Meeting: Battery Ventures
Date: 2026-01-13 Attendees: Thomas Startz, Michael Yuan ↔ Olivia Henkoff, Caroline Culmo (Battery Ventures) Type: Intro Duration: ~23 min
Summary
Warm intro via Caroline (Penn/Huntsman connection with Michael). Olivia spent most of the call asking smart questions and validating our approach — she explicitly endorsed the FDE model, payer focus, and PDF-first product strategy. Battery is Series A bread-and-butter so this is too early for them, but they want to build the relationship pre-raise. Most useful thing: Olivia named Optera as an FDE comp selling to payers, 6-12 months ahead of us. Strong category fit, wrong timing for their fund.
Questions Asked
| # | Question (verbatim/near-verbatim) | Topic | Answer Quality | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "What were they doing historically for that use case and how did they come across you?" | Traction | strong | Thomas laid out the 3 buckets (prior auth, concurrent, retro), explained plan has 99% prior auth automated, concurrent is the gap, Wharton professor intro. Clear. |
| 2 | "How does the product actually work? Where does it start and stop?" | Product | strong | PDF/text upload, independent from EHR, works for outsourced UR orgs. EHR integration planned for client. Olivia liked circumventing EHR as "really smart." |
| 3 | "Is it going to be UI based or working in the background?" | Product | decent | Thomas: "I'd prefer UI, customer prefers background." Olivia validated background is fine — "stickiness will come from the savings." Slight hesitation but landed well because Olivia resolved it for us. |
| 4 | "Payer vs provider — are you going to stick with one side?" | Market | strong | Clear payer-first: bigger pain, more dedicated nurses, bread and butter of payer ops. Acknowledged providers hate it too but payer is the acute pain. |
| 5 | "Are there any companies you're thinking of as core competitors?" | Competition | decent | Named Latitude (Redesign Health) and Otter Health. Pivoted to "comp us to Palantir or McKinsey or Epic engineering" — aspirational but didn't name specific differentiation. |
| 6 | "In terms of fundraising, how are you thinking about the raise?" | Fundraise | decent | Bootstrapped, about to close first client, another in the wing, at capacity with 2-3 clients. "Not raising today but imminently, a few million dollars." Appropriate for stage. |
| 7 | "How are you planning on pricing? Contingency fee of savings?" | Business Model | weak | "Let them determine the terms... whatever contracting fee they want to give us." Too passive. Pre-dates the Tau revenue framework. |
Concerns Raised
- Organizations avoiding point solutions, moving toward consolidation post-scribe wave — procurement is "lumpy"
- OpenAI and Anthropic starting to work directly with health systems — competitive pressure from foundation model companies
- Implicit: UI stickiness concern (but Olivia resolved this herself)
What Resonated
- FDE model — Olivia explicitly: "I actually think that's the smart decision in this category... if you don't have the FDE you're probably not going to get adoption or it's going to be much slower"
- PDF upload circumventing EHR — "That's probably a really smart decision for you guys"
- Payer focus — they understand the pain, Olivia tracks both payer and provider
- Ambient scribe → upcoding → UM pressure — Olivia raised this: "There's so much upcoding that's already happening... utilization management might have gotten harder for them." Market tailwind.
- Palantir/McKinsey comp — showed strategic thinking beyond point solution
- Bootstrapping + first client closing — credibility signal
Our Commitments
- None explicit
Their Next Steps
- Stay in touch pre-raise
- Meet in person in NYC when Olivia is back from SF
- Referred us to Optera as a comp to watch
Investor Insights
- Fund positioning: Series A bread-and-butter. Too early for them today but want the relationship.
- Portfolio: Investors in Magnify (payer intelligence — payment integrity, medical audit, prior auth review). Olivia deeply understands the space.
- Olivia: 6 years at Battery, ~80% healthcare. Evolution from admin → clinical → pharma → payer. Based in NYC, offered coffee.
- Caroline: Early stage + growth, vertical software and AI applications. Penn Huntsman program (undergrad Wharton analog). Joined Battery earlier in the year.
- Market view: Procurement is lumpy post-scribe wave. Organizations hesitant, want consolidation not point solutions. FDE is becoming the answer to adoption hesitancy. Backend > UI for RCM/UM.
- Optera comp: "Slightly later stage, 6-12 months ahead, doing exactly what we're talking about, selling to payers, not UM but risk and governance." Best FDE comp we've gotten.
Interesting Moments
- Olivia on upcoding: "Because of the rise in ambient scribes... there's so much upcoding happening... utilization management might have gotten harder for [payers]" — unsolicited market tailwind confirmation
- Olivia on FDE adoption: "We're starting to see it more and more... a lot of people are coming around to the idea" — category validation from someone seeing deal flow
- Thomas: "I'd probably rather comp us to a Palantir or a McKinsey or like an Epic engineering kind of folks" — good aspirational positioning
- Thomas on market: "It's really hard for these clients to know which AI product to buy... they kind of are realizing that they can build things but don't know exactly how" — the FDE thesis in one sentence
- Call started with Thomas troubleshooting VS Code memory issues — casual energy, not overly polished