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.
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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.
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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.
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Most healthcare AI conversations start and end with documentation. StartUp Health community member Mehmet Kazgan, CEO & Founder of cliexa, thinks that is the wrong place to focus.

In this episode of StartUp Health NOW, Kazgan joins Unity Stoakes for a deep dive into clinical reasoning, the intelligence layer that connects what a patient says, what a provider decides, and what a payer will cover, all in real time. Kazgan traces the evolution of healthcare technology from EMRs to interoperability to AI scribes, and explains why none of those waves solve the core problem without a reasoning engine underneath. He shares what it took to build and validate that engine over eight years, what deploying it with Mayo Clinic Platform and Eating Recovery Center has revealed, and why the window for health systems to act is right now.

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.
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Food as medicine is having a moment, but for leaders like Richard Bennett of Epicured and Victor Penev of Edamam, this is not a passing trend. It is the long-building future of healthcare.

In this special highlight episode of StartUp Health NOW, Unity Stoakes brings together two conversations from members of the StartUp Health community on the growing role of nutrition in prevention, chronic disease management, and whole-person care.

First, Richard Bennett, CEO & Co-founder of Epicured, joins Logan Plaster to talk about why food is emerging as a powerful front door to trust, engagement, and better outcomes. He shares how Epicured is helping bridge healthcare and nutrition, why reimbursement is a game changer, and how culturally relevant meals can support more human-centered care.

Then, Unity sits down with Victor Penev, CEO & Founder of Edamam, to explore how AI and food data are reshaping what personalized nutrition can look like. From meal-planning agents to virtual nutrition support, Victor explains why this moment feels like an inflection point for the Food as Medicine movement, and why data remains the foundation for what comes next.

Together, these conversations highlight a major shift in healthcare: food is no longer peripheral to care. It is increasingly central to prevention, treatment, and the future of personalized health.

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.
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Ian Madom, MD, orthopedic spine surgeon and co-founder of Mocingbird, joins us on StartUp Health NOW to discuss how administrative friction quietly limits healthcare access and clinician capacity.

Drawing from his own experience in practice, Dr. Madom explains how state-by-state licensing, certification timelines, and compliance requirements create unnecessary drag for clinicians and administrators alike. He shares how Mocingbird helps organizations manage licensing end to end, why multistate practice is essential in a post-COVID, telehealth-driven world, and how thoughtful use of AI can support, not replace, human judgment. He also reflects on the doctorpreneur journey and the role the StartUp Health community has played in Mocingbird’s evolution.

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.
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In this Health Moonshot Update, StartUp Health community member Justin Ayars of EqualityMD explains how the company is redefining employer healthcare through a pre-insurance model designed to resolve health needs before insurance is triggered.

EqualityMD delivers culturally competent virtual primary care, mental health support, urgent care, and prescription access without generating insurance claims. New research shows the platform can resolve up to 80 percent of employees’ diverse health needs pre-insurance, saving employers 20 to 30 percent in health claim and administrative costs and reducing employees’ out-of-pocket expenses by 40 to 70 percent.

Ayars shares why traditional telehealth often increases claims volume, how claim prevention changes the cost equation, and why rethinking healthcare upstream may be key to rebuilding trust and affordability in the system.

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.
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StartUp Health community member Richard Hanbury of Sana Health joined Unity Stoakes for a Health Moonshot Update just prior to achieving a major regulatory milestone: an FDA De Novo grant for neuropathic pain, establishing a new class of audio-visual neuromodulation.

Hanbury reflects on decades of neuromodulation research, shares why credibility in healthcare is built “one rung at a time,” and explains how Sana’s pivotal data demonstrated a significant reduction in pharmacologic dependence. The conversation also covers DoD-backed PTSD research, VA trials, international expansion in Israel, and why the future of pain and mental healthcare must move toward multimodal, scalable models of care.

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.
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