00:00Medicare is something that, if you look over the course of a decade, it's trillions of dollars.
00:04You are trying to change how the system works and access that capital.
00:09What are you going to do with the $100 million you raised?
00:12Thanks for having me.
00:13We are really focused on continuing to build the best products we can for seniors, for American retirees,
00:18because it is the most underserved population in the U.S.
00:22So we're investing in a lot of AI technology.
00:24We're investing in new products to help people navigate Medicare and their health care writ large.
00:29And we're really excited about this.
00:30Let's do the basics.
00:31What is Chapter?
00:32What does Chapter do?
00:33I started the company a few years ago after seeing my parents struggle with the Medicare process.
00:37They received terrible guidance working with a local Medicare broker.
00:41And as I sort of peeled back the onion into how the ecosystem works,
00:45I was just appalled at how bad the incentives are, how bad the technology is.
00:48So what we do at Chapter is we are the only unbiased, AI-driven Medicare guidance platform.
00:54So when you need help signing up for Medicare, which every American senior needs,
00:57you call Chapter and we help you enroll in the right plan for you.
01:01We save people thousands of dollars a year when they enroll in Medicare,
01:05and we help them navigate the entire ecosystem throughout their Medicare journey.
01:09$100 million Series E.
01:11And, Ross, I want to go to you here because you have come on again.
01:15You're an existing institutional investor.
01:17Al Gore's Generation Investment Management has joined this particular round.
01:20Ross, what has made you so committed to Chapter?
01:23Why this particular way of navigating health care?
01:26Well, it's really two things.
01:28One, as Kobe mentioned, everybody over 65 in America is going to get Medicare.
01:35So everyone in the U.S. is eventually going to be a chapter customer.
01:40And that scale of business, like that opportunity, like that is a venture scale business.
01:45And you want to be part of companies that are building at that level.
01:49Talk to that thesis, though.
01:50Why is every single American going to be using Medicare?
01:55Everyone over 65 in the country is going to enroll in Medicare services because it is the best way to
02:03get health care for the aging population in the U.S.
02:07And that's just a point of fact.
02:11Chapter enables my mom, my dad, to make the best choice of where they should get their Medicare services.
02:20Further, Chapter has done a tremendous job in the last few years of growth.
02:25We grew over 3x last year to 100 million in revenue.
02:28And the reason that we keep pushing more money and more excitement into chapters is because we see that growth
02:35continuing 3 and 4x in subsequent years.
02:38And that's really just the tip of the iceberg of building out a solution for the entire U.S. population.
02:45100 million in revenue, you know, that's no small feat.
02:48You know, there were headlines overnight, perplexities just hit 500 million ARR, but look at the coverage that they get.
02:54What's your core competence?
02:55What is it that you and the team are really good at?
02:58It's a great question.
03:00I'm really proud of the team we've assembled.
03:02We've assembled some of the best technologists around.
03:04I think generally we focus on people who are really mission-driven and who are exceptional at working with AI.
03:10So what we're really good at doing is structuring data, realigning incentives, and then operationalizing that in a really efficient
03:17way.
03:18Our entire company, our corporate headcount is about 30 people.
03:22And we've been able to grow at that scale with this headcount because of that.
03:26Ross, I've always found the XYZ model really interesting.
03:29I may be oversimplifying, but you write checks to companies that are going after the public sector in many ways.
03:35It's different to going after some startups that, like, may never need to have revenue, and, you know, we can
03:40get into that at a later date.
03:41But why does that present a real return opportunity as an investor to go after a startup whose dollars come
03:48from one arm of government or another?
03:50Yeah.
03:51And so our focus area at XYZ has been largely on building and supporting companies that are selling to the
03:58government because it is the largest spender in the entire world.
04:02So areas of defense spending is one of the largest spends in the entire world, and that's why we backed
04:08companies like Andrel.
04:09Areas of health care spend and Medicare are one of the largest spends in the entire world, and so that's
04:15why we backed companies like Chapter.
04:17And when those companies are winning, when they're capturing hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars, we dollar concentrate
04:23into those businesses,
04:24and we get the right to do that because we've been there since the beginning.
04:28And so that's our economic approach, find those exceptional people in those businesses.
04:33Kobe, you're making it easier for people to try and navigate a very complex system.
04:38But the narrative we hear time and time again on this show at the moment is abundance of AI being
04:43able to bring health care to all and being, you know,
04:45what is your vision for what health care in the U.S. looks like in five to ten years' time?
04:51I want every American who's navigating Medicare and navigating health care at large to, A, understand what they are buying,
04:58what is their health coverage, and, B, to be able to access their health care in the simplest way.
05:04There's no reason people should have to read hundreds of pages of documents and go through tons of e-mails
05:10and faxes and phone calls
05:11just to understand what they've already signed up for.
05:14And so really we're trying to create a more equitable health care system, a more efficient health care system,
05:19and one that drives down the cost to the system and creates much better care and coverage for every American.
Comments