The market continues to reward companies with B2B contracts

Everyone in the industry should be paying attention to the Talkspace acquisition because it’s emblematic of a lot of the deals that I suspect will happen in the next 12 months. It’s a relatively healthy outcome for the industry, so it might also inspire some IPOs for companies that are waiting in the wings. 

It shows a few things about what the market is rewarding: 

1. B2B contracts are heavily favored as a mechanism to build to scale and acquire patients without spending enormous marketing costs.
2. Strategics see value in digital health as a potential “front door”;
3. There’s a finite pool of providers, so incumbents are willing to spend on tech-enabled services to acquire these highly-trained, deeply specialized individuals.