# Nick Shelly

> Nick Shelly is the co-founder and CEO of Apero Health, a Y Combinator-backed (S19) medical-billing and revenue-cycle company in San Francisco that helps healthcare practices get paid faster and gives patients clearer bills. Before software, he was a computer scientist with an unusually wide runway: a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Stanford CS researcher in computer networking, and an engineer at Apple, Nicira, and Forward Networks. He turned that systems-and-networks training toward one of the least glamorous, most broken corners of American life - the medical bill - and built Apero with co-founder Jacinda Shelly to fix the plumbing behind it.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Apero Health
- **Organizations:** Apero Health, Y Combinator, South Park Commons, Stanford University, Forward Networks, Nicira, Apple, U.S. Air Force, University of Oxford
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. in Computer Science, U.S. Air Force Academy, Graduate study (economics / finance), University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar), M.S. in Computer Science; Ph.D. candidate, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Rhodes Scholar (University of Oxford), Co-founded Apero Health, named among the top startups of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 batch, Raised funding from notable backers including Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail) and founders of Doctor on Demand, Gusto, and Reddit

## Career timeline

- **2009** — Commissioned officer; software and network security work associated with the U.S. Air Force / NSA
- **2009** — Named a Rhodes Scholar; studied at the University of Oxford
- **2012** — Software engineering intern at Apple
- **2013** — Software engineering intern at Nicira (later acquired by VMware)
- **2014** — Member of technical staff / software engineer at Forward Networks
- **2015** — Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Stanford, researching computer networking
- **2018** — Member at South Park Commons
- **2019** — Co-founded Apero Health (Y Combinator S19) and became CEO

## Achievements

- Rhodes Scholar (University of Oxford)
- Co-founded Apero Health, named among the top startups of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 batch
- Raised funding from notable backers including Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail) and founders of Doctor on Demand, Gusto, and Reddit
- Published computer-networking research at Stanford (flow caching for high-performance software forwarding; Snap.py graph-analysis interface)
- Built Apero into a platform serving healthcare practices nationwide, integrating with leading EHRs

## Latest updates

- **2019-08** — Apero Health launched out of Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch with Nick Shelly as co-founder and CEO.
- **2019-12** — Apero raised seed funding (reported around this period) to expand its medical-billing platform.

## Links

- Website: https://aperohealth.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-shelly-5b414710
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/nshelly

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/nick-shelly
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-21