Chris Palmieri leads new venture capital fund focused on health care delivery
Chris Palmieri, former CEO of Commonwealth Care Alliance (CCA), is launching Winter Street Ventures as a standalone venture firm with a target of raising $100 million to back health‐care delivery innovations.
Originally, the Winter Street brand and its innovation efforts were housed at CCA (a health insurer focused on Medicaid/Medicare members) and used the organization as a “living lab” for new care‐models. With CCA’s recent acquisition by CareSource, Palmieri acquired the Winter Street intellectual property and relaunched the venture fund independently.
Winter Street is focused on investing in tech‐enabled health-care service companies (rather than early seed companies) — targeting firms with annual revenue between ~$2 million and $10 million, and the intention to back 12-15 companies from this initial fund.
Palmieri emphasizes the need to improve health-care delivery, noting that the consumer experience is lagging behind other industries, and he wants to help entrepreneurs solving “complex health-care problems”. The firm currently counts a team of four, and is already engaging with insurance plan leaders interested in adopting innovations coming out of Winter Street.
