Haven, Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture to disrupt healthcare, is disbanding

I interviewed there a couple of years ago. I was really excited going into the interview because I'm a big fan of Atul Gawande and I thought there was huge potential for a transformative impact. But when I talked to them it was clear that they didn't have a clear vision of how specifically they were going to transform healthcare. I got the sense that the engineers were just messing around waiting for the healthcare and product people to tell them what to build. They clearly had a lot of talent and resources and I'm sad they weren't able to make it work.

Maybe I was dreaming, but I actually thought this could be a real disruptor. I was a big fan of Atul Gawande as a journalist, but I guess he wasn't enough to make this concept work.

It sounds like they nibbled around the edges making things 'easier'.

But they never got to the meat, which is how do you make sure each interaction is creating the maximum benefit for the patient, with the minimum amount of money spent.

How do you identify the big drivers of cost and illness, and can you address them better than the current system.

I suspect that they didn't want to become a payor or a provider (both of which are more complex), and thus were limited to generating ideas. It's sort of what Verily is doing, but they seem to have deeper pockets and a longer timeline to work with.

After 3 years the best they could come up with is telemedicine, making insurance easier to understand, and group purchasing of medications?

(tech worker in healthcare here) my best guess is that most of these plays have been dependent on medicare for all/public option gaining more steam than it has. even my company's chiefs were pretty convinced it was going to happen. it's easy to put a doctor in your whole foods or cvs, but cost remains a huge barrier. medicare for all would have fixed that.

Recent podcast on Bio Eats World talks about why it's difficult to build a software company in healthcare

https://a16z.com/bio-eats-world-podcast/

I'd be curious to know some more details. The article says turnover was a problem at all levels, but why?

I am in this same industry and I'm really interested to learn what a massively well connected and funded startup discovered that made it better to toss in the towel.

I would love to hear the inside scoop on why this failed.

Good news for GoodRx.