accuracy and for success. And it gives patients actionable insights to make their like lives better and to, to know and actually to, to measure it. So basically, again, I've worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield a long time ago. In order to get something, again, there's certain countries are with, by the way, Sweden, way better, digital reimbursement in healthcare, really like reimbursement for healthcare is in the, in the Nordic countries is, are so wonderful. You want to go to an

• 25:54Speaker 02

  insurer, whether that's a public or private insurer, and show evidence that like, hey, with the implementation of this technology or process, you're able to have a healthier population that like lives longer and you can serve them at like lower cost. NecoHealth is my view thus far, like showing all the right signals. And actually even like, again, we'll just have more and more folks. I mean, it's already had, you know, I think a hundred thousand, hundreds of thousands of scans and he'll soon be millions and sort of tens of millions. My suspicion is that there's going to be enough data to show that, hey, like, because these folks, myself included, have a primary care appointment, and then we're held accountable to that. And then we have the opportunity to speak to a physician.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  And, and there's so many products that I like, I like can't, probably don't even have the fullest knowledge about, but like things that are in the, in the hopper, it's going to drive real change. And so I'm, again, I'm hopeful that regulators will be excited to be supportive of, of a company like NecoHealth. But I also think they should be careful about those who aren't as robust, or maybe aren't as robust, or maybe only like capture a very like small sliver, a slice of information and nothing as comprehensive as sort of primary care, you know? That's the difference between what I think is a fad versus what is something that is really like foundational and conventional.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  And I, I feel like I only have time for one more question, which was, you said you have like 30 cousins who are doctors?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yes, first cousins.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  First cousins, have, have they used NecoHealth? What were their thoughts? What did they not like? What, what do they think needs to be improved on? I'm so curious now.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, actually, so all my, so my first cousins for physicians are all in Chicago and unfortunately there isn't a Neko in Chicago yet, but there, but there will be. No, I mean, I honestly like the feedback largely has been so, it's, it is just so head and shoulders above any, any, any primary care experience that I've ever had. And I think, and this is why people are so happy to sign up for like the next year and to even share things. I mean, like, NecoHealth is making ownership of your personal care and primary care like a source of pride. That's why it's, you know, it's on social media and it's on X and people are excited. I know like in SF, they'll, I believe it'll be on Market Street eventually.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, it's not in SF yet?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Will be, will be.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That's actually kind of crazy that it's not in San Francisco yet.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  As I understand it, you know, regulatory, zoning, these types of things sort of takes, still in California.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  The regulators, I forgot.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  The regulators, yes. But you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm super excited for them, them to expand there and elsewhere. Because I think, again, this isn't just a US problem. I'm happy it's in Europe. There's more countries there, but it should be really everywhere.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like, no, it seems like really interesting. It's like all over the internet now. It seems like a form of like preventative health in a sense. I don't know. I was, I remember I was talking to one.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Have you got, wait, you, you haven't gotten a scan yet?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  I am terrified of these things.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Oh, no. What?

• 28:57Speaker 02

  I just told you the story about.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  We just had a whole conversation.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that's so funny. Well, okay. Well, no, that fears are valid. How you feel is valid, of course.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  I would, yeah, of course. I would encourage you to, I would say like the fact that you can interface with a physician for 20 or 30 minutes or 10 minutes, or depending how much time you need privately and ask all those questions, the fact that the data is like secure and that it's yours. And it's a really like safe, it's, it's a real safe space. So I would encourage you to, because do you mind me asking when the last time you got a, when's the last time you saw a doctor?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  My, my primary checkup? I see it once a year.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Oh, you do it? Okay, that's good.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I'm picking it up, you know, I'm getting, getting in the game. No, I think it, I think it's, I think NecoHealth is really, really interesting. And I'm also curious to see how it expands. Yeah. I mean, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  And to our listeners, you can find me on Instagram. Please follow me on Instagram at Dominic Midori. And you can follow Equity at EquityPod. And where can our listeners find you?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  You can email, you know, [email protected]. For one, always prefer entrepreneurs who are like working on healthcare problems or artificial intelligence problems, you know, hopefully like from our conversation, some of the themes that I care about are kind of like we're uncovered. And so please, please email me. And then, yeah, LinkedIn as well is, is always good. Thank you, by the way, for the conversation. I hope it was informative. Honestly, I think we could have talked about like more healthcare AI stuff for, for hours, really. Like it's a, it's such an interesting time and there's a real renaissance. So thanks for giving it some attention.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course. I mean, I hope, I hope there's a renaissance.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's happening. It's, from just the VC entrepreneurial angle, like it is remarkable, like what's capable now, what's possible, even from like the companies and how fast they're growing and responsibly growing. Like not a fad, not a fad, real.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Not a fad.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Truly real. So yeah, thank you again.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Talk to you next time. Talk to you next time.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Equity is hosted by TechCrunch senior reporters and produced by Teresa Locan-Solo with editing by Kel. Subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and find out what's next at techcrunch.com/events. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.