Minneapolis Wound Care Startup Raises $4.25M
For Nima Ahmadi, the math behind wound care simply didn’t pencil out.
By some estimates, wound care costs upwards of $28 billion for the Medicare population, not including millions of younger, privately insured Americans. Despite all that spending, improperly healed wounds still lead to tens of thousands of amputations each year. And that number continues to grow, per the American Diabetes Association.
As co-founder and CEO of The Wound Company, Ahmadi believes he’s found a better way. The Minneapolis-based startup bills itself as “virtual wound care company,” and its sole mission is to help folks recover from serious wounds and ostomy surgeries. Using predictive analytics and other technology, the startup acts as a care coordinator between health care providers, insurers, and patients.
The Wound Co. was just founded last year, but it’s already caught investor attention. On Thursday, the startup announced that it has landed $4.25 million in seed funding from two prominent San Francisco Bay Area venture capital firms: Susa Ventures and Sozo Ventures. The latter was a funder of Twitter, Zoom, and payment platform Square. The Wound Co.’s raise occurred amid an otherwise unfriendly environment for VC-backed startups this year.
“Something is fundamentally very wrong with this part of health care that has received very little attention, even though we spend so much on it,” Ahmadi said in a Thursday interview.
In general, there are few medical experts focused on wound care. Those that do specialize in it often work at larger hospitals or in long-term care settings, so they’re not necessarily providing personalized care for patients after major procedures. “They’re not continuously connected to patients. They’re not monitoring and following wounds,” Ahmadi said.
Plus, there are no residency programs for wound care, which Ahmadi believes is part of the reason the sector is so dysfunctional.
For now, The Wound Co. employs about 25 people, many of them nurses specifically certified on wound care. Ahmadi said the company’s virtual care offering is available nationally, and it’s authorized to provide in-person care in a small number of states, including Minnesota. With the recent funding in hand, the startup aims to expand its footprint and hire more staffers.
Ahmadi noted that The Wound Co. has already lined up partnerships with “some of the largest health systems in the state of Minnesota, as well as home care and hospice providers in the state.” But, for contractual reasons, he wasn’t able to share names of current customers.
Hailing from California, Ahmadi moved to Minnesota eight years ago for a job at health care software firm Icario. Before founding The Wound Co., he was working at Cardiovascular Systems, which went on to get acquired by Abbott for almost $1 billion.
Wound care is personal for Ahmadi, whose uncle was a double amputee due to improperly healed wounds. Ahmadi devoted part of his career to building prosthetics for amputees, but he eventually pivoted to trying to prevent amputations in the first place.
“This problem is bigger and worse than I thought,” Ahmadi said. “A medical device company isn’t necessarily going to solve it. We need a different kind of company to stand up and address this.”
