Matt McCambridge, Eden Health, on defining the future of primary care

Eden Health eliminates the hassle of healthcare for employers and their employees, and is building the future of patient-centered healthcare. Eden is a new kind of doctor’s office that combines a private practice and 24/7 telemedicine for both primary care and mental health as well as a personalized insurance navigation into one simple platform. Based out of New York, Eden was founded by former college classmates, Matt McCambridge and Scott Sansovich, both passionate about breaking down barriers in healthcare. We’re thrilled to have Matt join us on this episode on The Pulse where we talk about the future of a full-stack primary care solution with seamless care coordination, growth levers to scale to next the level and lessons from his entrepreneurial journey.

Matt’s shares his inspiring story of why he started Eden (Start–3:45):

• Our guest today is Matt McCambridge — Co-Founder and CEO of Eden Health
• Matt’s sister’s challenges with the healthcare system inspired the founding of Eden. Given her complex condition, she was referred to over 70 different specialists and dozens of emergency rooms, all the while no one was paying attention to the coordination of care.
• At Harvard undergrad, Matt met his future co-founder Scott who was also interested in the healthcare space.
• After graduating, he pursued a career in venture capital at Insight Venture Partners, where he got to see upfront and personal all the exciting activities in healthcare.
• Matt started Eden with Scott in 2016, a new kind of doctor’s office inspired by both their personal and professional venture investing experiences.

The science of finding a compatible co-founder (3:45–6:00)

• How Matt’s co-founder Scott was a perfect match compared to Matt’s background and skillset
• Importance of recognizing how your co-founders completes the skillsets and interests that you don’t have
• Advice on what to look for in a “unicorn” co-founder

Diving in Eden’s service offerings (6:00–9:30)

• The inspiration and meaning behind the name of Eden, which means delight!
• Eden partners with employers, as employers pay for healthcare differently than other groups in the market. Employers cover the health insurance of more than 160M Americans, which positions itself as the largest unit of healthcare buyers in the US
• Eden is focused on integrated primary care, mental health and physical therapy, stitched together with navigation. Eden provides both physical and virtual care, which are both valuable components to providing a continuous and quality patient experience.
• Beyond providing virtual care, physical encounters deepens the relationship between the patient and provider, furthermore Eden goes directly to the employers’ worksite (e.g., popup clinics)

Product decisions that resulted in strong patient engagement (9:45–11:45)

• Eden hires their clinicians full-time, which means their clinicians don’t see any other patients except Eden patients and are able to deliver exceptional physical and virtual care
• The biggest stumbling block in employer virtual solutions is engagement
• Eden has set a high bar for engagement, resulting in amazing patient engagement (out of 100 employees, 77 will register on the app, and 66 will use Eden’s services in a given year)

What is Eden’s competitive moat? (11:45–17:30):

• Believes that virtual care in many cases can be dramatically better than in-person, allowing you to see a doctor immediately, and the provider can track how those symptoms develop over time
• First to think about integration in a deep way — combining the most fundamental services, primary care, behavioral care, and physical therapy, while stitching together a navigation platform to provide the first point of access. Model is complicated from regulatory, technology and delivery standpoint
• For Eden, there are few direct competitors but there are competitors in a variety of ways such as concierge primary care (e.g., One Medical) or hospital systems in general
• Eden chose the B2B2C route through employers as it seeks a group to subsidize care for a majority of folks. Employers can also fix the way healthcare is paid for or incentivized at a primary care level

Growth levers as Eden scales to Series B (17:30–19:30):

Today Eden partners with employers to service tens of thousands of patients across the country and will continue expand on the following two areas:

• Scaling through more employers who are sponsoring: growing marketing and sales team, and getting the word out on Eden (took 2.5 years of care delivery to have rock solid quality, engagement and cost-savings data)
• Focusing on growing the product: continuing to add more offerings directly or through partners such as diabetes management or work with hospital systems on bundled payment plans

Exciting Convene partnership with Eden (19:30–23:00):

• Eden is aligning with partners like Convene, a nationwide flexible workplace and amenity services partner, that thinks about physical spaces differently
• Mental health and physical health doesn’t stop when you walk into the door of the employers, its continuous
• Eden has permanent locations in Convene, and also has pop-up clinics where they send providers to a location, and then connect the virtual care services to enable continuous care after the doctor’s appointment

How Eden guarantees same-day and next-day availability (23:00–25:00):

• Eden forecasts patient demand per location based on time of day and will staff providers accordingly
• Patients are also able get in touch virtually almost immediately (average 7 minute response time)

Lessons on entrepreneurship, fundraising and finding advisors (25:00–33:00):

• Growing up, Matt didn’t necessarily feel the need to start a business. But when he saw his sister’s experience with the healthcare system, Matt developed a passion for creating a solution, becoming obsessed with the concept
• Most important characteristic of entrepreneurship is persistence. Matt learned the importance of persistence through his first sale. Matt and Scott’s decided to not raise money, hire employees, or even build a product until they could make their first sale
• Experience in venture capital helped with their fundraising process (having a common vocabulary and understanding VC specific needs and requirements that are unique to the industry)
• Helped to humanize the process (VCs also have bosses…their LPs!), and understand that VCs have special incentives and preferences that make sense for their business
• Investors are long term partners, and will be a part of your journey for years. Eden talks to their investors weekly. It is important to select valuable advisors. Phenomenal advisors are transformative and many have been through the operator’s shoes

Culture and Hiring (33:00–35:45):

• Eden focuses on building a strong culture through a clearly articulated mission, vision statement and values, which drives the decisions people make on a daily basis. Matt’s personal favorites are putting patients first, and speaking up and acting with conviction!
• Joining a startup means you can’t be above doing certain things. It needs to be all hands on deck where is is extremely important for everyone to be a team player
• Eden has hired a few MBA interns and full time employees. MBAs provide an organizational framework for thinking about how to operate in a company, and tend to fit really well with finance, sales, business development and marketing roles
• Contact Nyala Khan (Head of Talent) with questions nkhan@edenhealth.com

Tips on entrepreneurship for current and future founders (35:45–37:00):

• Really persevere through the idea. Find something you are truly passionate about because you need to work through long hours and stay interested in it the whole time!

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