Caribou raises $3M in quest to make healthcare-cost planning accessible

Caribou, a Miami-based startup, has developed a healthcare cost estimator and predictor tool, and today the founders announced they have raised seed funding to propel their SaaS solution more broadly into the market.

The $3 million round was led by Jack and Max Altman, with participation from Dash Fund, existing investors Garage Capital and N49P, and angel investors including the CTO of Plaid, Leslie Schrock, and Arjun Sethi of Tribe.

Founded in in 2020, Caribou is led by co-founders Cory Blumenfeld and Christine Simone and founding engineer Giorgio Delgado (pictured above). Simone and Blumenfeld both come from healthcare backgrounds and believe healthcare needs and costs should play a key role in  financial planning decisions, including the choice of healthcare plans and long-term-care decisions, but the financial planning industry, employers and consumers aren’t typically equipped to do that.

“We’re focused on helping people understand their health care costs, because it can be the biggest stress to your wealth, and our goal is to be able to mitigate financial exposure from that,” Simone said.

They spent their first year diving deep to understand the market and developing the product at the intersection of heathcare and fintech that would initially be targeted to financial planners and their clients. The product gathers and analyzes data on a client’s health conditions, insurance, medications and other needs and health plans to help advisors evaluate their client’s financial planning needs.

“Now we are in market with customers – our software is being used everyday by financial advisors and their clients,” said Simone, who has worked at medical device and digital health companies and met her serial entrepreneur co-founder at one of them.

The founders plan to use the funding for product development, and while the initial customers have been financial advisors, their focus is broader. “With users now on board, Caribou is now looking to make the product more scalable for wider distribution. We want to get this into the hands of all consumers, not just consumers who work with financial advisors.”

That includes fintech platforms that tens of millions of consumers use to manage and grow their money, she said.

Caribou’s distributed team numbers about 10 now and plans to double by the end of the year, and they are looking to hire engineers and customer-support teams.

 “Having started the company in the midst of a pandemic, obviously Miami has been a great area to build the business,” Simone said, adding that the area’s high concentration of Caribou’s customer base, financial advisors and retiree clients, is a plus.

“The Miami Movement is fueled by a vision to create a city that works for everyone, and Caribou fits right into that mission – they’re solving one of today’s most pressing issues by making healthcare more affordable,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, in a statement.  

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Nancy Dahlberg