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Conversation
Highlights
Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Kristen Valdes, CEO & Founder of B.well, a digital health platform that’s raised over $100 Million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
- The Founding Story: Kristen’s personal healthcare struggle with her daughter, who suffered a near-fatal incident due to fragmented medical records, inspired her to build B.well. This experience exposed how broken the system was for consumers, leading her to create a platform that empowers families with tools to manage their own healthcare.
- System Design Flaws: Kristen believes the healthcare system isn’t “broken” but designed poorly, prioritizing “sick care” over preventative, holistic health. She emphasizes that the system operates as intended, driven by fee-for-service payments, which incentivizes more procedures rather than better outcomes.
- Value-Based Care: Transitioning to value-based care is critical for improving healthcare outcomes, but it’s a slow and challenging process. Kristen estimates it could take another 10-15 years before value-based models dominate. Providers and hospitals need to trust the transition before they fully commit to abandoning fee-for-service models.
- Consumer Experience Platforms: B.well is a “consumer health experience platform” that focuses on solving the fragmentation of healthcare data. The platform allows users to manage their medical records, receive personalized health insights, and access care across different providers—all through a single mobile interface.
- Fragmentation and Transparency: Kristen emphasizes that the real challenge in healthcare today is the fragmentation of data. B.well has worked on government initiatives aimed at increasing transparency, from medical records to pricing, in order to drive more innovation and competition in healthcare.
- Marketing and Category Creation: Kristen shared insights into B.well’s journey in creating a new category—Healthcare Consumer Experience Platforms. Despite the long and difficult process, persistence, thought leadership, and industry collaboration helped B.well succeed in defining this space and gaining analyst recognition from Forrester and Gartner.
Actionable
Takeaways
Create Consumer-Centric Healthcare Tools:
Kristen’s experience shows the need for tools that empower consumers to manage their own health. For founders, it’s crucial to focus on solving real pain points by giving people better access to their own data and making care more convenient.
Don’t Compete on Data, Compete on Value:
In healthcare, competing on data is a losing battle. Instead, Kristen advises founders to focus on providing value through better health outcomes, patient engagement, and convenience.
Navigating Category Creation:
If you're building in an undefined space, Kristen suggests rallying around pain points that resonate with both consumers and buyers. Demonstrating real market demand and RFP activity is key to convincing analysts to formalize a category.
Optimize for Consumer Experience:
Kristen highlights that convenience wins in healthcare, just like in other sectors. Founders should think about how to make interactions with healthcare as seamless and straightforward as booking a ride or a dinner reservation.
Resilience is Key in Building a Startup:
Kristen advises founders to stay resilient through the inevitable ups and downs of building a company. Challenges are part of the journey, but with belief and perseverance, the rewards can be immense.
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