Sherpaa raises a $4M Series A round led by Softbank

I’m obviously quite excited about this. Sherpaa started in February of 2012 with one client, tumblr. A little over two years later:

• We take care of more than 100 companies

• We’re 18 employees and hiring

• Our monthly revenue covers our monthly burn

• We’re now in California and in the process of expanding to 10 other major cities by the end of the year

• We solve 70% of medical problems without referring you to see a doctor in person…think about that…that means 70% of doctor visits don’t need to happen

• Our insurance experts recoup money on a daily basis for you from insurance companies and doctors’ billing mistakes

• Employees absolutely love the service with 98% rating the experience as exceptional

• Companies are offering this exceptionally-rated service and saving money 

Healthcare absolutely can be better and we’re proof. I’ve seen a lot of healthcare companies come and go and raise too much or too little money. My goal is to create a sustainable service that people absolutely need and love powered by an intelligent business and investment strategy based on a career of studying what works and what doesn’t in healthcare. In the beginning of my career, back in 2007, I often blogged about what’s wrong with healthcare. Around 2011, I decided to stop bitching, and start building something better. Sherpaa is a dream come true, enabled by a good idea and passionate investors who want to change a very important, yet broken, industry and fundamentally make it better. Without our investors’ passion and talents, Sherpaa would be nowhere. Along with the investors in our seed round (O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, First Round Capital, and Collaborative Fund) who followed on in this Series A, Josh Guttman at Softbank led this investment along with David Karp, the CEO and founder of tumblr. I’m thrilled to have such a rock star group of investors enabling Sherpaa to grow bigger and better.

The WSJ article alludes to something I strongly believe. If you haven’t noticed, our investors are not healthcare investors. Their main focus is consumer technology. I’m a huge believer that change in healthcare cannot come from within the confines of traditional healthcare thinking. It must come from fresh-eyed partners and investors outside of the healthcare box who find healthcare way too frustrating and backwards. 

So cheers to the finest team of doctors, sales people, engineers, account experience directors, and insurance experts that power Sherpaa and make a better version of healthcare as awesome as it can be. Cheers to the companies who entrust us to make healthcare better for their company. And cheers to Phase Two of Sherpaa, making it bigger, better, and quickly coming to a city near you.