Kevin Porter knows all about executing exits and raising capital, so his latest undertaking can be seen as a natural progression.
This week, Porter and his business partner, Steven Sablan, officially launched the site of Porter Sablan Capital, a Louisville-based venture capital firm that is currently looking for early-stage companies that have a product market fit. It also helps if they are primed for scalability — and later — salability.
“As an entrepreneur myself, you know, it’s often difficult to take an idea and scale it [so that it] becomes successful,” Porter told me. “We’re excited about the opportunity to partner with founders, CEOs, management teams — not only provide capital, which is critical — but also we bring wisdom and experience and scaling and exiting companies with great outcomes. And so we’re excited to partner with people who are open to that type of partnership.”
Many may know Porter as the founder and CEO of SentryHealth, which was acquired by First Stop Health back in October, while Sablan is the company's COO. The two are in the tail end of helping the company transition to the new ownership in an arrangement that ends this October.
Porter and Sablan are long-time acquaintances, having known each other for 30-plus years, after meeting as students at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.
The two first started working with each other when Sablan joined an analytics firm called Deyta in 2011 as its chief information officer. Porter served as the CEO and president from 2001 to 2015, before it was acquired by HealthcareFirst.
Porter and Sablan were both part of HealthcareFirst’s exit in 2018, when it was acquired by ResMed. At the time, Porter was the CEO and Sablan was the chief information officer.
“We started kicking around the idea at that point in time,” Porter said of possibly forming a capital firm.
Teaming up
The two made their first investment in 2020 “under the Porter-Sabalan umbrella,” Porter said, but kept it away from public attention. The two were silent co-founders and lead investors for a Ozark, Missouri-based revenue cycle management company called HealthRev Partners.
The two also contributed to the seed round of Louisville-based Forecastr, which was also founded in 2020. Porter said he first met two of Forecastr founders, Steven Plappert and Logan Burchett, when they were working at Venture First and he was at SentryHealth.
A few months ago, the firm made an investment in Lockbox AI, a Louisville based startup that has a cloud-based platform centered on revenue cycle data.
The firm has also made an investment in a Chicago-based company called LYLA — which has a virtual personal assistant product — as well as Feynx Health based out of Philadelphia.
“We have a significant network here in Louisville,” Porter said. “So, obviously, we’re going to be biased towards investing in companies in the Louisville area [and] the Midwest, but again, we are looking to expand that network as well.”
Even though a majority of the firm’s investments have been in the health tech space, Porter said that that is by no means a requirement to receive an investment. As of a recent date, investments have ranged from $50,000 to $500,000 per company.
“While we spent considerable time in healthcare, where we're very interested in investing is outside of healthcare,” Porter said. “We’re having actively involved conversations [about] investments in a variety of spaces. It’s our own capital. We’re not raising money from limited partners or outside investors, so we have the flexibility to really invest in anything that’s of interest to us.”
Furthermore, the firm is not seeking outside investors at this time, but Porter said that he and Sablan might be open to the idea in the future.
Although Porter acknowledged that the last two years have been challenging for founders trying to raise capital, he and Sablan do expect the market to loosen up a bit going into next year.
“I think once we get through the election, hopefully we’ll get a rate cut or two going into 2025. We’ll start to see the investment dollars flowing again … At the end of the day, it all comes down to having a strong idea, a strong company, being a passionate founder,” Porter said. “There’s always investment dollars for great companies and great ideas.”
