John Perez, Senior Manager, Client Engagement at AVIA

Doing Well by Doing Good: Health Provider Venture Funding with John Perez, Senior Manager, Client Engagement at AVIA transcript powered by Sonix—easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.

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Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Sam Marquez is here and today I have the privilege of hosting John Perez. John is a Senior Client Engagement Manager and the lead for the venture network at AVIA, the nation’s leading health care innovation network. His work spans both innovation and strategic capital investments in digital health. He holds a degree in Biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt and works out of Chicago here like myself. And I’m so privileged to have him on the podcast today to dig into a little bit about venture and really health care, about how health systems can best leverage their position and how to best position their strategy as it relates to venture. And so, John, thank you so much for joining us today.

John Perez:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. So excited to be here.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. So before we dive in, I would love to hear more about you, John, and what inspires your work and health care.

John Perez:
Yeah, absolutely. And I really grew up in a medical household, so I had two amazing physician parents. My mom was a pediatrician. My dad’s a plastic surgeon. And so right off the bat, you have to total opposite ends of the spectrum. But, you know, it really did kind of two things growing up. First, made it really, really hard for me to fake being sick as a kid. And and second, it really introduced me to health care and jumpstarted my career within health care at a really young age. And so I had the good fortune of being able to spend a ton of time with my mom at her pediatric office, working summers and kind of part time and really get familiar with the full patient journey from end to end. I got to spend time and scheduling, billing collections, kind of the whole nine yards. And one key thing that ended up being a big part of the transition from her full office, from paper to electronic right to paper to EMR. And if you can picture it, you’d see me kind of locked away in a room charts all over the floor or scanning into the system. And I’m kind of piecemeal. What were some of the processes that happened when this was paper and what are these processes going to look like when we’re now leveraging digital and we’re in the new system and talk about the easiest way to get some hands on experience into just kind of the overall funkiness of health care? Right. you have a piecemeal, you know, processes and a lot of administrative burden just in the overall health system. And so I really got exposure to that at a very young age. And probably what I didn’t fully appreciate at the time is just the massive opportunity for technology and really for for digital to kind of play a role into the health care space. And so you take that and fast forward decades later and the processes are still pretty clunky right. There’s there’s still lots of administrative waste. And I’m just super grateful and fortunate to be sitting in a position where I’m truly at the epicenter and kind of smack dab in the middle of what we’re seeing as the health care digital transformation revolution more broadly today.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, and just picture you there on the floor, papers everywhere trying to figure this thing out and that Aha@ moments like this could be so much better. And here you are many years later pursuing that mission with AVIA. So folks, you’ve listened to a couple of interviews with other leaders at AVIA on the podcast. Bruce and Amy, and they’re helping health care organizations unlock the power of digital. And so, John, it’s exciting to get you on here to to talk more about the venture side of things. And so tell us a little bit more about how the business is adding value to the health care ecosystem around venture.

John Perez:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, maybe just to set the stage and provide a little bit of context for those listening and who don’t know about kind of more broadly obvious, really, a network of 50 plus leading health systems across the country, systems, all shapes and sizes, big, small, academic, community based, rural and urban. And really, they’re all aligned around one key thing, it’s how can we best leverage digital to move the needle at organization? And so we partner with our systems in a number of different ways. right, starting all the way at the top with things like enterprise strategy and how can we help systems think through. What are some of those really big moves, those big things that we need to be thinking about in order to stay competitive and relevant in the health care market today, all the way down to AVIA, I’m really trying to pick the right solution company partner to help us take better care of our patients at home, for example. And can you help us pick and align around the right solution partner for us in the remote monitoring space? And so you I feel like if all people get the joke right, we know that digital is massively important in health care. And you’re going to spend a ton of time interviewing some of the most inspiring leaders tackling some really, really complex challenges, but the reality in our world is that there’s just so much noise out there and you have every company touting AI machine learning. They might be the virtual health platform of the future. And that’s not to knock any of the companies right. You have some amazing entrepreneurs that are really changing health care for the better. But as the health system and maybe potentially limited resources, a tech landscape that’s changing what feels like kind of real time now, it’s how do you sift through all that noise and how do you pick the right digital partner for you? It’s incredibly tricky stuff. And so that’s really where AVIA comes in more broadly, right, driven by the experience of our 50 plus systems, the network, we have resources that are just dedicated and waking up every single day thinking about things like social terms of health, like virtual health strategies, how to leverage remote monitoring, all of these type of spaces. And they’re really just chomping at the bit to help our health systems guide them through whatever step of the way that they’re in. And so that’s AVIA more broadly. And my role at AVIA, kind of I wear two big hats at AVIA.

John Perez:
So we talked about venture a little bit. My first hat is really on the client engagement team and so I’m working kind of hand in hand with some of the innovation leaders, the clinical leaders, the operational leaders at our member health systems, really to say and understand, you know, what’s your strategic goals, what are your priorities and how can I best plug you into all the great stuff that we have about the resources, the diligence and help you get done? That’s kind of one. And then, as you mentioned, had to and where we’ll spend most of the time today is the lead for obvious venture network. And at at a high level right. Obvious venture network is really if you took the 50 plus systems in the broader network, about a third or a quarter of them have a strategic investment arm or a venture branch, and that is associated with their system. And they look to invest capital alongside adopting different technologies. And so our whole venture network is really focused on supporting that subset of members. And it all really started about three years ago where one of our more gung ho investor health systems really just raised their hands to have you right..

John Perez:
We’re a strategic investor. We know there are some other ones in the network. Can you just put us in a room? Let’s just talk best practices, investment strategies and learn from each other. And so starting there, we have just grown a ton with just interest in this space between venture capital, in the health care ecosystem. So now we’re at a spot where we have over a dozen system investors in the venture network right there, collectively worth over three quarters of a billion in total assets under management. And we’ve now really surfaced over 30 direct digital health care companies for investment opportunities to that group. So exciting stuff within that space. And if I were to just give a little bit of color on kind of the nuts and bolts right., you can really understand the venture network by understanding we anchor ourselves and really these quarterly Shark Tank style events where we’ll take the 12 plus healthsystem investors we just talked about, put them in a room and surface six or so curated investment opportunities each quarter and religiously matchmaker in the space to help our health systems get a solid look at a unique, interesting investment opportunity and help some of these promising companies really secure capital from an interesting strategic source.

Saul Marquez:
And that’s really great. And the opportunity is capital. But also the other opportunity is having somebody interested in using you. So it’s the distribution method there. Tell us a little bit more about that.

John Perez:
Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s absolutely two big aspects of value. Right. you have to have capital and investment and you have aligning yourself as a customer and in two big buckets. Right. And so if I were to say where the value of the venture network comes from, Right. and what that looks like is I’d actually put it as kind of two different sides of the coin. So really, on the first side of the coin, you have the strategic investor side, right. And you have how do we help our health systems from that perspective? And my take is really that there aren’t many, if any, organizations that have a better pulse on the digital health care landscape today. Right., we talked about that. That’s kind of our day job. That’s day one for us at AVIA and things like what are the trends power companies uniquely positioned, who’s seeing the market traction within the space. And so that gives us a really incredible, unique vantage point to service some of these investment opportunities. You can also look within our space of kind of how our health systems tap into their the network from a venture perspective and thinking about things like their socializing and getting investment opportunities amongst each other, socializing their portfolio companies.

John Perez:
So added value from that perspective and really, how can they leverage some of the experience for the broader group to put in best practices at their specific organization? So in the health system side Right., that really puts us in a really unique position if you combine all those things. But it’s all kind of what you are getting at, right. Is the value added from a company perspective is I think as you kind of touched on Right., the statement holds true capital is not all the same. And great CEOs and entrepreneurs really see that a lot of the folks that you interview on a daily basis see that right. And there’s so much value in aligning with the strategic health system investor, because way beyond just the cash on the check Right.. And this group becomes a really, really interesting, valuable source of capital for companies that really see that. And so we obviously kind of sit in the middle of this to really help connect kind of both parties.

Saul Marquez:
And it’s challenging Right. if you’re a health care organization, looking to see what’s out there and maybe you have a strategic investment arm like a third of the group does, maybe you don’t. But the reality is there’s still a ton of companies out there that are doing great things, some that are not. And how do you know? And then the other thing is integration into the system. How long is it taking? And a big factor is trust and getting through a lot of the due diligence. Oftentimes a company could get bought or go out of business. Have you seen some of this, John? And tell me a little bit more about what makes AVIA different and better than what might be available to these health systems today?

John Perez:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s such a changing landscape and not only just more broadly, but even now in the wake of COVID that things are changing at such a rapid pace that it’s really, really hard to keep your finger on the pulse. And so, I mean, if I think about what makes us different in the market, I mean, I feel like I kind of touch base on that Right. just before and the differences between health systems and companies and the value they glean from our work specifically. But if I if I were to talk about kind of the value and just overall improved outcomes, I really just walk through maybe just a member example of some of our work in the past. Yeah,

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. That’s great.

John Perez:
Yeah. The best way to talk about it is through an example. And all of this is public information. So, you know, I respect our members unblinded information. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But so early last year we surfaced a company through one of our tech cycle event, Surfest, a company called Twistle. And the Twistle is a company that’s tackling kind of care plan automation and patient engagement more broadly. But at the end of the day, they’re kind of really laser focused on how do we better engage patients through digital and kind of a scalable way right at the end of the day, improve patient outcomes. That’s kind of their niche. And through our process, they received a ton of interest from the broader group and actually, ultimately one of our health systems co-lead the round, which is fantastic. And so they raised a total of 16 million. And then actually we ended up having two other health system investors join the group. So now you have one company with three strategic investors all together. So that’s an exciting outcome from from our perspective. Right. So as a company, you have three big brand name healthsystem as strategic investors that are really packed on to your effort.

John Perez:
And you either they are current clients, right. Because that’s some might be might need to kind of have that in place in order to invest or their hopefully future clients. And but I mean, at the end of the day, they’re all invested to help you shape the direction of the company. The product is the best way possible.

Saul Marquez:
That’s really cool. And so the hospitals were able to almost even get white glove treatment in the process of the development, customization and the results. Sounds like we’re really great.

John Perez:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. From the health system side Right., you have at least the process. You have a curated investment opportunity through a lot of our diligence and research Right. surface that way. You have health systems that are able to de risk their investments by really just the ability to swap notes and talk with other health systems and how they’re really thinking about the space and the specific company more broadly Right. and ultimately landing on health system, investing together. And so as a company right., they really do see the value in that capital. And so it’s just a really, really interesting space to be in for that group. And I think this example is an interesting one, Right., because the ticker is all of this happened kind of pre covid. Right. And pre the state of the state that we’re in today. And in the wake of everything going on, there really isn’t a health system out there that isn’t thinking about trying to digitally engage with their patients Right. that’s that. That is kind of where we currently sit. And that’s a really big focus for some of our health systems. And so so Twistle, the company has been really, really well positioned to support their health systems to this time. So from that investment Right., you already have health systems that have they’ve received strategic value right. From their investment because they’re leveraging technology that they invested in a potentially Right. to support some of their really tricky times with it. And they really paved the way for an actual cash capital ROIC return down the road. So just kind of one example of a handful of cases of how we just derive a lot of great value from that broader group.

Saul Marquez:
So, John, fascinating work that you guys are doing there. And the Twistle example, just. Super interesting way that everybody wins. Tell us a little bit about the setbacks, if you like, we learn more from the setbacks we experienced than the wins. So what is one of those? And maybe a key learning that you pulled from that that’s made you guys better?

John Perez:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a it’s a really good question for us, because we’ve been doing this for a few years, but we’re still relatively young in the space. And so we’re constantly learning and working through challenges and kind of picking things up along the way. But if I were to pinpoint one key one for us, it’s really timing. Timing is a really, really big challenge for our work. And when I say timing, I mean, it takes a lot of time for a health system to really align around a strategic opportunity, a strategic investment, and ultimately write a check that takes a lot of time. If you’re if you’re more of an institutional investor, more traditional D.C. fund, I mean, you’re still going to take time right. you’re going to you’re going to do your due diligence. But it feels like a lot less of a cumbersome process. And for our group, just about every single healthsystem in the room really does need to have true operational alignment within any investment. They look at they need to have line of sight into the fact that they’re going to derive a lot of value, have a customer before they write any checks. And so what that means is your needs need to align with the system strategy. You need to socialize the investment opportunity amongst a number of key stakeholders. And all of that stuff really takes time. And so from our end, it’s now we have to service investment opportunities accordingly. Right., you can’t service some opportunities that are weeks or even months away Right. because it’s just not going to happen. Right. your systems aren’t going to get a line that quickly. Maybe some might be able to really tricky. And you can’t service investment opportunities that a year plus down the road because you’ll lose steam with interest and the rounds might not be even as formalized as they’d like to be. So timing for us has just been been really, really tricky and it’s tough. But so we’ve kind of.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and it’s an issue, right? I mean, it takes time. And if you’re going to write a check, I mean, it takes time. You want to do your due diligence. Right.. So how have you guys found that sweet spot there?

John Perez:
Yeah, absolutely. Again, learning through our case along the way, we’ve kind of landed on this, you know, three to six month investment opportunity, surfacing opportunities from about three to six months out.

John Perez:
And that that I mean, of course, the challenge there is that all of the needs need to align with the best companies are really in their need for capital. Right. And so so still a little tricky. I don’t know that we’ve figured out the –, but I think that along with testing out the waters with some different types of events, especially now in the wake of covid in our more virtual world, Right., we’re testing out things. I think if you add experience maybe around one around to obvious venture network event, that might have felt more like a random walk down down digital health, where there’ll be a handful of companies not necessarily playing in different spaces together Right., but interesting investment opportunities for our specific health systems. Now we’re really toying with the opportunity of or the idea of, hey, can we look at a particular space and really think about who are the top two or three best in class companies in that space that we know from some of our diligence and align events that way. On the flip side, Right., again, if those companies aren’t raising capital, if you leave out one of the best companies just because they’re not raising and probably not going to see kind of which are best in class. So, again, I don’t know that we’ve perfectly nailed it, but figuring this thing out along the way.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, now, that’s really interesting, John. And in that example where maybe they’re not raising but, you know, maybe showing support and getting some sort of strategic partnership alignment is just as valuable without having to write a check.

John Perez:
Oh, yeah, absolutely right. And so companies really come to the event for obviously two reasons. Right. you have the want and need for capital. But also, I mean, it’s a fantastic customer base, Right.. And so we’ve had many companies come through where they don’t necessarily secure a check from one of the investors, but they do absolutely secure customer. And that’s obviously a fantastic outcome from the company’s perspective, because they’re really, really great group of a customer base as well.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, yeah. And so as the organizer of the events, the matchmaking events, I mean, you guys win if either happens, right, because you’re providing that environment where the health systems can find these sort of relationships and investment opportunities.

John Perez:
Yeah, you’re spot on Right.. All of these outcomes are great for us. Right, because at the end of the day, we want to help our health systems and not only just our health system investors, but align with really great digital opportunities that are going to move the needle for them strategic wise. And these companies are really looking for key healthsystem clients to prove out either their capability or just grow and expand with the ever changing landscape of health care. And so, you know, from our perspective, at least, the venture network and you folks might be confused, but we’re not really a sidecar fund. We don’t invest directly. And so from a matchmaker perspective, it’s really just can we drive the best outcomes for both parties? And if that happens and we’re we’re happy as clams.

Saul Marquez:
What would you tell any health system leaders listening now that maybe aren’t members of AVIA? How can they learn more? And what would you encourage them to consider? As we go through tough times with covid, the front door to the health system forever changed. What encouragement would you give them?

John Perez:
Yeah, that’s that’s a really, really good question, especially with things changing so much in the wake of covid and how I mean, we have probably just a good example of this Right.. We have heard a couple of weeks ago from a health system that I work with. You know, they’re trying to they’re trying to build out and integrate some of their texting capabilities. And over the past year and a half, it took them about a year and a half to organize really two or so use cases to secure kind of the texting capability and how to best engage with patients. That’s pretty COVID post COVID. We’ve had examples of health systems who have worked and acted in four to six weeks to build out and deploy a texting capability. And so all the old examples of the clunkiness and the challenges of learning stakeholders’, a lot of that has kind of been thrown out the window and systems are moving quicker Right. they’re moving faster than than they ever have before. And so, you know, trying to continually work on your organization to keep things nimble and being able to move fast and kind of learn from your mistakes has been a big shift that we’ve seen in our health system network. And I think that’s proving to be a really, really good value and for some of these systems that are just trying to block and tackle and now that things are kind of calming down, although I wouldn’t really quite say that, think through. How do they redesign their organizations to accomplish these things from a long term strategy perspective?

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, no, I think that’s great. I mean, and the other point there is wave two. So if it does happen, how do you prepare yourself?

John Perez:
That’s what everyone’s asking for. Everyone’s really asking that question right now. It’s how do we best prepare ourselves for wave two or what might even be a wave three or just really the dynamic nature, I think, of the environment. A good example actually had a good conversation with the health system recently, and they’re trying to design their virtual health strategy to be pretty nimble and understand that. Well, right now we’re not seeing as many inpatients visit Right.. We’re seeing a lot of virtual visits, but we know that that’s going to change over the course of the next month and year. How do we design an operation that just lets us flex kind of up and down Right.? And what are other considerations there? Right. like how our providers going to be staffed accordingly to think about virtual in-person? What are some of those complex things that you’re thinking about? And so really, really tricky as far as thinking through the changing landscape and changing environment? I think the nice kind of silver lining is that digital has really shown that it has been able to help and be effective in some of these spaces. And you think about things like rebuilding consumer confidence and helping patients and folks really understand that, you know, we’re safe to go back into the health system. Environment has been tricky and health systems across the country have really been enabling digital to help with some of those strategies. And that’s something that we could spend a whole podcast on. And I probably wouldn’t even be the expert to talk about that Right. acceptance of my key folks that AVIA or those that are thinking about some of these bigger, broader consumerism type of efforts, folks like you’re saying, because the VPN really drives all our consumerism work at AVIAA. I mean, she’s in these type of conversations with just about every system that we have. And so it’s tricky stuff. It’s tricky stuff.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. But, you know, just being surrounded with people that are at the forefront of it, whether it be health systems, the thought leaders at your organization, John, or or even beyond some of the companies putting together some of the solutions, that’s how you get it done. What are you most excited about today?

John Perez:
That’s a really good question, because, again, there’s a lot to be excited about. But also, we’re in the midst of a pandemic. So there’s a lot to be sad and concerned and confused about. But I mean, from my perspective, COVID has really shined a light, a really bright spotlight on a lot of the great work that we do at AVIA and really just the broader importance of digital. So what I’m most excited about is that health systems are not stopping their spending in digital because actually came out with a really interesting article on they did a survey of kind of the CFOs across the country, CEOs and senior leaders across the country. And it came back with a couple of cool things. So the first was only 12 percent of CFOs expect to cut or defer digital spending Right.. And again, when, as we talked about in the wake of a dime Right.. Yeah, and they’re really strapped for cash right now. Systems are very, very strapped for cash. And so the fact that they’re not expecting to cut. Ending on digital is really promising in the space and then on the flip side.

John Perez:
Eighty one percent of CFOs and senior leaders said that there is an immediate need for digital and digital transformation for the long term survival of their organization. So right off the bat, I mean, I feel like our organization has really been thinking about the imperative of digital for so long. And now we’re really starting to see that the systems are double down in the digital space and they’re understanding that this is going to be a key piece of their long term strategy and long term survival Right.. And that’s not different from any organization. We just the health care kind of 10, 20 plus years behind. And so it’s exciting to actually see that that this is starting to be realized for these systems. And folks are acting. I mean, that’s that’s kind of more more broadly what I’m excited about. But I mean, personally, I think we’ve talked a little bit about this, but I just stoked to be in this role and in the in the work that I’m in at AVIA, I mean, similar you saw I get to engage with and learn from some of the most amazing leaders in health care, both on the system side Right.. So those investors we talked about, the innovation leaders and the really, really sharp, intelligent and experienced leaders in health care and on that side of thing and those CEOs and entrepreneurs that are doing amazing things. Right. And just get the glean all the stuff in. If you ever hear our CEO and co-founder Eric Langshur speak, he’s always really talking about he’s just saying, guys, we get paid to learn.

John Perez:
It’s awesome stuff. And so that I’m always joking. We live kind of in dog years, right, where we’re one year and AVIA might be seven years broadly or somewhere else because we’re just in the middle of so much and there’s so much moving or learning so much along the way that it just gets me excited about kind of one just the space, the to the incredible opportunity that we have to really make a difference in health care more broadly.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s so great, John. And being in the middle of it all, you’re learning a ton and you’re helping others leverage those learnings to do even better with digital. So, I mean, just incredible work that you’re up to there and the team is up to there. I love if you could just share closing thoughts with us and then where the listeners could reach out to you to to find out more.

John Perez:
Yeah, absolutely. So this was actually something that came across recently from one of my health system members. And again, I’ll keep it blinded. But the key contact there said, you get at AVIA, you help us understand two things. One, we’re not as far behind as we think we are. And two, we’re really not as far ahead as we think we are either. And like that statement just kind of stuck with me and holds true in a number of spaces. Right. it holds true personally. It holds true, true professionally in health care and other organizations. And so that kind of opened my eyes to how we can really learn from each other as a network, as an ecosystem. And so I just wanted to leave that parting thought. And then as far as getting in contact, any of your listeners can reach out to me. My email is jperez@avia.health. Don’t be shy. I would love to connect and you can always learn more on AVIA more broadly at our website avia.health. Saul, Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate your time and the conversation.

Saul Marquez:
John, this has been fun and I appreciate you for coming on and sharing some of the insights that you’re seeing over there and certainly wishing you guys the best. Please stay healthy and thanks again for being on.

John Perez:
Awesome. Thanks so much.

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