DavidFoote

David Foote booked the flight to Manila for the water. He got out, found the reef, and then he looked around at a city of 14 million people who had to sit in brutal Metro Manila traffic every time they needed a doctor. He never left.

That instinct - to spot a problem hiding inside a convenience - is the through-line in everything Foote has built. This is a man who, as a college student at UC Berkeley, taught himself to code well enough to sell a video game he'd written to major gaming companies. Who then built an internet security company from zero to 80 employees, getting products onto the shelves at Fry's, CompUSA, and Best Buy. Who then filed patents in two completely unrelated fields: Peer-to-Peer instant messaging and 3D visualization of business data. Who published bioinformatics research using software he wrote himself - while holding a neurobiology degree with minors in Computer Science and Cognitive Science.

These are not the resume lines of someone who drifts. Foote picks a problem, goes deep, and surfaces with something built.

In 2015, Foote co-founded zennya health in Makati, Manila with Brian Perley. The premise was clean: a mobile app that dispatches trained wellness and medical professionals to your home or office in under 30 minutes. Think Uber, but instead of a driver you get a nurse, a physiotherapist, a doctor for a teleconsultation, or a technician to draw blood for a lab test.

The pitch sounds simple. The execution is not. Coordinating licensed healthcare workers across a sprawling megalopolis of 14 million, maintaining clinical standards while operating with the speed of a delivery app, building trust in a market where healthcare has historically meant long queues in waiting rooms - none of that is easy. Foote built it anyway.

By 2021, zennya had earned a $1.2M seed round led by DayOne Capital Ventures, Foxmont Capital Partners, and Ignite House of Innovation - a vote of confidence from some of the Philippines' sharpest investors. The timing wasn't accidental: COVID-19 had just turned the entire world's attention to home-based healthcare, and zennya was already there.

The company now employs 110 people and partners with 120+ wellness providers - all women, by design. Foote structured the platform so these professionals choose their own clients, control their own schedules, and earn three to five times the industry average. It is not charity. It is architecture: a platform that works precisely because the people delivering care are invested in the quality of each visit.

Foote operates between San Francisco and Manila - a split that gives him proximity to both Silicon Valley's capital networks and Southeast Asia's fastest-growing health market. By 2024, zennya had expanded beyond Metro Manila into Metro Cebu and every major Philippine city, reporting 300% growth in home healthcare services and launching a new patient portal to handle the surge.

There is a particular kind of founder who sees technology not as a job-eliminator but as a job-multiplier. Foote is one. His philosophy - applied across music apps, security software, bioinformatics, and now healthcare logistics - is that AI and automation create new categories of work when you build the infrastructure thoughtfully. The zennya model depends on human workers. The app exists to make those workers more efficient, better matched, and better paid.

From Berkeley's neurobiology labs to patent filings in P2P networking. From Fry's Electronics endcaps to Makati home visits. David Foote has always been mid-stride. The Philippines just happened to be where he was standing when the clearest problem came into view.