“I never started out wanting to win 23 Grand Slams. I wanted to win the US Open, and then I made that scalable,” joked Serena Williams, managing partner of investment firm Serena Ventures, at SXSW.
Typically, panels made up of venture capitalists focus on profits and returns on investment. But with tennis legend Serena Williams as Reckitt Catalyst’s entrepreneur-in-residence, the conversation centered on how funding tech startups could drive tangible community impact.
Another panelist included Mika Eddy, the co-founder of Malama Health, a community-based telehealth company that connects pregnant people with local doulas and remote-monitoring tech to support them during their pregnancy and postpartum. Malama, which means “care” in Hawaiian, aims to improve maternal health outcomes.
Eddy said she was inspired to build the company after watching her OB-GYN grandmother care for patients in rural Japan while growing up.
“The US was truly not built for healthy outcomes for women, and particularly if you do not have privilege or a platform, oftentimes these outcomes are left to chance,” said Eddy. “We built Malama in order to help fill the gaps.”
Also on the panel was Kwamane Liddell, an emergency department nurse who founded Thrivelink to help patients across the country find the housing, medication and other vital social service resources. The company is focused on accessibility — you don’t need the internet, smartphones or reading skills to use it. For example, Thrivelink uses AI voice tech rather than relying on text, which may be harder for some patients to use. Liddell’s uncle, who had a stroke and was part of the inspiration for Thrivelink.
“People might not be able to text or type within the app, but they can say their address,” said Liddell. “So we built a telephonic AI agent that allows people to talk. Since then, we’ve helped thousands of families access healthy food.”
Health tech, venture capitalism and policy have a long, complicated history in the US. Health technology is often designed to fill gaps or address major issues left by the health care and insurance industries. Big companies in the AI revolution, such as OpenAI, Amazon and Microsoft, are also building health AI tools along with startups like Malama and Thrivelink.