Does HC9 Ventures Invest at Seed? What Founders Should Know Before Pitching It

A venture fund's limited partner base is usually a mix of institutions and family offices. HC9 Ventures built its first fund almost entirely out of healthcare executives writing personal checks, a structure that shapes both its diligence process and the kind of help it can offer portfolio founders.

HC9 Ventures II, L.P. filed today with $31.175 million raised. Charlie Falcone serves as general partner of the firm, which he co-founded alongside Richard Lungen and Jon Gordon. HC9's first fund closed at $83 million in 2022, built around a community of more than 125 healthcare leaders with experience at organizations including UnitedHealth Group, Anthem, LabCorp, Cigna and Express Scripts, all committing their own personal capital rather than institutional money. Falcone previously worked at healthcare advisory firm Leverage Health, with earlier roles at Goldman Sachs and First Round Capital.

What Stage and Focus HC9 Ventures Actually Targets

HC9 is a New York-based firm investing specifically at seed and Series A in healthcare software and services startups, with a stated focus on companies addressing structural challenges in the healthcare industry rather than consumer wellness or adjacent categories. For a founder evaluating fit, that means HC9 is a strong match for enterprise-facing healthcare technology, software selling into payers, providers or health systems, but a weaker match for consumer health apps or biotech requiring clinical trial capital.

Why an Operator-Heavy LP Base Changes What a Founder Gets

A fund whose limited partners are themselves healthcare operators, rather than passive institutional capital, can offer founders something beyond the check itself: direct access to potential customers, pilot partners and domain experts who have actually run the kinds of organizations a healthcare startup is trying to sell into. That structure also means HC9's diligence process likely draws on real operator judgment about whether a product would actually get adopted inside a health system or payer organization, not just a financial model's projected growth curve.

How Founders Should Approach This Fund

Founders building enterprise healthcare software should lead with concrete evidence of early traction inside a real healthcare organization, a pilot, a letter of intent, or a paying customer, since HC9's operator-heavy structure suggests the fund will weight real-world validation from people who have sat in a buyer's seat more heavily than a generalist seed fund might. Falcone's own background spanning healthcare advisory, investment banking and venture capital at First Round suggests he also brings a sharper eye for go-to-market mechanics specific to healthcare sales cycles, which tend to run longer, involve more stakeholders, and carry a longer runway requirement than a typical enterprise SaaS sale.

Why a $31 Million Filing Still Earns a Dedicated Profile

Several funds in today's filing list raised more than HC9's $31.175 million without earning a profile slot, because their names carry no independent public footprint a founder could verify before reaching out. HC9's combination of a closed $83 million first fund, named general partners with traceable prior roles at First Round Capital and Goldman Sachs, and extensive trade-press coverage of its operator-LP model makes it a fund a founder can actually research before pitching, which is the bar this batch is now applying ahead of raw dollar size.

What This Means for Founders

For founders building healthcare software or services at the earliest stages, HC9's structure, a fund built by and for industry operators rather than generalist capital, is a useful model for understanding what kind of value beyond the check a specialist fund can offer. Founders evaluating HC9 alongside other healthcare-focused investors should ask directly which of the fund's 125-plus LP operators map onto their own specific buyer profile, since that network is likely the fund's most differentiated asset relative to a larger, more generalist healthtech fund.

Browse the healthtech investor directory for more active funds in enterprise healthcare software, read the baseline mechanics of a seed round and a limited partner's role if either term is new, or explore active capital on AngelLinx @ angellinx.ai/register.

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