Kevin M.

what's the price to invest in a "hot" company in YC? answer: "blank check" at latitude, we don't usually go for MFN deals. if you don't know what they are they effectively mean you have no valuation cap and will convert at the valuation set in the company's next priced fundraising round this means you are effectively investing in the company's NEXT ROUND today that's not great for many reasons, but primarily because you don't know what your valuation will be... hence, blank check however, i admit i've come around on these a bit and am more open to them now within the context of YC companies in the batch. these need to be true for me to consider them: 1/ i need to love the company/founders, etc 2/ i need to meet them in a standard pitch meeting (30 minutes) 3/ i need to have confidence the founder intends to raise at a "sane" valuation within the batch 4/ i need to have confidence i will convert to a valuation cap if the founder starts raising at a cap later in YC admittedly i'm a little exposed on point 3/4, as it's more of a handshake understanding. it's getting wild out here what does the Internet think?

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Anthropic just launched Claude for #Healthcare, and OpenAI just launched ChatGPT Health. Both are LLMs, but their strategies differ significantly. I wrote down a few thoughts. 1️⃣ 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 Claude is entering the race with the ambition to integrate AI scribe + AI billing + AI clinical decision support + workflow, in order to become a new intelligence layer on top of legacy systems. It targets payors, providers, and consumers, tapping into (public) databases to optimize clinical operations. Claude also launched Claude for Life Sciences in October 2025, offering tailored solutions for pharma and integrating them into this broader ecosystem. 2️⃣ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐆𝐏𝐓 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 / 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 ChatGPT’s strategy is much narrower, as it focuses primarily on consumers and patients, but with a much deeper offering. It integrates medical navigation, lifestyle, nutrition, and fitness, as well as decision support to help users choose the right care plan (in the US), going after players like Transcarent. 3️⃣ 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐆𝐏𝐓 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐈 Both Claude and ChatGPT integrate with Function Health, which uses blood analyses to both detect diseases early and optimize daily health. Consumer AI currently remains a tool for the healthy and wealthy, but over time the system may shift from being doctor-centric to consumer-centric. Claude and ChatGPT are clearly accelerating this shift. 4️⃣ 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐧: 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞’𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐆𝐏𝐓’𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐭? Claude is trying to go very big: maybe too big. No one really wants a single player to own such a large and strategic piece of the healthcare tech stack. ChatGPT, on the other hand, aims to become the digital front door of healthcare, similar to Apple or Amazon. In the short term, it may monetize through advertising (as OpenAI has recently launched ads on its models). In the long term, it’s unclear how it will evolve beyond this. It is already replacing “Dr. Google”, but Google itself never managed to build a truly large business around that. 5️⃣ 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 Claude connects to many different sources, often involving unstructured data. Thanks to LLMs, it does not require highly structured or standardized data to operate effectively. MCPs combined with LLMs are redefining interoperability. Claude can ingest raw, unstructured data from multiple systems and generate usable insights. Traditional IT and SaaS systems were simply not able to do this before. ---- Follow HGM Advisory for daily reposts of the most interesting #HealthTech news.

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My conviction in Flow Engineering has only grown since I first led the Series A. I invested personally in this round and joined as an independent board member because of the team, the traction in the business, and the timing of AI accelerating hardware development. 35 of 100 most valuable companies in the world are technology companies, and 26 of those 35 are hybrid hardware/software companies. Flow Engineering enables legacy and frontier hardware businesses to harness agentic development and accelerate time to market.

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What if the next $1B health company isn’t built in SF… but in Paris? Max Berthelot is doing exactly that with Lucis (YC X25): AI + longitudinal blood testing to catch disease years before symptoms. Preventive health isn’t just wellness anymore… It’s venture-scale. In this episode, we break down: - Why blood data, not wearables, is the real gold rush. - The "Blue Ocean" arbitrage of building in Europe. - How to maintain SF velocity in a Paris office. If you think the next healthcare giant looks like a hospital, then you're looking in the wrong century. 🔗 Link to full episode in the comment section

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Wispr Flow raised $280M on $2B to keep growing voice dictation. Story: incredible user love, proprietary model, more workflow (like note taking). Like a lot of other "wrapper" companies, Wispr continues do well despite heavy competition due to advantages in distribution and maturity of product. It hopes to maintain its lead by aggressively partnering with other companies in the ecosystem and introducing new workflow tools (like note taking!) With the launch of Canto, it's leveraging its proprietary real-world data to try to create differentiated results (and control over COGS) with its own speech model. With this raise, it joins the consumer/prosumer AI unicorn club -- a group of companies that have done especially well this year by leveraging viral GTM + charging $10 - $30 / user / mo!

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Sam is here at YC! A few takeaways: > Stop training a model if it can’t provide strong alignment guarantees. > OpenAI will do whatever is necessary to produce tokens (including building chips, robots, self-replicating data centers, and energy infrastructure) as well as the core consumer interface: always-on, persistent AI. > His suggestion for startups over a five-year horizon: pick a vertical and use AI to take on the incumbents - drug discovery, farm automation, AI accounting, etc. (He guaranteed that OpenAI won’t be doing those) > Over a 20-year horizon: build for the other side of a major technological transition. That could mean space or a big bet on energy. > A new version of Astra is about to be released. > A few jokes about the OpenAI trailer A slightly scary takeaway: he isn’t confident that humanity will be able to defend itself against AI in the near future, if development continues without any attempt to slow its pace.

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'Hardware is hard' - but not for much longer. The team at Flow Engineering are building transformative tools for hardware engineers - a hugely underserved market desperately in need of technology to help them make and scale breakthroughs in energy, industry, manufacturing and more. Congratulations to Pari Singh on reaching another huge milestone. All of us at Odyssey Ventures are excited for the next stage of the journey!

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