Intus Care, the health tech startup behind software tools for in-home care organizations, has closed a $500,000 seed round led by Equal Opportunity Ventures (EO Ventures), a Boston-based venture capital firm.
The funding will go largely toward product development as Intus Care develops a go-to-market strategy. It will also be used to hire up to 10 summer interns in software development, clinical research and marketing. Plus, Intus Care still has to take care of some "typical startup stuff," as co-founder and CEO Robbie Felton put it—finding office space, paying legal fees.
Intus Care's relationship with EO Ventures began at Brown University, where Felton and his co-founders are all students. They were speaking with various professors to set up independent study courses for the semester, planning on doing research for Intus Care through the university. Among those they met with was economics professor Glenn Loury.
"He took an interest in what we were working on and connected us with Roland Fryer, one of the founders at the VC firm," Felton said. "We took the train up to Boston and had a great first meeting with their team and started the diligence process from there."
One month later, Felton and his team received a term sheet from EO Ventures. The outbreak of the coronavirus delayed the negotiation process a bit, but the team was still able to close—just in the nick of time, as venture capital markets have begun to freeze up a bit in light of the new economic environment.
Like many other startups, Intus Care plans to hunker down and improve its product, then look to raise additional funding in early 2021 once the coronavirus has hopefully loosened its grip.
"It's a great feeling, but it's like we're still at the bottom of the mountain," Felton said. "We're at base camp, and we still have an entire mountain to climb to summit. But now we have all the proper resources to start this journey. It's a good feeling: We hit this milestone. We have so much more work to do."
Founded in 2018, Intus Care was inspired by the inefficiencies in the home health care industry, including no-show appointments by care providers, appointments that are not reimbursable by insurance and massive amounts of wasted time spent on paperwork. Its flagship product is a software solution that allows provider organizations to track the efficiency of care providers through electronic visit verification. Intus Care also uses machine learning to predict hospital readmissions and utilization risks using electronic health records.
The startup took home $25,000 and top honors in the Brown Venture Prize competition last month. It was a semi-finalist in the Rhode Island Business Competition last year, as well as a winner in MassChallenge Rhode Island. Its founders were all featured in Rhode Island Inno’s 25 Under 25 in September.
Intus Care is one of Rhode Island Inno's 2020 Startups to Watch.
