Extra Crunch Friday: 8 VCs agree: Behavioral support and remote visits make digital health a strong bet for 2021

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday

I had my first telehealth consultation last year, and it’s likely that you did, too. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, consumer adoption of remote healthcare has increased 300%.

A May 2020 McKinsey study pegged domestic telehealth revenue at $3 billion per year before the coronavirus, but “up to $250 billion of current U.S. healthcare spend could potentially be virtualized” after the pandemic abates.

A staggering number, but in a category that includes verticals like women’s health, pediatrics, mental health, data management and sexual health, it’s clear to see why digital health funding exceeded $10 billion in the first three quarters of 2020.

Drawing from The TechCrunch List, reporter Sarah Buhr interviewed eight active health tech VCs to learn more about the companies and trends that have captured their interest in 2021:

• Bryan Roberts and Bob Kocher, partners, Venrock
• Nan Li, managing director, Obvious Ventures
• Elizabeth Yin, general partner, Hustle Fund
• Christina Farr, principal investor and health tech lead, OMERS Ventures
• Ursheet Parikh, partner, Mayfield Ventures
• Nnamdi Okike, co-founder and managing partner, 645 Ventures
• Emily Melton, founder and managing partner, Threshold Ventures

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week; I hope you have a relaxing weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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How VCs invested in Asia and Europe in 2020

Last year, U.S.-based VCs invested an average of $428 million each day in domestic startups, with much of the benefits flowing to fintech companies.

This morning, Alex Wilhelm examined Q4 VC totals for Europe, which had its lowest deal count since Q1 2019, despite a record $14.3 billion in investments.

Asia’s VC industry, which invested $25.2 billion across 1,398 deals, is also seeing “a muted recovery,” says Alex.

“Falling seed volume, lots of big rounds. That’s 2020 VC around the world in a nutshell.” Next week: a look at Africa’s 2020 VC numbers.

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TC Sessions: Justice 2021

Sponsored by TechCrunch

Explore inclusive hiring, the gig worker experience, the justice system and more in a series of interviews and breakout sessions.

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Decrypted: With more SolarWinds fallout, Biden picks his cybersecurity team

In this week’s Decrypted, security reporter Zack Whittaker covered the latest news in the unfolding SolarWinds espionage campaign, now revealed to have impacted the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Malwarebytes.

In other news, the controversy regarding WhatsApp’s privacy policy change appears to be driving users to encrypted messaging app Signal, Zack reported.

In the meantime, Facebook has paused its plans for tweaking WhatsApp’s PP “until it could figure out how to explain the change without losing millions of users.”

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Hot IPOs hang onto gains as investors keep betting on tech

A big IPO debut is a juicy topic for a few news cycles, but because there’s always another unicorn ready to break free from its corral and leap into the public markets, it doesn’t leave a lot of time to reflect.

Yesterday, Alex studied companies like Lemonade, Airbnb and Affirm to see how well these IPO pop stars have retained their value.

Not only have most of them held steady, “many have actually run up the score in the ensuing weeks,” he found.

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Dear Sophie: What are Biden’s immigration changes?

Dear Sophie:

I work in HR for a tech firm. I understand that Biden is rolling out a new immigration plan today.

What is your sense as to how the new administration will change business, corporate and startup founder immigration to the U.S.?

—Free in Fremont

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Hello, Extra Crunch community!

I began my career as an avid TechCrunch reader and remained one even when I joined as a writer, when I left to work on other things and now that I’ve returned to focus on better serving our community.

I’ve been chatting with some of the folks in our community and I’d love to talk to you, too.

Nothing fancy, just 5-10 minutes of your time to hear more about what you want to see from us and get some feedback on what we’ve been doing so far.

If you would be so kind as to take a minute or two to fill out this form, I’ll drop you a note and hopefully we can have a chat about the future of the Extra Crunch community before we formally roll out some of the ideas we’re cooking up.

Thanks very much!

Drew Olanoff
@yoda

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How and when to build marketing teams at deep tech companies

Building a marketing team is one of the most opaque parts of starting up, but for a deep tech company, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

How can technical founders working on bleeding-edge technology find the right people to tell their story?

If you work at a post-revenue, early-stage deep tech startup (or know someone who does), this post explains when to hire a team, whether they’ll need prior industry experience and how to source and evaluate talent.

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