Omada Health Office Visit with Sean Duffy: Lifestyle Intervention

Sean Duffy with Henk Jan Scholten

I walked to the Omada Health office in the Financial district yesterday for an office visit organized by 500 Startups.

Like the office visit to BetterDoctor a couple weeks ago, one of the key advantages to have an office in San Francisco is proximity to opportunities like these.

Omada Health recently closed a $50M Series C round a couple months ago, so I was definitely interested in hearing what Co-Founder and CEO Sean Duffy had to say.

SEE ALSO: BetterDoctor Office Visit with Ari Tulla: A Focus on Execution

Sean Duffy: My Takeaways

Here are my takeaways from our office visit with Sean Duffy:

• You don’t need to be published in the New England journal of Medicine right out of the gate. Robust clinical trials not needed in the beginning.
• Every buyer on healthcare is very risk averse.
• Focus on discovering who would have a business benefit for your product in a large org. Then go target them. Who is the PnL owner?
• Make sure your solution saves money in the first year. That’s the key to selling to big orgs.
• Educate a buyer they have a problem.
• Health plan sales is a very crowded market.
• “For us it’s about lifestyle intervention.”
• Founded Omada in 2011.
• The Single Instrument Fallacy: Independent tools like fitness trackers and Fitbit don’t work just on their own. Full package approach is key.
• Healthcare seed funding changes constantly.
• The best board members don’t try to run your business for you. They don’t try to be operators. You want even keeled board members.

About Omada Health

Omada Health is a breakthrough online program that inspires healthy habits people can live with long-term.

They combine the science of behavior change with unwavering personal support, so people can make changes that actually stick. It’s an approach shown to reduce risk factors for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

About 500 Startups Digital Health

500 Startups Digital Health is part of the four month core accelerator program focused on customer acquisition and fundraising.

They look for tech-enabled health and health care startups who have a product in the hands of some customers, but need to scale traction before qualifying for a follow on round.

We are proud to say we were part of their first batch (B18).