Announcing our latest investment, Flatiron Health

It's always exciting to get the chance to publicly share a new investment - but today is even more exciting given this is the second time we've partnered with serial entrepreneurs Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg.  Nat was one of First Round Capital's first interns ever and built our very first website.  He then went onto intern at a First Round company, then called VideoEgg (now Say Media) and soon after, with Zach, came up with the idea for a company focused on algorithms and ad targeting called Invite Media (acquired by Google in 2010).

Nat and Zach are the kinds of founders we love to partner with, they're heat seeking missiles.  With Invite Media they pivoted away from their original product and essentially invented what is now known as a Demand Side Platform.  They are insanely effective executors and learners, resourceful and constantly curious.  For example, while they were not ad tech domain experts when they founded Invite Media, they immersed themselves in the space, accumulated as much knowledge as possible and ultimately discovered an opening in the market at the right time and rapidly grew the company before exiting.

So when the guys told us they left Google to dive into an entirely new space -- healthcare -- we were instantly excited and thrilled to participate in their initial round of financing.  Their new company is called Flatiron Health and it's focused on bringing the power of big data to the healthcare space.

I always seem to hear how a ‘cure for cancer’ is right around the corner, but the clinical trials to bring drugs to market is such a long process that 'the corner seems' seems to retreat farther and farther away.  Or, to be more precise, eight years away – the time it takes to test each potential cure.  While part of this time period is required (it can take years before we see the results of a cancer treatment), there has to be a way to make this process quicker.  In other industries, we've seen Big Data help buyers, sellers and everyone in between make more efficient decisions.  Yet Big Data has only just started to make it's way into MedTech.

Flatiron Health, based in New York City, is building an “oncology data platform”, which allows cancer care providers to aggregate, structure and mine their clinical oncology data (they call it "making cancer data actionable"). Flatiron’s platform integrates a cancer center’s disparate data systems to provide a truly longitudinal and comprehensive view of the patient population. Through the platform, administrators and clinicians gain deep analytics for business and clinical intelligence, resource utilization, treatment patterns, network management and research. Cancer centers can also monitor their adherence to national cancer care guidelines and benchmark their performance.  Flatiron is currently in private beta.

Nat and Zach join a number of other First Round companies focused on the healthcare IT space - including DNAnexus, Mango Health and Sherpaa.  Please join me in welcoming Nat, Zach and the entire Flatiron Health team back into the First Round Capital Community.

Oh, and if you're interested in joining the team and changing the world for the better, they're hiring for insanely good engineers and product managers - you can learn more here: http://www.flatiron.com/careers/open.html