Episode 74: What Healthcare Organizations Need To Succeed with Dave Chase of Healthfundr and Cascadia Capital
January 06, 201639:08

Episode 74: What Healthcare Organizations Need To Succeed with Dave Chase of Healthfundr and Cascadia Capital

Dave Chase was named one of the most influential people in Digital Health due to his entrepreneurial success & writing along with luminaries such as Eric Topol, Patrick Soon-Shiong, & Vinod Khosla. He speaks to & consults with new ventures inside of established companies & high growth startups. Chase is widely published. The book Chase co-authored won the healthcare Book of the Year in in 2014.

Chase has a penchant for making connections between previously disconnected trends and making them understandable and actionable. Chase is in the development stage of a documentary that seeks to make the indecipherable understandable and demonstrate that there is reason for great optimism that a partnership between doc-entrepreneurs and forward-looking clinicians with individuals (fka “patients”) can dramatically out-perform against Quadruple Aim* objectives compared to traditional healthcare orgs.

*The Quadruple Aim is the Triple Aim (improved outcomes & patient experience with lower costs) plus the overlooked 4th Aim — clinician satisfaction critical to improving the current condition where an alarming number of clinicians are overburdened & burnt-out which negatively impacts their lives as well as the individuals they care for.

Chase was the CEO & Co-founder of Avado, which was acquired by and integrated ino WebMD and the most widely used healthcare professional site - Medscape.

Before Avado, Chase spent several years outside of healthcare in startups as founder or consulting roles with LiveRez.com, MarketLeader, & WhatCounts. He also played founding & leadership roles in launching two new $1B+ businesses within Microsoft.

Chase is a father, husband & oxygen-fueled mt sport athlete. His 2014 team placed 3rd in their division & 24th overall (out of 500 teams) in America's oldest adventure race where Dave took on the Nordic ski leg. Dave was a former PAC-10 800 Meter competitor.


00:00 What Dave’s been doing for the last six months.
02:00 “Where’s the most value I can add to Healthcare?”
03:00 “If you ask ‘Why’ five times often you will get to the root of the problem.”
06:00 Guiding principles for building business and innovation in healthcare.
07:20 How those in healthcare will utilize these guidelines to facilitate transformation in healthcare and healthcare delivery.
08:50 “Contemplating the universe from the ground up.”
09:10 How Dave went from theory to real-world in implementing his guidelines for the healthcare industry.
12:00 Dave explains what it means for Healthfundr to be focused on the ‘institutional seed’.
12:45 The Internet Trends Report by Mary Meeker.
15:00 Dave discusses what he thinks separates the “winners and losers” of health startups.
15:20 “Healthcare is where tech startups go to die.”
17:30 “Don’t throw technology on top of a broken process.”
19:20 Dave discusses the flaws with current pay transparency practices and trends.
22:00 Dave’s advice for creating convincing, innovative go-to-market strategies.
26:00 Picking your customers early as a startup.
31:00 Alternative healthcare business models.
34:00 “What people want at the end of life is not all of these aggressive interventions, what they want is to be warm, dry, pain-free and with loved ones.”
35:50 You can find out more at cascadiacapital.com and healthfundr.com, or google Health Rosetta and 95 Theses.

healthcare,Business,health,pharma,marketing,avado,cascadia capital,healthfundr,
|

Episode Support Provided By

Special Thanks to Our 2026 Sustaining Monthly Donors

Kimberly Carleson, Dylan Yahn, Benjamin Light, Matt McQuideAnn Kempski, Spencer Allen, Scott TromanhauserMarilyn Bartlett, 
Steven Elkins, Matthew Bunte, and Lori Smith.

Recent Episodes

EP508: Why Don't More Self-insured CEOs Take Bold Action in Health Benefits Strategy? With Lee Lewis
Relentless Health ValueApril 23, 2026
508
44:0240.31 MB

EP508: Why Don't More Self-insured CEOs Take Bold Action in Health Benefits Strategy? With Lee Lewis

Listen on Your Favorite App This episode is the very first episode that we have done that is an AMA—an Ask Me Anything—and here is our very first question. Sarah Monroe: Hi. This is Sarah Monroe in Chicago, and I'm a benefits procurement leader. And I'm curious why you think so few executives take p...

EP507: 4 Core Concepts to Buy or Deliver the Highest-Value Healthcare—A Review
Relentless Health ValueApril 16, 2026
507
33:5831.09 MB

EP507: 4 Core Concepts to Buy or Deliver the Highest-Value Healthcare—A Review

Listen on Your Favorite App Look, we wonks, meaning you and me, you're listening to this, so I am on to you. But we wonks in the Relentless Tribe, we move like lightning on Relentless Health Value. We tend to cover lots of ground pretty fast. So, sometimes I like to, with great intention, sum up wha...

EP506: How Other Employers, Shareholders, and Clinics Are Using Price Transparency Data—And It's an Arms Race, With Jerry DiMaso
Relentless Health ValueApril 09, 2026
506
35:5132.81 MB

EP506: How Other Employers, Shareholders, and Clinics Are Using Price Transparency Data—And It's an Arms Race, With Jerry DiMaso

Listen on Your Favorite App, So, we have a few miniseries afoot here on Relentless Health Value right now, and one of them is "The Inches That Are All Around Us"—finding the hidden fees, the hidden friction for plans and members and clinics themselves a lot of times in those inches. For a full trans...

EP505: The Death of the "What Is Value" Guessing Game for Clinical and Plan Decision-Makers Ready to Move On, With Ahilan Sivaganesan, MD
Relentless Health ValueApril 02, 2026
505
44:0240.31 MB

EP505: The Death of the "What Is Value" Guessing Game for Clinical and Plan Decision-Makers Ready to Move On, With Ahilan Sivaganesan, MD

Listen On Your Favorite App Hello, Relentless Tribe. Thank you so much for showing up today. All right … to start, let me lay out the goal of the episode today. This episode is for you if you are a self-funded employer looking to ensure your members are steered and tiered to real high-value care and...

EP504: A Back-to-Basics Roadmap Through the Perverse Incentives to Advanced Primary Care, With Ryan Jacobs
Relentless Health ValueMarch 26, 2026
504
33:3630.76 MB

EP504: A Back-to-Basics Roadmap Through the Perverse Incentives to Advanced Primary Care, With Ryan Jacobs

Listen On Your Favorite App It's been a while since we started from the beginning, so let's just take stock of the basics in this show, refresh ourselves if you're a longtime listener, or welcome if you're new around here. Today we are digging on and about what I would call the poster child for prov...

INBW46: Relentless Tribe Goings-On With Insights to Outwit the Hot Mess of the Non-Healthcare Market
Relentless Health ValueMarch 19, 202619:3717.96 MB

INBW46: Relentless Tribe Goings-On With Insights to Outwit the Hot Mess of the Non-Healthcare Market

Listen On Your Favorite App This inbetweenisode I wanna try something new for two reasons. One of them is that I need to check this episode off my to-do list because I am crushed for time. I'm going to be headed to Arizona tomorrow for the Collective Health Conference , which will have occurred thre...

EP503: Let's Go From Lazy PPO Networks to Smart Collaboration With Direct-to-Employer Specialty Care, With Ryan Wells; Leo Spector, MD, MBA; and Adam Stavisky
Relentless Health ValueMarch 12, 2026
503
46:1642.35 MB

EP503: Let's Go From Lazy PPO Networks to Smart Collaboration With Direct-to-Employer Specialty Care, With Ryan Wells; Leo Spector, MD, MBA; and Adam Stavisky

Listen On Your Favorite App Today we are digging into something I've said probably way too often: Collaboration is the next breakthrough innovation. And I'm doubling down on this because in the current healthcare landscape, two parties that actually should be talking—like burning up the phone wires ...

Listen and Follow

Sponsored by Aventria Health Group
©2026 BD Bridges LLC. All Rights Reserved.