Marlon Ross was born and raised in Chicago and spent the past seven years living in Dallas. But within the next 45 days, he plans to permanently relocate his early-stage health technology startup to Milwaukee.
Ross's company Wellacy Health was one of five startups from across the country selected for the latest and fourth cohort of Northwestern Mutual’s Black Founder Accelerator, a 12-week training program that comes with a $100,000 investment. But entrepreneurs don't need to relocate to Milwaukee in order to participate.
After a calculated decision-making process of evaluating five Midwest states, Ross had decided to move to Milwaukee before applying for the accelerator program, he said. Getting accepted sped up the process, he said.
"There's a serious dearth of Black founders in the state of Wisconsin and in particular, in Milwaukee," Ross said. "Diversifying that ecosystem is important to me."
Before deciding to move to Milwaukee, Ross systemically considered the startup ecosystems for founders of color in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan, he said. He visited those states and met with investors in each, he said.
"It turns out that Milwaukee does it best," Ross said.
In the process of scoping out Wisconsin, Ross got connected with Que and Khalif El-Amin, the co-founders of The Blueprint startup incubator program in Milwaukee and Green Bay. The El-Amin brothers invited Ross, who has a background in financial services, to teach The Blueprint Green Bay's first cohort.
On a trip to Milwaukee, Ross also visited the downtown coworking space Ward4 and said he felt welcomed immediately.
Wellacy Health will be the third Milwaukee company to participate in Northwestern Mutual’s Black Founder Accelerator, which announced its first cohort in spring 2021. With the latest cohort announced this week, a total of 20 companies from around the country have been selected for the program.
The other two Milwaukee startups previously selected for the program were global money transfer startup CrossKudi and Tip a ScRxipt, a solution designed to help patients afford out-of-pocket medical expenses.
The other companies in the current cohort are Chicago-based insurance startup Centinel, Houston financial technology startup SpenDebt, Minnesota-based health care platform UzObi Inc. and What-If Collective, an Atlanta company focused on building trust between insurance companies and multicultural communities.
Ross has a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before earning that degree, he worked on Wall Street and after grad school, he worked at a couple of enterprise software companies, he said. He decided to start a company in the health care space after some personal experiences left him feeling frustrated with primary care providers.
After pivoting from an initial concept, Ross officially started Wellacy Health in February, Ross said. He has three employees and also hired an outside firm to build the startup's technology platform, he said.
Wellacy Health's mission is to help fix the country's broken health care system and eliminate disparities in access to quality care, Ross said. The startup is focusing on providing patients, particularly in underserved communities, with personalized information and care to help them prevent and fight chronic diseases, he said.
Through a combination of personalized care teams and a web- and app-based platform, Wellacy Health plans to engage with patients by establishing partnerships with health systems, insurance companies and employers, Ross said. It plans to launch a pilot program in the first quarter of 2023 with a small physician's practice that has around 10,000 patients, he said.
