How do you diagnose a failing startup?

They’re spending like crazy without any returns.

The U.S. healthcare system spends $4.5 trillion annually. The vast majority of that money goes toward treating preventable chronic diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and lung disease. It’s still not enough to save lives: In 2021, about 1.8 million people died from chronic diseases — about four times as many people than those who died that year from COVID-19. 

They’re wasting resources on bureaucracy, not investing in customers.

Administrative costs in the U.S. healthcare system account for 15-25% of total expenditure, almost 10 times what most other countries spend. How much are we talking? Studies in the last two decades estimate that complex private insurance and billing cost the U.S. up to $1 trillion in 2019.

They’ve lost sight of their north star metric.

In 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped to 76.1 years, the lowest since 1996. Countries like Japan, Switzerland, and Australia have life expectancies of over 82 years — and they spend less per capita.

For the most consequential system in the U.S, evolution isn’t enough. We need a healthcare revolution, led by those with the energy for fast transformation and a love for innovation that improves lives.

Making America healthy means running the healthcare system like a startup.

My uncle died at 40 from a sudden heart attack. Unfortunately, this is a preventable tragedy that’s become routine for families across the U.S. 

Today, people like my uncle are still dying — even though we have the technology we need to anticipate every single one of the most common diseases in the U.S. before they strike. 

How do we deploy that innovation? It’s the same playbook generational startups have always followed — now applied to healthcare.

Startups focus relentlessly on the user.

For healthcare, knowing the customer means knowing each patient down to their DNA to deliver targeted care that prevents diseases instead of treating symptoms.

That’s why Nucleus builds consumer-first health software. While we’re built with scientific rigor, we don’t build for traditional providers or insurance companies. 

We open access to advanced medical technology at an affordable price to put potentially lifesaving information in the hands of people seeking health independence — the knowledge to make decisions about your health that are right for you.

Today we build software to help you prevent disease. One day soon, we will also use it to better diagnose and treat conditions as well.

Startups deploy innovation at scale.

In the last two decades alone, the cost of analyzing a complete human DNA sequence dropped from $20 million to $200. A complete analysis of someone’s DNA measures over 100,000 genetic markers to capture their lifelong predispositions to every possible disease.

But less than .1% of U.S. adults have had access to complete genetic sequencing.

We believe medicine is data science. So we set out to help you gather as much data about yourself as possible. 

We also know data is useless without an easy way to understand it. In the next six months, we’ll be releasing an LLM to help you query your DNA for deeply personalized and dynamic health recommendations.

Startups have a bias toward action.

Slow healthcare kills, and bureaucracy strangles speed. 

AI can already outperform doctors in accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and empathy, and we believe we can offer this service today — not in a decade — to help as many people as possible access convenient, 24/7 care.

To do that, we need to move fast, with laser focus. I’m grateful to be surrounded by a skilled scientific and engineering team that can do both without compromising quality for our users. Since launching just a few months ago, we’ve already launched dozens of new features.

Great healthcare in this country requires each of these tenets quickly deployed at a national scale. Let’s make it so.

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