If you’re new here or got forwarded this post, hi, I’m Vadim. I lead a digital health growth fund called Mighty Middle Ventures and organize high impact digital health events workshops in NYC under the Healing Healthtech banner.

I’ve been sending out this monthly events newsletter for years and will continue to do so for a long time to come. If you’re organizing an event and would like it included in the next mailer, please submit to this form.

Please take a minute to subscribe or forward to someone new to NYC or digital health who you believe would get value.

Warmly,

Vadim

Subscribe now

🏠 Ours this season

📈 Health System CAO / CDO Dinner

• Wed, Nov 18, 6–8 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • A private roundtable for chief analytics and chief data officers from hospitals, medical practices and PE-backed provider groups. No pitches, no vendors, no investors; just data and operations people comparing notes. Co-organized with Niloo Steel, former Chief Analytics Officer at HSS.

🥩 Self-Funded Employer Healthcare Founders and Funders Dinner

• Thu, Dec 3, 6–9 PM · Tribeca, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Super proud of our F&F dinner outcomes lately.

    • A founder tripled his revenue in 3 months after a family office investor made a direct intro to a conference organizer.

    • A pre-seed startup met their now fractional CMO who also put in an angel check.

    • One of the attendees from the Medicare + Medicaid dinner landed 2 checks within 30 days of the event.

  • If you’re a founder building in employer sponsored care who hasn’t yet raised a priced round or an investor, we invite you to apply.

  • Format is 12 founders and 12 investors.

🎙️ Where I’m speaking

🫀 Rewriting Women’s Health

• Tue, Nov 10, 1–6 PM · Oppenheimer & Co., 666 3rd Ave · $35

  • An inaugural summit on cardiovascular, autoimmune and neurological conditions that hit women differently, hosted by Reba Auslander and Sandy Polu, PhD (Alysia Health). Panels, then startup pitches.

🧩 Mental Health Tech Summit NYC

• Wed, Nov 11, 9 AM–5:30 PM · St. John’s University Manhattan, 101 Astor Pl · Price on registration page

  • A conference for clinicians, researchers, founders and investors working where mental health care meets AI. I’m speaking.

⚡ This Week: Oct 29–Nov 1

🧠 HAS Neuro-Health Conference 2026

• Thu, Oct 29, 12–5 PM, reception until 7 · Brown Rudnick LLP, 7 Times Square · Free, approval required

  • The HAS Foundation’s interdisciplinary day on brain health, from discovery through investment. Panels and a fireside chat, then a cocktail reception for attendees.

🔥 Week of Nov 2

🌐 AI, Human Expertise, and the Future of the People’s Health

• Mon, Nov 2, 5–6 PM · 19 Washington Square North · Free

  • An NYU Abu Dhabi Institute discussion on where AI should and should not stand in for clinical judgment in population health. One hour, in person, near Washington Square Park.

🍾 NYC HealthTech, MedTech Networking & Pitch Event

• Tue, Nov 3, 7–10 PM · Flûte Champagne Bar, 205 W 54th St · $10–$34

  • A promoter mixer with an elevator-pitch format. The same night is listed three times on Eventbrite under Business Founders Group, The Founders Club and Business Minds Events; it is one event.

🔋 NeuroNYC presents Biohybrid BCIs with Science Corporation

• Wed, Nov 4, 5–7 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Science Corp co-founder and CSO Alan Mardinly and BCI medical director Murat Günel on dopaminergic biohybrid implants, then a Q&A led by Naveen Rao of Neurotech Futures. Chatham House rules. A good warm-up for NYBCI the next morning.

🛰️ SOSV Deep Tech Summit

• Wed–Fri, Nov 4–6 · Virtual · Free

  • SOSV’s three-day online summit with a VC-founder matchup and a co-founder search. Speakers include Jennifer Doudna, Daphne Koller (insitro) and Thomas Oxley (Synchron). The one virtual entry here, included because the matchup is worth a deep tech founder’s time.

🦾 Health2Tech NYC, MedTech Edition

• Thu, Nov 5, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address to registrants · Free, approval required, waitlist

  • Bailey Morgan, Audrey Guazzone, Maria Putilina and Alex Koshykov’s monthly, this time for device founders, bioengineers, clinicians and specialist investors, with live demo slots for physical products.

💼 NewYorkBIO’s 2026 Finance Networking Reception

• Thu, Nov 5, 5–7 PM · RSM, Times Square · Complimentary

  • Life sciences founders with the bankers, accountants and investors who finance them.

🖥️ NYC AI Demos #12: Health Tech

• Thu, Nov 5, 6–8 PM · The Refinery at Domino, 300 Kent Ave, Brooklyn · Free, approval required

  • Pensar’s demo night goes health: live demos from Headway, Oscar, Evvy, Norbert Health and Cleo Health, covering mental health, women’s health, patient monitoring and family care.

🔌 NYBCI26: The New York Brain-Computer Interface Symposium

• Thu–Fri, Nov 5–6 · New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave · Paid, price on registration page

  • Mount Sinai’s neurotech meeting, 8 AM–5 PM both days. A separately registered pre-event mixer with Neurotech Futures and NeuroNYC runs Wed, Nov 4, 6–9 PM, address to registrants.

☕ November Healthcare Coffee Meet Up

• Fri, Nov 6, 8:30–10 AM · Hastings Tea & Coffee, 235 Main St, White Plains · Free

  • Sixth Borough Health’s monthly coffee and co-working morning for Westchester digital health leaders.

🔥 Week of Nov 9

🎤 NewYorkBIO’s November 9th Mini-Pitch Day

• Mon, Nov 9, 1–6:30 PM · Cooley LLP, 55 Hudson Yards · Price on registration page

  • Early-stage life sciences companies pitch from 1 to 5, reception from 5 to 6:30.

🩺 Primary Care Forward: Driving New York’s Health Care Transformation

• Tue, Nov 10, 8:30 AM–12 PM · Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl · Free

  • City & State NY’s morning on the state’s primary care agenda. Policy staff, payers and provider groups in one room, which is where value-based primary care gets decided.

🏛️ HLNY’s Frank Camerano Memorial Dinner and Lecture: The AI-Enabled Health System

• Tue, Nov 10, 6–9 PM · St. John’s University, Gate 4, Utopia Pkwy, Queens · Price on registration page

  • Healthcare Leaders of New York asks what happens when intelligence is everywhere in a health system. Reception with Fred Sganga, the PAVE mentorship graduation, then the lecture. A room of hospital administrators.

💹 Healthcare PE Dinner: AI Value Creation in Medical Practice Operations

• Tue, Nov 10, 6:30–9:30 PM · Empire Steak House East, 151 E 50th St · Free, approval required

  • Confido Health and Angelini Ventures host healthcare PE funds, MSO and DSO executives, practice owners and clinician entrepreneurs on AI in scheduling, revenue cycle and care navigation. The question on the table is margin, not demos.

🥂 NY-IL Digital Health Community: End-of-Year Toast & Happy Hour

• Tue, Nov 10, 6:30–9 PM · Midtown, address to accepted guests · Free, approval required

  • A-Squared Ventures and Brown Rudnick’s year-end gathering for Israelis and allies building health software in New York. Rapid-fire startup pitches, and they match your 2027 “ask” to the right people before you arrive.

🎓 Tenth Annual Dean’s Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

• Wed, Nov 11, 12–5:30 PM · Griffis Faculty Club, 521 E 68th St · Registration on page

  • Weill Cornell’s tenth annual afternoon on faculty startups, opening with a fireside chat led by Dean Robert A. Harrington. One conversation features a radiopharmaceutical company that closed a $70M Series C in July.

🌷 Mount Sinai Fourth Annual Women’s Health Forum

• Wed, Nov 11, 7:45 AM–4:30 PM · New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave · $50

  • Mount Sinai OB/GYN on advances, new technology and prevention in women’s health. Clinician-led, so it is a read on what the buyers think matters.

🧮 AI Deciphered 2026

• Thu, Nov 12, 8 AM–6 PM · Convene, 117 W 46th St · $785, $710 each for groups of 3–5

  • MM+M, PRWeek and Campaign’s third annual day on AI for healthcare marketing, communications and advertising. Over 350 attended last year. The room for anyone selling to pharma brand teams.

🌶️ Pepper NYC: Healthcare Data Meetup 26Q4

• Thu, Nov 12, 6–7:30 PM · East Village, address on approval · $10, includes a drink, approval required

  • Pepper’s quarterly data subgroup. The $10 is, in their words, a commitment device.

🐉 The Rise of a Biotech Superpower

• Thu, Nov 12, 5–7:30 PM · Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, 115 E 54th St · Free to $157

  • Silicon Dragon Ventures on Hong Kong’s Northern Loop as a launch pad for international health startups, plus a book talk on China’s biotech boom.

🧪 RAMHT 2026 New York City

• Thu, Nov 12, 6–9 PM · 873 Broadway, Suite 410 · $20

  • The Frontier Psychiatrists on the future of brain medicine and who is changing mental health care.

🗳️ An UNMUTED Debate: Operation MAHA, Mission Accomplished?

• Thu, Nov 12, 6:30–8:30 PM · Sugar Mouse NYC, 47 3rd Ave · $20–$45, approval required

  • Has RFK Jr. made American medicine better or worse? A live debate on reproducibility, NIH priorities and federal health policy.

🫂 The Future of Social Health: Building Technology That Brings Us Together

• Fri, Nov 13, 4–6:30 PM · Fabrik, 12-16 Vestry St, Tribeca · Free

  • The Social Connection Collective and Fabrik, sponsored by Entrelacs, on technology that tells different kinds of loneliness apart. Social psychologist Hans Rocha IJzerman (Entrelacs) talks with Odile Beniflah about measuring disconnection, then a demo, rapid-fire founder pitches and hands-on time with the tools. HR and corporate wellness leaders, clinicians and investors in the room.

🏃 NYC November Run, Bio-Health Athletic Club

• Sat, Nov 14, 10–11:30 AM · Maine Monument, Columbus Circle · Free

  • A conversational-pace run for biotech and health tech people, then optional coffee at Le Pain Quotidien. All levels.

🔥 Week of Nov 16

🤖 AI to Advance Medicine: Dean’s Lecture Series

• Mon, Nov 16, 12–1 PM · Weill Greenberg Center, 1305 York Ave · Registration on page

  • Dan A. Landau, chair of Systems and Computational Biomedicine, on human somatic evolution, from new measurements to clinical impact, including what cell-free DNA can carry into the bloodstream.

🤝 NYC B2B: Healthcare Founders & Investors Meetup

• Mon, Nov 16, 5–7 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required, 21+

  • NYC B2B’s happy hour for B2B AI founders and investors, this edition focused on healthcare. No unregistered plus-ones.

⚖️ Confinement and Care: The Ethics of Health Care Behind Bars

• Mon, Nov 16, 5:30–7:45 PM · CUNY Graduate Center, Elebash Recital Hall, 365 5th Ave · Free

  • The Greenwall Foundation on the ethics of health care in jails and prisons. Relevant to anyone selling into correctional health.

🗽 PreAct Summit: 25 Years After 9/11

• Mon–Tue, Nov 16–17 · Convene, 555 Broadway · Time and price not on page

  • Mount Sinai’s two-day preparedness summit marking 25 years since 9/11. Registration runs through Cvent.

👶 Tech Table Talk: Career, Family & Life on Your Terms

• Tue, Nov 17, 6:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Baddies in Tech and Spring Fertility host an intimate dinner for women in tech on career, fertility and family planning. Fertility benefits founders get a room of the people they sell to.

🌳 Treehub AI x Health Pitch Night NYC

• Wed, Nov 18, 5:30–8 PM · Upper East Side, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Early-stage AI and health startups pitch to Mary Minno (Treehub) and Stephanie Coleman (Coleman Family Ventures). Treehub runs a six-month founder residency near Stanford; its winter cohort’s early deadline is Nov 20.

🫁 The Battle to Breathe: Film Screening and Q&A

• Wed, Nov 18, 5:30–7:30 PM · The New York Academy of Sciences, 115 Broadway, 8th Floor · Free, advance registration required

  • HHMI Tangled Bank Studios’ documentary on the decades of science behind Trikafta and cystic fibrosis, then a Q&A moderated by NYAS president Nicholas Dirks. A clean case study in how a drug gets from basic research to patients.

🔭 BVS and CURE Innovation Research Exhibit & Networking Event

• Thu, Nov 19, 4–6:30 PM · CURE, 345 Park Ave S · Free to $200

  • Biotech Vendor Services and CURE put research tools and services vendors in front of NYC life sciences teams.

🏦 The Art of emPOWERment: Ultimate FO Happy Hour

• Thu, Nov 19, 5 PM · Midtown West, address on RSVP · Price not on page

  • The 17th event in the Art of Empowerment and NyXXt series, a curated, closed room of family offices, founders and investors talking about where they put capital. Themes this time: sports, legacy, healthcare and AI.

⏳ Longevity Biotech Pitch Night, New York

• Thu, Nov 19, 5:30–9:30 PM · NYC, venue on RSVP · Free, approval required

  • The Longevity Investor Network and Lifespan Research Institute put longevity startups in front of investors, with presentations from Repair Biotechnologies and Unmask Therapeutics. Opening remarks from Keith Comito.

🧫 Night Lab II: Engineered Evolution

• Thu, Nov 19, 6–9 PM, doors 5:30 · 873 Broadway · Free

  • An evening on materials as a bridge between biology and computation, and what redesigning the body and mind might mean.

🛠️ Build @ Deerfield: Healthcare AI Hackathon, applications close

• Thu, Nov 19, 11:59 PM ET deadline · Apply online · Free to apply

  • Out-of-Pocket and Deerfield’s five-week hackathon for teams under $3M ARR. Selected teams get a $10K non-dilutive grant in December, build virtually, and finish in NYC on Jan 20–21, 2027 with $120K more in prizes. You can apply with nothing built yet.

📊 From Data to Action: The Brooklyn Health Equity Index Symposium

• Fri, Nov 20, 10 AM–2 PM · SUNY Downstate, 445 Lenox Rd, Brooklyn · Free

  • The Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health on its Brooklyn Health Equity Index, a tool that turns community data into accountability for health systems.

📏 Agent Evaluation Science NYC

• Fri, Nov 20, 9 AM–6 PM · Downtown Manhattan, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • A one-day symposium on how AI agents should be evaluated. Speakers include Hanna Wallach (Microsoft Research), Jason Weston (Meta, NYU) and Yoav Artzi (Cornell Tech), with Mass General among the committee affiliations. For health AI teams who have to prove their agents work.

🔥 Week of Nov 23

🍻 NYC BioTech, Life Sciences, Healthcare Industry Networking Event

• Mon, Nov 23, 7–10 PM · The Laurels, 231 2nd Ave · $10–$34

  • The same promoter network as Nov 3, again listed three times under different organizer names.

🍸 bconnected NYC: Biotech & Life Sciences Networking

• Fri, Nov 27, 6:30–8:30 PM · Vanderbilt Market, 230 Park Ave · $42–$82

  • Scientists, founders and investors from NYC biotech, in a food hall by Grand Central, the day after Thanksgiving.

🍂 December

🏙️ HITLAB Fall Innovators Summit

• Tue–Thu, Dec 1–3 · Microsoft Technology Center, 11 Times Square · Passes from $199 (Women’s Health Tech Symposium) to $2,199 (VIP)

  • Three days on health system leadership, analytics and patient experience, with a women’s health tech symposium on Day 2.

🚀 Health2Tech NYC, December

• Tue, Dec 1, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address to registrants · Free, approval required, waitlist

  • Bailey Morgan and Alex Koshykov’s monthly. Speaker not yet announced.

🍽️ AI in Healthcare: From Pilot to Production, An Executive Dinner

• Tue, Dec 1, 6:30–9 PM · Kyma, 15 W 18th St · Free, approval required

  • Will Naylor (Sentro IT) seats health system and payer CIOs across from the CTOs building for them: build versus buy, Epic integration, pilot purgatory. Moved again, from Nov 17.

🎄 Pepper Holiday Dinner

• Wed, Dec 2, 6–9 PM · Amigo AI office, Flatiron · $54–$250, approval required

  • Pepper’s end-of-year gathering: food, drinks and a short slideshow looking back and ahead. Mostly standing.

🥼 MED Connect Healthcare

• Wed, Dec 2, 6–10 PM · Virgin Hotels New York City, 1227 Broadway · $86–$97

  • A networking night for doctors and medical professionals, run by RED AWARDS. Useful if you are recruiting clinicians or advisors.

🎅 One Health Collective: Healthcare Social (Holiday Edition)

• Thu, Dec 3, 6–9 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • OHC’s quarterly ecosystem night, about 250 clinicians, health system operators, startups, pharma, payers and investors from the tri-state area. Holiday sweaters encouraged.

💻 Health AI Show-and-Tell

• Tue, Dec 8, 5:30–8:30 PM · Midtown, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Bring a prototype, workflow or failed experiment and show it in about three minutes. MC’d by Brittany Sigler with Pepper NYC; pizza from Comma Capital. Laptops required, presenters only.

🧘 Arthur Ashe Institute 34th Anniversary and Mental Health Symposium

• Wed, Dec 9, 9:30 AM–4 PM · 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn · Free

  • Healthcare professionals, students and community leaders on mental health in Brooklyn.

🔔 NewYorkBIO’s 2026 Holiday Reception

• Thu, Dec 10, 6:30–8:30 PM · New York Stock Exchange · Members $75 early bird, $99 after; non-members $250 / $350; early bird ends Nov 4

  • The state life sciences association’s year-end party on the NYSE floor.

❄️ Innovation Triangle: West Harlem Holiday Party

• Thu, Dec 10, 4–7 PM · West Harlem, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • The third annual party from The Janus Property Company, Harlem Biospace and the CUNY ASRC Center for Advanced Technology. Uptown’s science founders and the people who back them.

💃 NeuroBall 2026

• December, date not yet announced · NYC venue to come · Price not on page

  • NeuroNYC’s first neurotech gala for founders, researchers and investors. Watch the page for the date.

If you’re new here or got forwarded this post, hi, I’m Vadim. I lead a digital health growth fund called Mighty Middle Ventures and organize high impact digital health events workshops in NYC under the Healing Healthtech banner.

I’ve been sending out this monthly events newsletter for years and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Please take a minute to subscribe or forward to someone new to NYC or digital health who you believe would get value.

Subscribe now

📈 How to Raise Your First Priced Round

• Tue, Oct 27, 1–5 PM · NoMad, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Raising your first priced round is a completely different beast than stacking SAFEs. I’ve come together with Qapita, Gunderson Dettmer, and Mercury to create a half-day bootcamp that will teach you everything you need to know.

  • Event is free and open to the public. Although my jam is healthcare, the topics apply to founders raising in any domain.

  • Four sessions in one afternoon: data room and cap table hygiene, finding and closing your first institutional investor, term sheet language, then a VC panel with Mat Kaliski (Acronym Venture Capital), Brian Laung Aoaeh (REFASHIOND Ventures) and Owen Willis (Opal Ventures). Presented with Qapita, Gunderson Dettmer and Mercury. Ten founders get picked to stay for a private session afterward.

⚡ This Week: Oct 8–11

🤖 Agents on Call: Live AI Agents in Healthcare Ops

• Thu, Oct 8, 6–8 PM · NYC, address after registration · Free, approval required

  • Pepper’s AI Week session on agents doing prior auth, intake, scheduling, eligibility and denials work in production. Operators who have shipped, not demo reels.

🍁 Autumn After Hours

• Thu, Oct 8, 6–9 PM · Park Place, 1218 Jericho Tpke, New Hyde Park · $35

  • nycthehive’s evening for clinicians, administrators and health system leaders, just over the Queens line on Long Island. Hosts include Tiffany Lam, Alex Tang, Gurdeep S Sareen, Carlos Navas and Dr. Silpa Saladi. A room of the people who run hospitals and practices, not other founders.

🌍 Global Health Congress 2026

• Fri–Sun, Oct 9–11 · The Yale Club, 50 Vanderbilt Ave · $800 single day, $1,500 conference, $2,500 VIP

  • Clinical leaders, pharma and payer executives and investors under one roof for a weekend. Tickets support a nonprofit.

🔥 Week of Oct 12

📊 Quantified Self NYC: Show&Tell and Gary Wolf Book Launch

• Tue, Oct 13, 6:30–8:30 PM · Civic Hall, address to registrants · $15–$48, capped at 60

  • Quantified Self’s first NYC Show&Tell since March 2017: self-tracking talks, tool demos, and the launch of Gary Wolf’s book The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe. Hosted by Steven Dean. Wearables and digital biomarker founders get a room of the people who track themselves most seriously.

🔗 2026 Healthix Conference

• Wed, Oct 14, 8:30 AM–4:30 PM · Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl · $39–$402 on Eventbrite

  • New York’s largest health information exchange, run with City & State NY. Interoperability vendors meet the people who steward the data and buy the integrations.

⏳ New York Health Innovation Night: Is Longevity Becoming Real Medicine?

• Wed, Oct 14, 5:30–8:30 PM · The Globe Bar, 158 E 23rd St · $22–$27 on Eventbrite

  • Hosted by Alex Fair (MedStartr), James Hueston (AgeTech NYC) and Steven Wardell (DigitalHealth InvestorTalk). Hillary Lin, MD, CEO of CareCore, speaks. Longevity founders and the investors deciding whether it is a category.

🦠 Gut Feelings: A Panel on the Gut-Brain Connection

• Wed, Oct 14, 6–8 PM · Parsley Health, 126 5th Ave, 2nd Floor · Free

  • Our Kind Therapy and Parsley Health put a functional medicine clinician and a therapist on one panel. Useful for anyone building integrated behavioral and physical care.

🎯 Great Products Don’t Speak for Themselves: A Fireside with Turquoise Leadership

• Wed, Oct 14, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required, sold out with a waitlist

  • Women in Healthtech hosts Turquoise Health’s VP of Product, Ariela Simerman, and VP of Marketing, Faye Leong, on running product vision and its story at the same time at a fast-growing company. Organized by Oriana Fuentes and Sydney Clark. The page says waitlisted guests usually get in.

💉 An UNMUTED Debate: Peptide Freedom vs Proof First

• Thu, Oct 15, doors 6:30 PM, debate at 7, ends 8:30 · NYC, address to registrants · $20–$45

  • Should consumers be able to buy peptides, exosomes and other regenerative therapies before trials prove they work? Julius Ritter (California Peptide Club) argues for access plus outcome data; Dr. Tiana Woolridge (Hospital for Special Surgery sports medicine) argues for evidence first. Hosted by UNMUTED with Pepper NYC and the Peptide Club of NYC.

🔬 Nucleate NY Activator Info Session

• Thu, Oct 15, 12–1:30 PM · NYU Langone, address on approval · Free, approval required, lunch served

  • For postdocs, PhDs, MDs, MBAs and JDs thinking about a life sciences company. Covers Nucleate’s Activator program and NYU’s Technology Opportunities & Ventures office.

🧬 9th Annual NY Metro Life Science Symposium

• Thu, Oct 15, 8 AM–3:30 PM, reception after · Union League Club, 38 E 37th St · $399 members and academics, $499 standard

  • Builds Bio+’s regional life sciences day. Therapeutics and diagnostics founders, their investors and the service providers around them.

🍷 Fall 2026 Healthcare Happy Hour

• Thu, Oct 15, 5:30–7:30 PM · Moquette, 11 Boniface Cir, Scarsdale · Free

  • Sixth Borough Health’s first quarterly happy hour for Westchester digital health leaders. Walkable from the Scarsdale station.

🩺 Healthcare Expertise, Scaled

• Thu, Oct 15, 6–8 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Forum Ventures and One Health Collective on turning clinical and operator expertise into B2B companies. Panel: Alice Bator Krenitski (Forum Ventures), Margaret Davidson (Company Ventures), Ethan Fischer (Nourish), Greg Fitzgerald (Doctronic) and Nima Roohi Sefidmazgi (Blooming Health).

🤰 It Takes Two: Preconception, Vitamins & Fertility

• Thu, Oct 15, 6–8 PM · Materna Health, 130 7th Ave S · Free

  • Materna’s clinical team and Bird&Be on preconception testing and male fertility. Patient-facing, so it is a chance to watch how a maternal health practice talks to its customers.

🌎 Ugly Talk: Latino Founders Building Between Latin America and the U.S.

• Thu, Oct 15, 6:30–8:30 PM · Venue not on page · $10–$15, approval required

  • Founder-CEOs including Christopher Saravia of Carebox on the false starts behind building across two health and consumer markets.

🏅 Medical Innovation Olympics: Live Finals

• Fri, Oct 16 · Rockefeller Center, plus hybrid on Swapcard · Time and price not on page

  • Finals of a global early-stage health innovation competition that held qualifying rounds in June and September.

🌸 Claude & Longevity Health

• Sun, Oct 18, 2–5 PM · Everything’s Jake, 54 E 13th St · Free, approval required

  • A World Menopause Day gathering on femtech, midlife care gaps and where language models help or hurt clinical communication.

🔥 Week of Oct 19

🩻 i2i Workshop: from Innovation to Implementation in Imaging

• Wed–Thu, Oct 21–22 · NYU Langone Health, 550 1st Ave · Free to $250

  • NYU’s Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research on getting new imaging methods into clinical use. Relevant to anyone selling AI or device tools into radiology.

🧠 Make-With-Data Hackathon: Mapping Mental Health

• Wed, Oct 21, 4:30–7:30 PM · Pier 57, 25 11th Ave · Free

  • A three-hour data hackathon on mental health. Good for meeting technical people interested in behavioral health problems.

🧪 ASRC CAT x HarlemBiospace x J.P. Morgan Innovators Social

• Wed, Oct 21, 4–6 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Monthly science founder social. This edition features Dr. Norma Padrón of J.P. Morgan’s Innovation Economy team.

🥂 NewYorkBIO Life Sciences Innovators Mixer

• Wed, Oct 21, 4:30–7 PM · Deloitte, 330 Hudson St · Price not on page, approval required

  • NewYorkBIO and Deloitte. Members get priority, so apply early if you are not one.

🦿 Robots That Care Summit

• Wed, Oct 21, 6–9 PM · Brooklyn Navy Yard, address to registrants · Free

  • The first of a quarterly series on care robots taking protocol-driven clinical work under licensed staff. Alexandre Winter (Norbert Health), Matthieu Masselin (Wandercraft) and Hyo Won Lee, Ph.D. (ARPA-H) speak, then a panel moderated by Ahmad Gaber and live robot demos. Co-hosted with Newlab Brooklyn.

🏛️ HLNY’s 10th Annual Mini Congress

• Thu, Oct 22, 8 AM–4 PM · New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave · $53–$263

  • Healthcare Leaders of New York’s annual day on policy, people and payments. A room of health system administrators, which is where most digital health sales start.

🚀 Health2Tech NYC, October

• Thu, Oct 22, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address to registrants · Free, approval required

  • Bailey Morgan and Alex Koshykov’s monthly. Marissa Fayer, CEO of DeepLook Medical, and Bailey Morgan talk “Women’s Health: Undervalued to Unavoidable,” then networking until 8:30.

🥼 MED Connect Healthcare

• Thu, Oct 22, 6–10 PM · Virgin Hotels New York City, 1227 Broadway · $33–$43

  • A networking night for doctors and medical professionals, run by RED AWARDS. Useful if you are recruiting clinicians or advisors.

🔥 Week of Oct 26

💊 BioFuture

• Tue, Oct 27 · 345 Park Ave S · Time and price not on page

  • Demy-Colton’s convening across biopharma, digital medicine and AI, with partnering meetings and a seed showcase.

🏥 Skilled Nursing Executive Outlook

• Wed, Oct 28, 8 AM–3 PM · DoubleTree LaGuardia, 104-04 Ditmars Blvd, Queens · From $215

  • The New York State Health Facilities Association’s strategy day for SNF operators. Post-acute founders get the operators’ own view of their constraints.

📡 ConV2X: Smart Technology Transformation in Healthcare

• Thu–Fri, Oct 29–30 · ILR Conference Center, 570 Lexington Ave, 12th Floor · Price not on page

  • Telehealth and Medicine Today’s symposium on AI and telehealth. Clinicians, vendors and journal editors.

⚖️ Responsible Tech Summit 2026

• Thu, Oct 29, 10 AM–7:30 PM · The Times Center, 242 W 41st St · $150–$700 in person, free virtual, approval required

  • All Tech Is Human’s curated summit for 375 people on AI accountability. Useful for health AI teams thinking about governance before regulators make them.

🍸 bconnected NYC: Biotech & Life Sciences Networking

• Thu, Oct 29, 6:30–8:30 PM · Vanderbilt Market, 230 Park Ave · $42–$82

  • Scientists, founders and investors from NYC biotech, in a food hall by Grand Central.

🍂 November

🦾 Health2Tech NYC, November

• Thu, Nov 5, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address to registrants · Free, approval required

  • A medtech edition. Priority goes to device founders, bioengineers, clinicians and specialist investors, and there are live demo slots for physical products.

💼 NewYorkBIO’s 2026 Finance Networking Reception

• Thu, Nov 5, 5–7 PM · RSM, 151 W 42nd St, 19th Floor · Complimentary

  • Life sciences founders with the bankers, accountants and investors who finance them.

🔌 NYBCI26: The New York Brain-Computer Interface Symposium

• Thu–Fri, Nov 5–6 · New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave · Paid, price on nybci.com

  • Mount Sinai BioDesign’s neurotech meeting. nybci.com lists 8 AM–5 PM both days, a Nov 5 evening reception and a Nov 4 pre-event mixer.

☕ November Healthcare Coffee Meet Up

• Fri, Nov 6, 8:30–10 AM · Hastings Tea & Coffee, 235 Main St, White Plains · Free

  • Sixth Borough Health’s monthly coffee and co-working morning for Westchester digital health people.

🎤 NewYorkBIO’s November 9th Mini-Pitch Day

• Mon, Nov 9, 1–6:30 PM · Cooley LLP, 55 Hudson Yards · Price not on page

  • Early-stage life sciences companies pitch from 1 to 5, reception after. This edition is in Manhattan; NewYorkBIO’s September pitch day was in Buffalo.

🫀 Rewriting Women’s Health

• Tue, Nov 10, 1–6 PM · Oppenheimer & Co., 666 3rd Ave · $35

  • An inaugural summit on cardiovascular, autoimmune and neurological conditions that hit women differently, hosted by Reba Auslander and Sandy Polu, PhD (Alysia Health). Panels with Suzanne Steinbaum, MD (Heart-Tech Health) and Shruti Naik, PhD (Colton Center for Autoimmunity), plus startup pitches with feedback from investors including me.

🌳 Treehub Pitch Night NYC

• Wed, Nov 18, 5:30–9 PM · Upper East Side, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Early-stage AI and health startups pitch to Treehub, a Silicon Valley investor that runs a six-month founder residency in Los Altos, with Coleman Family Ventures. Pitches at 6, dinner provided at 7. Pitch slots are assigned separately from registration; judges not yet announced.

🍽️ AI in Healthcare: From Pilot to Production, An Executive Dinner

• Tue, Nov 17, 6:30–9 PM · Kyma, 15 W 18th St · Free, approval required, 12 seats

  • Will Naylor (Sentro IT) seats health system and payer CIOs across from the CTOs building for them. Build versus buy, Epic integration, pilot purgatory. Off the record.

Trying a new format this month. Two amazing bits of digital health builder alpha for you.

1. How to Raise a Priced Round Panel / Workshop

   1. 

   2. Raising a priced round is a completely different beast than stacking SAFEs. I’ve condensed some of the highest value workshops that we ran in my former accelerator into a single afternoon sponsored by Mercury, Qapita, and Gunderson Dettmer.

      1. Session 1: Data room contents and hygiene.

      2. Session 2: Negotiating Terms in Your First Priced Raise

      3. Session 3: How to find, pitch, and close priced round investors.

      4. Session 4: First Round Panel with NYC VC Partners.

         1. Owen Willis - GP Opal Ventures / VP Primary Venture Partners

         2. Brian Launch Aoaeh, GP REFASHIOND Ventures

         3. Mat Kaliski, Partner Acronym Venture Capital

      5. Event will be the afternoon of 10/27 in Gunderson Dettmer’s NOMAD, NYC Office.

      6. Register Here or forward to a founder you know raising in the next 12 months. The content will be industry agnostic - not just healthcare.

2. How to Sell into Medicare Medicaid

   1. 

   2. Selling national scale contracts into managed Medicare and Medicaid is something that exceptionally few founders have done ever, and far fewer have done well.

   3. Two weeks ago, I had a breathtaking conversation that was my "Only New Mistakes" thesis in action. A deeply experienced operators who has built and operated billions of dollars of programs in both Medicare and Medicaid sat with one of my portfolio founders and laid out his framework for designing, pitching, and executing on care programs at national scale.

   4. With both of their permission, I’ve stripped out company identifiers and shared the conversation here.

The complete October / November NYC events calendar will go out Thursday AM.

Thanks everyone!

-Vadim

Subscribe now

The Healing Healthtech Mini Accelerator - The Consult - was absolutely incredible. Thrilled to be doing the next ones with Scrub Capital in SF in December and Paulo Machado in Chicago this Spring. I’ll have application links shortly.

I’m going to be experimenting with a bunch of new event formats this year. My theme overall is to distill the most interesting and highest value elements of accelerator programs and community events into high impact, deeply engaging meetups.

If you’ve got an event format that you’d like to experiment with or are interested in volunteering, providing space, or sponsoring a get-together, reach out to me via DM here on Substack.

I’m not the only one cooking though. NYC digital health peers communities Pepper, Health2Tech, OneHealth and many others have a bunch going on these next two months. 40 events total.

-Vadim

🏠 My September and October events

🎧 Just Listen: A zero talking event

• Thu, Sep 10, 6–8 PM · Dumbo, Brooklyn · Free, 20 seats by lottery

  • After two days of intense communication at The Consult, my next event will be the exact opposite.

  • My passion project this summer was to restore a pair of vintage large format Urei studio monitors (big loudspeakers used in recording studio)

  • October 10th, I’ll be setting them up in an acoustically treated space with comfy couches.

  • Zero talking, zero screens allowed.

  • Two surprise albums will be played end-to-end.

  • Bring takeout, bring a book, or just sit.

  • Twenty attendees will be drawn at random from applicants.

🍷 Medicare + Medicaid Founders and Funders Dinner

• Thu, Oct 1, 6–9 PM · Personal penthouse of a 3x IPO’d super-angel, NYC · Approval required

  • Building for the social safety net brings its own challenges, economic, operational, and clinical realities and struggles. Connect with founders and investors building and thriving in that space.

  • Twelve founders and twelve investors will be accepted to participate.

  • Part one will be a mixer-style dinner with a gorgeous view of the city.

  • Part two will bid farewell to the investors and be a group office hours for founders led by an exited YC CEO where we help one another work through our respective hurdles.

  • The founder side is open to any company that has not yet raised a priced seed and serves a predominantly Medicare or Medicaid population.

  • Investor side is open to VCs and angels who have written at least two checks into Medicare or Medicaid-focused value props in the past 24 months.

🗣️ Negotiation for Non-Lawyers

• Thu, Oct 15, Cct 22, 6–9 PM · Tribeca NYC · capped at 25 participants

  • Learn strategies and tactics to become effective at driving negotiations

  • A two-part workshop on the skill most operators assume is innate. I’m proof that it can in-fact be learned.

  • Each evening runs two short didactic sections and two peer role-plays built from real digital health and venture scenarios.

  • I’ve spent years developing and teaching this workshop and have previously taught it to rave reviews at NYU, the SOSA International Accelerator, and many others.

  • This will sell out quickly.

  • $350 per attendee

📑 Priced Round Bootcamp

• Tue, Oct 27, 1–5 PM · Flatiron, NYC · Approval required

  • Raising your first priced round is a completely different beast than stacking SAFEs.

  • Four part afternoon workshop will cover

    • Cap table and data room hygiene

    • Finding, pitching, and closing your first institutional investors

    • Words that matter in a term sheet and deal docs

    • Panel / Q&A with 4 active VCs working at priced seed

  • This workshop / bootcamp is a distillation of the best parts of multiple different programs I’ve run previously to support founders’ first institutional raise.

  • This one is domain agnostic - not just digital health.

Peer community events in NYC Digital Health

⚡ This Week: Sept 1–6

☕ September Healthcare Coffee Meet Up

• Fri, Sep 4, 8:30–10 AM · Laughing Horse Coffee & Tea Co., Harrison · Free

  • One for those in Westchester!

  • Sixth Borough Health’s monthly coffee and co-working session for digital health leaders, run by Julia Bernstein, COO of Brightside Health.

🔥 Week of Sept 7

🍽️ Seed2Table: Pitch + Dinner for Health Tech & AI Investors

• Tue, Sep 8, 5–10 PM · NYC, address on approval · Ticketed, tiers vary

  • A seated pitch dinner with Tower Capital, presented by KPMG.

🏦 The Ecosystem Behind Innovation: The Neion Bio Journey

• Tue, Sep 8, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • The Ford Center Incubator at Rockefeller University with J.P. Morgan, tracing Neion Bio from stealth to a Series A.

  • The founders, their Caffeinated Capital investor, and Rockefeller leadership on the table, moderated by J.P. Morgan.

  • Networking after.

🧬 From Bench to Boardroom: James Rothman on Cellular Logistics

• Tue, Sep 8, 6 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • SOSV brings the Nobel laureate whose vesicle-trafficking work underwrites a generation of nanobiology companies.

  • Conversation with Sean O’Sullivan on what actually converts bench science into a fundable company.

🩺 Health2Tech NYC

• Thu, Sep 10, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Bailey Morgan, Perrin Joel, and Alex Koshykov’s recurring digital health evening.

  • Investor Panel will include Margette Davidson of Company Ventures, Michelle Wang of Wavemaker 360, and Jesse Gentil of Health Enterprise Partners

🌶️ Pepper NYC Healthtech Founder Meetup

• Thu, Sep 10, 6–8:30 PM · Tap Haus 33, 14 E 33rd St · Free, approval required

  • Founders and operators building in healthcare, drinks and bites covered by Lemma.

🏃 NYC September Run: Bio-Health Athletic Club

• Sat, Sep 12, 10–11:30 AM · Pier 46, Hudson River Park · Free

  • Conversational pace, biotech and healthtech talk, drinks after. All levels.

🔥 Week of Sept 14

🌇 Health Tech Founders & Funders: Rooftop Happy Hour

• Tue, Sep 15, 5–7 PM · NYC, address on approval · Free, approval required

  • Distributed Ventures, Inflect Capital, and Wilson Sonsini putting founders and funders on a roof together.

  • Inflect writes $250K to $2.5M and is backed by a physician group of 8,000 clinicians across 500 sites;

  • Distributed does seed and Series A across health, wealth, and insurance.

  • Curated guest list rather than open door.

⚛️ No Free Lunches: Why Physics Still Matters in an AI-Driven Drug Discovery World

• Wed, Sep 16, 6–8 PM · NYU Silver Building, Rm 32, Waverly Pl · Free

  • The New York Area Group for Informatics and Modeling on where physics-based methods still beat learned ones in drug discovery. Technical room.

🗽 Digital Health NY Summit

• Thu, Sep 17 · Quorum by Convene, 1221 Sixth Ave · Registration by application

  • DHNY’s annual summit.

⚓ Ship It: A Healthcare Software Engineering Conference

• Thu–Fri, Sep 17–18 · NYC · $950, invite-only

  • Out-Of-Pocket’s engineering summit.

  • 80 curated guests,

  • 12 workshops,

  • hands-on sessions on FHIR, HIPAA, and AI. Debates and breakouts rather than hour-long keynotes.

🧠 Materna Mind Series: Managing Anxiety in Pregnancy and Postpartum

• Thu, Sep 17, 6:30–8 PM · Materna Health, 130 7th Ave S

  • Lillian Rishty, LCSW, PMH-C on the 3am spiral and the worry that asking too many questions makes you a difficult patient.

🌍 Project Dandelion: Health is the Headline

• Sun, Sep 20, 2 PM · NYC, address on approval · Approval required

  • Women, climate, and health as one problem rather than three.

  • Opens the Climate Week stretch.

🔥 Week of Sept 21

Climate Week NYC runs Sep 20–27.

🎓 From Lab to Market: Adaptation and Resilience Tech from Universities

• Tue, Sep 22, 8:30 AM–12 PM · Cisco Systems, 1 Penn Plaza · Approval required

  • Tailwind Futures on commercializing university-originated research.

🏛️ The State of Play: How Global Governance Reform Will Reshape Health and Climate

• Tue, Sep 22, 10:30 AM–12 PM · The Sidebar, 134 W 29th St · Private event

  • The global health architecture is currently undergoing significant institutional change, with several parallel reform initiatives underway, including UN80, the WHO Joint Process, and other financing processes, set against a broader backdrop of shifting multilateralism and geopolitics.

  • This is the session that maps them against each other.

🚑 When the Road to Healthcare Is the Barrier

• Tue, Sep 22, 11 AM–12:30 PM · The Sidebar, 134 W 29th St

  • The event looks at SDOH elements of distance, travel time, and unreliable transport as the determinant nobody funds towards healthcare outcomes.

  • Emergency obstetric care and immunization completion will be the worked examples for the conversation.

⚖️ States Under Pressure: Resisting Federal Climate Rollbacks

• Tue, Sep 22, 11:30 AM–12:30 PM · 113 W 60th St · Free

  • ​As the federal government moves to accelerate fossil fuel infrastructure and roll back environmental protections, states, local governments, Tribal nations, and communities are confronting a fundamental question:

  • Who gets to decide what is built, where it is built, and whose health and environment are put at risk?

🌱 From Climate Commitments to Health Impact

• Tue, Sep 22, 4:30–6 PM · The Sidebar, 134 W 29th St

  • The implementation gap between a pledge and a health system that can absorb it.

  • Panel representing academia, government, philanthropy, and industry discuss the path forward.

💪 The Core Truth: Movement, Pelvic Floor, and Birth Prep

• Tue, Sep 22, 6:30–8 PM · Materna Health, 130 7th Ave S

  • Jenny Hoofnagle of Freya Movement Studio on diastasis, prenatal strength, and postpartum recovery.

📰 Newsweek AI Health Summit

• Wed, Sep 23, 7 AM · Newsweek HQ, 1 WTC 72nd Fl · $799

  • Jennifer Cunningham and Alexis Kayser convene hospital leaders on moving AI past isolated pilots.

⚡ AEG NYC Health, Energy & Resilience Action Challenge

• Wed, Sep 23, 11:30 AM–4:30 PM · WSP USA, 250 W 34th St · $295–$2,544, some passes free

  • Advanced Energy Group’s working session with WSP and the NYC Department of Health’s Air Quality program.

  • Gov and nonprofit passes are comped.

🌾 Scaling Resilience through Whole-System Innovation

• Wed, Sep 23, 2–3:15 PM · NYC, address on approval · Approval required

  • REGEN HOUSE on regenerative agriculture inside planetary boundaries.

  • Food-as-health adjacent.

🔀 Shifting Power in Climate and Health

• Thu, Sep 24, 8:30–10 AM · The Sidebar, 134 W 29th St

  • A small working conversation on who decides what gets funded when the expertise sits in the countries bearing the risk and the capital does not.

👵 HITLAB September Digital Health Symposium

• Thu, Sep 24, 11 AM–2 PM · NYC · Registration open

  • Healthy aging, longevity, and caregiver technology.

  • RPM and AI applied to the population that actually generates the spend.

🧘 Mental Health in a Disastrous Climate

• Fri, Sep 25, 11 AM–1 PM · The Climate Imaginarium, Governors Island · $10 suggested, nobody turned away

  • Climate Cafe NYC on converting climate grief into action. Governors Island in late September is its own argument.

🔥 Week of Sept 28

🧫 NewYorkBIO Innovation Summit

• Wed, Sep 30, 8:30 AM–6 PM · Cure, 345 Park Ave S · $99-$800

  • New York’s life science advocacy body running its annual innovation day at Deerfield’s Cure.

🩻 Klinikum+: How AI is Reshaping Medicine

• Wed, Sep 30, 7–9 PM · Manhattan, exact venue to registrants

  • Part two of the Klinikum+ series.

🍂 October

🫂 The Check In: Men’s Mental Health

• Thu, Oct 1, 7–9 PM · Harlem, address on registration

  • Dre Steinberg’s monthly peer circle. Every first Wednesday normally; this one runs Thursday.

👶 The Future of Fertility

• Tue, Oct 6, 9 AM–12 PM · 115 Broadway, FiDi

  • Five experts on where fertility care, law, and coverage are heading. Hosted by IVF Law Group, so the regulatory angle will be sharper than the usual femtech panel.

🧪 Biolabs@NYU Langone Investor & Innovator Exchange

• Tue, Oct 6, 12–7 PM · Hunters Point, Queens, address on approval · Approval required

  • Seven hours of founders and investors in the room at NYU Langone’s incubator. The Sep 15 pitch practice session feeds this.

🍴 AI in Healthcare: From Pilot to Production, An Executive Dinner

• Wed, Oct 7, 6:30–9 PM · Kyma, 15 W 18th St · Free, approval required, 12 seats

  • CIOs and technology executives from regional health systems and payers seated with the CTOs building for them. No slides, no recording, off the record. Will Naylor of Sentro IT hosts.

🤝 Agents on Call: Live AI Agents in Healthcare Ops

• Thu, Oct 8 · Venue TBD · #AIWeekNY

  • Prior auths, intake, and the rest of the operational surface where agents either work or quietly don’t.

🌐 Global Health Congress 2026

• Fri–Sun, Oct 9–11 · The Yale Club, 50 Vanderbilt Ave · $1,500–$2,500

  • Three days of clinical leaders, innovators, and capital. Priced for institutions.

🔗 2026 Healthix Conference

• Wed, Oct 14, 8:30 AM–4:30 PM · Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl · Ticketed

  • City & State NY convenes New York’s largest health information exchange. If your product touches interoperability in this state, the buyers and the data stewards are both here.

🦠 Gut Feelings: A Panel on the Mind-Body-Belly Connection

• Wed, Oct 14, 6–8 PM · Parsley Health, 126 5th Ave · Registration required

  • Our Kind Therapy and Parsley on the gut-brain axis and the patient whose labs come back normal.

🔬 NY Metro Builds Bio+ 9th Annual Symposium for Life Science Innovation

• Thu, Oct 15, 8 AM · Union League Club, 38 E 37th St · $349

  • The tri-state life sciences economy, including eastern New Jersey and southern Connecticut, treated as one market. Science, real estate, and capital in the same program.

🍸 Fall 2026 Healthcare Happy Hour

• Thu, Oct 15, 5:30–7:30 PM · Moquette, Scarsdale · Free

  • Sixth Borough Health’s first quarterly happy hour. Julia Bernstein again, this time north of the city.

🏆 Medical Innovation Olympics: Live Finals

• Fri, Oct 16 · Rockefeller Center · Attendee $500 early, $650 regular

  • Finals and closing ceremony for the competition whose Sep 18 trials are listed above. Hybrid.

♀️ Claude & Longevity Health

• Sun, Oct 18, 2–5 PM · Everything’s Jake, 54 E 13th St · Free

  • World Menopause Day, framed around femtech, AI, and longevity as a women’s health question. 31 going.

🩺 Health2Tech NYC

• Thu, Oct 22, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC, address to registrants · Free, approval required

🏥 Smart Technology Transformation in Healthcare (ConV2X)

• Thu, Oct 29, 9 AM · NYC Conference Center at Cornell ILR, 570 Lexington Ave

  • Partners in Digital Health’s summit on smart tech, clinical practice, and policy.

⚙️ Responsible Tech Summit 2026: From Principles to Power

• Thu, Oct 29, 10:30 AM–7:30 PM · The Times Center, 242 W 41st St · $150–$300, approval required

  • All Tech Is Human on moving AI accountability from principle to enforcement. University and nonprofit rate available.

Fifteen NYC events between this weekend and the end of August: happy hours, hackathons, summits, and a picnic. July 30 triple-books you: a mental health summit at NYU Langone by day, then the Central Park picnic or the Out-Of-Pocket happy hour by night.

Subscribe for a twice-monthly dispatch of field guides for healthtech builders, and forward this to anyone who just moved to the city.

Warmly, Vadim

Only new mistakes.

📣 Mine First

🩺 The Consult - Free Mentorship for NYC Healthtech Founders

🗓️ Wed–Thu, Aug 26–27 · NYC · ⏰ Applications due July 30

Intensive mini accelerator for digital health founders who have raised less than $250k and done less than $500k of revenue.

Mentors are some of the best digital health operators and investors in NYC.

Two afternoons of 1:1 mentorship for 30 curated NYC healthcare founders: 18 mentor sessions per team, 40+ operator mentors, six tactical workshops, happy hours to close each day. $0 cost, sponsored by Rho.

🎙️ Right to Exist, Ep. 2: Otto Sipe of Photon Health

30 Minute listen.

Otto Sipe and Photon are building and executing against an incumbent with >95% market share.

Otto watched SureScripts’ closed network block the product his Thirty Madison team wanted to build, so Photon inverts the rail: the prescription goes to the patient, who picks the pharmacy with price, stock, and delivery in view.

In the interview we dig into the strategies and tactics through which Otto found their wedge, moat, and drove their Right to Exist.

📗 How to Own Risk Without Getting Pwned (Part 2 of 2)

20 Minute Read. Part II of my essay and recipe for owning risk.

Part I followed Kinetic Insurance and its story arc living the VC healthtech dream. Kinetic creating and now dominates a new category where it owns risk and drives economic and human outcomes.

Part II uses that framework to look at how 4 very different companies found commercial success with upside and downside risk in pregnancy (Fetal Pillow, Maven Clinic, Pomelo Care, Ouma + MedArrive),

Part II closes with a nine-question diligence memo for scoring any healthtech company in thirty minutes.

⚡ This Week: July 19–24

🎛️ Sound and Movement Hackathon

Sun, Jul 19 · Fractal Tech, Brooklyn · Free

Music Community Lab’s day of building music through gesture and dance: artist talks, workshop, open presentations at 7:30 PM.

🎤 Pitch Your Way Into the Hacker House

Mon, Jul 20 · Brown Rudnick, NYC · Free, pitching invite-only

~5 curated pre-seed frontier-AI founders, 3-minute pitches with live VC Q&A, and a fast track into the OnlyExit Seattle hacker house cohort.

💼 My Worst Day as a CFO

Tue, Jul 21 · NYC · Finance leaders only

The NY Tech CFO Group’s panel with the CFOs of Public.com and Lerer Hippeau on the misses and crises that shaped how they lead. Four spots remained when I saved the page.

🍹 Multi-School Summer Mixer

Wed, Jul 22 · Rooftop, NYC · Waitlist

Alumni clubs of Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Oxford, Stanford, UChicago, and more on one rooftop. 500 going.

💄 AI-Native Women: Beauty, Health, Wellness

Wed, Jul 22 · G-Gallery, NYC · Free / $15 guaranteed spot

Build a Claude Projects brand assistant live in the room, then a panel on AI in trend intelligence, sales enablement, and GTM.

🦷 Convergence Health Summit NYC

Fri, Jul 24 · AIC Wall Street, NYC · $250

An all-day summit judging innovation on implementation readiness, reimbursement alignment, and adoption feasibility, with dentistry and oral-systemic health at the center of the room.

🔥 Week of July 26

🛠️ Builders NYC Demo Day: Roast & Roast

Sun, Jul 26 · Fractal Tech, Brooklyn · Free

A morning demo day where builders present real projects and half-baked ideas, then take 3-5 minutes of honest feedback and lighthearted roasting over coffee.

📄 Papers We Love Brooklyn: DeepSeek-R1

Wed, Jul 29 · Mindspace Williamsburg, Brooklyn · Free

Espresso AI’s Edwin Jain walks through the DeepSeek-R1 paper on reinforcement-learned reasoning, for engineers who like their LLM claims with methods sections.

🙏 5th Annual Faith Summit: Mental Health is Physical Health

Thu, Jul 30, 8 AM–3:30 PM · NYU Langone, 550 1st Ave · Few tickets left

The Institute for Excellence in Health Equity’s day-long summit bringing community members, clinicians, and faith leaders together on mental health stigma, access, and support.

🌳 NY’s Healthcare & Lifesci Central Park Social

Thu, Jul 30, 5–8 PM · Central Park · BYO blankets & beverages

One Health Collective’s fourth annual Central Park edition of its ~250-person quarterly ecosystem gathering: clinicians, startups, pharma, payers, investors.

🍻 Out-Of-Pocket x Bunkerhill Health Happy Hour

Thu, Jul 30, 5:30–8:30 PM · Location TBD · Approval required

A small, curated group of FDEs, product people, and consultants building in healthcare, from Nikhil Krishnan’s Out-Of-Pocket crew and Bunkerhill Health.

☀️ August

🤖 Build with Gemma NYC: On-Device AI for Healthcare

Sat, Aug 1, 10 AM–6 PM · NYC · Free, $2,000 prize pool

Bond AI’s one-day hackathon on Google’s Gemma 4 models, built for healthcare’s privacy constraints: voice for care, agentic admin copilots, fully offline patient-data tools. Beginners welcome.

🚀 NYC HealthTech Launchathon

Sat–Sun, Aug 1–2, 9 AM–6 PM · NYC · $50 early bird by application, $250 regular

MedStartr’s two-day launchathon hosted by Alex Fair: form teams and find a problem worth solving on day one, build on day two, then every project continues into a MedStartr.ai showcase and a Founder’s Day with investors.

🧬 Biotech Happy Hour with 2048 Ventures × Rho

Wed, Aug 5, 5:30–7:30 PM · Brown Rudnick, NYC

A mid-summer break for the NY biotech community. No slides, no agenda; drinks sponsored by Rho.

🩺 Health2Tech NYC

Thu, Aug 20, 5:30–8:30 PM · NYC · Approval required

An investor panel (”Beyond Borders”) and two hours of networking, hosted by Bailey Morgan, Christopher Martinez, and Alex Koshykov with Orrick as partner.

🗺️ Make-With-Data: Mapping Mental Health

Thu, Aug 27, 5:30–7:30 PM · Pier 57, 25 11th Ave · Donation-based

Edenas Children’s workshop teaching mapping and data-science skills in service of community mental-health challenges.

Healthtech venture is hard, a fact I’ve learned firsthand as an operator, accelerator director, and investor. I’ve watched too many good teams repeat avoidable mistakes others have already paid for. I write Healing Healthtech to distill research and the experiences of top-tier operators into actionable tactics and frameworks, so we can all aim to make only new mistakes.

• Part 1 covers what I published this month on Substack.

• Part 2 covers NYC Healthtech events that I’m hosting.

• Parts 3 covers the most impactful and informative things that I read in the past month.

• Part 4 covers other NYC healthtech events worth a spot on your calendar.

Subscribe now

Subscribe for a twice-monthly dispatch of free and paid field guides meant to help you build more deliberately toward something better in human health. And if it’s useful, please forward it to other healthtech builders in your network.

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Warmly,
Vadim
Only new mistakes.

✍️ Part 1 — What I Wrote This Month

• 🎬 Venture Funding for Fun and Profit - Part 1 The Narrative — Free — 20 minutes

  • The heart of this video is how to build a successful pitch deck for raising angel and preseed funding.

  • More broadly, its a workshop that I’ve given many times focusing on the meta narrative that creates a fundable company.

  • My approach to pitch decks and narrative works - 80% of my final 12-team accelerator cohort raised follow-on funding within 3 months of graduation. One got into YC and another has already exited. Historically, we had 300+ teams raise 2.7B into 44 exits.

• 📊 Join an Accelerator or Nah? — Free — 10 minute read

  • When a program is worth the equity and when it isn’t; the comet distribution of accelerator outcomes, the hedging-accelerator model, two diligence checks for founder, and my advice from getting the most out of a program that you decide to participate in.

• 💰 Venture Funding for Fun and Profit - Part 2 The Process — Paid — 45 minute read

  • Deep dive into the process of running an effective raise.

  • How to find, qualify, engage with, and close angels and early funds.

  • How to measure and re-calibrate your raise against benchmarks as you go.

  • I combine my own anecdotal experiences, data from Docsend, Carta, and Angellist, along with the writings of the best venture investors of the past 20 years into a deeply actionable and practical field guide.

• 📱 SMS vs. Apps for Effective Digital Health Interventions — Paid — ~30 min

  • A field guide on when to reach for SMS versus an app in chronic care, built from 75+ clinical trials and operators who delivered at population scale.

• 🏛️ Anthropic’s Future Looks More Like Oracle Than Google — Free — ~15 min

  • Argues open weights are compressing frontier API margins, with OpenAI on a Cisco path and Anthropic on an Oracle one, and what that means for healthtech builders.

• ⚖️ Will My SMS Architecture Survive Scrutiny or Create Liability? — Free — ~5 min

  • The free, abbreviated edition of the SMS field guide: the four regulatory regimes governing healthcare SMS and six tripwires that turn a compliant program into a class action.

📅 Part 2 — My Events This Month

• 🍽️ Self-Funded Employer Founders & Funders Dinner | Tribeca, New York City

  • If you’re building or investing in angel or pre-seed self-funded employer healthcare, please apply to attend. Sponsored by Rho.

  • Historically, 70%+ of the founders at my F&F dinners have follow-on meetings after the event with 1 or 2 checks resulting.

  • 🗓️ Tuesday, July 7, 2026

• ⌚ HealthTech Watch Club | TIME+TIDE Watches NYC, 460 Broome St, New York City

  • One Health Collective x MarkOne Health x Time+Tide gather NYC’s healthcare-ecosystem watch enthusiasts for horology, no pitches. Wear your most interesting mechanical, automatic, or quartz piece (no smartwatches).

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 25, 2026

✍️ Part 3 — The Best Things I Read in Healthtech This Month

• 📉 340B Wasn’t Stolen From Rural Hospitals. It Was Built On Their Graves. — — ~15 min

  • Follows where the 340B spread actually landed, naming five publicly traded chains and PBMs rather than the safety-net communities Congress wrote the program for, plus the dual-classification loophole that let urban hospitals qualify as rural.

• 🐄 How Farmers are Smarter than Doctors — — ~3 min

  • Uses livestock veterinary practice to show how far human medicine lags on women’s reproductive and vaginal health.

  • This one really isn’t as off-color as it might seem. A founding patriarch of reproductive endocrinology once gleefully walked me through how both the devices and procedures in his field owe more to animal husbandry than human medicine.

  • Lara is a heck of a clinician scientist and well worth the follow and read.

• 🏗️ It’s time to build (in Medicaid) — — ~13 min

  • Makes the operator case for building inside an $880B program most founders avoid, with field notes on navigating the bureaucracy.

  • Youssef isn’t an idle bystander. As healthtech investment principal at AlleyCorp, he led investments into several current rocket ships in the portfolio that work with Medicaid-heavy panels, including Altitude, Birches, and Stepful.

• 🧠 Mental Health AI Is Operating Without Clinically-Informed Safety Standards. That Should Alarm Us — — ~15 min

  • Proposes a seven-part architecture of enforceable safety standards for mental health AI, grounded in documented patient deaths and existing clinical frameworks like ASL-MH.

• 🩺 The Dangerous Practitioner: on miscalibrated confidence in medicine — Graham Walker MD — ~10 min

  • Defines the “dangerous” clinician as one whose confidence outruns competence with no outward signal of the gap, and shows why medicine’s safety systems (consults, escalation, supervision) all depend on someone recognizing where their competence ends. The calibration frame maps directly onto the question of when to trust a confident AI.

  • I’m placing this Scott and Graham’s piece above right next to Byron’s piece on purpose, as a counterpoint: the case for caution right before the case for urgency.

• 💊 Our Penicillin Moment — — ~7 min

  • Argues the evidence for medical AI’s benefit is now strong enough that continued delay carries its own moral cost.

  • Byron is CMO of Doctronic, which runs the first state-approved autonomous AI prescription program in the U.S., currently limited to prescription renewals in Utah under a graduated-autonomy model.

• 🎓 The Old World Is Dying — — ~12 min

  • Career advice for the class of 2026 entering an AI-disrupted job market, useful for anyone weighing where durable work comes from.

  • I graduated during the last recession and now teach digital health venture design to graduate students pursuing MPA, MHA, and MPH degrees. Like many, I’ve been struggling with what to advise new alums in the face of AI emergence. This piece reached me by way of Youssef (above).

• 💸 How much I’ve made angel investing — an update — — ~5 min

  • Publishes a full deal-by-deal angel track record (0.89x cash returned on $2.9M across 53 investments) and benchmarks it against Carta fund data, a rare unvarnished look at returns.

  • Halle is easily the best-connected US healthtech angel of the past 25 years, and her openness about portfolio performance (or lack thereof) is badass.

  • Get her book.

📅 Part 4 — NYC Healthtech Community Events

• 🤖 Healthcare in the Age of AI | New York City

  • UJA’s Healthcare Division hosts a panel on how AI is reshaping care across clinical, technical, and business functions.

  • 🗓️ Monday, June 15, 2026

• 🏛️ Civic Health Forum 2026 | Civic Hall, New York City

  • A half-day convening of providers, policymakers, investors, and founders built around one question: how do we keep people healthy before they enter the healthcare system? Co-hosted by Fedcap, Digital Health Hub Foundation, and StartUp Health.

  • 🗓️ Tuesday, June 16, 2026

• 🍹 NY–IL Digital Health Community Happy Hour | New York City

  • An evening bringing together Israelis and allies building healthcare software, with rapid-fire startup pitches alongside the drinks and networking.

  • 🗓️ Wednesday, June 17, 2026

• ❤️ An Evening of Courage, Connection & Purpose (KuraHealth) | New York City

  • An intimate talk on grief and resilience at the residence of economist Nouriel Roubini, featuring Kevin Hines, one of the few to survive a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 18, 2026

• 🎨 Art in the Education Lab: “The Shape of Memory” by Maya Ciarrocchi | New York City

  • The unveiling of the 2026 Art in the Education Lab commission by artist Maya Ciarrocchi.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 18, 2026

• 🥂 The Art of emPOWERment: Ultimate FO Happy Hour | New York City

  • The 13th event in the Art of Empowerment series, a curated family-office happy hour where founders, allocators, and investors discuss where they put capital and energy to work. Hosted with EisnerAmper.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 18, 2026

• 😎 Summer Chill (HIVE) | New York City

  • A HIVE healthcare networking evening for clinicians, administrators, and healthcare leaders built around intentional conversation and connection.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 18, 2026

• 🧠 BrainHealth: VC Panel + GTM Bootcamp | FINN Partners, 1675 Broadway, Midtown NYC

  • A practical session on go-to-market strategy for brain-health innovation, with lessons from CEOs and institutional BrainHealth VCs. Moderated by Richard Hatzfeld of FINN Partners.

  • 🗓️ Monday, June 22, 2026

• 🚀 AI Engineers Presents: Founders to Follow | New York City

  • Intimate conversations with NYC startup founders about their journeys, including Tyler Johnson (Tennr) and Aditya Maru (Blacksmith).

  • 🗓️ Wednesday, June 24, 2026

• ⚖️ Digital Health Market NYC Symposium | Nixon Peabody, 55 W 46th St, New York City

  • A CTeL and Nixon Peabody roundtable bringing together digital health leaders, investors, and policymakers on the regulatory, data, and AI deployment dynamics shaping market growth and M&A.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 25, 2026

• 🌇 Pepper Community Hang: Vessel Sunset Walk + Tapas | Vessel, Hudson Yards, New York City

  • A golden-hour walk around the Vessel followed by tapas and drinks, hosted by Pepper NYC’s health/tech community.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, June 25, 2026

• 💻 Healthcare x AI Hackathon | NYC | New York City

  • A 1.5-day hands-on hackathon to build real AI tools and agents for healthcare, for engineers, PMs, and founders working in regulated spaces. Partners include Baseten, Lovable, ElevenLabs, Upfront Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Aegis Ventures.

  • 🗓️ Friday–Saturday, June 26–27, 2026

• 🏙️ Health Tech Startup Networking Rooftop Happy Hour | New York City

  • Rooftop networking for health tech startup professionals over drinks and skyline views.

  • 🗓️ Tuesday, June 30, 2026

• 🧬 NeuroNYC GP/LP Happy Hour | New York City

  • A curated evening for GPs and LPs active in or exploring neurotech, mental health, brain-computer interface, and neurodegenerative disease, held the night before the NeuroTech Summit.

  • 🗓️ Wednesday, July 15, 2026

• 🌟 Health2Tech NYC | New York City

  • An exclusive digital health gathering hosted by Bailey Morgan, with a guest talk and extended networking.

  • 🗓️ Thursday, July 16, 2026

• ⚓ Ship It 2026 (Healthcare Software Engineering Conference) | New York City

  • An invite-only Out-Of-Pocket summit for software engineers in healthcare: 80 curated guests, 12 hands-on workshops, and tactical talks over panels. Two-plus years of healthcare experience expected.

  • 🗓️ Thursday–Friday, September 17–18, 2026

  • ⏰ Deadline to apply: July 1, 2026