Julie Yoo has seen healthcare from nearly every angle, as a founder who scaled Kyruus to 20 million patients, as a board member, and now as a General Partner at a16z leading investments in some of the most consequential AI health companies being built today.

In this conversation with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes and an interactive audience of StartUp Health community members, she unpacks the ideas she’s been putting forward publicly and the thinking behind them. Why will healthcare benefit from AI more than any other industry? What does infinite healthcare actually mean, and why did it generate such a polarized reaction? Why is she now actively encouraging the compound business model she once cautioned founders against? And what does she look for in a founder when everyone walking into a Series A looks the same on paper?

A rich, candid conversation for anyone building, funding, or thinking deeply about the future of health.

Do you want to participate in live conversations with industry luminaries? When you join StartUp Health – a private community for founders, investors, buyers, and industry leaders to connect year-round – you are invited to a full calendar of interactive Fireside Chats with the most influential leaders shaping health innovation. Come with questions, learn what is working right now, and connect with industry icons.
» Learn more and join today.

What does it mean to build something that has never existed before?

In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, Unity Stoakes sits down with CEO & Co-founder Valerie Gharagouzloo and Chief Science Officer & Co-founder Codi Gharagouzloo, PhD, of Imaginostics, the health technology company reimagining what MRI can tell us about the human body. Their platform, built on a technology invented by Codi during his PhD research in 2012, creates a new quantitative data layer inside existing MRI scanners, one that replaces toxic contrast agents, delivers images judged ten times better than the gadolinium standard, and generates vascular biomarkers measurable for the first time at the individual patient level.

StartUp Health community members Valerie and Codi break down the difference between their two platforms, ImagiView™ and ImagiSight™, explain why blood-brain barrier leakage matters for Alzheimer’s and how they are finally able to measure it in individual patients, and share what their commercialization partnership with Siemens means for getting this technology into hospitals.

Twice nominated for the Prix Galien, backed by four federal research agencies, and now running a 96-patient study funded by the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Imaginostics is one of the most rigorously validated zero-to-one technologies in health innovation today.

Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, journal, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot Membership. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit.
» Learn more and join today.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

What does it actually take to transform the way the world thinks about food as a driver of health? Kim Fisher has spent years finding out — as an entrepreneur, a startup mentor, a UC Davis program director, and now as Chief Impact Officer of StartUp Health’s Food as Medicine Moonshot.

In this episode, Unity Stoakes and Kim go deep on the science, the market dynamics, and the human stories behind one of health innovation’s most complex and consequential frontiers. They explore the molecular science quietly reshaping how we understand food, why the GLP-1 moment may be the catalyst the industry has been waiting for, and how precision nutrition could soon mean personalized meals calibrated to your individual biology.

Kim also opens up about the personal journey that brought her here — her daughter’s Type 1 diabetes diagnosis and the hospital conversation that made her realize just how far the healthcare system still had to go in treating food as medicine. That moment set the course for everything that followed.

Listeners will come away with a clearer map of where the field is headed, what kinds of innovation are most needed, and how a new angel investment network is working to close the funding gap for early-stage food and health companies.

If you’re a founder, investor, researcher, or policymaker working anywhere near food, metabolic health, or longevity — this conversation will sharpen your thinking.

Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, journal, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot Membership. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit.
» Learn more and join today.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.