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Summary
Venrock partner and physician Bob Kocher joins StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes for a candid look at where AI is actually headed in healthcare. Bob makes the case that AI will improve access and quality but won't lower costs given fee-for-service incentives, and shares his single biggest test for whether a founder's idea is worth backing.
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Key Moments
🚀 Bob says it's never been a better time to start a healthcare company, with AI unlocking speed and access at scale
🤖 His contrarian take: AI will make care better, but won't make it cheaper, since most of healthcare is still fee-for-service
💊 Where he sees real opportunity: value-based specialty care, geriatric behavioral health, and medication titration and deprescribing
🔄 A shift from episodic visits to continuous care, powered by tools like CGMs and real-time dialogue with patients
🩺 AI's role is to augment doctors, not replace them, freeing up time for what actually matters in the patient relationship
🧠 What separates a real AI company from a wrapper: distribution, not features
💡 The one metric Bob cares about most in a pitch: effect size, so obvious it should be "visible from Jupiter"
🏗️ Prevention is healthcare's hardest business model problem, with only two paths that actually work today
📜 Bob's policy fix: multi-year insurance products that give payers a long enough horizon to cover prevention
🤝 His advice to founders chasing investors: relationships built over time beat any single pitch meeting
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StartUp Health is a private global community for innovators, visionary decision makers, thought leaders, and funders transforming the future of health. If you're a founder, healthcare executive, operator, investor, or industry stakeholder who wants to stay connected to the people and ideas driving the future of health, StartUp Health is your exclusive community to stay connected and stay ahead. StartUp Health membership puts you at the center of what's next.
