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From TechCrunch
By Marina Temkin
May 15, 2024
For years, Sammy Faycurry has been hearing from his dietician mom and sister about how poorly many Americans eat and their struggles with delivering nutritional counseling.
Although nearly half of all adults in the country are affected by chronic conditions linked to unhealthy diets, health plans have a limited number of in-network registered dieticians.
Faycurry decided to build a platform that would empower RDs, like his mom and sister, to start their own practices while being covered by insurance.
He began working on Fay, a startup that connects RDs with insurances and patients, when he was an MBA student at Harvard Business School in 2021. About a year into his effort, which Faycurry initially bootstrapped, he asked Mark Stefanski to join him as a CTO.
On Wednesday, Fay emerged from stealth after quietly raising $25 million from General Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures, with participation from 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 practitioners, such as dietitians and therapists, the tools for running their practices, including filing claims with insurance, receiving payments and being matched with patients.
“Insurance companies love it because their patients are getting healthier. And the dietitians love it because they can make almost five to eight times more money as independent practitioners with our platform than they earn in a hospital,” Faycurry told TechCrunch.
Other startups that have implemented this business model include Grow, a network for therapists that last month raised an $88 million Series C led by Sequoia and Nourish, which, just like Fay, matches RDs with patients. Nourish closed its $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 for a price of a regular co-payment.
“Payers and employers’ costs have been skyrocketing for a long time. Everyone’s saying diet, diet, diet, and then no one has been doing anything about it,” Faycurry said.
Curiously, many of Fay’s patients are people who take Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines, which are currently being touted as miracle weight loss drugs. That’s because doctors who prescribe these medications require patients to see a dietician so they learn healthy habits. “We’ve seen people who lost 25 pounds, but they still have high cholesterol because they’re having a slice of bacon with every meal,” Faycurry said.
Nicole Johnson, a partner at Forerunner Ventures, said that her firm was impressed with Fay’s execution. “They got off to a really quick start and grew revenues at an incredibly fast pace while burning very little capital.” And Fay has big plans for future expansion into meal delivery, too, Johnson said.
After Shopify bought his last startup, Birk Jernström wants to help developers build one-person unicorns
Sam Altman and “his tech CEO friends” have a betting pool on the year we will see the first one-person billion-dollar company. The idea of a single person reaching a billion-dollar valuation for a startup would have been unthinkable without AI. But single-person, AI-first businesses have been sprouting all over the tech industry and Birk Jernström, CEO of Polar, a “monetization platform to empower one-person unicorns,” is standing by to help them get there. Polar hopes to stand out from other
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A comprehensive list of 2025 tech layoffs
The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies.
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Unlock purpose-driven growth at TechCrunch All Stage, and get $210 off for 6 more days
T-minus 6 days until TechCrunch All Stage ticket prices rise. From now until June 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT, founders save $210 and investors save $200 on passes. Are you ready to push your startup to the next level? Or are you an investor looking to back the next big breakthrough? Join TC All Stage on July 15 at SoWa Power Station in Boston for the founder summit built for traction and breakout growth. Give your startup a competitive edge. Secure your pass now and save up to $210. Why attend TC All
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