Why We Invested In Handl -- Healthcare Price Transparency

Excited to be investing in the $2.5M seed of Handl Health alongside Mucker and Everywhere, their official announcement is here. Tau Ventures is an AI-first fund in Silicon Valley investing primarily in mature seed, typically when there is a pipeline of customers. We found Handl intriguing in several areas: (1) strong need (2) an entrepreneurial team, and (3) a product with significant expansion potential.

1) The Need

Ever gone for an MRI and got charged double the price than another place? Or gone into a knee surgery without knowing the exact cost, and afterwards being surprised with a huge invoice? In America, if the disease doesn’t kill, the bill probably will. That is where Handl comes in. They are focused on increasing healthcare price transparency for employers, to help them design and deliver affordable health benefits packages for their employees. Incidentally, half of Americans (160M out of 320M) get their healthcare from their employer.

2) The Team

Handl’s team has impressed us with their hustle, and they have built a community around them that we see will conspire to their success. CEO Ahmed Marmoush and COO Ria Shah met while working at their last job at E&Y. They were joined by CTO Karthik Palaniappan and Director of Sales & Marketing Shapari Samimi to complete the founding team. Handl started in Pittsburgh, went through Techstars Healthcare (sponsored by Cedars-Sinai, UnitedHealthcare, UCI Health and Point32) in Los Angeles, which is where the core team is based now. Along the way they had also got backing from the NIH and Allegheny Health Network.

3) The Product

Pricing data is available publicly and there is new legislation enforcing that. But the data is hard to find, hard to understand, and hard to act upon. Handl’s strength is in transforming this into unique datasets for employers, augmented by employer-specific data. Their key customer is a self-insured employer and they get to them through either insurance brokers. Handl has 30 customers and is close to profitability, both of which are rare in our experience at this early stage.

Primary author of this article is Amit Garg. Originally published on “Data Driven Investor," am happy to syndicate on other platforms. I am the Managing Partner and Cofounder of Tau Ventures with 20 years in Silicon Valley across corporates, own startup, and VC funds. These are purposely short articles focused on practical insights (I call it gl;dr -- good length; did read). Many of my writings are at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amgarg/detail/recent-activity/posts and I would be stoked if they get people interested enough in a topic to explore in further depth. If this article had useful insights for you, comment away and/or give a like on the article and on the Tau Ventures’ LinkedIn page, with due thanks for supporting our work. All opinions expressed here are my own.