Valley entrepreneur Justin Bayless has launched a new venture capital firm to back early-stage health care technology companies.
The VC firm, Bayless Ventures, launched this week with investments in three companies: Piction Health, Prickly Pear and Joiful Health.
Piction Health leverages AI to provide rapid expert dermatology medical care, while Prickly Pear created a platform to support women’s cognitive, emotional and neurological health. Joiful Health connects low-income communities to preventative health and social services using text messaging.
Bayless was prompted to start the VC firm to address funding disparities for health care startups, especially those led by underrepresented founders, he said.
“I started doing some research and I did my rounds in the Arizona venture scene — which has grown dramatically in the last five years — and I quickly realized that there was a gap,” he said. “I think, unknowingly, there seems to be a huge difference in specifically minority and women entrepreneurs getting venture capital funding. When you drill down even further, you find that health care VC is a small portion of venture capital focus, even though health care is the third largest contributor of GDP."
Bayless is the former CEO of Bayless Integrated Healthcare, a family business that he helped scale from six to 600 employees and nine locations prior to selling a majority stake to a Fortune 25 health care company. He rebooted Bayless Integrated Healthcare in January after his noncompete agreement ended.
What's more, Bayless, along with Mark Moeremans, founded Journey Venture Studio to close racial and gender opportunity gaps by providing resources to diverse founders wanting to pursue entrepreneurship. The nonprofit launched its inaugural founder-in-residence cohort in September 2023 and recently selected four entrepreneurs for its second cohort.
Bayless Ventures plans to back more startups
Bayless reinvested an undisclosed amount from the sale of Bayless Integrated Healthcare into Bayless Ventures, which aims to provide companies up to $250,000 each in pre-seed and seed funding. The firm plans to back as many as 20 companies within three to four years, Bayless said.
“I’m looking for the right entrepreneurs in the right sector with a disruptive idea that hasn't been done yet in health care,” Bayless said. “I’ll also invest in one or two (startups) that come out of the Journey Venture Studio every year as well, if they have potential to be part of our portfolio. So it’s probably going to take me three years to round it out.”
Bayless Ventures is also serving as a health care adviser and limited partner in Emmeline Ventures, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm with ties to the Valley.
Emmeline Ventures invests in female and female-identifying founders building businesses that empower women to manage their health, wealth and environment.
"We are thrilled to have Justin’s partnership and involvement — not only for his deep experience, knowledge, and innovative thinking, but also for his firm belief in the profit potential of our gender lens investing strategy,” Azin Radsan van Alebeek, cofounder and general partner of Emmeline Ventures, said in a statement.
Bayless joins a growing number of Valley entrepreneurs who are reinvesting in the local tech ecosystem following successful company exits.
After Gregg Scoresby sold edtech firm CampusLogic in 2022, he turned his focus to growing PHX Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in business-to-business software companies in Arizona. Last year, PHX Ventures raised more than $25 million for a second fund to back up to 15 software companies, the Business Journal previously reported.
In addition, Justin Gray, along with sales and marketing expert Josh Wagner, co-founded In Revenue Capital in 2023 to back early-stage startups. Gray is the founder and former CEO of LeadMD, which was acquired by Trendline Interactive — now known as Shift Paradigm — in 2021.
