A working brief for tomorrow's strategy session. Everything we've learned since Friday, the call we've already made, and the four decisions that need to come out of this meeting.
EC doesn't sell the horses. EC provides the track, the conditions, and the field of buyers who only show up because they trust the venue. The fund pays for the right to run its horses on EC's track, in front of EC's buyers, under EC's credibility.
The vetting is the product. If we let any startup into the room, the buyers stop coming. The quality of the field is what makes the venue worth attending.
Ayo's partner. Co-founder of A Very Stable Conference Season 2 with Ayo and Aaron Frank. Sent Rob a follow-up email asking to chat.
Read: Ayo isn't offering a casual intro. He's sending the operator who runs his playbook. The conference offer is real and staffed.
Twine, Manresa, Recall, Floating Point, Meridian Street. Ayo's words: "they all hustle for their founders" — pre-seed first-check writers who will push portfolio to Nashville on request.
Read: The first prospect list for the cohort sales motion. Outreach order in §04.
Charta, Sage Care, SuperDial, CloudCruise, Nen, Youshift, Substrate. All enterprise HC GTM. Three of the seven trace to one Carbon Health team.
Read: Founder-side pipeline. Pilot-cohort candidates. Carbon Health cluster in §04.
Ayo offered to co-build a healthcare version of A Very Stable Conference — including his VC sponsor pipeline as the revenue mechanic. Single-day, ~300 attendees, invite-only.
Read: Real offer, real playbook. Our call on this is in §03.
Ayo offered a conference. We're saying no — for now. The cohort is the product. The conference is a consequence of cohort success, not the entry move.
National networks pretending to be local — Marcus Evans, HLTH, Plug and Play, Rock Health — can't replicate Nashville without buying a building here. HCA, Vanderbilt, Humana, Ardent, CHS, BCBS-TN inside a 30-mile radius is structural geography, not curation methodology. That's the Derby moat. A bigger stadium doesn't strengthen it. A tighter field does.
"If you told me I had three meetings with the right healthcare buyers in Nashville tomorrow, I'd fly out tonight, change my flight, and come back."
Ayo Omojola · CEO, Substrate · May 7 meeting
Meridian Street first — Woody Baum founded Local Infusion in Nashville and has publicly called Nashville "the Silicon Valley of healthcare." Warmest geography fit of the five.
| Fund | HQ / Fund | Healthcare DNA | Why this order | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Meridian Street Capital Woody Baum, Scott Law, George Ribaroff MD |
NYC (orig. Indianapolis) 34+ investments, 3 exits |
100% healthcare × tech | Founder/CEO started Local Infusion in Nashville. He already gets the buyer-concentration story. Easiest first call. |
| 02 | Twine Ventures Leshika Samarasinghe, Ethan Yeh PhD |
Bay Area / NYC Fund I ~$25M, $500K–$750K checks |
~50% portfolio is health | Purest thesis match. Waltz Health, Waymark, Rupa Health (exited), Teiko Bio, Alaffia. Maps cleanly to the EC's buyer access. |
| 03 | Floating Point Eddie Segel, John Loser — both ex-Bridgewater, both founding team Oscar Health |
Boston + NYC Fund II $70M, >$150M AUM |
Core thesis vertical | Oscar Health lineage = deep payer DNA. Commons Clinic, Dandelion, Wheeler Bio, Mevo. Strong pitch hook for Humana. |
| 04 | Manresa Ventures Jackson Gates (solo GP) |
SF $40M Fund I, $500K–$3M checks |
Opportunistic | One confirmed health portfolio company (Camber, RCM/billing). Pitch as "your one healthcare deal this year." |
| 05 | Recall Capital Sarah Tierney Niyogi, Somrat Niyogi |
Bay Area Fund + AngelList syndicate, size not disclosed |
Not confirmed | B2B SaaS focus. No named healthcare portfolio. Qualify before pitching. |
Three of the seven startups Ayo named trace back to one ex-team. Ayo Omojola was CPO at Carbon Health. Caesar Djavaherian, MD co-founded Carbon Health — he's now co-founder of Sage Care and CMO of Charta Health. Ayo is CEO of Substrate. Land one Nashville visit, close all three. That's the easiest first cohort.
| Company | What they do | Funding | Buyer ICP | Fit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Charta Health | AI pre-bill medical chart review. Claims 11% revenue uplift. | $22M Series A (Jul 2025), Bain Capital Ventures led. ~$30M total. | VP Revenue Cycle, CFO, Chief Compliance Officer | Strong |
| 02 | Sage Care | AI patient access — triage, scheduling, provider matching. Claims 15–20% revenue lift. | $20M (Oct 2025), Yosemite + General Catalyst + Metrodora. | Chief Patient Access Officer, COO, VP Contact Center | Strong |
| 03 | Substrate | AI agents for medical billing — claim status, appeals, payment posting. | YC S24. Series A not publicly disclosed. | VP Revenue Cycle, CFO, Practice Administrator | Strong |
| 04 | SuperDial | Voice AI outbound calls — eligibility, prior auth, claims follow-up. | $15M Series A (Jun 2025), SignalFire led. ~$20M total. | VP Revenue Cycle, RCM outsourcers, DSOs, MSOs | Strong / Medium |
| 05 | YouShift | AI shift scheduling for physicians and hospital staff. | $500K seed (Feb 2025), YC W25. | CMO, CNO, VP Medical Ops, department chairs | Medium |
| 06 | CloudCruise | Dev infrastructure for browser-agent automation against EHRs. | $5M seed via YC W24. Floating Point, Meridian Street, Twine all backed. | Engineering at other healthcare-AI companies | Weak (for buyers) |
| 07 | Nen | Cloud Windows desktops for AI agents — 2-sec spin-up against legacy EHRs. | Reported $5M seed (not fully confirmed). | Engineering at other healthcare-AI companies | Weak (for buyers) |
CloudCruise is portfolio-backed by Floating Point, Meridian Street, AND Twine — three of our five target funds. That's not random. These funds already know each other and already invest in the same infrastructure layer beneath Charta and Substrate. The cohort thesis is real, and the prospect map has internal coherence.
Buyers in 2026 are not a monolith. The CIO and the CFO buy on different criteria. Every founder in the cohort must answer both — distinctly — before they enter the room. We use this as a curation gate and a buyer-matching axis.
| The CIO | The CFO | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary concern | Integration capacity. Technical debt. Cybersecurity attack surface. | P&L impact. Reimbursement shifts. Service-line margin. |
| Risk filter | Rejects "one-off" integrations that destabilize the stack. | Demands direct ROI. Rejects long-term liabilities. |
| What earns the meeting | EHR-native posture. Built to live inside Epic, Cerner, or the regional instance. | Quantified P&L story. Reduced ED boarding, denial-rate lift, service-line contribution. |
| Pair with | HCA enterprise architecture. Ardent IT. Vanderbilt's clinical informatics. | Vanderbilt finance. Humana plan economics. HCA margin teams. |
Every founder produces a one-page Workflow Integration Map before the cohort. Not an EHR sandbox — a single artifact the founder brings into the buyer meeting.
"We protect your buyers' cognitive load by curating only founders who've mapped their workflow to the buyer's actual operations. The fund pays. The founders get the meeting. The buyer never wastes an hour."
EC's existing program family — InFlight, TakeOff, PreFlight, Project Healthcare — sets the naming gravity. A new product can join that family or break from it, but the choice should be deliberate. Three buckets, with the strongest candidate in each marked.
Extends EC's existing program family (InFlight, TakeOff, PreFlight) but pushes the naming toward access, authorization, and earned position — the things that signal a curated room. Featured three first, then the broader field.
| Name | Aviation meaning | What it signals for the product |
|---|---|---|
| The Gate Top pick | The single controlled point of entry to the aircraft. No gate, no flight. | Says "tickets only" without saying it. The EC controls the gate. Funds bring their portfolio through it. Three syllables on a calendar invite. Sounds like a category, not a program. |
| The Manifest Top pick | The official list of every passenger and crew on the flight. | The list is the product. Selectivity baked into the name. Pairs naturally with the existing "names" collateral idea — the manifest is the published roster. |
| Wings Top pick | The qualification a pilot earns to fly. "You've earned your wings." | Strongest qualification metaphor in the set. Founders earn their way in. Funds bring portfolio companies up for their wings. Reads as a rite of passage, not a program. |
| Name | Aviation meaning | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Flight Deck | The cockpit. Operational command of the aircraft. | Where decisions happen. Operators only. |
| The Briefing | Pre-flight crew prep before any sortie or commercial flight. | Insider knowledge. The room before the room. |
| The Tower | Air traffic control. The authority that routes every aircraft in and out. | The EC routes the room. Authority over who flies. |
| Jetway | The bridge from terminal to aircraft. The last private corridor before boarding. | The privileged passage. Members only. |
| Jumpseat | The extra cockpit seat, granted only by the captain's invitation. | The rarest privilege in commercial aviation. |
| Touchdown | The moment of landing. | The meeting that lands. Works as a noun and as an annual date ("Touchdown 26"). |
| Approach | The high-stakes final phase before landing. | The discipline of arrival. |
| Clearance | ATC authorization to proceed. | Vetted. Approved. Cleared. |
| Hardstand | The designated parking position for an aircraft on the apron. | Your reserved slot. Earned, not bought. |
| Bulkhead | The premium front-row position on the aircraft. | First in the field. |
| Squadron | A small elite aviation unit operating as one. | The six-startup cohort as a unit. Military-aviation cachet. |
| Vectors | ATC-assigned headings that guide an aircraft to its destination. | The EC routes you to the right buyer. |
| The Hangar | Where premium aircraft are housed and prepared. | Private. Curated. Behind the doors. |
| First Chair | Borrowed from orchestra: the principal player in the section. (Music, not aviation — included for exclusivity feel.) | Chief. Lead. Named. Best signal of "earned seniority" outside aviation. |
| Tarmac | Where planes and people meet on the ground. | Concrete, direct, no terminal noise. |
Highest distinctiveness. The name carries the analogy. Risk: too horse-racy if buyers and GPs don't already know the framing.
| Name | What it says | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The Paddock Recommended | Where horses gather and trainers prep before the race. Insider language for the qualifying moment. | Strongest of the Derby set. Implies preparation, qualification, and intimacy. Sounds like a club. Works on its own. |
| Post Position | The starting gate. The slot a horse earns to run. | Specific and earned. Two words is heavier on a logo. |
| The Field | The qualified set of competitors. "The strength of the field." | Generic in print, distinctive in context. Pairs well with the moat language. |
Lowest brand risk. Easiest for a fund GP to put on a calendar. Risk: forgettable. Doesn't carry the positioning forward.
| Name | What it says | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The Slate | What's on the slate. The curated roster of who's in. | Implies selectivity. Reads as an editorial product more than a program. |
| The EC Healthcare Cohort | Descriptive. No metaphor. | Clear, dull, safe. The placeholder name in the concept page if no other lands. |
The aviation set is the right family. Three live candidates: The Gate for access, The Manifest for the curated list, Wings for the earned qualification. The Paddock stays in the running if Sam wants the Derby positioning to live in the name itself. Strongest single argument: The Gate — it says "tickets only" in two syllables and extends the EC family without forcing the analogy. The Manifest is the dark horse because it doubles as the names-directory artifact.