Oscar Health Insurance just received a powerful cash injection.
The technology-based health insurance company founded by Josh Kushner (Thrive Capital), Kevin Nazemi and Mario Schlosser today announced quietly on its Tumblr page it has raised an $80 million investment round. Sources close to the deal say the round valued Oscar at $800 million.
Formation8's Joe Lonsdale led the $80 million Series A round, which also included billionaires Jim Breyer (Breyer Capital) and Stanley Druckenmiller, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Partners, Khosla Ventures and Kushner's own Thrive Capital. (Oscar had previously raised $75 million in seed funding.)
Oscar's spokesman wouldn't comment on the valuation or revenue, but sources have told me that Oscar (which is less than a year old and operates solely in New York State) has more than 16,000 customers who pay an average of $4,500 in annual fees—placing Oscar’s revenue at around $72 million. With a valuation of $800 million, investors are putting a frothy 11x sales multiple on the company—signaling they view Oscar as a fast-growth technology play rather than a traditional insurance company. Think Tesla vs. Ford.
Despite the high valuation, Oscar’s founders acknowledged the company has a long way to go. "Oscar’s early successes have enabled us to raise the capital we need to support our current business," Kushner, Nazemi and Schlosser wrote on the company’s Tumblr page. "There is a common misconception in the technology industry that raising capital is correlated with success. Financing is not innovation, nor should it be celebrated. On the contrary, we have a tremendous amount of work to do." Oscar, which currently has about 60 employees, will use the new capital to hire talent and offer insurance in new regions.
Josh Kushner—whose VC fund has backed hot start ups like Spotify, Nasty Gal, ResearchGate, Codecademy, Warby Parker and Instagram—started Oscar in an attempt bring the efficiency, transparency and design of consumer Internet companies to the ugly, byzantine world of health insurance. With the goal of hacking Obamacare, Kushner built Oscar in-house with cofounders Kevin Nazemi (a former director at Microsoft’s health care division) and Mario Schlosser (a data junkie who worked previously at Bridgewater Associates and
Launched in October of 2013, Oscar offers a simple and user-friendly website with a Google Map-style doctor-finder and a search tool that lets you enter symptoms in plain English. Other features allow you to compare prices of commodity services like MRIs and make free phone calls to doctors any time of day.
It will take more than free calls to make a dent in the highly regulated (and highly lobbied) health insurance industry dominated by giants like United Health, Aetna and Humana. Receiving big money from some of the tech world’s biggest investors is a good first step.
Follow me on Twitter: @Stevenbertoni
