Veda Data Solutions' CEO Is D.C.'s Latest Woman Founder to Raise $1M

It's official, Veda Data Solutions CEO Meghan Buck is now a part of an elite group in D.C. of female founders who have raised at least $1 million in funding.

Buck walked out with the D.C. chapter of the Vinetta Project's grand prize of $20,000 Thursday night. Buck competed amongst a group of four finalists and a semifinalist pitch competition in March in Vinetta's annual venture showcase competition for local women founders.

In September, Veda also closed a $1 million seed round led by New Dominion Angels, and in 2016, the company received $200,000 from undisclosed investors. The latest funding from Vinetta brings her total funding for Veda Data to $1.2 million.

"Being completely honest, I’m sort of awe in being in a group that includes companies like Framebridge," Buck told DC Inno in an interview Friday. "I feel very lucky, but it also makes me want to be more engaged with female founders."

Veda Data Solutions is out to solve a rather simple problem: updating the directories of physicians covered by insurance policies. In theory, anyone should be able to log into their health insurance provider's site and pull up an up-to-date list of physicians in their network. But that's not the case. Doctors switch hospitals or retire all the time, and health care insurers struggle to keep their lists 100 percent accurate.

That's where Veda Data Solutions comes in.

Founded in 2015, Veda Data Solutions works to help machines pull the right data into their databases every 24 hours, and the company sells their services through a customizable subscription model at $10,000 a month. They're working to solve a problem that, Buck estimates, costs $3 billion annually.

Current clients include Humana Health Insurance and MedStar, who they're launching a pilot program with in October.

"What I have seen over the years as a political consultant is that everyone is trying to figure out how to care for hundreds of thousands of people in an affordable way," Buck said.

Buck and her co-founder, Bob Lindner, don't have a health care background. Buck came from political consultation and Lindner is an astronomer by trade. Veda started as a solution for nonprofits, until they went to a hackathon in Cincinnati and came across this simple — yet "dumb," as Buck calls it — problem.

"If we can have open dialogues about what those challenges are, I think we can have a unique opportunity to be the place to start the company if you’re a woman."

Now, Veda has plans to branch out into different health care products. The company is in the process of receiving HIPAA certification so they can branch out into more data solutions and products. Think of the certification like the "organic" label given to coffee roasters. HIPAA certification should be coming in the next 30 days, and with it, Veda is exploring a slew of new products.

Like one that will catch typographical errors in insurance claims. Maybe someone misspelled a person's last name or birth date, and it leads to an insurer declining a claim. Veda's next product will catch those typos to help both insurers and consumers save time and money in appeals processes.

"It’s just a terrible cycle and it’s a multi-billion dollar problem for the industry," Buck said. "It’s been plaguing the industry's pipeline."

With the latest round of funding, Veda plans to expand its six-person team. Currently, they're hiring a product manager, more engineers and a marketing development team. Veda also added two data scientists to its roster this past month.

"It’s not easy, and it has special challenges," Buck said about being a women who has raised $1 million. "If we can have open dialogues about what those challenges are, I think we can have a unique opportunity to be the place to start the company if you’re a woman."