This is a story about resilience.
A year ago, Melanated Healthcare barely missed the cut to be one of the startups invited to take part in Techstars Detroit Powered by J.P. Morgan.
This year, Co-Founder/CEO Lecresha Sewell and her team found out they had been chosen for this year’s cohort back in July, having been fast-tracked to the screening committee.
The program begins this week with two weeks of in-person sessions, before going remote for its duration leading up to a demo day on Dec. 5.
“I was really excited, especially having the opportunity to potentially penetrate other markets outside of Kentucky, and really expand. Having that exposure will be a great opportunity for us to scale,” said Sewell, who added that she had received some advice about Techstars through two of the program’s alumni: Akhil Suresh Nair of Xena Intelligence (New York, 2022) and Stevens Bonhomme of Feedcoyote (Atlanta, 2023).
Founded in 2020 in Louisville, Melanated Healthcare offers a platform for digital health — as well as a credentialed telemedicine practice that connects Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), as well as others in underserved communities to health professionals. The company’s app has had more than 16,000 downloads, Sewell said, which launched on both Android and iOS in 2021.
In 2023, the company was named one of our 2023 KY Inno on Fire Awards under the category of “The Disruptors.”
Getting credentialed
When I recently spoke to Sewell about the news, she said her company was in the closing stages of being credentialed in Indiana. That process should be complete by October, allowing for the acceptance of insured patients in the Hoosier State.
When the company began, it initially only was credentialed within the commonwealth. Now an emphasis will be placed on getting credentialed in Michigan in 2025 — along with Ohio and Tennessee, Sewell said.
As of a recent date, the company had five providers credentialed for telemedicine — with three more in the process. Furthermore, 154 providers, located throughout the U.S., had been onboarded into the company’s directory. Those providers include specialists in behavioral health, primary care and women's health.
More strategic partners needed
When I spoke with Sewell, the company had raised a total of $524,500 — allowing it to go over the $500,000 it had targeted for a pre-seed round. Sewell added the company is open to follow-up funding in the pre-seed round.
“Certainly [we] still need more strategic partners so that we can really change that traditional care model and really focus more on a hybrid care model,” she said.
The company was recently named of one of 12 winners of this year’s Render Competition (and received a check for $100,000), as announced at the inaugural Derby Tech Summit at the beginning of May at the University of Louisville’s L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium.
Melanated Healthcare also received in February 2023 a $70,000 grant from Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM), which has also become a patient referral partner to the company.
In September 2023, the company also won $100,000 as part of the Reconstruct Challenge — a joint initiative by the UofL Health Equity Innovation Hub (HEIH) and Render, with support from Kentucky Department for Public Health’s Office of Health Equity and Access Ventures. It also received $25,000 as part of being a winner of the Community Foundation of Louisville’s 2022 Vogt Awards. Other investors include Keyhorse Capital and Garrett French.
Startups taking part in this Techstars cohort will have the ability to receive funding of up to $120,000 of diluted funding — with the lowest amount being at $20,000. Sewell said her company planned to take the maximum amount.
Sewell said that the funding from Techstars will close out the company’s pre-seed round before it turns its focus to starting a seed round.
A majority of the money received from Techstars will go to the company’s overall tech development efforts needed to scale its operations.
The company has a headcount of eight, but is looking to add to that number in the upcoming months — including the addition of a COO.
History of Techstars
Techstars was originally founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado — and has since grown to accelerators all over the U.S. and beyond.
As perhaps a sign of the times in the venture capital space, some of its accelerators have been shut down, such as in Washington, D.C. — which had Louisville-based Moolathon in 2023 — while announcing that it was laying off 17% of its staff back in August. It did announce the opening of a new accelerator in Baltimore that same month.
