Wallet Max Planet Positive Podcast with Investor Emily Zhen

Join Bhuva Shakti, Founder & CEO at Wallet Max, as she speaks with female investors looking to leverage inclusion and impact without compromising growth of investments.

​This month, Bhuva's guest is Emily Zhen, Principal on the investment team at Zeal Capital Partners investing in early-stage companies across Healthcare, Financial Technology, and the Future of Learning & Work.

​About Emily Zhen:

​Emily Zhen is a Principal on the investment team at Zeal Capital Partners investing in early-stage companies across Healthcare, Financial Technology and the Future of Learning & Work. She joined Zeal in June 2023 and leads their healthcare focus. Before Zeal, Emily was a healthcare investor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and an operator at two digital health startups. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with dual degrees in biology and finance from The Wharton School. Emily has been recognized on the Forbes 30 under 30 List and as part of the Emerging Venture Capital (EVC) Top 25 Investors list. She is Kauffman Fellows Class 30, a member of All Raise, an advisor for Gold House’s Gold Rush Accelerator for Asian American Pacific Islander founders, and the healthcare co-lead for Emerging Venture Capitalists Association.

About Bhuva Shakti:
Bhuva Shakti (she/her) is the visionary founder and CEO driving sustainable innovation at Wallet Max, a global community of executive women and venture capital investors with a mission to expand fundraising access for high-growth sustainable startups. With an MBA from Columbia University in New York and as a senior executive director on Wall Street for three decades, Bhuva has managed diverse financial portfolios and launched several digital transformation products for investment banks, capital markets, and payment networks.

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Transcript

Bhuva

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the August edition of WalletMax Planet Positive podcast.

I'm Bhuva Shakti, based in New York, and the founder of WalletMax. We are a global community of startups, investors, and executives focused on increasing funding access, especially in the climate tech, fintech, and AI sectors.

We interview one impact investor every month for our podcast to share their background and what different differentiates them from the crowd in terms of prioritizing impact along with profits and planet. We deep dive into their personal and professional journey and their mission to uplift.

Today, we are speaking with Emily.

Emily is a Principal on the Investment Team at Zeal Capital Partners, investing in early-stage companies across healthcare, financial technology, and the future of learning and work.

She joined Zeal in June 2023 and leads their healthcare focus. Before Zeal, Emily was a healthcare investor at New enterprise Associates, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and an operator at two digital-linked startups.

Let me now hand over to Emily and invite her to say a few words about her background and career path. Over to you, Emily.

Emily

Thank you so much for having me, Bhuva. It's great to be here.

I'm Emily. As Bhuva mentioned, I'm a Principal in the Investment Team at Zeal Capital Partners. I founded and helped lead our healthcare focus here at Zeal, and I also invest in financial technology and future learning and work.

Our mission is really to close gaps in wealth, health, and skills. And really align profits with purpose. And so, as Bhuva mentioned, I have been at Zeal for a bit over two years.

Prior to that, I did multi-stage healthcare investing at NEA, New enterprise Associates out in the Bay Area. And then was at Goldman Sachs Prior and Investment Banking, helping to take companies public and IPOs, companies that we took public, like Oak Street Health and Moderna, and then also doing M&A transactions as well.

But really, I also wanted to hone in on a little bit of my upbringing. I'm from an immigrant family, first generation, and I've been a caregiver for my grandparents and a translator for them. And that really gave me the motivation to do something in health care.

I studied biology and finance at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at multiple digital health startups and in clinical research focused on oncology and helping on an opioid withdrawal treatment clinical trial.

It was there that I learned that a lot of healthcare challenges were not purely because of medicine, but because of technology or lack thereof with technology and systems that were not coordinating with each other that ultimately impacted patient outcomes. And so that's where I thought that being in venture could really help.

I've seen economic mobility firsthand, and I want to help empower folks with that, whether it's health care or financial mobility, financial technology and inclusivity, or helping people with upskilling and reskilling through the companies that we invest in.

So that's a little bit about my motivation and my why, which I like to say that brings me here today.

Bhuva

Thank you, Emily.

I think biology and finance is a unique combination, never heard of, at least from my end, in the venture capital. Space.

So typically, it is more in the R&D or the pharmaceutical sector, glad that we wanted to continue our investment journey beyond gold and capital.

And you also mentioned the lack of technology being a challenge collaboration between the system. So what would be your unique secret sauce?

Typically, investors are either from a financial background, operational background, or consulting background. That's a great addition because I was also mentioning, typically you are in that sector, you will go into a pharmaceutical industry or research and development at a big pharma company.

Now, you also mentioned that you take care of your grandparents and that has motivated you. Especially also, we see the big gap in technology missing in the healthcare sector.

What is your unique secret sauce that comes with your upbringing that will differentiate that investment from your perspective?

Emily

Absolutely.

Given my background at this intersection between life sciences, healthcare, and business innovation, It gives me a strong understanding of how the industry works.

Health care is a industry with a lot of regulation, a lot of more complex science at times when you're looking at new technologies like precision medicine and new forms of therapy, gene and cell therapy, for example.

And you're also looking at innovation in business models, whether you think about value-based care models which pay based on healthcare outcomes versus pure volume, or when you think about how to solve the massive provider shortage, when you see a shortage of doctors and nurses, how can you use things like artificial intelligence, AI, and various forms of technology to help augment and ultimately make a doctor's job more efficient so then they can focus on caring for patients.

There's so much innovation in healthcare and life sciences today. Having an understanding of the clinical workflow and will a provider, will a health system or payer or a pharma company actually adopt a technology is really important and crucial, just as important as it is to understand reimbursement, understand government policies around Medicare and Medicaid.

My background around both biology and healthcare management and policy plus finance helps me understand that regulatory piece, the science, the underlying provider adoption pieces of it, while also understanding how to ultimately scale a company, I would say.

Having seen that at my time at Goldman or at NEA and now at Zeal. Combining those two gives us unique domain expertise, to be in the trenches with our founders, and a unique blend of understanding of the regulatory and market dynamics that really impact a healthcare company beyond another technology company.

Bhuva

Yeah, no, that's correctly said, because I transitioned from investment banking sector also.

I was on Wall Street for a couple of decades, and then I moved into venture capital, but still keeping my fintech roots, but also additionally focused on impact-oriented climate solutions at the moment.

You got ahead with my question around regulations.

In Western banking, highly regulated. Fintech, now you're in health care, highly regulated.

What motivated you to go from Goldman to Zeal? Is there a pivotal moment in between or it was more transitional and the next logical step?

Emily

It's a great Good question.

At Goldman, I was really lucky, and as you can relate to Bhuva, to just get tremendous exposure to some of the largest Fortune 500 companies that were thinking strategically about capital raises, about M&A and acquisition, and really thinking through their growth strategy.

That really gave me a lens to the healthcare world and really helped me understand how things work and how the big players are thinking about growth and consolidation in the market.

But the more I spent time there, I realized that I liked working with earlier stage and growth stage companies.

One, because I felt like they're the ones that are really creating the future of health care and really innovating on new technologies and more willing to experiment than a more established pharma company or payer or health system. And so the combination of collaboration with these these newer players and these incumbents was really interesting to me.

And so that's what got me to explore venture capital and growth investing. And so that motivated my transition to NEA, where I got to work with companies across early stage through growth equity and even post-IPO, and really follow the full journey of investing end-to-end.

I was at NEA for about four years and just learned so much. I'm so grateful for my colleagues and just the ability to cover all these stages, especially as a newer investor at the time.

Really, Zeal actually reached out to me. 

It was through a mutual connection, through a GP, a general partner, at another firm that I served with on a board while I was at NEA. He had recommended me for the role of principal to start the healthcare focus at Zeal from the ground up.

I met Nasir, the founder of Zeal in 2022.

At the time, I actually was just going through something personal where my grandpa had passed away.

My grandparents, multi-generational household, they played a huge role in helping raise my brothers and me. It was a very sudden moment where he had to go to the hospital and he ended up getting pneumonia in the hospital. 

But it was a moment where you usually were there to translate and advocate for him.

But unfortunately, we couldn't visit because of the COVID pandemic, hospital visitation rules and limitations. And so ultimately, there are all these questions around, should he even have gone to the hospital? Because we weren't able to be there with him and translate.

And it was a very sudden moment. By the time we visited, two weeks later, he was passing away and made me realize I really wanted to do something mission-driven.

And when this year at Zeal approach me with this opportunity to build healthcare investing with a lens towards health equity, with a lens towards solving these gaps in care, and also thinking through Solving wealth gaps and skills gaps that just really resonated with me personally, and especially after this pivotal moment with my own family, just really gave me the motivation to to go and start something and be entrepreneurial and start a new vertical focus in addition to investing in financial technology and future of learning and work, which really appealed to me from the standpoint of education and financial mobility being super important in terms of creating generational wealth.

Bhuva

I'm very sorry about your grandfather.

I know a lot of my extended family members also went through a similar situation during COVID I mean, you don't know, do you have to go to the hospital? You don't have to go to the hospital.

Even hospital emergency rooms were full, so you're not getting a bed or equal care at that point in time. It was a very difficult time for so many people that I know of also.

It's a great thing that you're focused not just on healthcare investing, but health equity and financial and mobility solutions. That's really important.

That's why I also transitioned from investment banking into venture capital, because for me, fintech is not just fintech or finance or AI, rather financial inclusion is key. If we don't solve those challenges or planetary challenges, keeping people in mind, I mean, what are we doing, really? 

Now, we touched upon healthcare, fintech, future of work within the US market or comparing it to what's going on geopolitically at the moment. Also, considering if you're investing in growth state startups, at some point, they are going to for external markets.

In your perspective, where do you see some opportunities or challenges in these sectors and how from Zeal, from your perspective, you're trying to proactively do something today?

Emily

Well, it's interesting because when I started in venture, it looks very different from where it is today.

I started in VC right before the pandemic, and I remember there being a huge scare in terms of, Okay, what's going to happen with the economy?

But because of the low interest rate environment and all the stimulus bills, you actually saw a lot of funding, a lot of rounds, high valuations. And so 2020, 2021, even early parts of '22, were very active for capital deployment across VC. You saw many companies going public much earlier than they probably would otherwise. You saw higher valuations. And then when the interest rates started to go up and the economic environment adjusted, you saw that reverse.

What's really interesting today is you're seeing the market adjustment in terms of capital raises, valuation, and you're seeing this flight to quality in terms of the highest quality founders, repeat founders or teams are getting the attention, getting the valuations, but then other companies are taking longer to raise capital. There's a smaller graduation rate from one run to the next.

The IP IPO markets were not as open, honestly. Just given some of the macroeconomic environment and uncertainty around IPOs, you just didn't see as many public offerings.

This has created a bit of a liquidity challenge for many VC firms, and that can be a challenge in terms of exiting.

What this means for how we're investing is, one, we're ensuring that our companies are really thinking through capital efficiency. Really looking hard at what they're spending and investing on, what's the ROI, and how can they do more with less.

Number two is really thinking through what is the exit strategy for every company beyond a public offering. The biggest one is M&A.

We want to ensure that there are players in the market that would be interested strategically in this company and to acquire the company. Three, also just ensuring early on that we're aligned with the founder on what does that long term vision look like.

We're a venture firm.

We invest in long term impact. We know that it takes time to build really great companies. But we also ultimately have the fiduciary duty to return capital to our limited partners.

There needs to be some type of long term play and exit strategy early on.

We do ask our founders that. That alignment piece is very crucial, especially given different market environments, the up and downs, and just seeing many different types of environments between what we're going through now, '08, '09, and even the dot-com boom.

It's market cycles, and it's important that we're investing in companies that have a plan and can also be resistant to some of these market cycles.

Bhuva

Yeah, that's true.

I remember during pandemic, There were hundreds of SPACs, suddenly SPAC everywhere.

I was also part of the 2008 crisis, so I know anyone that comes out of it is going to be much resilient and stronger.

Now, we see in the last six months, at least this year, the trend has not been to increase investments yet. Maybe the trend will change towards later part of the year. Some of the big corporations and even private equity investments investors are shifting a little bit priorities in terms of if you talk about health equity or financial inclusion or future of work with an impact mind, then you may have to have a longer diligence cycle before you get the investment.

How do you think your startups can approach you confidently?

Why do you think any overlooked healthcare solution or a future of work solution is important for you? And How can you confidently convince them to take you as an investor?

Because, of course, investors invest in founders, but for founders also, they need to have that fit with you, right 

Emily

Absolutely. That piece is so important.

Whenever we're looking at companies, we tell the founders, This is a two-way street. We want you to learn about us and understand us and ensure we can add value and that we're good fit just as much as we are doing the same. I couldn't agree more with that point.

In terms of our firm, one, we're very laser-focused on three sectors: fintech, healthcare, future learning and work. We're laser-focused on systems change.

Are you fundamentally improving fintech and helping to create savings and wealth creation or helping improve credit scores and credit access?

Are you on the future learning and work side helping with up-skilling and re-skilling or worker and learner enablements?

Or are you helping to fund alternative education pathways, such as pathways from community colleges into four-year institutions, for instance, like our company, Advisory is doing?

Or are you a workforce play that's helping with coaching for the entire organization, not just for the C-suite, like our company, Medley is doing. 

Then on the healthcare side, are you improving access and affordability of care?

Are you really moving the needle on quality for all populations, not just for the wealthiest populations?

Are you improving women's health or behavioral health, mental health and wellness, or contributing to social determinants of health, which we consider any non-medical factors like food, housing, transportation that disproportionately impact health outcomes?

You can read about our thesis. We're super clear online of this is what we're looking for.

If a company is doing that and has a sustainable, scalable business model, and this is very important because we're investing in for-profit, venture-scalable companies. We're not a charity or nonprofit. We need to make returns and generate returns.

As the revenue aligns with the impact, and this can be a scalable, venture-backed company, they have a business model with some established customers and revenue, that's when we get excited about digging in and doing more work.

In terms of where we can offer value, one, we are really strong at working as an extension of the management team to make intros to potential customers, to look at their story decks and look at how they're pitching to potential customers and work with them side by side to perfect that.

We help with follow-on financing rounds, help with investor intros, help with the narrative, help with the data room preparation, and also help the financial budget preparation, et cetera.

Then the third area that we spike is ecosystem building, connecting them to other helpful folks in the environment, whether it be other founders, whether it be helping them with hiring new team members, helping to connect them with the appropriate distribution channels and partners.

We have many cases where we have actually connected them to their next investor or their next customer.

For example, our company Esusu, which is a billion-dollar company in our first portfolio, Zeal 1, they help improve credit scores by means of rental reporting. So on-time rental payments as a means to improve your FICO credit score.

We actually introduced them to one of our partners and investors, Motley Fool Ventures, who led the Series A, and we led the seed.

That's a very tangible example.

One of our companies, fintech companies, we just introduced to a large financial institution for a pilot partnership. It could go on and on, but we really dig in. We're on the ground level with our companies, and we really focus on adding value and being able to use their domain expertise to help them to grow.

Bhuva

Sometimes the check that you give is the start of your relationship. Sometimes you may not give the check, but if you are able to make an introduction, that goes really a long way.

Relationships matter.

You also mentioned something earlier about the equity challenges that people have and also the learning. Future of work or learning may not be just creating a new product, rather, it could also be upskilling and reskilling, especially when so many people are concerned about AI being part of our workforce at the moment.

You also touched upon a very good point where I'm more focused on climate these days, along with Fintech and AI. You mentioned that healthcare may not be just healthcare. It could be food, water, air quality, anything.

The same challenges we face in climate.

It may not be a climate solution, a hardware solar panel, or a wind project. It could be clean water, air, or food security. So basic things that people need every day. So thanks so much for sharing that, Emily.

When we started, you also mentioned you were in Japan, talking about healthcare.

What trends do you see there?

Do you see anything different, anything more or less?

Are they all aligned between US and Japan in terms of what we are seeing in the industry?

Emily

For sure.

Well, first of all, I just wanted to acknowledge how much I agree with you on how climate goes beyond what people may think of, right?

Solar panels. It's really about living in a planet that works for all of us, and it's really about wellness.

I see that in terms of our sectors, too. When it's financial technology, it's not just about money. It's about how that ties into people's holistic wellness. It's about financial health. It's about how that impacts the workforce.

And you start seeing all of these sectors really tie together and the impact emerge. Climate and health, so many intersections between the two.

I just wanted to underscore that point.

In terms of my trip to Japan, it It was amazing. It was for the global health challenge in Osaka.

I got to meet just leaders from all over the world, from Japan, from the UK, from Australia, from other countries in Europe who are really thinking about how can they improve health care and innovation in each of their respective countries.

One takeaway I had is that there are more similarities across countries, across cultures, than we would think.

For example, aging population.

It's something we talk about all the time in the US. We talk about Medicare, we talk about Social Security funding and that getting tighter. We talk about how we can take care of dual eligible people who are eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.

In Japan, they have an aging population as well. Probably, I believe the stats say their birth rate is even slower than ours. 

As you think about things like caregiving, as you think about treatments for chronic conditions and also addressing common conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, there's so many similarities in terms of challenges that both countries are facing.

One thing that popped in my head is, how can we work together to take all the best practices in one place?

Another good example of this is women's health. There was a fantastic women's health panel there at the conference featuring US, UK, Japan, and in Australia, all talking about how they were innovating in menopause care, how they're innovating in fertility and also maternal health, and how women's health extends beyond reproductive health.

What was really interesting is the UK has been talking about menopause for years, whereas in the US, it's a newer topic that was previously more stigmatized to talk about.

They've been talking about menopause because of the impact on the workforce, because many working-age women going through menopause are struggling to feel like themselves, and how this ultimately impacts how they show up to work.

Learning from the UK and how they tie it in menopause with work, the future of work, is really interesting as we think and take that back to the US.

And how Australia talked about solving health disparities in rural health.

I was thinking about, Well, we have so many rural communities that don't have as many primary care physicians or specialists.

So how can we learn from each other about best practices?

What works? What works well?

What doesn't? How can we work together?

Those are two tangible examples, aging and women's health, where there's a lot more in common than we think. I think there's the power of convening and sharing best practices.

Bhuva

I totally agree, especially menopause is the time when most of the women are trying to climb the executive ladder. They are either expanding their little bit later in their career and trying to define their legacy or the next set of years in their lives. If they are unable to solve the challenge.

It's not that we have research and clinical trials available that we are not using.

What I have uncovered talking to so many investors in the last several months is we don't even have some of the studies done already, which stops us from even solutions, right?

Because now you have to start researching and then find solution, then they have to commercialize, then you're going to prescribe to women, which may take, I don't know, 5, 10 years, but your route of investing in growth state startups could get there a little bit faster, could be.

You mentioned an example earlier about a startup that's using rental data for credit score.

I've seen that challenge also quite a lot in financial sector where many people are denied credit loans, microloans, especially women and people of color, are mostly impacted quite a lot because some of these use traditional scoring methods.

Apart from that case study or example, is there anything else you would like to share from Zeal or your personal investment as well from the healthcare fintech future of work and learning?

Emily

Absolutely.

Well, we have so many incredible portfolio companies making an impact. I wanted to highlight just a few recent investments that we did as part of Zeal 2, which we closed earlier this year.

One of them is called Debbie.

Debbie is really rewarding people for positive financial behaviors. So think about paying off your debt, starting a savings account, increasing the capital in your savings account. They partner with financial institutions, credit unions and banks. And they're essentially allowing them to... They're enabling them to grow their membership, grow the customers that they have, and to actually turn on dormant users.

So for example, with SoFi, they're able to who really help SoFi to reengage some of their population that wasn't as active anymore. They're especially resonating with millennials and Gen Zs who are in this middle income bucket.

Just imagine graduating from college, you have a job, but you still have a lot of student debt, and you're trying to think about how do you start with these financial habits?

Well, if you could earn rewards for things like groceries and gas and everyday items, and you don't have to pay anything. But instead, you're starting new accounts and you're getting new business for financial institutions, it's just a very clever play.

And that is a female-led company based in New York City called Debbie.

We have a company called Aura Finance, A-U-R-A. That is a employee financial platform that is psychology-driven.

So they're using behavioral science in order to help people understand their relationship with money and then to help take the next best action. They're working with all employees, not just focused on the ones that already have retirement accounts, but also meeting people where they are, even if they don't have retirement, even if they're paying off debt, really meeting people where they are.

Then one more I wanted to highlight more.

The healthcare space is a company called Seven Starling.

They are a woman's mental health platform. They provide mental health through individual and group therapy, medication management, and also their app to people throughout their motherhood journey, from fertility through postpartum.

They're expanding into other life stages as well. They have over 50% of their provider workforce is BIPOC.

They're really, really focused on inclusion.

Over 90% of moms will feel better after just a few weeks of using the program. They're partnered with OB/GYN or OB/GYN.

Now, imagine getting a referral from your OB/GYN to get a appointment the same week versus having to wait upwards of six weeks they're over for an in-person therapist.

They're really solving access challenges in mental health and also addressing a big issue since one in five moms will have some type of mental health condition, and one in four women will experience some type of mental health condition throughout their life.

They're meeting women where they're at and offering a very specialized service for that.

Just a few more recent investments that I wanted to highlight.

Bhuva

Thanks for sharing that, especially if you are getting a referral from your OB/GYN.

We see a lot of cases where some of these postpartum challenges, prepartum challenges, are not even diagnosed. But trying to take care of that earlier is a really good thing because it should be a happy moment, not a challenging moment for the family itself.

Thanks for sharing that.

Then You mentioned building better financial habits, especially now the next generation. Gen Z and millennials are looking for similar habits, but they don't want to go through the traditional mechanisms, but they also want to build habits.

In fact, they want to graduate without debt or close the debt first before they can do anything. So that's a really good investment as well.

And with all these investments going on, I also wanted to quickly check in. So healthcare itself I mean, at least if a future of work or fintech, you can have different types of investments.

It could be low capital in terms of you can have medium or high.

But in healthcare, there is this whole research cycle and then the clinical trials, and there are so many other components.

Have you come across any such challenges where you have to invest in a company today, but they won't be commercializing or revenue-generating for a few more years?

Has that come across your table?

And if it does, then how do you handle that, especially the healthcare sector? 

Emily

Right now, actually, for Zeal, we invest in companies that are already post-commercial, so that means they're revenue-generating.

We're typically not investing in companies that need FDA approval or regulatory approval but don't yet have it already.

That being said, when I was at NEA, we did invest in companies in therapeutics and life sciences that were very innovative science and in the process of clinical trials, and those were not revenue generating yet.

Very different models of investing, I would say. Just want to clarify, I don't invest in companies that don't generate revenue today.

Typically, investing companies that have at least a few hundred thousand in ARR and a few contracts with different customers.

In terms of investing in life sciences, though, which I did at NEA, it's really about the data. It's really about digging into the clinical trial data, seeing if we believe that the science will work based on looking at the animal data, the human clinical trial data, looking at the endpoints, the statistical significance.

Then it's also about understanding the market size. If it does work, how successful do we think the commercialization will be, both in terms of the size of the market with that specific condition or disease that they're solving for, and also in terms of pricing power and other comps that are out there.

And so very different model, but just wanted to highlight a little bit of how we thought about it, how I thought about investing in life sciences companies. Is when I did that.

Bhuva

Thanks for sharing, Emily.

And now with all this going on, we spoke about opportunities, challenges. We spoke about different sectors, different case studies, examples. I want to look at a little bit futuristic.

So What are some emerging trends that you see that you're excited about today across these three sectors?

Within Zeal itself, in your investment thesis, in your diligence process, are you making any adjustments looking forward, or how do you anticipate this going in?

Bhuva

Definitely.

One trend that I see across all three categories is AI as an enabler. 

And so what I mean by that is I personally don't I don't think AI is going to replace the human touch.

When you think about healthcare or when you even think about a financial advisor in the fintech world, I think about this phrase nudge and touch.

I think nudge is the technology.

You can use AI to more deeply understand someone's profile, whether you're a wealth advisor or a financial advisor, whether you're an employer trying to understand an employee's needs and what benefits you can ultimately offer them.

Number three, when you're thinking about how you can personalize medicine, how you can use genomics and wearable data and all the different data you have in between clinical visits to better care for a patient. 

I believe AI is game changer in all of the sectors that we're working on.

I think you can use data and AI to help personalize learning and upskilling and reskilling in the workforce.

 That being said, I don't think that you're going to replace a doctor anytime soon. Soon, at least.

I think you're going to use AI to help a doctor with scribes and note taking and submitting reimbursement from insurance companies.

I think you'll see AI in the financial space, looking at a broader set of data as you're underwriting someone for a mortgage or debt.

I think you'll see AI in terms of automating elements of manual processes, whether you're looking for a loan or looking to start an account or just the KYC process.

I believe you'll see it turn on in terms of learning and universities and post-secondary education, and also how you think about training workers in AI and how that will improve efficiency.

But I don't think that ultimately you can replace the one-to-one relationships that you have between people.

AI as an enabler is one that I think applies to all of our categories. 

Number two is business model innovation.

I think in addition to technology, we will need to see business model innovation to solve some of our most challenging problems.

A few examples of that.

In health care, it's historically been fee for service, which means I go get a procedure, I go get a screening or a test or a visit, doctors get paid a certain amount.

But the result of that means that sometimes providers aren't necessarily held accountable for the outcomes.

Business model innovation is something like a value-based care model, where now you're getting paid not only per visit, but you're also getting rewarded for better outcomes.

If you're able to keep a patient out of the hospital, keep them out of the emergency room.

So companies that invested in back at NEA, like Strive Health in Valley-based kidney care or Curana Health, which is focused on primary care for senior living. They're reducing hospitalizations by 30, 40% by having a value-based care model and holding people accountable and aligned finding incentives.

I think about innovative business models to account for provider shortages and labor shortages through using upscaling pharmacists, upscaling people who can do not only dispense medication, but what if a pharmacist can prescribe medication?

What if they could do more lab testing diagnostics?

That could really improve and address the shortage of providers, especially in rural areas.

I'm thinking a lot about business model innovation. You see it in fintech as you look at some of these companies that are serving community banks and CDFIs and thinking differently in terms of how you better serve the consumer.

Those are two things that I'd offer seeing across the board.

Bhuva

I'm seeing that as well, especially today, everything is an AI company.

How do you differentiate?

Then enabling it for scale, accuracy, speed in climate, it's really important. The Texas tragedy that we saw, some of it could be also not enough forecasting ahead of time, more proactive and being predictive. AI could have helped quite a lot there.

Not that it's not being used today. We can really magnify the positive impact.

From a big pharma and the healthcare perspective, typically we have seen, Okay, so how can you make the patients go to the doctors, frequently get more medications, but then value-based care is going to really change the game.

I don't want to be going to the hospital. That's what I want to do.

But if the doctors are also being rewarded for that, then I think we'll have a better healthcare system.

Thanks for sharing that, Emily.

You also mentioned about the future of work and the business model innovation. In climate, also, we see quite a lot of government to business to customers, especially also some of this scaling, even in healthcare and fintech and AI-based solutions.

Sometimes if it's not B2B or B2C or B2B2C, it could be G2B2C because you have to really impact the scale at a community or a regional level.

Given all these challenges and new set of trends that you are tracking at the moment and the AI enablement and business model innovation, how do you think Zeal is uniquely positioned for the broader startup and venture ecosystem within the US, at least in these three sectors?

Emily

I would say Zeal's domain expertise and sector focus really enable us to go deep with the founders that we meet and also ensure that we're building community.

We care a lot not only about making investments, but we want to bring bringing together founders and investors and operators and limited partners in every city that we visit.

For example, we're doing road shows in different cities, and we're not only going to the venture hubs.

We love investing in New York, in the Bay Area, in Boston, but we're also going to the middle of the country, places like Chicago and Atlanta and Nashville, which is a huge hub for health care, and the research triangle where there's so much innovation going on.

We're trying to host community events there that really bring together the ecosystem.

Actually, about three quarters of our companies are outside of the three top VC hubs of New York, S. F, Boston.

We invest in many companies in those areas, but we know innovation can come from everywhere.

And so part of where we win is going to places that other investors might look and investing in people, other founders that are really talented but may be overlooked as as well.

And also just our super focus on these sectors, going really deep, as I mentioned, and creating that sense of ecosystem and camaraderie and collaboration among our founders is really part of our ethos and part of what our values are in terms of bringing together the community of folks.

Very similar to you.

I know community building is huge for you. It's part of this podcast and it's part of Wallet Max as well.

Bhuva

No, thank you so much for sharing.

Like you rightly mentioned, not just seeing the venture hubs.

I mean, the April, we had Fintech Week in New York and Tech Week, June, and then we have the Climate Week coming up in September.

I do pitch competitions during these times because most of the audience and the participants are from other parts of US and the world. This is an opportunity for all of them to meet some of these unique startups, and they are solving challenges that I've not come across, typically in the local sector.

But once a year, they are able to come here and showcase, and then our venture capital is go there.

So Midwest, Southeast, North, and even the Northwest, there are a lot of initiatives going on. So really a great diversity of founders and ventures. And thanks for doing Roadshow in all these places, so we can also meet them in their places.

Apart from then coming up to New York or San Francisco for once a year events.

Now, how can people get in touch with you and Zeal?

Is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we wrap up?

I know we are coming up-time. I wanted to see if there is anything else we missed, we want to talk more or mention it so that we can share with our community as well.

Emily

Well, anyone can feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

 Emily Zhen, Z-H-E-N is my last name.

Would love to connect with you, especially if you are a founder building in one of our sectors, fintech, future learning and work, or healthcare, and you feel mission aligned.

We would love to hear from you.

We invest in seed companies, mostly.

We've done a few early Series A investments as well, and we'd love to learn about what you're building.

Then to co-investors operators and potential investors and funds, we'd love to hear from you as well.

Please feel free to reach out. Thank you so much for having me, Bhuva. This is a pleasure.

Bhuva

Thanks a lot, Emily.

Even though sometimes we have shared sectors, sometimes we have sectors that are totally different, I see so many similarities. So climate and healthcare, fintech, and future of work.

So many similarities. So thanks so much for sharing your expertise with our community. And then let's be in touch. Thank you.

Emily

Thank you.