In venture capital, the check is the easy prop. It arrives with a press release, a round number and a photograph of people trying not to look as if they have just posed for a photograph. The difficult work begins later, when a young company must persuade a health plan, hospital system or risk-bearing provider to change how it operates. HC9 Ventures was designed for that less photogenic interval.
The New York firm invests in healthcare software and services, usually at Seed and Series A. Its first fund closed at $83 million in November 2022. That puts HC9 in a busy part of the market, surrounded by specialist health investors and generalist funds hunting for the next durable enterprise platform. Its distinction is not a new financial instrument. It is the deliberate organization of people around the money.
HC9's limited partners include healthcare executives, entrepreneurs and investors. The firm asks this community to do more than attend an annual meeting. Members can help founders read the market, test a pitch, meet a buyer, recruit a director or understand why a seemingly rational sales process has stalled. In a sector where the customer may also be a regulator, a risk manager and a clinical institution, that translation work has value.
The unglamorous bottleneck
Richard Lungen and Charlie Falcone had already spent 16 years working together at Leverage Health, a business-development organization they founded. Jon Gordon had built and led NewYork-Presbyterian's corporate venture arm and worked as an entrepreneur and operator. Their collective observation was blunt: capital was plentiful, but founders still struggled to navigate healthcare's commercial terrain.
A hospital does not buy like a consumer. A health plan may love a product's clinical premise but require proof that it changes utilization, quality or total cost. A founder can reach the correct executive and still discover that the real decision sits across finance, clinical operations, security, procurement and local market leadership. The sales cycle becomes less a funnel than a subway map designed by committees.
“Transforming healthcare doesn't happen overnight.”Jon Gordon, HC9 co-founder, at the fund's 2022 launch
HC9's response is a venture model built around commercial help. It supplies equity capital, then uses its team and investor community to refine product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. The firm says it looks for founders who actually want an engaged investor. That qualifier matters. A network is useful only if the company wants it in the room.
The economics remain conventional venture capital. HC9 pools limited-partner money, buys minority stakes and aims to participate in the value created as companies grow or exit. Its fee, carry and ownership terms are not public. The unusual service sits on top of that familiar structure: founders gain access to people who have run plans, providers and healthcare businesses, while limited partners gain an organized way to contribute operating judgment.
A map of expensive seams
HC9 does not organize its portfolio around one disease. It organizes around healthcare software and services where better coordination can improve access, experience or economics. The ten public companies form a map of the system's awkward handoffs.
Forge Health provides integrated mental-health and substance-use care. Psych Hub offers evidence-based mental-health education and care navigation. Laguna Health supports people moving from acute care back home. Gather Health combines primary care for Medicare seniors with in-home and social support. The pattern is operational: each company works at a place where the system loses continuity, money or trust.
The proof is in the follow-on
The useful way to assess a support-heavy fund is not by counting introductions. It is by watching what portfolio companies do afterward. In 2024, HC9 led a $7.5 million Series A for Reema Health. Reema's model blends people who live in the communities they serve with a data platform that guides outreach to high-risk, high-cost members. By December 2025, Reema had expanded from four markets to 14 and raised a $19 million Series B led by LRVHealth and Optum Ventures, with HC9 participating again.
HC9 also led Circadian Health's $7.5 million 2024 financing, intended to expand the virtual specialty-care company's relationships with risk-bearing health plans and providers. The same year, it reinvested in XP Health's $33.2 million Series B. XP had grown from 30 business customers to more than 3,000 in two years, offering vision programs to employers and their workers. Those are portfolio-company results, not fund returns, but they show the kind of commercial progress HC9 selects for and supports.
Where HC9 concentrates
From care delivery to AI accountability
Optura, HC9's tenth public investment, extends the thesis from delivering care to governing technology. Healthcare organizations have no shortage of AI pilots. Their newer problem is deciding which ideas deserve investment, connecting experiments to enterprise priorities and proving that deployed systems create value. Optura calls that return on AI investment, or ROAI.
HC9 backed Optura's seed financing and continued investing when the company raised a $17.5 million Series A in May 2026. Salesforce Ventures led the round, with Echo Health Ventures joining and Susa Ventures and Matrix Partners continuing alongside HC9. Optura reported more than $120 million in tracked value across in-flight initiatives and more than 250 identified use cases. The numbers are company-reported, but the category choice is revealing: HC9 is willing to invest one layer above a clinical application, in the operating machinery that decides whether enterprise AI works at all.
“It's not about tech. What does the organization need to do to create value?”Mike Hollis, Optura co-founder, in HC9's interview series
Where the model can bend
HC9 competes with health-focused firms including 7wire Ventures, Define Ventures, LRVHealth, HealthQuest Capital, Flare Capital and Oak HC/FT, plus generalist funds that can write early checks. Many of those firms also employ former operators and maintain strategic networks. HC9's claim is therefore not that relationships are unique. It is that an unusually engaged community, focused on a compact portfolio, can make those relationships more usable.
That model has natural constraints. High-touch support consumes partner time. Commercial introductions must be handled carefully so that the investor community does not become a captive prospect list. And healthcare expertise can prevent naive mistakes without removing reimbursement pressure, regulatory change or long buying cycles. The best network cannot make a weak product necessary.
The model is also difficult to measure from outside. Fund performance, fee terms, ownership stakes, revenue and valuation are not public. HC9's visible evidence is instead found in later financings, portfolio partnerships, executive appointments and founder testimony. Forge Health co-founder Eric Frieman said HC9 helped open doors with payers and bring industry talent to the board. Alacura CEO Ken Van Cara pointed to the firm's knowledge of both health plans and hospitals. These are interested witnesses, but they describe the exact jobs HC9 says it was built to do.
Community as operating infrastructure
HC9 has made its culture unusually legible for a small fund. Its public interview archive lets portfolio leaders explain the problem they are solving, the competitive landscape and why they chose the investor. Quarterly round-ups collect operating milestones. In 2026, the firm added HC9: The Next Generation, an in-person program for 18-to-25-year-olds nominated by limited partners, with lessons on careers, networking and venture investing.
None of this is a substitute for returns. It does, however, reveal the firm's working idea of community: not a large contact database, but a group expected to teach, connect and participate. For founders, the practical appeal is straightforward. HC9 can provide capital, but the firm wants to be hired for what happens after the wire clears.
That is where HC9 fits in the market. It is a specialist early-stage investor for healthcare companies whose products must survive institutional complexity. Its portfolio companies sell to plans, providers, employers, accountable-care organizations and other risk-bearing buyers. Their software may be polished, but their success depends on changing behavior inside organizations that cannot afford casual experiments.
The fund's central wager is refreshingly testable. If operator access is truly part of the product, HC9's companies should find better buyers, sharper use cases and stronger follow-on partners than capital alone would produce. The press releases will keep supplying the round numbers. The quieter evidence will be contracts signed, care redirected, members reached and pilots that finally earn their way into production.