#THCBGang on May 5 was an extraordinary special on cancer & navigation. Everyone on this gang has been touched by cancer as a patient or caregiver.

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) will be fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano); policy consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1); Jeff Goldsmith; Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); PLUS Adam Pellegini (@adampellegrini) from cancer navigation company Jasper Health. It really was a great conversation about what to do (and what is being done) to make the experience better for people with cancer and those that love them.

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica DaMassa:

Matthew Holt, you and our loyal listeners might recall how a few weeks ago I bring up the fact that no one is talking about Peloton and the fact that it’s killing TV characters left and right. Then what happens all of a sudden? Boom! Take out of Peloton. The stock has tanked. The CEO is gone. Thousands of people laid off. Am I the harboror of terrible things that are yet to come? It’s this episode, the February 10th episode of Health Tech Deals.

Matthew Holt:

Better hope you don’t talk smack about anybody else in this one.

Jessica DaMassa:

Shh. I think there may have been a point where people wanted to be mentioned on this show. And now, I don’t know.

Matthew Holt:

Okay. So welcome Big, very nice. Not calling out anybody for killing off their characters on TV.

Jessica DaMassa:

I can move markets, Matthew.

Matthew Holt:

It’s actually kind of funny. Right? Because the whole article that was written by the investor who’s really pissed off with the guy, the CEO of Peloton, was all about, “How that guy was…” You know, he was doing it. He said, “I dont understand what the CTO does. I don’t understand what the operations person does, so I just delegate to her.” And he’s cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars on the way down. To some extent, it’s not exactly his fault that the market got so… the value of these stocks so crazily and got ahead of the skis. There’s not much you can do as a CEO if the market’s going crazy on the upside. All you can do is do your business. There was a long discussion about what could the CEO of GameStop actually have done other than what he did do? Just sell a bunch of, or pay off a bunch of their debt by selling stock, as did AMC and much of the others. Right?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah.

Matthew Holt:

So when their stock went completely crazy, you take advantage of it. But the stock is out of your control to some extent.

Jessica DaMassa:

But what’s interesting about the CEO of Peloton here, it’s like they’re painting this whole story is like, this is a case of a founder who didn’t know when to walk away. The thing that I heard on the news this morning was all about that. They’re interviewing people about, “Oh, you’ve got to learn when you’ve gone beyond yourself. And oftentimes the entrepreneur who founded the company doesn’t realize when this is happening.” And he’s not really even going anywhere. He’s actually got a promotion. He’s the chairman of the board now.

Matthew Holt:

Well, yeah, everything was taken away from him. But I mean, he also walked off with several hundred million dollars. So I mean, you can all get purer about the fact, well, people shouldn’t just sell their stocks at the higher the market. But on the other hand… well…

Jessica DaMassa:

Isn’t that the point?

Matthew Holt:

Wouldn’t you do that?

Jessica DaMassa:

I know, sell high. Right?

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. You and I, well, I’ve perfected the other approach

Jessica DaMassa:

No, you buy high and sell low. But I generally try to go buy low and sell high.

Matthew Holt:

All right. Well, we’re talking about buying and selling, All right, you ready?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah, get it. Oh, my God, there’s so much. More mergers and acquisitions, baby. Let’s do it. Signify Health acquires Caravan Health in a deal $250 million, combination of cash and stock. This one’s very interesting to me.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, it’s a decent sized acquisition. Signify’s valuation, it’s down like anyone else, but it’s not down like in the gutter. It’s about a quarter of where it was at the crazy highs and rough about a couple of billion. So it’s not a huge acquisition. But they do both the home care stuff and they have their perspective payments, risk value based payment management side. Caravan Health does a bunch more of that stuff. They run a bunch of ACOs and all that stuff. So it’s a nice extension. Caravan Health’s got a bunch of ex CMS people on their management team, which would probably help, given what CMS is about to do in direct contracting and medical manage. So it looks like a nice tie and a nice tucking to what they’re doing. Your friend, Kyle Armbrester there, is not dumb. And guess who the big backer still at Signify is.?

Jessica DaMassa:

My favorite, Matthew Holt. Mountain Capital Matthew Holt. You will love the interview that I did with Kyle Armbrester and Lynn Barr, who’s the founder of Caravan Health. So you guys have to check that out if you want the details about it. All right, Koneksa gets 45 million in a Series C. What do they do?

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, they do a bunch of biometric measuring stuff for clinical trials. Came out of Merck a long while ago. I actually did a bit of early-stage consulting with these guys eight years ago? Seven, eight years ago. Not quite sure why they’ve been taking so long. This is like a series C, but hopefully it’s going to do well.

Jessica DaMassa:

Cancer navigation company, Jasper Health gets 25 million in a Series A, brings their total up to 31.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. This is Adam Pellegrini from CVS, Walgreens, a bunch of other places. And Greg Orr, from Walgreens or CVS, I can’t remember which one. They are working together. Really, really, I like this one a lot.

Jessica DaMassa:

All right, Vynca, 30 million for end-of-life planning.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. I don’t know much about this company, but they’ve been doing good work in helping people get advanced directives. There’s another company called My Directives, which was around earlier pushing this. Several competitors in the space now, but integrating that into EMRs.

Jessica DaMassa:

And Doximity acquires Amion, which is the scheduling app. The big news here is about their Q3 earnings. Matthew Holt! First of all, this acquisition 82.5 million. This brings a scheduling thing for doctors into their whole little portfolio. But talk to us about that, and those huge earnings.

Matthew Holt:

So Doximity, it’s got all the doctors in the world on its system. It makes most of its money selling drug adverts to them, marketing on behalf of the pharma companies. But during the pandemic, they picked up a lot of activity. Both for those individual doctors and for enterprise doing telemeds and telehealth. The scheduling thing, I think, from Amion fits pretty well into that. And apparently, it’s used by quite a lot of independent doctors as well. So that’s where it came from. But I mean, the real big news is, yeah, the earnings are up nearly 100%, on the way to nearly 100 million, 97 million. 67% year-on-year increase. I mean, they’re going gangbusters, still. Even though the stock is well down, or the stock is up about 25% today. And their net margins, all that, they made over $50 million. Everyone else is losing money, their EBIT is like 45% of revenue. I mean, I don’t know. Jeff Tangney should be giving lectures to the rest of digital health CEOs on how to make money.

Jessica DaMassa:

Apparently so.

Matthew Holt:

He seems to really have figured it out.

Jessica DaMassa:

He’s not one of those CEOs who is in over his skis

Matthew Holt:

He is like, people are sitting around saying, “Why isn’t this company worth more?” Don’t forget, it was worth a lot. At one point was on the way to being worth as much as Peloton… Peloton, sorry, Teladoc, companies who should come down off their highs. Yeah, it was down last week. I should have bought some. Hmm. No, I’ve always… to my credit-

Jessica DaMassa:

Hmm. Again, buy low, sell high.

Matthew Holt:

To my secret credit, when Venrock used to send around that questionnaire to the digital health crowd, I mean, saying, “Who would you like to buy and have an IPO?” I always put down Doximity. Don’t forget, they were the ones who raised all that money from Rebecca Lynn and Canvas and never spent it. Basically gave her a massive present. “Yes, you can buy a bunch of our equity. We’ll never touch the money. Then we’ll give you the equity, which is worth 20 times as much.” So yeah, super well-run company. A lot of people… Yeah, still there’s a lot say, “I never use it.” But clearly the people who do use it in terms of the customers are… They’re liking it.

Jessica DaMassa:

Never underestimate the value of a micro audience of niche people. Right?

Matthew Holt:

Well, it’s not that micro, right? They’ve basically every doctor in the place-

Jessica DaMassa:

I understand. But like comparatively for, I mean, even important and influential group of people to hear the right kind of messaging at the right time.

Matthew Holt:

Compared to the other big social network for consumers, which went down 25%,

Jessica DaMassa:

Right. That’s what I’m saying. I mean, somebody would look at that and say, “Oh, yeah, just the doctors? Why wouldn’t you branch this out? Get patients. Get this, get that.” And it’s like, “Okay, well, there’s something to be said for capture of a very targeted, niche market.”

Jessica DaMassa:

Like those who watch Health Tech Deals. Ah!

Matthew Holt:

Our niche market may be even smaller than Doximity’s, you know?

Jessica DaMassa:

All we need is one person to sponsor that timer rooster. I’m secretly hoping it’s Mountain Capital, Matthew Holt, who decides to do it. And then…

Matthew Holt:

And then there’s a replacement.

Jessica DaMassa:

You can welcome in the Mountain Capital timer rooster. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Matthew Holt:

It would just be nice if there was some identity mix up and I got his bank account, that’s all.

Jessica DaMassa:

It would be nice if that happened. And maybe he can sit in that chair and I can talk to him a couple times a week about funding.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. I could be like the guy who stole $4 billion in Bitcoin with his wife. He’s all over social media, just got arrested.

Jessica DaMassa:

Oh, my God. I saw that. I’m waiting for this whole stupid miniseries that tries to position them as like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde dealing in Bitcoin. Like, oh, that. Oh, please.

Matthew Holt:

All I know is, if I stole $4 billion in Bitcoin, I hope you would help me disappear.

Jessica DaMassa:

All I could actually think of was the time your Bitcoin got stolen.

Matthew Holt:

It did.

Jessica DaMassa:

I know, and I was like-

Matthew Holt:

Someone stole half a Bitcoin off me. They stole, or someone helped them steal or whatever thousands of Bitcoins

Jessica DaMassa:

I know that. But it was like, the timeframe was similar to when you lost your Bitcoin. I was like, I wonder if you were a part of this?

Matthew Holt:

Maybe I am. Oh, well.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes. Well, to donate Bitcoins to Matthew Holt and I, find us over there on Twitter. He is @boltyboy. I am @jessdamassa. And go ahead, let me see you point at the sign.

Matthew Holt:

I have to point better, because last time I didn’t point it well.

Jessica DaMassa:

Last time you pointed at the sign for the podcast audience. It was the most lackadaisical point you’ve ever seen in your life. This time now at least… Oh look, it’s two different kinds of pointing to the banner behind him that says, “The Health Care Blog,” where you can find the email newsletter link and subscribe to it. So you get the best of the blog, and these Health Tech Deals episodes delivered right into your inbox.

Matthew Holt:

Very good.

Jessica DaMassa:

Very good.

Matthew Holt:

And this week, WTF Health podcast coming soon. Coming soon.

Jessica DaMassa:

I mean, now it’s coming! And I had two big news stories. I got to talk to Steve Gutentag from Thirty Madison about his merger with Nurx. Then Kyle Armbrester today with the acquisition of Caravan. So yeah, exciting stuff coming on

Matthew Holt:

You’re all over it. All over it, Jess.

Jessica DaMassa:

Getting it.

Matthew Holt:

All right. Say goodbye.

Jessica DaMassa:

Bye, everybody. Talk to you soon.