Digital health kept dying on borrowed playbooks

It is still faster to move money across the world than to get a second opinion. Since 2023, healthcare has buried more venture-backed companies than any other sector, most with a cleared product and a customer still to come. Three lenses explain why. They agree on one sequence: revenue and impact ahead of proof and build.

I have sat in three chairs on this. I bought from these companies when I ran digital at Ferring and Gedeon Richter. I advised other pharma companies on the same decisions through Kainjoo Ventures. And I screen the survivors at Allegory Capital, where the capital has sat still for nearly 18 months while the AI rat race ran past.

The question that kept it still is simple. The industry runs on innovation from outside. So why do the companies that carry it keep dying in the same place, at the same age, for the same reason?