MGMT Boston - W2, Q1 25 - Connective Health / Paperless Parts & Centaur Labs on The Lantern
Connective Health / Paperless Parts & Centaur Labs on The Lantern
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 1,100+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
Connective Health - a healthtech service for doctors so they are better equipped with the right data at the right time to deliver high quality care to patients
Thanks to Lily Toto at Two Lanterns VC for the intro
Jason Ray, Co-Founder & CEO, Paperless Parts on The Lantern - Paperless Parts is building a vertical SaaS company focused on the (discrete component) manufacturing sector. Their solution helps customers quote and estimate parts more effectively and they’ve grown to issue 50,000 quotes per week or $2.5B in quote volume (already seeing ~10% of the entire market)
Thanks to Alison MacDonald for the intro
Erik Duhaime, Co-Founder & CEO, Centaur Labs on The Lantern - Centaur Labs provides a platform and service for data annotation for companies building artificial intelligence in the medical & life sciences space, doubling revenue or more for the last 3 years
Thanks to Ali Devaney for the intro
Other Resources:
MGMT Boston Operators Club - a community and opportunity engine for 100+ Boston based up & coming venture backed operators
2025 Boston Tech Big Board - 2025 First View
Trusted Partners - top local partners we’ve worked with directly at MGMT Boston or would trust with our own resources
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q1 Highlighted Startups: Cimulate
Q1 Highlighted Operators: Jeremy Aubin / TireTutor
2023 1H Recap / 2023 2H Recap / 2024 1H Recap / 2024 2H Recap
Connective Health
Founders: Joe Athman, Chris Diblasi, Ryan Hess
Founding: 2021
Mission: Ensure every clinician understands the story of every patient in 30 seconds, with treatment support options at their fingertips
Employees: <50 & ~15% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Seed & <$5M raised
Investors: Two Lanterns VC,
Key Customers: Various Providers
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $10M – $30M (assuming average equity dilution in Seed fundraising)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Connective Health is building a healthtech service for doctors so they are better equipped with the right data at the right time to deliver high quality care to patients. This Seed stage startup is leveraging interoperability for automated medical record retrieval and customized summaries to deliver a better experience for providers and better outcomes for patients.
Founded by Joe Athman, Chris Diblasi, and Ryan Hess this trio previously worked together at Surescripts. Ryan and the team have known for decades, seeing it up close at Surescripts, that our healthcare system still works in antiquated ways. The concept of interoperability, which was supposed to solve many of healthcare’s ills, has been a grind to become a useful force.
When you show up to the doctor, intake forms and questions tend to be pretty standard - it is clear that providers do not know where you have been in the healthcare system or the important conclusions other providers have reached. This fundamental issue of disconnected care has had a spotlight shown on it as two new models of care, virtual care and value based care, have grown. Virtual care and value based care are critical and innovative approaches to improving healthcare but have been hamstrung by the lack of meaningful interoperability. This is where Connective Health enters the stage. Connective gathers all of a patients data, cleanses it and then determines, based on a specific patient visit, what a provider needs to know that they don't.
Interoperability has only been possible pretty recently. And it isn’t always a priority for large healthcare organizations. Even at Optum, where Co-Founder & Head of Product Chris Diblasi previously worked, interoperability features were not on their near term product roadmap. Slow and steady changes in our healthcare legal policy have finally given us a chance to deliver a consumer-like experience to doctors in healthtech.
Electronic health records (EHRs) have been around for a while but their adoption increased after the passing of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) under the Obama administration. Next, common API frameworks were developed so that information could flow more freely. More recently, the 21st Century Cares Act mandated that data must be shared if requested or the record holder would face fines. This was the combination that allows for free flowing information…even if it took decades. It’s about time!
The healthcare provider network management market just passed $4B and is projected to grow to $12B by 2032 (src). Healthcare is 17% of U.S. GDP and provider burnout to service this behemoth of a system is a real thing. Some studies show physician burnout prevalence as high as 60% (src).
Healthcare is still fragmented. When your parents come down to visit from New Hampshire, they’re probably bringing a 4 inch thick binder with their entire patient history because the doctor they're going to see won’t have it. On the other hand, if they do bring it, no one’s going to look at it.. And it certainly won’t improve their care.
Connective Health uses AI & analytics to deliver a doctor exactly what they need ahead of each patient appointment, combing through patient files as long as 500 pages from 10 different locations and reformatting those sources to deliver specific and actionable information.
Each patient summary is customized as a standardized part of a doctor’s existing workflow, pushing relevant updates. For example, if you’re going to see a neurologist after a fall, it will exclude notes like “recently received botox” or “got a flu shot last month” because we both know that’s not the problem!
Making sense of these disparate data networks, formats, and information is where the magic happens so doctors can more quickly figure out why the patient is there and deliver great care. Connective Health locates 98% of patients, analyzes 1M documents per month, combs pharmacy databases, and interacts with 4,000+ clinical sites monthly.
Since it’s healthcare, you need to follow the money. Connective Health is working with 4,000 value based care providers helping them level up their care so less risk is pushed onto doctors and reimbursements can proceed more quickly. Their ideal customer is primary care organizations with Medicare Advantage across regional networks.
They also work with a number of large virtual care providers. Epic Health is their largest industry incumbent as the predominant owner of medical records and they also see Health Gorilla & Zus Health in the healthtech ecosystem. But Connective Health is most focused on providers (doctors).
This Seed stage startup billed $1M+ ARR in 2024 with bookings 2-3x of that number. Their customers pay per provider with average deal sizes ranging from $50k - $500k. Their goal is to triple their revenue growth in 2025, growing to dozens of customers, as they look to grow their GTM team further.
Operators to Know:
Annie Jacobson, Director, Customer and Product Success
Kathryn Jaggers, Product Strategist
Richard Kramer, VP of Sales
Adam Lanners, Director of Engineering
David Theobald, VP of Business Development
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Connective Health team if I missed any up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
More roles coming soon in 2025!
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
What are the critical GTM strategies that enable Connective Health to reach provider networks & virtual care networks at scale?
What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team into the growth stage?
What is the long term vision for the company?
What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2025 // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Connective Health you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more providers into the digital age. All patients applaud your efforts. See you around town!
Jason Ray, Co-Founder & CEO, Paperless Parts on The Lantern
Paperless Parts is building a vertical SaaS company focused on the (discrete component) manufacturing sector. Their solution helps customers quote and estimate parts more effectively.
Entering 2025 Jason & the team are focused on..
Getting control of their destiny, making sure their business is the right size business for the growth ahead, has been a major focus over the past couple years
Manufacturing & supply chains are global and Paperless Parts now has customers in Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand
They have grown to issue 50,000 quotes per week or $2.5B in quote volume. In a custom parts industry of $300B in annual parts, they are already seeing ~10% of the entire market
What has Jason learned from this journey?
Having the right team that’s fully bought in and leading with transparency.
$5M - $15M in revenue was the hardest stage. You’re big enough where the engine is running, but everything is breaking. Parts are falling off the car as you’re driving it!
Understanding the phases, what the team needs to look like at each stage, and who should be in what seats on the team is really important.
Next is transparency. Making sure the team understands if they are building something that is going to last and that’s valuable. At Paperless Parts they take the time to help everyone understand that.
How can we help?
They’re hiring! If you’re interested in joining the Paperless Parts team, they’re hiring across a number of GTM & technical roles.
And an ask for Boston - we build a lot of awesome companies here. The tech scene is understated. This is a big tech community, let’s talk more about it!
Erik Duhaime, Co-Founder & CEO, Centaur Labs on The Lantern
Centaur Labs provides a platform and service for data annotation for companies building artificial intelligence in the medical & life sciences space.
They have a network of tens of thousands of medical students, nurses, PhD students, and doctors around the world out to prove they are the best data annotators for machine learning & artificial intelligence models.
What’s Erik & the team focused on entering 2025?
Erik sees the AI space evolving from its origins of standing up an AI model (annotating data to create a model) to a state where companies will use a startup like Centaur Labs for ongoing monitoring or evaluation.
"Experts in the loop" can spot check code changes and external effects to keep their models working well over a long period of time as the world changes. These models need to be current, understanding what a TidePod is for example (!), when they're leveraged to provide medical advice!
Centaur Labs has been doubling revenue or more for the last 3 years. Their team is up to 25 and could grow to 40 by the end of 2025. Today they're looking for talented sales & marketing operators to join the team.
What has Erik learned from building this startup?
Building a startup is both a marathon and a sprint. They’re not staying up til 3am chugging RedBull and coding anymore. It’s about consistency and making incremental changes every day.
Erik likes to tell people when they join Centaur Labs that it’s a grind like anywhere else but when you look back 6 months it’s really motivating to see how quickly things change and the impact you can make inside this rapidly growing startup.
How can we help?
They’re hiring across the org! Sales, Marketing and a Product leader. If you know good people, especially if they’re located in Boston, Centaur Labs would love to chat!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt