It has been a long year. It feels like several long years, actually, jam-packed into a few dreary months. Locked down, cooped up, hemmed in, beset by a profusion of woes, wary of illness and peeking between our fingers to see what fresh Hell comes next. 2020 hasn’t been a romp in the sun.
Where We Are Investing Now: Neuroscience
Neuroscience has always been a focus area for Social Starts and Joyance Partners and should continue to be due to the large and clear unmet need. Stress, anxiety, mental illness, and their associated impacts are at all-time highs. People seem desperate for solutions. Science points toward many potential new approaches. We also recognize that there […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Market-Based Education
Education is part of health and happiness as a means of intellectual and financial empowerment and as a vector for delight. Happiness can be enhanced by the acquisition of new skills. Where education was once the province only of formal institutions and largely as part of long-term pedagogical programs, today education is becoming a pure consumer product. It is available by the course, by the class, or by the experience, whenever and wherever desired. Professional grade skills, and the certifications that come with them, can be obtained in the precise measures required by the market, and often at no immediate cost to the student.
Where We Are Investing Now: Longevity and Aging Economy
Longevity and Aging Economy will be one of the core investment areas for Social Starts for the remainder of 2020. Longevity ties strongly into Health and Happiness: “Healthspan”—the number of years a person can expect to live with full health and no activity limitations—is an emerging concept in this area and should stand at the […]
Where We Are Investing Now: FemTech
Women supporting women in everything related to being women is a growing and inexorable worldwide trend. This is manifestly truly related to health and happiness, where the worldwide female 51% is demanding new and better approaches to every part of their lives. In that forceful expression of ascendency, we see a singular investment opportunity. This […]
Where We Are Investing Now: Health Tech
Because of the inextricable tie between health and happiness, there exists an equally strong connection between happiness and health. Now, powerful new science is opening whole new categories of products capable of contributing to happiness. Therefore, we see Health Tech as a central investment focus area.
Where We Are Investing Now: Health and Happiness Digitally-Native Vertical Brands
We believe that successful digital brands have these characteristics…
Individual Health in the Time of the Pandemic
Mike Edelhart of Social Starts walks us through some observations on how COVID-19 has impacted trends from a VC’s perspective.
Why we are Strong in the “Mighty Middle”
Many venture funds believe they can predict what is going to happen next and where. They invest based on that certainty, focusing in specific regions, or on specific types of tech, or, commonly, both. At our funds, we know it’s impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen next or where. Instead, we study […]
Where We Are Investing Now: XR in Health
We have been interested in XR for Health for some time. This year, however, we think the time has come for these technologies to take a great step forward. In the past, we viewed it purely through the lens of other areas of science. Now, in 2020, XR for Health is officially an independent focus area for us.
Where We Are Investing Now: Life Sciences, Part 2: A Framework for Deep Science Startups
Our last post explained how we are looking at Life Sciences investment this year. But the challenges of life science demand more than merely an appropriate organization. We have to change the way we think about investing to be effective here at the earliest stages. We have to approach deep science companies differently than we […]