What can I say? It feels awesome that
EveryMove just raised a significant chunk of money to build what will once be a household name on how you get recognized for your healthy lifestyle. We have a great team and the funding will primarily help us
recruit another handful of people to build this into a billion dollar business, while improving the health of an entire population. Yeah, no small feat ahead of us (and it might take more a dozen folks to do it).
We haven’t talked publicly about what we are doing, but there isn’t much secret to it. We want to help you get recognized by your health insurance company, your employer and by brands for the healthy lifestyle choices you are making.
The healthy industry is screwed up (f-word would be more like it). Most people just don’t understand it and they blame health insurance companies ever increasing premiums because that’s from whom they get hit with the bill, but the problem is not that simple. In reality, of the entire health industry, the insurance companies are the most regulated piece of the puzzle and the ones making the smallest profit margins. I’m no expert, so don’t quote me on it, but the reality is that we have a system-wide problem and it will take many changes, some traumatic, to fix this. One of those changes is to put
accountability and empowerment back at the hands of consumers.
Today, there is very little you can do to make your lifestyle choices impact your out-of-pocket health insurance cost. If you exercise, eat well, sleep eight hours a night and don’t smoke, you are pretty much paying the exact same amount as someone who is living a very unhealthy lifestyle. That’s where EveryMove kicks in. We are playing a very complex technological, regulatory, consumer-oriented, enterprise-enabled game. We’ll enable you, the consumer, to systematically and near frictionless get a discount or cash-backs from your insurer or employer. There is a lot more to it, but you get the gist.
Russell has done a tremendous job since the early days of TechStars; pitching, negotiating, collecting information and commitments and bringing a very complex financing to closure -- it’s complex because it involves private non-profit companies (Premera & BCBS Nebraska), it involves Angel Investors and a VC. Obviously, EveryMove would not exist without Russell and this financing would not had come together if it wasn’t for his personality, persistence and attitude.
BTW, how did I get here?
There is an investor in Seattle who deserves a lot of credit for the existence of EveryMove and for me being here and that person is
Andy Liu, co-founder and CEO of BuddyTV and one of the most prolific Angel investors in Seattle, if not in the US.
Since my first startup, Sampa, shutdown, Andy and I have been having conversations and holding brainstorming session on what I should do next. The stars aligned and Andy introduce Russell Benaroya, EveryMove’s co-founder & CEO, and I. After a few weeks we were in business.
I have to give Andy Liu lots of props for insisting that I should take a look at this when I was quickly dismissing the idea of working on the health space, and, his investment thesis of betting at entrepreneurs who are
hungry. I hope to be at the level of
Ben Huh someday, another of Andy’s big bets.
Kick Starting
In March of last year we started building something which we didn’t know what it was, but we knew what we wanted to achieve. We went through TechStars in one of the most
intensives experiences of my life and the result is a crystal clear vision for a business and fairly clear vision for the product (i.e., the consumer experience).
Premera Blue Cross was the first to “bet” on EveryMove. They did the initial funding of the company, but more importantly, they showed us the inner workings of the system which enabled us to have an unprecedented access -- by a startup standard -- on how we can fit in and play a role into the complex health industry.
Premera has been so supportive of what we are building at EveryMove they even introduced us to other health insurance plans (most health insurance plans are regional so they don’t see out-of-region plans as competitive). That’s how we got Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska as an investor and customer. We have two other insurance plans we are negotiating with as well and a pipeline of 12 other plans. It takes many, many months of relationship and trust building, and negotiations with these organizations, so if we want a new customer by 2014 we need to start now.
And then came Sandbox
Sandbox was just an unbelievable combination of timing and luck. Let me just start by saying that if you gave me the list of all the VCs in the US and told me to pick which one I wanted to invest on EveryMove, Sandbox would be it. Now, how lucky are you to get the VC you wanted the most? That’s where timing comes in. Let me give a quick explanation that Sandbox Industries are the managers of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Venture Fund. A dozen or so health insurance companies put a couple hundred millions dollars together to invest in disruptive innovation on the health space.
Sandbox, more than any VC in the US, get to see day in day out pitches from startups on the health space. They know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and what’s going to happen two years from now on this industry. They are also very active at helping their portfolio companies to get introductions and make strides to the their Limited Partners (a.k.a., the dozen or so health insurance companies who put their money together). There is no "health-entrepreneur" who doesn't want Sandbox on their side. I feel very lucky and fortunate.
Top top it all, we got some pretty freaking amazing list of Angel Investors who joined this parade and help us propel it forward, folks like Jonathan Sposato (sold 2 companies to Google), Andy Liu (entrepreneur, prolific investor), Chris DeVore and Andy Sack (through Founder’s Co-op), Matt Shobe (sold FeedBurner to Google), Geoff Entress and Rob Martin.
Doubling-down
Let me just tell you something about
Geoff Entress and
Rob Martin: They hold the very exclusive elite title of being the only two Angel Investors in the world who have bet on me twice. They were investors on my first startup and they are the investors on my second startup, EveryMove. A big shout out for them to continue to believe in me.
Actually, there is one investor who is the person who bet on me the most and that’s my wife. I know this can sound just like an Oscar acceptance speech when people start thanking their spouses or parents for where they are, but that’s the reality. More than anyone in the world, my wife has sacrificed a lot to allow me to do startups. It has been hard at times, frustrating at times and really exciting at times, and always supportive.
And one more thing
We are hiring! Developers. Developers. Developers. Also, designers, marketers and biz-devers. Here is the full list of
job openings at EveryMove and if you want to give it a try on our product just drop your email on our
homepage. Between now and somewhere at the end of the summer we’ll be opening up to the public.
