01/27/2025

Healthcare

Brenton Fargnoli, MD Joins Lightspeed to Co-lead Healthcare

Today I’m joining Lightspeed, as a Partner to lead Healthtech investing.

I started on this journey as a physician. While practicing medicine at hospitals at the forefront of medicine, I was struck by how antiquated the technology stack was for healthcare delivery — from pagers to faxes to electronic health records. At the first startup I joined, Flatiron Health, I saw the important role venture capital played — from funding the acquisition of an electronic health record company to key strategic insights from board members. From my time practicing and in startups, I was convinced that venture capital was the vehicle to drive healthcare technology innovation so direly needed and ultimately create a new standard of care delivery for patients.

In 2019, I joined Kevin Ryan, The “Godfather of NYC Tech,” at AlleyCorp to start the Healthcare team and led it to become the most active Healthtech investor in the country. There, I served as a first investor and board member in value-based care startups like Thyme Care and Pearl Health, as well as healthcare AI startups like Clarium Health. I am eternally grateful to Kevin, a world-class leader, role model, and friend, who taught me, among other things, that “ideas are everywhere, but people are everything.”

I am thrilled to be joining Lightspeed — with $30 Billion in assets under management, offices globally, including the healthtech hubs of NYC and the San Francisco Bay Area, and on the forefront of AI — at this critical moment when AI is reshaping the healthcare landscape. In healthtech, I’ve seen how the greatest opportunities often lie at the intersection with enterprise, consumer, fintech, or biotech and can require significant capital over many years — both areas Lightspeed is uniquely structured for. Lightspeed’s Healthcare team has already invested over $1.25B across healthtech and biotech, and I’m honored to join Dr. Shelley Chu, MD/PhD in co-leading this effort.

As a long-time champion of the “Doctorpreneur” community, I immediately felt at home with Lightspeed’s team (including Shaurya Aggarwal, Shelley Chu, Galym Imanbayev, Will Kohler, Jonathan MacQuitty, Naveed Matinfar, Bejul Somaia) investing across game-changing early, growth, and late stage healthcare companies, as well as physician-entrepreneurs within the portfolio such as Abridge and Aledade. As a builder, investor, and supporter of the NYC startup ecosystem over the past decade, I’m joining a growing Lightspeed NYC office where Lightspeed has invested in NYC startups that have raised over $3.5B and created thousands of local jobs.

If you’re building a new healthcare company or scaling one at the speed of light and feel like I might be able to help you achieve your mission, please feel free to get in touch.

 

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