A new health care-focused venture capital fund has launched with roots in Chicago and Austin, Texas.
After investing in several companies together, Chicago-based Amit Aysola, a longtime veteran of the local health care scene, and Emma Cartmell, an Austin-based health care investor, have launched Create Health Ventures.
The fund closed on its initial $21 million fund with the hope of finding the next great innovations in business-to-business software for health care systems.
Aysola will serve as managing partner alongside Cartmell. Between the two of them, they have more than 45 years of experience in health care operations and investing.
Aysola is a former principal at Healthcare Growth Partners and an advisor to the Michigan Biomedical Venture Fund and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Northwestern University.
Cartmell was COO at Abraxis BioScience. After the company was acquired by Celgene Corp. in 2010 for nearly $3 billion, she helped Abraxis' board chairman set up a family office that invested more than $1 billion in companies finding cures for cancer.
Aysola said he first met Cartmell as investors in the same space where the two ended up co-investing in seven different companies together before realizing it made sense to combine forces.
Create Health Ventures plans to invest in about a dozen companies, focusing on B2B solutions to help payers and pharmaceutical companies improve patient engagement, and to recruit and retain patients for clinical trials.
With a Midwest and Southern focus, Create Health backs companies at the seed stage and will follow on by investing larger sums in series A rounds. The fund has already invested in five startups, including Illinois-based companies Advocatia Solutions and Carallel.
“Chicago is a great city for attracting top engineering talent,” Aysola told Chicago Inno. “I very intentionally wanted to get more involved in Northwestern. It allows me to plug into any emerging startups that are coming out of that university, but we’ve been looking to create connectivity through the Chicago ecosystem as a whole.”
Aysola said that when the fund had its first close in January 2023, he heard more than once that it was as challenging an environment to raise a fund as there’s been in 20 years.
“Even though my partner and I have been investors and advisers at different digital health companies throughout our careers, technically speaking, we are an emerging fund,” he said. “It was definitely challenging, but at the same time, we were able to align with [limited partners] that really understood our vision.”
He said the fund saw participation from health care executives, foundations, family offices and more backing it.
The fund's investors primarily include health care executives who've had their businesses acquired, and include participation from health care executives, foundations, family offices and more backing it, as well as strategic investors, including New York-based marketing agency Butler/Till.
Brent Wistrom, senior editor of Austin Inno, contributed to this report.
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