The Next Wave of Founders Building in Health & Wellness
Humans in the Wild is a program for experienced entrepreneurs building their next big thing. The name “In the Wild” stems from a pivotal point in a founder’s career when they are about to embark upon the entrepreneurial journey again — and we’ve designed an environment and community proven to compound their growth during this critical time. In this 100-day program, Human Ventures provides the cohort with a proprietary curriculum on early-stage company building, co-piloting from the Human team and strategic Advisors, connections to experts in Human’s network, and a rich, peer group of experienced founders — all to get businesses from zero to one.
The first Humans in the Wild program launched out of Human’s Studio in April 2020 with a focus on health and wellness. It led to investments in Spora Health, Hark Wellness, and Deep as well as other successes which are illustrated here. The second cohort ran in the Fall of 2020, where we partnered with the Slack Fund and entrepreneurs building the future of work and invested in a few of the companies in the cohort (soon to be announced!).
This winter, we again put out a call for health and wellness entrepreneurs. While we had nearly an equal amount of men and women applicants, the strongest candidates building in the biggest opportunity spaces in health and wellness, happened to all be women.This is another data point to confirm when investing in areas that address the needs of the whole population, you end with a more diverse set of founders who are tackling those challenges.
In 2020, we saw healthcare experience ten years of acceleration in just one year. Meeting hundreds of founders, we found the most compelling areas of opportunity to be: Telehealth, Mental health, Women’s health, and the Consumerization of healthcare. We are excited to partner with the following founders who are building for this new paradigm.
Meet the Founders
Inspired by her own experience with family trauma and mental health, Grace Chiang is bringing together her background in management consulting, business operations, and HR tech with a decade of experience in adolescent education to build Cherish. Cherish helps parents learn evidence-driven skills to build healthy, connected relationships with their teens. Previously, she launched a beauty-tech startup backed by TechStars. Grace started her career at McKinsey and worked in venture capital and impact investing before moving into early-stage business roles at a number of startups.
Doreen Bloch is building ELLEMENT, a personalized, consumer-focused prenatal company. Doreen has deep experience in CPG, having already launched a profitable, VC-backed consumer insights data business, Lucky Analytics. Her work has been recognized by Fast Company, InStyle Magazine, and L’Oreal’s NEXT Generation Award. Doreen was also named a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder and Inc. 30 Under 30 founder.
Annie’s experience as a front-end data engineer at JP Morgan and a social media analyst at Influenster has granted her the ability to traverse both product, technology, and marketing. This positioned her well to launch glow — a B2C beauty booking marketplace created to deliver innovative tech to the outdated market of booking beauty and wellness services. Annie is also the founder of two tech communities, one focusing on beauty and the other connecting founders and investors in Europe.
Renee Russo is an entrepreneur, engineer, and the co-founder of glow. Designed to disrupt the beauty industry, glow is creating new ways for salons and customers to connect while prioritizing the customer experience. Renee has used her software engineering background to build an intuitive platform that changes the way users will interact with beauty. In previous roles, she was the lead frontend engineer and application owner at JP Morgan, where she built and scaled a company-wide application from the bottom up.
As a public health professional, Ashlee Wisdom is a champion for health equity and is passionate about taking an equitable approach to healthcare innovation. Ashlee’s experience working in the healthcare industry led her to co-found Health In Her HUE, which is reducing racial health disparities by leveraging the power of technology, media and community to improve health outcomes for Black women. Previously, Ashlee worked for an advisory firm, Junto Health, where she was the Program Director for the Strategic Ventures Group, an exclusive consortium of nationally-ranked health systems investing in health technology. Earlier in her career, she worked in health equity at Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals, and a Federally Qualified Health Center.
Cheryl Kemp is an experienced alumni of hyper-growth startups including OrderUp, Groupon, and Ritual.co who thrives in the earliest stages of a company’s growth. The only thing she loves more than building from zero to one is group fitness, which is why she is deeply passionate about empowering fitness instructors with technology. She is leveraging that passion and her growth experience to build IndiFit, a business management platform for fitness and wellness entrepreneurs.
After getting to know physicians and nurses intimately, Marcie Cheung saw a dire problem around clinicians and their ability to access mental health providers. With her strategy and operating experience as part of the early team that launched Jet.com (acquired by Walmart), deep knowledge of marketplaces, and firm belief in the power of therapy, she decided to launch KindMind. KindMind is the only therapist matching solution built specifically for clinicians, based on confidentiality, convenience and a fundamental understanding of the medical profession. Additionally, Marcie currently sits on the board of Out in Tech, uniting the LGBTQ+ tech community.
During a stressful 10 years in the NYC finance industry, Jamie Pabst found that her “stress in the workplace” problem was a global problem that needed to be addressed with new science-based solutions. Her personal experience in sound’s therapeutic properties from growing up with a mother with hearing loss and a sister entering the world of music therapy led her to start Spiritune. Spiritune is modernizing mental health with it’s scientific, music-based approach to mental health, helping users reduce stress, regulate emotions and improve focus and productivity.
Natalie Waltz knows how to build brands through storytelling. From joining the early team at Collective Health and scaling it, to leading marketing at The Chernin Group, to her experience building brands and product experiences in historically “taboo” areas including Dadi and Cleo — Natalie has a knack for crafting new ways to think about established markets. Now, inspired by a conversation with her mom, she’s taking on one of our culture’s oldest-standing taboos: sex and menopause. Her company, Tabu, is on a mission to celebrate and honor sexual wellness as we age.
Daphne Chen is co-founder of tbd health which is reimagining the future of healthcare for women, starting with telehealth-powered STI screenings. After working in product leadership roles at customer-centric companies like Amazon/Alexa, Daphne wanted to translate that mentality to clinical events, transforming them into moments of self-care that women look forward to everyday. Her passion for empowering women was first fostered during her Fulbright Fellowship in which she researched gender-based violence and economic inequality.
Stephanie Estey is an experienced entrepreneur, lawyer and the co-founder of tbd health. tbd health is changing how women experience their sexual health and wellness, starting with easy, accessible and — dare we say it — enjoyable at-home STI screening routines. Stephanie also previously co-founded ALTRD, a social-impact startup that leveraged technology to bring meaningful income to immigrants and refugees in their homes through clothing alterations. Prior to that, she had a career in NYC in corporate law.
About Human Ventures
Human Ventures is a business creation platform, comprised of a venture fund, startup studio, and enterprise agency. We go beyond the business model and seek opportunities to build Model Businesses with ambitious founders who are innovating around human needs. By unlocking access to a powerful network of founders, investors and corporate partners, we are creating a blueprint for the future of business to be built on purpose. Humans in the Wild is a unique, 100-day incubation program for founders who are in the early stages of developing their next big idea in Health & Wellness.
If you’re building in the Human Needs Economy, we’d love to hear from you.
