Dietitian startup Fay has been booming from Ozempic patients and emerges from stealth with $25M from General Catalyst, Forerunner

For years, Sammy Faycurry has been listening to from his registered dietitian (RD) mother and sister about how poorly many Individuals eat and their struggles with delivering dietary counseling.

Though practically half of all adults within the nation are affected by persistent situations linked to unhealthy diets, well being plans have a restricted variety of in-network registered dieticians. 

Faycurry determined to construct a platform that might empower RDs, like his mother and sister, to start out their very own practices whereas being coated by insurance coverage. 

He started engaged on Fay, a startup that connects RDs with insurance coverage suppliers and sufferers, when he was an MBA pupil at Harvard Enterprise Faculty in 2021. A few 12 months into his effort, which Faycurry initially bootstrapped, he requested Mark Stefanski to affix him as a CTO. 

On Wednesday, Fay emerged from stealth after quietly elevating $25 million from Normal Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures, with participation from 1984 and the founders of Develop Remedy and Maven Clinic.

Fay provides RDs a franchise mannequin that has gained recognition amongst sure forms of healthcare suppliers lately. The so-called business-in-box offers practitioners, equivalent to dietitians and therapists, the instruments for working their practices, together with submitting claims with insurance coverage, receiving funds and being matched with sufferers.

“Insurance coverage corporations adore it as a result of their sufferers are getting more healthy. And the dietitians adore it as a result of they will make nearly 5 to eight occasions extra money as unbiased practitioners with our platform than they earn in a hospital,” Faycurry instructed TechCrunch.

Different startups which have applied this enterprise mannequin embrace Develop, a community for therapists that final month raised an $88 million Collection C led by Sequoia, and Nourish, which, similar to Fay, matches RDs with sufferers. Nourish closed its $35 million Collection A in March in a spherical led by Index Ventures. 

Fay at the moment has 1,000 RDs on its platform and permits individuals coated by Anthem, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna CVS, Blue Cross, Cigna, Optum, Humana and different insurance coverage suppliers to make use of their companies weekly or bi-weekly for the worth of an everyday co-payment.

“Payers and employers’ prices have been skyrocketing for a very long time. Everybody’s saying weight-reduction plan, weight-reduction plan, weight-reduction plan, after which nobody has been doing something about it,” Faycurry mentioned. 

Curiously, lots of Fay’s sufferers are individuals who take Ozempic and different GLP-1 medicines, that are at the moment being touted as miracle weight reduction medication. That’s as a result of medical doctors who prescribe these medicines require sufferers to see a dietician in order that they study wholesome habits. “We’ve seen individuals who misplaced 25 kilos, however they nonetheless have excessive ldl cholesterol as a result of they’re having a slice of bacon for each meal,” Faycurry mentioned.

Nicole Johnson, a companion at Forerunner Ventures, mentioned that her agency was impressed with Fay’s execution. “They acquired off to a extremely fast begin and grew revenues at an extremely quick tempo whereas burning little or no capital.” And Fay has huge plans for future growth into offering meals for sufferers, Johnson mentioned.