Bernie Zipprich, New Ventures

Redesign Health is a healthcare innovation platform that brings together entrepreneurs, industry experts, and investors to elevate healthcare companies that empower people to live their healthiest lives. Redesign’s venture studio incubates tech-enabled companies that work to transform healthcare — elevating patient experience, increasing transparency, and democratizing access to high-quality care. Bernie Zipprich (WG’16) is a member of the New Ventures team at Redesign, where he has a hand in all parts of the company incubation process, from opportunity assessment to launch.

The Pulse: : Redesign operates a venture studio focused on health tech innovation – will you explain the venture studio model and why it’s especially compelling in healthcare?

Bernie Zipprich: The traditional stereotype of starting a company is: two people working on an idea in a garage, maybe they go out and try to cobble together funding, build out a product, and often are living on a shoestring budget and eating a lot of ramen. I say this with affection – starting a company is really hard and requires perseverance and fortitude. In healthcare it’s especially hard and requires a lot of time and capital.

Now consider the role of venture capital – they write checks to and take equity to help startups achieve profitability and sustainability. For a Limited Partner looking to invest in a venture fund, maybe they assume 10% of the fund’s portfolio gets an outsized return, 50-60% gets a decent return, and the rest sees a loss but it balances out.

Redesign Health’s model is different in that investors are arguably getting the same portfolio diversification, but are paying for a level of risk mitigation in all the portfolio companies. That risk mitigation comes from Redesign having in-house team members who are regulatory experts, marketing experts, product experts, recruiters, engineers, etc. This makes us really good at slogging through the challenges that make it hard to start a healthcare company. This also compresses the time and capital needed to get a company to market and scale. We’re de-risking startups, which allows us to drive attractive returns to founders and LPs. If you’re a founder out in the wild, you might be relying on personal relationships and luck to pull together the right team. But with an innovation platform like Redesign’s, we get to purpose-build teams for specific companies and we have capital to deploy on Day 1.

“If you’re a founder out in the wild, you might be relying on personal relationships and luck to pull together the right team. But with an innovation platform like Redesign’s, we get to purpose-build teams for specific companies and we have capital to deploy on Day 1.”

The Pulse: : Tell us about your role on Redesign’s New Ventures team.

BZ: On the New Ventures team I get to work on everything from ideation through launch. I collaborate with cross-functional experts on different parts of the process, like idea sourcing, prototyping, market testing, financial modeling. If our work points toward an opportunity looking feasible and desirable, we’ll take it to Redesign’s investment committee. Once an investment is made, we recruit the company’s founding team and get the commercial operations up and running. It’s a team sport and I enjoy collaborating from the initial idea to getting a company to market.

The Pulse: : Is Redesign focused on specific themes in the healthcare industry?

BZ: There are two big movements in healthcare today: movement towards value and towards consumer centricity. Redesign companies tend to share a common thread that ties back to these themes: improve the patient experience, increase access to care, make care higher value where possible.

The Pulse: : We’re seeing a lot of health tech startups going DTC and putting new products directly in patients’ hands before seeking broad insurance coverage. Are Redesign companies pursuing this strategy?

BZ: Yes, companies need ways to pilot their solutions with actual patients, and this is a great way for early-stage companies to generate the data needed to win broader coverage by industry incumbents. This is a paradigm shift – healthcare innovators starting with the end user, generating data, iterating, and making sure they’re creating something valuable to patients. This also helps them build credibility to sell into large incumbents.

The Pulse: : It’s cool that this shift to consumer centricity in health tech means that people are more regularly taking part in the innovation and validation process.

BZ: Right, and keep in mind that culturally the US healthcare industry is informed by medicine and science – and evidence. Innovators are seeing that the best way to generate evidence is to put products in people’s hands. By doing this, they will be better positioned to make a data-driven case for coverage by health plans.

“Innovators are seeing that the best way to generate evidence is to put products in people’s hands. By doing this, they will be better positioned to make a data-driven case for coverage by health plans.”

The Pulse: : You know the healthcare landscape extremely well – what are a couple of industry trends you’re excited to watch unfold?

BZ: The shift of care into the home is really powerful and interesting; it’s going to make a big difference for a lot of elderly people and vulnerable populations.

I also think it’s critical that the increase in discussions around health equity that we saw in 2020 doesn’t go away. The entire industry – leaders especially – must continue these conversations.

I often think about how hard it is to innovate in Medicaid space given the structure and economics of the program. I’d love to find ways to use digital tools to lower costs and increase access. How can we take approaches working in other settings and apply them to help some of the most vulnerable (and often highest cost) patients?

I’ll add a macro observation; as we use digital tools to personalize healthcare and reach people where they are, we run the risk of making people more disconnected from one other. I hope we don’t lose sight of the power of community in healthcare. I recently spoke with a healthcare leader in South Florida who said that their waiting room has morphed into a community center with patients showing up when they don’t have appointments just to play dominoes or trade gossip. There’s something really special about that. As we innovate towards personalized health care and better health outcomes, we must remember that it’s not only about what we build for individuals, but it’s also about the systems and communities we build around them. I don’t think our current system offers great answers for how to do this at scale, but it’s something I hope we think more about. We’re seeing a lot of the social determinants work in the market scratching the surface of this.

“As we use digital tools to personalize healthcare and reach people where they are, we run the risk of making people more disconnected from one other. I hope we don’t lose sight of the power of community in healthcare.”

The Pulse: : As you reflect on your career progression, what advice would you offer to others?

BZ: It’s important to have a clear view of your own values. Ask yourself what’s important to you and what motivates you. Be willing to recognize that there will be times you need to put your head down and grind (and it might not be a ton of fun), but balance this with whether you’re moving in the direction you’re excited about. Another important skill is adaptability: try to be really low-ego, to listen and approach things with a fresh mind. Part of what I like about working at Redesign is that I don’t have all the answers, nor do my colleagues. But because we’re realistic about this, it opens us up to learn a lot more. Maintain a sense of direction based on your values and a dedication to learning – these are good ways to find some interesting twists and turns in your career.

“Maintain a sense of direction based on your values and a dedication to learning – these are good ways to find some interesting twists and turns in your career.”

Interviewed by Tara Sullivan, January 2021.