Five Questions: Magnify Ventures’ Julie Wroblewski

In this series, Digital Health Business & Technology interviews a range of digital health investors from those who work at venture capital firms and at health system and health insurance venture funds to individual and angel investors. If you’re interested in participating, email us here. 

Before starting her own venture capital firm, Julie Wroblewski worked as an adviser with philanthropist Melinda French Gates. 

“It was during that time that I saw a big opportunity to invest in technology that serves families and caregivers,” Wroblewski said. “I was interested in a growing and somewhat overlooked space of technology that could serve us every day.” 

Wroblewski left her role in September 2020 at the Gates-founded venture capital firm Pivotal Ventures to start Magnify Ventures alongside co-founder Joanna Drake. The company invests at the pre-seed and seed stage in startup companies that address needs in pregnancy, parenting, family caregiving, aging and end-of-life care. Portfolio companies include caregiving app company Papa and social activity platform company Element3 Health. 

Wroblewski spoke about closing her $52 million fund before the market turned, why she’s bullish in Medicare Advantage investments and more. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you want to start your own venture capital firm?

I was inspired by the founders I was seeing in the care economy including [Papa CEO and founder] Andrew Parker, who are stepping out to build really big, exciting businesses. And then I thought we had something different to offer those companies and founders than they might get from a generalist [venture capital firm] in terms of bringing in partnerships and really understanding the spaces where they were sitting. When I sit down with a founder of a company involved with childcare or aging, I feel like we bring really unique resources to the table to help them grow. 

What have you learned about running your own firm?

The thing I’ve come to appreciate are the similarities between building and running a new venture capital firm and building and running a startup. They're very different jobs but it's very similar in a lot of ways. I am the tech team, the partnership team…I am really kind of doing it all. And it's given me more empathy, understanding and appreciation for the journey that founders are taking. It’s quite different if you step in to be a VC at a large firm and you have a carved-out sort of role.  

What made you interested in Papa?

Papa was the first investment that we made at Magnify. We were drawn to the company for a couple of reasons that demonstrate our thesis. First, they have an incredible co-founder and CEO in Andrew Parker, who really understood sort of the future of healthcare and a technology with the potential to relieve the challenges that caregivers, older adults and families were facing. Secondly, we were impressed with the way they were using technology to build a new workforce around care. Third is we thought Papa was really bringing humanity back to healthcare. It’s bringing in home companions to help with everyday tasks such as transportation and grocery shopping. Using technology to serve and care for people like that is what we're looking for in other companies. 

You closed your $52 million fund last May. How do you take in the current state of the market as an investor?

We were fortunate that we closed our fund right before a very big, and probably much needed, shift in the market. We definitely see the opportunity in front of us. We’re also very mindful that there's a pain that will come alongside this market correction. People are losing their jobs. But for us, we have been very focused on wanting to invest in companies that are efficient, know their core value proposition and can grow in a disciplined way. As an investor who wants to invest in those types of companies, now is a great time. We see this as a tremendous opportunity to invest in companies that are focused on efficient growth and know the value that they have to offer to the market rather than those that are chasing a lot of different things and want to grow at all costs.

How do you see the next 12 months shaping out in terms of the market?

We’re going to see more focus on efficient growth and value. I think it’s a good thing for the market. Over the last five years, we saw so many companies with extremely high valuations and a growth at all costs mindsets. Companies were adding lots of different products and business lines, and really going after a lot of different opportunities at once. I think we're going to see really incredible innovation and huge areas of opportunity in healthcare that have been overlooked because of the discipline that is going to be brought to the market. 

There are a lot of areas of healthcare that are recession resistant. For example, Medicare Advantage, funding typically does not go down in a recession. Hopefully, we're going to see new areas within healthcare that get attention and innovation because of the fact that they're more robust in an economic downturn.