Apply to First Round’s Health Unconference

No industry has transformed over the last two years quite like healthcare. Here at First Round, we have a front-row seat to these innovations, partnering with our companies in our community like Flatiron Health, PatientPing, Forward, Suki, Nomad Health, Pine Park, Thirty Madison, Alma, Boulder Care, and over 20 others as they adapt to new challenges and opportunities to fill gaps in the healthcare system.

There is, of course, the obvious shift in the industry — the quick pivot to telehealth and its impact on patient-provider relationships. But there are also other undercurrents beneath the surface that healthtech companies are contending with, like protecting patient data, designing the right tech stack and choosing the right partners to serve patients. To help our First Round portfolio companies navigate these pivots, last year we brought on Dr. Regina Benjamin, the 18th United States Surgeon General under President Barack Obama, as an Executive in Residence. Now, we’re expanding access to some of those same critical lessons with our first-ever Health Unconference.

In the past few years, we’ve experimented with Unconferences, where we bring together a curated group for peer-to-peer sessions on specific topics. This format empowers attendees to both share and learn by feeding off of each other in breakout discussions that are focused on extremely tactical content and lessons. This allows for multi-dimensional discussions among people with different points of view, rather than the one-to-many approach of a handful of individuals getting up on a stage to share a collection of slides and proof points. In short, Unconferences allow us to tap into the wisdom of the many — and if the past couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that no one person has all the answers.

We’re excited to bring the proven Unconference formula to healthcare. By providing a forum for folks to swap tactics and share learnings, we hope to build the strongest community of startup leaders in healthtech. Our aim is for this event to be cross-functional, bridging the gap between Product, Clinical Ops, Providers, and other healthcare leaders across the org chart.

The First Round Health Unconference is on Wednesday, Feb. 23, conducted virtually from 12–2pm ET. If this sounds like a conversation you need to be a part of, apply here to grab your spot.

So what can you expect as an attendee? Rather than listening in to a high-level presentation, most of your time will be spent in small breakout discussions, focused on the most burning questions and topics top of mind for healthcare in 2022. You’ll walk about with extremely tactical ideas designed to move the needle on quality of care, support for providers, and growth. By attending our first Health Unconference, you’ll also get a chance to engage with the cream of the crop of healthcare startup folks across different industries and growth stages, including leaders from organizations like Thirty Madison, Clover Health and Candid Health.

As with past Unconferences, we’re crowdsourcing topics from healthcare leaders across the org chart, from product and engineering to the care team. Attendees will have a chance to discuss questions that are top-of-mind in sessions like:

• Changing Patient Outcomes through Behavioral Science
• Designing a Payor-Friendly Tech Stack
• Cracking Health Plans: Tactics to Get to Yes with Payers
• Responsibly Iterating on your Care Model
• Building for Security Before You Scale
• Product-led GTM: Analyzing Claims Data to Deepen Commercial Relationships

We’re now accepting applications! Healthcare leaders — apply by Wednesday, Feb. 2 to join us (virtually) on Feb. 23 from 12–2 pm ET.