Jason Fiedler

I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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🔔Announcing the 2025 Vertical SaaS 50!🔔 Today, Avid Ventures, Headline, and Bain Capital Ventures recognize 50 new emerging vertical SaaS companies. 🏭 This year, over a third of the honorees are solving problems in the physical world including Caspian, DocUnlock, and Revenue Vessel in logistics, Complement, DiploAI, and Forgepoint in manufacturing, Ichi in construction, and GridStrong, Lumora, and Strobe Power in electricity/utilities. 📝 As in prior years, several honorees are building in the broader professional service landscape including &AI, Crosby, and PointOne in legal, Mako AI in financial services, and Foundation, Novella, and Strala in insurance. 🩺 Most notably, we've seen an increase in healthcare companies like Charta Health, Ferry Health and RoVR as well as Zoomlogi in pharma, Corner Health and Duet in nurse practioner practices, ExaCare AI in senior care, Onos Health in behavioral health, Grove AI in clinical trials, and Lassie and Rondah AI in dental. If you are building a vertical SaaS company or have recommendations for our 2026 list please reach out - we'd love to hear from you!

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Health tech's last five years laid its foundation; the next five will change the game entirely. We at Define Ventures took a hard look at our sector because we wanted to dive into the real story. Whether we looked at venture funding, relative sector performance, public market trends, or M&A, we found that health tech has performed quite well over its early years in light of the evolution and change during our recent history. And more importantly, that the next wave of companies defining it are doing so in unprecedented fashion: * They’re scaling faster. Companies expected to pursue liquidity events over the coming years are reaching 2-3x the revenue scale of previous exits. * They’re building more efficiently. AI and automation are making commercialization faster and less capital​ intensive * They’re meeting a more receptive buyer market. Payers, providers, employers​, and pharma are more equipped to adopt new solutions than they were even five years ago ​ We believe this is a defining moment for ​h​ealth tech. The companies emerging today won’t just digitize healthcare— they ​w​ill fundamentally rethink how care is delivered, paid for, and experienced. Our latest report unpacks what this means for founders, investors, and the healthcare ecosystem at large:

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