AngelList Weekly - The rise of telemedicine

As COVID-19 brings business to a screeching halt across the country, people are looking for alternatives to in-person services. Healthcare is no exception. Patients looking for routine treatments are avoiding hospital visits, pushing medical professionals to adopt telemedicine. This means patients can connect to healthcare providers via virtual visits -- and maybe the end of waiting rooms forever. 

The Washington Post projects over 1 billion telehealth visits by the end of 2020. And now that insurers are willing to fully reimburse claims from telehealth visits, the industry is set to take off. Startups, as always, are helping pave the way. 

Solv, a startup that offers same-day appointments with a network of physicians, reported that the consumer telemedicine usage was up nearly 3x in March. Walk-in patient traffic had declined by 57%, and the number of patients who scheduled their appointments more than a day ahead of time had declined by 18%. 

Doxy.me offers healthcare practitioners a free, HIPAA-compliant video platform to virtually connect with their patients. Doctor on Demand takes telemedicine a step further, allowing patients to make a virtual appointment with their own practitioners on the platform. 

Electronic health records and e-prescriptions were also transformative, but they differ from telemedicine in one major way. Those changes were driven by doctors, insurers, and the government. Telemedicine is being driven by patients looking for better, faster, and safer options for their care.

More from last week

Six tactics to receive the best advice from your startup's advisors in tough times:

• Be prepared to spar, benchmark, and direct your own learning.
• Master the art of contextualizing your requests.
• Maximize strong advisor relationships and bolster those that are lacking.
• Carve out time to spotlight what's valuable.
• Treat all of your advisors like mentors.
• Keep imposter syndrome at bay.

Lenny Rachitsky, who previously led Growth at Airbnb, shares the seven strategies that account for every big consumer app’s early growth:

• Go where your target users are, offline
• Go where your target users are, online
• Invite your friends
• Create FOMO in order to drive word-of-mouth
• Leverage influencers
• Get press
• Build a community pre-launch

The pandemic is creating a new topology of psychological and emotional needs. Covid-19 is exposing huge white spaces for new products.

James Currier and Josh Elman break down why now is the best time to start a social/communication company.

Auren Hoffman, CEO of Safegraph, outlines how to become a 10xer in your organization.

• See opportunities where others only see threats.
• Create a bias for action.
• Be positive, not negative.
• Make your team better.
• Do everything you say you are going to do.
• Manage your boss and colleagues; don’t make them spend time managing you.
• Proactively help the organization.

Melissa Raffoni, an executive coach, shares five questions to ask yourself to ensure you are the best leader you can be as you manage your team from home.

• Are you strategic enough?
• Have you revamped communication plans for your direct team and the organization at large?
• How might you reset roles and responsibilities to help people to succeed?
• Are you keeping an eye on (and communicating about) the big picture?
• What more can you do to strengthen your company culture?

Hot startups hiring now 🔥

Funding and Acquisitions

Facebook is buying the popular GIF-making and sharing platform Giphy for a reported price of $400 million, with plans to integrate the massive GIF library into Instagram and other Facebook apps. According to Facebook, 50 percent of all of Giphy’s traffic comes from its apps, with half of that coming from Instagram alone.

DigitalOcean, the developer-focused cloud infrastructure company, announced that it had raised a $50 million Series C round at a valuation of around $1 billion. DigitalOcean has surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue during this current quarter and said COVID-19 had accelerated the transition of businesses to the cloud.

Quizlet, a global learning platform providing AI-powered study tools to help people practice and master whatever they are learning, has raised $30 million in Series C funding at $1 billion valuation. School shutdowns due to COVID-19 have caused students to flock to the platform as they look for new ways to study, retain information, and collaborate.

Apple confirmed that it had acquired NextVR, a virtual reality company that specializes in broadcasting live events under the virtual reality format. NextVR had established partnerships with the NBA, Wimbledon, Fox Sports, WWE, and more, plus it holds more than 40 patents that could be of interest to Apple. The purchase is further evidence of Apple’s plans to enter virtual reality and related augmented reality technologies as a new product category.

Kustomer, an omnichannel SaaS platform company, announced it signed an agreement to buy Reply.ai, a customer service automation platform. With more people at home, customer support organizations are seeing new levels of usage, leading to a growing push to leverage advances in AI. 

AngelList Weekly

90 Gold St

San Francisco, CA 94133

| Update preferences