By the Techstars Healthcare Vertical Network Team

This blog is Part 2 of a 5-part tactical series drawn directly from conversations at the Techstars Healthcare Vertical Network panel presentations in NYC in June 2025 with Techstars managing directors, leaders from Permanente Medicine Mid-Atlantic States, Johns Hopkins, Carefirst, PwC, and dozens of Techstars healthcare alumni founders.*

Part 1: Why Healthcare Feels Impossible — And Why We All Still Need You to Build

If you’re building in healthtech and struggling to land your first system pilot, here’s the brutal truth: it’s probably not your tech. It’s your approach.

At Techstars' Healthcare Vertical kickoff, leaders from Permanente Medicine Mid-Atlantic States, Northwestern, PwC, and Johns Hopkins pulled back the curtain on what actually makes innovation land in healthcare. The takeaway? Founders need more than just a great product. They need to understand how complex systems think, what scares them, and how to make it easy to say yes.

This post distills the most tactical, founder-ready advice from that session.

1. You’re Not Selling to a System. You’re Navigating a Maze of Stakeholders.

“Healthcare isn’t a monolith - founders are navigating a network of stakeholders with competing priorities. What many don’t realize is that they’re not selling to one buyer - they’re selling to five. The solutions that succeed must align with our mission, seamlessly integrate into workflows, and clearly differentiate their value so we can ultimately deliver affordable, high-quality care to improve the health of our members and communities we serve,” said Jessica Locke, Chief of Staff and Strategic Innovation at Permanente Medicine Mid-Atlantic States.

"That complexity means even the most promising solutions must align across navigate internal stakeholders - clinical, operational, technical, compliance, and financial - to move forward,” said Locke.

Each stakeholder has a veto. Your champion isn’t enough. Founders who succeed map this internal architecture early and design their outreach and messaging accordingly.

Tactic: Build stakeholder maps for each system. Identify your champion (often innovation or digital health), but understand the power to say 'no' lives with legal, compliance, and clinical ops.

2. Cost Savings Alone Won’t Get You In. You Need to Hit Multiple Value Pillars.

Every health system evaluates tech against a “value equation,” and cost is just one variable. At Permanente, that equation is:

(Clinical Quality + Patient Experience + Physician Experience) / Cost

If your solution saves money but disrupts workflows or diminishes care quality, it’s a no. But if it reduces friction and improves patient satisfaction or physician burnout, your odds rise dramatically.

Tactic: Frame your pitch around multi-dimensional value. Ask: What’s the patient impact? What’s the clinical burden reduction? What’s the revenue or time ROI?

3. Don’t Sell the Tech. Sell the Business Outcome.

Sid Bhattacharya of PwC said it best: “Nobody cares about your tech. They care about the business problem.”

Your demo should not be an API showcase. It should be a narrative: “We reduce re-admissions by X% by streamlining post-discharge data.” Or: “We cut time-to-treatment in stroke patients by 12 minutes through real-time EMS data integration.”

Tactic: Ditch the jargon. Every sentence should start with the problem and end with the business value. Tech is the how, not the hook.

4. Integration Isn’t a Feature. It’s the Barrier.

Nearly every panelist flagged this: if your solution doesn’t plug cleanly into the existing EMR or clinical workflows, it will die in procurement. Even the most enthusiastic champion can’t override the pain of multi-system toggling or re-training staff.

“Integration isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the make-or-break factor. If a solution doesn’t work inside our EMR or fit into clinical workflows, it won’t last. We’re looking to reduce friction and make care delivery easier. That said, integration doesn’t need to happen out of the gate. During early validation or pilot phases, we’re focused on proving clinical and operational value. If the solution shows promise, we’ll work with you to figure out integration pathways later,” said Locke.

Tactic: Come to the first meeting with a realistic integration path. If it doesn’t work inside Epic or Cerner, show how you’ll bridge that gap with middleware or HL7/FHIR. Bonus: bring an integration partner.

5. Transparency Beats Perfection.

Health systems are used to early-stage innovation. What kills deals is over-promising. “Don’t say you’re 10x ROI when your data comes from a 10-patient pilot,” said Salvatore LoGrasso from Northwestern.

Systems are happy to co-develop, but only if you’re honest about where your product is in its lifecycle.

Tactic: Come with a “here’s what we’ve proven, here’s what we want to prove with you” slide. Set realistic expectations and bake in co-design milestones.

6. The Fastest Pilots Still Take a Year. Plan Accordingly.

Even Northwestern’s fastest pilot, a generative AI solution, took nearly a year to go live. Why? Legal, compliance, IT security, clinical validation, stakeholder training.

The top reason healthtech pilots fail? Startups run out of money or patience before the deal crosses the finish line.

Tactic: Build 18 months of runway for pilot + procurement + deployment. Line up 2–3 pilots in parallel. Budget for compliance and legal back-and-forth.

7. Want to Stand Out? Know the System Better Than They Know Themselves.

Every system has blind spots. The startups that win are the ones who don’t just show up with a solution; they show up with insight.

Permanente’s team described working with a startup on cardiac remote monitoring that didn’t just bring hardware, they brought analytics the system had never seen. Another startup helped Northwestern redesign their specimen delivery process using drones — but only after walking the workflow, building city-level buy-in, and testing logistics for months.

Tactic: Before pitching, shadow clinical staff. Study operational bottlenecks. Identify a specific broken process and say, “We think this is costing you 12,000 staff hours per year. Let’s fix it.”

Bottom Line: Innovation Doesn’t Win. Execution Does.

Great tech doesn't scale in healthcare. Aligned, integrated, stakeholder-aware solutions do. If you want to get through the pilot gauntlet and emerge with a contract in hand, remember:

• Don’t demo the product. Show the outcome.

• Don’t promise the moon. Offer a roadmap.

• Don’t chase every system. Focus on the one that fits your product’s current maturity.

The founders who treat health systems not as institutions but as ecosystems — messy, political, and full of constraints — are the ones who will win.

* This content is distilled from a panel discussion during the Techstars Vertical Network Kickoff event in June 2025. Healthcare panelists included:

• Techstars Managing Directors Keith Camhi, Nick Culbertson, Tim Grace, and Jennifer Davis,

• Myra Norton, Head of Innovation, Startup & Ecosystem Acceleration at Johns Hopkins Medicine,

• Brian Hasselfeld, MD, Executive Medical Director, Digital Health & Innovation at Johns Hopkins Medicine,

• Ian Goldstein, Partner, Corporate Group & Startup Practice Area Lead at Fenwick & West,

• Jessica Locke, Chief of Staff & Strategic Innovation at Permanente Medicine Mid-Atlantic States,

• Salvatore LoGrasso, Program Director of Innovation at Northwestern Medicine,

• Sidd Bhattacharya, Partner at PwC, Healthcare AI Team,

• and many Techstars alumni founders.

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