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Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Healthcare Entrepreneur Meetup

By Atlanta Ventures

September 11^th, 2019

This September Atlanta Ventures hosted a powerhouse panel discussion with A.T. Gimbel of Atlanta Ventures, Sarath Degala of BIP Capital, Spence McClelland of Noro-Moseley Partners, and Philip Lewis of Fulcrum Equity Partners. We covered everything from how they got to where they are, common hurdles that startups face in healthcare, how entrepreneurs can prove ROI to investors, and tips when raising money for your HealthIT startup in Atlanta.

Check out the full video and photo recap below, or view the video snippets here!

The morning kicked off with small group networking chats to talk about fundraising challenges before each panelist shared their background and respective firm focus. Collectively, the panelists agreed that it is critical to invest in healthcare (and healthcare software) because there is a massive opportunity for growth right now.

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Trends for Investing in Healthcare

There’s been a tremendous amount of innovation in different areas within healthcare, but we know “healthcare” is very broad. When it comes to healthIT and the software space, each investor shared about a few opportunity areas they believe entrepreneurs should go after:

Data Analytics
Predictive Analytics
Hospitals reducing readmissions
New payment mechanisms
Patience revenue lifecycle
Social determinants of health

The data analytics space is really interesting. ...What you can do with predictive analytics, taking genomic data, taking pathology data, taking different genetic markers, ... and what you can start predicting around a certain type of treatment. That is a space that doctors and providers are clamoring towards, thinking, ‘How can I be more efficient? How can I drive the cost savings?’

-Sarath Degala

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Tips on Where to Start in Healthcare

There’s no surprise here when we say entrepreneurs face great challenges when going into the healthcare space. There are so many players involved, and oftentimes more complex solutions than a traditional business, so where do you start? Sarath shared the importance of customer discovery. It’s about talking to clinicians to see what challenges they face and working with them to solve those problems. Take a small problem, tie that back to the clinician’s real problem and ensure you have buy-in to take your solution farther. Philip added the importance of focusing on the buyer and a big enough problem.

Make sure you really understand who the ultimate buyer is. If you’re selling into a hospital system, for example, make sure the problem you’re solving for is big enough to actually get sign-off on. [You may have a product] that’s a great solution, that solves a problem, but when you go and try to sell, it’s not a big enough problem, and the existing solutions works well enough, so [as a buyer] why should I (the hospital CFO) change all of my processes for ‘well enough’? Really understand the buyer for whatever product or service you’re trying to sell.

-Philip Lewis

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Spence shared another tip on breaking into the market with partnerships. It’s a struggle is to figure out the partnership strategy for a variety of reasons, but in order to penetrate these huge health systems, he recommended working with other groups where you have trust to break in.

Healthcare, more than a lot of other industries, you really have to figure out the partnership strategy. It can be a sales channel strategy or an indirect strategic relationship. Work with other groups that have already cracked that nut, who’ve already established the trust channel with the provider or payer. You can identify 7,8,9 companies who are related to the area you’re focused on, ... go to those companies and talk to them about what they’re doing and how you can help them.

-Spence McClelland

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Proving ROI in Healthcare

When selling any product, proving the ROI is mission critical to close that deal, and oftentimes, it’s difficult to sell with a soft ROI—it’s not enough of a selling point.

The ones that are most successful are the ones that figure out pretty early on, the ROI and can very clearly articulate that. ... Talk to people to help you figure it out and pressure test it. When you find partners who invest or you give free trials to, it’s about good ol’ fashion upfront requests, ‘We want your help measuring this. Here’s what we’re going to measure.’ Everyone upfront knows what you’re measuring, and they sign off on it.

-Spence McClelland

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Tips Before Speaking to a Potential Investor

Because we had a powerhouse panel, we'd be remiss not to ask each of them what they recommend when entrepreneurs go out to raise money. Here's what they had to share:

Prepare! Don’t think you know everything, though. A lot of times when you come and pitch us, we’re going to give you advice during the pitch. We’ll have heard the business for roughly 30 minutes, and you might think, ‘Why is this person whose only known the business for 30 minutes trying to tell me about it? But a lot of times we’ve heard similar things, and we’re trying to ask, ‘Have you thought about this?’ Or ‘Have you thought about that?’ Try to keep an open mind. Really go into it with a humble mentality.

-Philip Lewis

I love early on seeing that people are using [your product] and they like it. It’s that initial check that you haven’t just built something that addresses a big problem and has a big market, but the dogs are eating the dog food.

-Spence McClelland

We will go a lot more into customer discovery. We’ll actually talk to customers! We’ll go visit and see the technology at play—how it works, get feedback, etc. So before you send over references of who’s using it, I would tell you to send your account management team or you go out and walk a couple days in their shoes to make sure the client doesn’t have any issues using it before we call them and they tell us the stuff they don’t like about it.

-Sarath Degala

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

What the Future Looks Like in Atlanta Healthcare

When thinking about how to make Atlanta the premier destination to start and grow a HealthIT business, Sarath shared a dream scenario where we have an environment where all players can collaborate, which includes coordination between investors, physicians, and local payers. Philip also reminded entrepreneurs not to be to focused on finding talent in the healthcare space alone. If you know a top notch developer bring them in and see what they can do from the outside perspective. Spence thought there was great opportunity to be viewed as an innovative state in Medicaid. The possibilities are endless and it’s a ripe time to be an entrepreneur in the healthcare scene in Atlanta.

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Investor Panel w/ Atlanta Ventures, BIP Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Fulcrum Equity Partners

Footnotes

Photos by Luke Beard | Video by Pullspark

FootNotes

Photos by Luke Beard | Video by Pullspark

© 2026 Atlanta Ventures

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