Esther and Anne Wojcicki Launch Treehub and AI Health Fund

A new residency-startup program, Treehub, has been launched to tackle one of the most pressing issues in the United States: healthcare. Mary Minno, an investor and former product lead at Google, announced this early-stage startup accelerator program on Wednesday, along with a venture capital firm called AI Health Fund. This fund aims to support startups working at the intersection of healthcare and artificial intelligence. The AI Health Fund serves as the investment arm of the Treehub residency, where founders can apply to incubate their ideas.

The Treehub residency spans six months. The first twelve weeks are dedicated to helping founders find product-market fit. The following twelve weeks focus on business direction, according to Minno. She explains that this could include raising a significant funding round, integrating into a traditional accelerator, or even deploying within a hospital system.

Minno conceived the idea for this residency and program late last year, shortly after the birth of her second child. A family member was diagnosed with acute leukemia, going from "very healthy to very sick practically overnight," she said. She faced the difficulty of finding a specialist for this family member, the waiting time before treatment after diagnosis, and the sluggish treatment process due to outdated policies and technologies.

"It was only when people stepped outside of that system and broke the rules that things could happen," she said. "I realized we needed more startups here because they will challenge the status quo."

To bring this vision to life, Minno turned to her longtime friend, Esther Wojcicki. Esther is an educator and the mother of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki. Esther was once Minno's high school journalism teacher, and the two have remained close since. They discussed how to increase innovation in the healthcare sector and how academics, often rich in research, struggle to bring their startup ideas to fruition.

The problem, according to Minno, is that these researchers don't really know how to tell a good story, at least not in the way venture capitalists like to hear it. They also don't know how to effectively market their research. Therefore, Minno and Esther wanted to create a program that would pair operators with academically-focused founders, "similar to what an investor would do to teach them the art of building a company."

In addition to launching the Treehub residency, for which founders must apply, Minno and Esther decided to partner with members of Stanford's biomedical data science department to launch the AI Health Fund. This fund writes initial checks ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 to companies emerging from academia. The fund intends to raise $10 million and completed its first close last year at $1.5 million, Minno stated. They raised $500,000 from family and friends, then received a $1 million check from billionaire VC Tim Draper.

Anne Wojcicki joined the fund as an operating partner, while Esther serves as a founding advisor. The Stanford team includes Roxana Daneshjou, assistant professor of biomedical data science and dermatology at Stanford Medicine; Minno's father, Derek, chairman of the venture capital firm Point Capital; and Alexander Ioannidis, assistant professor of biomedical data science and genetics at Stanford.

The AI Health Fund hopes to support at least 60 companies during this first iteration of the program. The fund was established as a separate vehicle because Minno also wanted to support founders who might not go through the program or who could be second or third-time founders not needing the Treehub program but still having a good idea.

That said, the AI Fund has already supported 12 companies emerging from the Treehub program, including the female hormonal tracker Clair Health (which also participated in an a16z speedrun) and the new venture of researcher Dennis Walls focused on pediatric autism.

Minno stated that the residency is still in its experimental phase as the team works on the best way to navigate between the accelerator-fund approach. She clarified that the true added value of the residency program is that it hopes to work with founders at the very beginning, even before there is a company.

"In more than half of the cases, we introduce founders to the lawyers who helped them incorporate, so we almost play a co-founder role," she said.

"The difference between us and other accelerators is that we really help them strategize and get along well; when there is a problem, we assist them with problem-solving skills," Esther said.

Minno indicated that the Treehub residency program aims to build support tailored to the needs of founders, such as organizing meetings they might need or any other elements necessary to help them grow their businesses. "We don't have a demo day because these companies mature at different rates," she added.

The overall goal is to see how the first iteration of the residency program unfolds, to "understand which aspects can be scaled and which aspects need to remain small," Minno continued.

"It is really important for us to make every company we work with successful," she added. "Our vision is to multiply by ten, so we start with something very small and then our plan is, after executing this cycle several times, to do it on a national scale."