For years, Sammy Faycurry heard from his dietitian mom and sister about how poorly many Americans eat and their struggle with nutritional advice.
Although almost half of all adults in the country are affected by chronic conditions linked to unhealthy diets, health plans have a limited number of registered dietitians in network.
Faycurry decided to create a platform that would empower RDs like his mom and sister to start their own practices while being covered by insurance.
It started working Fairya startup that connects RDs with insurance and patients when he was an MBA student at Harvard Business School in 2021. About a year into his venture, which Faycurry initially bootstrapped, he asked Mark Stefanski to follow him as CTO.
On Wednesday, Fay came out of stealth after quietly raising $25 million from General Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures, with participation since 1984 and the founders of Grow Therapy and Maven Clinic.
Fay offers RDs a franchise model that has gained popularity among certain types of healthcare providers in recent years. The so-called business-in-box gives professionals such as dietitians and therapists the tools to run their practices, including submitting insurance claims, receiving payments and matching patients.
“Insurance companies love it because their patients get healthier. And dietitians love it because they can make almost five to eight times more money as freelancers with our platform than they would in a hospital,” Faycurry told TechCrunch.
Other startups that have implemented this business model include; Cultivatea network for therapists that last month raised an $88 million Series C led by Sequoia and Nourish, which, like Fay, matches RD patients. Cultivate closed a $35 million Series A in March in a round led by Index Ventures.
Fay currently has 1,000 RDs on its platform and allows people covered by Anthem, United Healthcare, Aetna CVS, Blue Cross, Cigna, Optum, Humana and other insurance providers to use their services weekly or bi-weekly at the price of a normal partnership. -payment.
“Costs to payers and employers have been skyrocketing for a long time. Everyone says diet, diet, diet and then nobody has done anything about it,” Faycurry said.
Interestingly, many of Fay’s patients are people taking Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs, which are currently touted as weight loss miracle drugs. This is because doctors who prescribe these drugs require patients to see a dietitian so they can learn healthy habits. “We’ve seen people who have lost 25 pounds but still have high cholesterol because they eat a slice of bacon with every meal,” Faycurry said.
Nicole Johnson, partner at Forerunner Ventures, said her firm was impressed with Fay’s execution. “They started very quickly and grew revenue at an incredibly fast rate while burning very little capital.” And Fay’s has big plans for future expansion into meal delivery as well, Johnson said.
