In this HLTH 2022 interview, host Jessica DeMaso (WTF Health) talks with Deena Shakir, partner at Lux Capital, about the current state and future of health‑tech investing. Deena explains that while 2021’s funding boom has cooled—fewer dollars per round and more modest valuations—the long‑term outlook remains strong because health care is recession‑proof and venture capital horizons span ten years or more. She critiques the term “femtech,” preferring a broader “women’s and family health” framing that reflects the 51% of the population and 80% of health‑care spending driven by women. Deena highlights Lux’s flagship investment in Maven Clinic, noting its growth, Medicaid expansion, major employer and payer customers, and the role of female founders and investors in the deal. She identifies the biggest unmet gaps in women’s health as heart disease (the leading cause of death for women, especially women of color), early detection of hormonal disorders (e.g., PCOS, endometriosis), and cancers that disproportionately affect women. The conversation then shifts to health‑IT infrastructure, where Deena is bullish on platforms that enable large non‑traditional players (Amazon, Google, retail pharmacies) to partner with specialized vendors, citing investments in SteadyMD, Trial Library (decentralized trials), and Commure. She warns against the proliferation of point solutions that lack scale, arguing that integrated infrastructure is what providers and patients need. On mental health, she remains optimistic, pointing to opportunities in digital biomarkers, pediatric and adolescent care, and the broader mental‑health crisis. Finally, Deena emphasizes that Lux’s investment decisions are founder‑centric and focused on technologies that can advance humanity at scale, avoiding ultra‑niche “well‑being” tweaks.
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Hey, it's Jessica DeMaso with WTF Health. What's the future of health? I'm talking to the who's who of health tech and healthcare innovation. And look who is next to me right now here at Health 2022. I've got Deena Shakir. She's partner at Lux Capital. You guys might know her for making a gigantic investment in Maven. We're going to find out what Deena thinks about what's happening in terms of health tech and women's health and all sorts of digital health investment. But before we do that, we're going to hear about Lux Capital. So, Deena, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Well, I can tell you a little bit about Lux. We've been around about 22 years. We have about $4 billion AUM. We invest in everything from pre-seed through pre-IPO. Health tech is obviously a big area of focus for us, but we also do everything from infrastructure to ML and AI to robotics, you name it.
Awesome. So we are going to pick your brain about what's going on because everybody is panicking about the market. So first of all, you panicked at all about the, the health tech market writ large? Everybody's looking at those Rock Health numbers. The rounds are— there's just as many rounds, but the dollar amounts are smaller. Valuations are coming back to a normal place. What is your, your feel on the overall take in the market?
Well, I mean, even outside of health tech, the market is definitely tumultuous. That's clear. And obviously health tech itself, after the period of exuberance that we had in 2021, is seeing a little bit of a dip. There's no doubt about that. That being said, as venture capital investors, we have long time horizons. We want to invest in things and have sort of a 10-year-plus outlook. So it's actually an incredible time to be doing early-stage investing. You know, I am on quite a few boards ranging from C to Series E now. And so very different, you know, worries, I should say, in terms of what the fundraising environment looks like for those companies. For companies that were nearing a public exit, that might be a little farther away than we thought. For companies that were looking to raise growth funds, that also might be a different time horizon. So, you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It looks different than it did last year, but I'm not sure we're necessarily going to be here forever, nor am I sure that last year is where we should have been forever. So I think there'll be some equilibrium.
Yeah. You know, what struck me about those Rock Health numbers is I've been looking at them and it's like, really, we kind of picked up right where we left off in 2019. Like, it's like the pandemic was our big moment and we did great. And things I definitely think have changed. But yeah, we kind of picked up going back to the normal that we were, the trajectory of growth that was a little bit more reasonable, right?
More ups and downs, I think, as well. You know, I think that was a moment in time. But again, long-term time horizons. I say that health care is recession-proof in the sense that, you know, my uterus and your kidney does not care what the economic situation is. People will continue to get sick. They will continue to give birth. They will continue to have health care needs. And if you look at sort of the earnings calls of the really big stakeholders in health care, there's still a hell of a lot of capital out there. And I think that's going to be a really big opportunity for these companies to partner.
One of my favorite areas to watch is women's health. And I feel like thanks to you, Chrissy Farr, others who have really pushed on women's health as a very investable space in health innovation, there seems to be a lot more attention on women's health than there has been. And I don't know about you, but I really feel like the definition of women's health has been starting to expand. And so, like, I mean, you and I have spoken about this on a panel before, but, you know, this whole idea of not calling it femtech this whole idea of, you know, not calling women's health niche because it's half of the population of people, and the whole idea of not just focusing on reproductive health because that's only really half of a woman's life. So talk to me about what you're seeing in terms of women's health. Do you feel like the definition of women's health is expanding? Are you seeing that reflected in the startups that are throwing pitch decks across your desk, or what?
Definitely. I mean, let's, let's start with vocabulary. There is no perfect nomenclature. Like, I will recognize that. So as much as I criticize it, I really do criticize the term femtech, in part because I think it just sort of relegates women's health to some sort of, you know, frilly pink niche category. I recognize that women's health is not as inclusive of a term just in terms of, you know, vocabulary as we would like. So there's no perfect term out there. And Rock Health has called it women, you know, with the X health. And we— I like to call it women's and family health. At the end of the day, you're talking not only 51% of the population, but 80% of the dollars and decisions that are made in healthcare. Neal Shah from Maven Clinic, their chief medical officer, calls women the chief medical officers of the home. And that's absolutely true. So I think it's a category that is massive. We're just beginning to see some of these exciting announcements, including Maven's just from yesterday. And there is so much more to come.
Yeah, let's talk about that Maven investment. So you have been invested in Maven for a while now. So $90 million now and an additional round for them. I think it's a Series E, right, from General Catalyst. So tell me about that. That had to be exciting. Exciting for you to even go through.
So exciting. I mean, there's so much to talk about. I am incredibly, incredibly proud of Kate and Neil and Will and the entire team and the work that they have done. I mean, a financing is a financing, but what's really impressive is like the sheer number of growth, the number of covered lives they have now, the expansion into Medicaid, the expansion with not only half of the top Fortune 15 companies that are their customers as employers, but also a big portion of the major national payers. So they're expanding into additional categories as well in the communities that need it most, most. Not to mention the thought leadership, of course, that both Neil and Kate have had, particularly in a post-Dobbs world.
No, it's very exciting to see them achieve this level of success. I'm excited for them. I remember when they first launched.
And the other thing I want to call out, by the way, is the incredible women behind the scenes and on, on the cap table. So obviously, you know, I'm on the board of Maven, but the deal came to me through Jess Lee from Sequoia, who's also a young mom of two, and she led the Series And then we brought in, you know, general catalyst Holly Maloney, who is also a mom of two young children. And there's really a trend here. And I think, I think we'll see a lot more of that.
I love that. I love that. All right. One thing I do want to ask about the women's health space, what do you think is the biggest gap in women's healthcare? Is there any one area where you're just like, wow, there should be this, but I'm not seeing it? Because I feel like there's a lot of those categories like we talked about, like fertility, the reproductive health space, the period tracking, all of that stuff. And even now I think menopause is starting to get like that. I've seen more startups popping up in that space. But what is your answer?
Last year. Last year. That's changing. So, you know, listen, first of all, we've got lots of things going on across the board, but it is still really underinvested in. So even though we have unicorns now and, you know, and primary care like Tia with the Series B from last year, of course, with Maven and the Series E and lots of fertility companies like that, still not saturated. There is still lots of room there. But, you know, other areas like heart health is one. Where it is still the number one cause of death for women. And it still has this misconception that it's an issue for, you know, for men. It's not only women, it's primarily, you know, women of color who have an outsized impact. So heart health is one area. Early detection of hormonal disorders is another one, whether it's PCOS or endometriosis, cancer, particularly, you know, breast cancer and other cancers that are, you know, have outsized impact again on women. There's so much room for innovation.
Okay, cool. I love that. I love hearing that. All right. The other area I wanted to pick your brain about was about the, like, the health IT infrastructure space, because I feel like this category is one of those categories right now that is booming in terms of interest and investment. You guys have a, have a couple investments in this space. What is your take on that health IT infrastructure, like the platforms behind the platforms that are powering all the data and moving all the things? What's your ideas on that space?
I'm super bullish on. I mean, the fact is, like, let's look at the last few months, the amount of activity we've we've seen from non-traditional players in healthcare, whether it's Amazon, you know, whether it's Google, whether it's even some of the retail pharmacies that are doing more care delivery, these large mega players are not going to be creating in-house innovation solutions. They're going to need to partner with companies. So those are where— that's where there's real opportunity for these infrastructure plays. Of course, we're— we led the Series B in SteadyMD, for example, which is an excellent, you know, and really a partner to a lot of these companies. And so that's, that's a great one. There are many more out there. I'm also excited about the R&D side of things. In terms of clinical trials. So we led the seed round recently in a company called Trial Library, which is doing amazing work to help not only with decentralized clinical trials, but to actually effectively get a more diverse patient base. So helping to power those. So everything from R&D to care delivery, there is still a ton of white space here. And I can tell you, having conversations with these really big partners, they still want those solutions.
One of the things I'm seeing with those solutions, though, is I'm starting to see— I feel like, you know how we got point solutioned out in like the digital health space? In the chronic care space, and mental health space. One of the things I'm starting to see in that health IT infrastructure space is starting to look like a lot of the point solutioning, where it's like, oh, it's a health IT infrastructure play within mental health, or a health IT infrastructure play with this kind of data. Are you seeing that too, and are you concerned about that at all?
You know, it's interesting, because I think a lot of, a lot of companies may start off with a beautiful point solution that works really well, but they have to really prove that that individual point solution will expand, otherwise there's no TAM, and VCs are not going to be interested, and they're not going to be a large outcome. There's And there may be many of those, but at the end of the day, the partners who are, you know, the vent, the seeking out these vendors, they don't have the appetite or the capacity or the bandwidth to take on all these multitude of vendors. And then those point solutions have to interface with one another. So infrastructure plays like Commure, for example, which is also in our portfolio, or on the patient-facing side, Tendo on the digital front door side, that's where we get really excited because at the end of the day, like, that's not only what patients want, how many point solutions do you want to navigate? But it's exactly what the partners want as well. And providers, of course, don't want to interact with, you know, really with much software at all. So the more seamless you can make it, the better.
All right. Mental health, huge boom during the pandemic, especially for somebody like yourself where you're kind of on the earlier stage of investing. Is that category done for you right now? Are you kind of past it? Just want to see what's happening with what's already in this space, or are you still very bullish on that?
I think there's still a huge opportunity. There is so much we don't understand about mental health. You know, my dad is actually a psychiatrist, so my very first foray in healthcare was 8 years old helping file charts in the back of his office. He recently retired, but you know, why he got into it is the same reason I'm so excited about it. There is, we are just beginning to understand the ways in which our brain is physiologically tied to our feelings and how we can diagnose is very interesting. So digital biomarkers is one area, how we can treat is another. And it's hard not to pay attention to the mental health crisis that we are all facing and especially pediatrics and adolescents. And I'm a, you know, a parent myself, and so that's something that I think a lot about.
All right, what area are you not hot on anymore that you're like, nope, this is, this is one of these pitch decks that's just not going to get the Lux Capital seal of approval on it?
You know, I don't think I'll ever say I'm not looking at anything because at the end of the day, especially when it comes to early stage, it's all about the founder and the team. But I think if there's something that's like a super, super, like, you know, 1% type of problem that's really just optimizing for the worried well, it has no way that it's going to expand beyond that, it's not really of interest to me because ultimately I'm driving— I'm hoping to invest in technologies that are going to advance humanity, that are going to improve lives, that are going to make us all healthier. And so that's, that's really what I get excited about.
Ah, that's awesome. So Deena, it was so great to talk to you. Like, it's exciting to hear what your ideas are about, you know, kind of what's trending and what's not trending and like the shape that things are taking. And you see so many different types of startups that I'm sure, you know, pitch you all the time. And so it's exciting to hear like what you —find to be valuable and important in terms of investing in. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you.
Great to be here. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I'm Jessica DeMaza, and for more interviews with the who's who of health tech as they are changing the way that we do healthcare, head on over to my YouTube channel. It's youtube.com/WTFhealth. Thanks for joining us. Bye.
