Today, we’re announcing that we’re co-leading the series A for Roon, which ensures everyone has access to a trusted expert to help navigate their critical health journeys.
Roon is something I’ve desperately wanted myself as both a caregiver and patient, as it’s solving a widespread, profound consumer pain point. In vulnerable moments when you need clinically sound information about a condition or illness, Dr. Google is still the prevailing first destination, despite a deluge of misinformation online and a lack of personalized guidance. One of the primary promises of technology is information at our fingertips, but if the information is inundating (or worse, incorrect), we’re arguably worse off than where we started. AI has the opportunity to compound this problem or be a solution — either by amplifying misinformation, or by driving efficiency, personalization, and scale for doctor-led expertise.
Roon is essentially what you’d get if you combined WedMD with Perplexity, but trained only on doctor-created clinical information and answers — so people can instantly pull up doctor recommendations, guides, and even videos to quickly navigate healthcare concerns. Currently, Roon has built resources to address critical conditions such as ALS, Glioblastoma, Dementia, as well as broader medically-nuanced topics like Fertility & Family Building, and in the next few months, will expand to cover more of women’s health (Endometriosis, PCOS, Menopause, Breast Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Basic Gynecological Health and more), followed by forays into pediatrics, cancer, neurology and metabolic health.
As investors, we know there have been many efforts to displace Dr. Google over the decades through various approaches. For good reason: 7% of Google’s searches are health-related, as it can easily take 2-3+ months to see a doctor, and even then, the journey for answers just begins.
Roon fits squarely into a few tailwinds and themes we’re tracking closely at Forerunner, which believe make the company disproportionately advantaged to win:
Doctors as the new creators — and Roon as their platform to reach their audience: patients
One simple reason why Roon stands out: Doctors love it.
For the past decade, we’ve seen doctors extend their reach beyond the doctor’s office and clinic to become public figures — largely through Instagram and TikTok. The benefits are clear: consumers are hungry for trusted clinical guidance, while doctors get to build their brands and combat the misinformation they see trickling into their clinics and making their jobs harder. However, Instagram wasn’t built with clinical expertise in mind, and many doctors crave a way to achieve this impact outside an environment that can feel so performative. Put simply: Doctors have become increasingly savvy online but don’t have a space designed for medicine in mind to scale their reach and expertise.
As a result, doctors are flocking to Roon to help educate consumers, build their brand (you might even see Roon linked in their Instagram bio), and save themselves time and effort by providing a highly accessible, efficient medium for answering the questions they get every day in their clinic.
Today, Roon has 500+ actively engaged Medical Expert creators from all major institutions (UCSF, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, UPenn, NYU, Duke etc.) across 30+ specialties.
Search to Service
At Forerunner, we have a thesis about how the traditional, unilateral search experience - where the onus is on the consumer to sift through information - is being eclipsed by interactive, context-aware services that feel much more dynamic and bespoke. AI is underpinning this shift from search to service, as verticalized offerings emerge with much more dynamic, personalized offerings. We’re already seeing this play out with our investments in Joy, Daydream, and more.
The team to take this on
Roon is an obvious embodiment of this shift, and there is arguably no better team to tackle this mission: Roon is founded by not only a neurosurgeon who sees the challenges patients face every day but also early Pinterest leaders who were formative in architecting its early product, marketing, partnership, and creator tools. They are intimately aware of consumer behavior when it comes to this kind of technology, and how it can evolve today for the AI era for something as crucial as health.
All three founders have felt the need for a service like this acutely. CEO Vikram Bhaskaran was a caregiver to his dad who passed away with ALS, CTO Arun Raganathan is currently a caregiver to his father in India who is suffering from dementia, and CMO Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna treats patients with brain cancer and has longed for a place where doctors could educate patient scalably.
As AI is poised to reshape every corner of every industry, healthcare clearly stands for reinvention — and scaling the expertise of doctors is a promise that consumers globally are eager to see. Roon the reimagination of access to healthcare information that we all need.