SignalFire

Healthcare has a $150B choke point almost no one talks about. We found the founder who’s actually trying to eliminate it. 🚕 New VC Taxi episode just dropped. Founder and emergency physician Leah Houston, MD hopped in to pitch SignalFire Partner Wayne Hu on evercred, an AI-driven solution for one of the biggest bottlenecks in medicine: physician credentialing. If you’ve never lived inside a hospital credentialing workflow, here’s the brutal reality: - Doctors wait 4–6 months to get cleared to work - Hospitals lose $1.2M per doctor in the process - The system bleeds $150B a year because clinicians are stuck in paperwork instead of caring for patients Leah explains exactly why credentialing is so broken, and how new AI agents that can call, fax, email, verify, and complete repetitive tasks can shrink that timeline from months to moments. Wayne zeroes in on the big questions that matter: • How do you win go-to-market in a crowded ecosystem • What differentiates Evercred from incumbents • How do AI agents integrate into messy, highly regulated workflows • Where should the product wedge start, and how fast can it scale Watch this founder pitch a deeply technical, high-impact healthcare problem with clarity and conviction. 🎥 You can watch the full video on YouTube (link in comments). #HealthcareAI #HealthTech #Founders #AIagents

🚕 When you put a founder building the future of mobile design in a car with an investor, things get real fast. Aibek Yegemberdin, Co-founder of Wonder, hopped into the VC Taxi to pitch SignalFire Partner Wayne Hu on his AI-powered design tool: A next-generation workflow that helps creators explore ideas faster, with more intuition and fewer constraints. Wayne shares his unfiltered take on Aibek's product, speed of development, and user experience, and get what actually matters at this early stage: 🔥 Ship earlier than you think 🔥 Get real designers using it 🔥 Watch how they break it 🔥 Let the product learn faster than you can plan Wonder is pushing into one of the most important spaces in AI right now: Creation tools that feel magical, not mechanical. Get a glimpse into where creative tooling is headed. 🎥 Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gCe-3BJw #Founders #AI #Design #AIforDesign #Startups (Featured founders were not compensated and may or may not be investors or advisors. They are not SignalFire employees and do not provide investment advice. Additional disclosures available on our website: https://lnkd.in/grrEqVzh)

2 truths: Comms is hell, and invest in what you want to see in the world. Well, I w̶a̶n̶t̶ NEED Honeyjar, the AI for PR. If you're in comms, get early access in the comments. You know it's legit when a16z's Margit Wennmachers, Outcast PR CEO Becky Porter, and New York Post CEO Jesse Angelo invested too. Honeyjar lets you focus on storytelling, not grunt work. Built by 20-year PR ace Michelle Masek, it crafts narratives, sources reporters, personalizes pitches, and tracks everything. Whether you're in-house, solo, at an agency, or a founder running comms yourself, Honeyjar gets you buzz. Can't wait to use it with all my portcos.

Clutch Security has uncovered a major shift that many businesses are not tracking: MCP servers quietly exploded from 3 to 6,878 deployments in 13 months. That’s a 2,200% growth with zero visibility for most enterprise security teams. This isn’t a hypothetical threat; these are real systems running inside real environments, creating a brand-new credential surface shaped by AI assistants and automated tooling. The blind spot is huge, and its implications can hit companies immediately. This article by Clutch CEO Ofir Har-Chen breaks down why enterprises overlooked it and what security teams need to prepare for: https://lnkd.in/g3-kJtB5

Healthcare affordability is becoming one of the defining pressure points in the U.S. system, and PayZen’s new 2025 report shows just how deep the problem runs. Their Patient Perspective Report's findings are impossible to ignore: - 36% of patients postponed or skipped needed care last year because they couldn’t afford it. - For most families, the ceiling for out-of-pocket medical bills is just $97/month; it's not enough to cover anything beyond the basics. - Yet when given a real, interest-free, flexible payment option, patients overwhelmingly want to pay. What PayZen's data reveals is that people want care and want to pay their bills, but the current systems lock them out. By offering personalized, AI-powered payment plans with no interest and no hidden fees, PayZen provides patients with a path to care that avoids financial ruin. For health systems, that means less bad debt, more collections, and patients who get care when they need it. For families, it means access, dignity, and peace of mind. If you care about making healthcare truly accessible, this report is a must-read.

Our portfolio company Ply just raised $8.5M in strategic funding. This round isn’t just fuel, it’s validation. The materials management bottleneck has held contractors back for decades, and Ply is proving there’s a better way. Real-time visibility, automation that actually works in the field, and a platform built to make every project run leaner, smarter, and more profitable. Partnering with Ferguson accelerates their mission: turning materials management from one of the biggest frustrations in construction into one of its biggest advantages. Huge congrats to Dave Wigder, Darion Miller and the Ply team! If you want to help build the future of construction ops, they’re hiring. 🚀

The strongest signal in customer support right now is less about cost savings and more about a long-overdue push to give customers the quality of experience they’ve been waiting for. For years, we’ve all put up with clunky chatbots that stalled, guessed, looped users around, and handed conversations off with zero context. That era is over, and autonomous AI Agents have stepped in with context awareness, accurate knowledge retrieval, real action on internal systems, and support that feels fast, thoughtful, and human. In this new piece from our Practitioner’s Perspective series, namrata ram (Together AI) and Stuart Watson (Resolve AI) break down the playbooks top CX leaders are using to raise the bar: ⚡ Sharper answers built on AI-ready knowledge architecture: When your docs are structured for retrieval instead of readability alone, your AI stops guessing and starts delivering precise, confident responses. ⚡ Shorter wait times backed by meaningful deflection: High deflection only matters if the customer experience stays strong. The best systems resolve quickly and with answers that feel researched and relevant. ⚡ More trust through real telemetry and live data: Strong CX AI doesn’t hallucinate. It ties every response to metrics, logs, and source documents so customers walk away informed, not frustrated. ⚡ True hybrid support that feels seamless: The handoff between AI and humans should be invisible. Full context, instant transfer, no repetition, no “start over” moments. This is what modern CX looks like: Low friction, high personalization, and support that finally works the way it should. Huge thanks to Sarung Tripathi of Together AI for sharing the playbook behind a 96% automation rate that still protects the customer experience, and to Aaron Lee of Smith.ai for insights drawn from 5,000+ customers on what really drives trust in AI-first support. If you’re building the next generation of customer experience, this deep dive is for you (link in comments).

The strongest signal in customer support right now is less about cost savings and more about a long-overdue push to give customers the quality of experience they’ve been waiting for. For years, we’ve all put up with clunky chatbots that stalled, guessed, looped users around, and handed conversations off with zero context. That era is over, and autonomous AI Agents have stepped in with context awareness, accurate knowledge retrieval, real action on internal systems, and support that feels fast, thoughtful, and human. In this new piece from our Practitioner’s Perspective series, @Namrata Ram (@together.ai) and @Stuart Watson (@Resolve AI) break down the playbooks top CX leaders are using to raise the bar: ⚡ Sharper answers built on AI-ready knowledge architecture: When your docs are structured for retrieval instead of readability alone, your AI stops guessing and starts delivering precise, confident responses. ⚡ Shorter wait times backed by meaningful deflection: High deflection only matters if the customer experience stays strong. The best systems resolve quickly and with answers that feel researched and relevant. ⚡ More trust through real telemetry and live data: Strong CX AI doesn’t hallucinate. It ties every response to metrics, logs, and source documents so customers walk away informed, not frustrated. ⚡ True hybrid support that feels seamless: The handoff between AI and humans should be invisible. Full context, instant transfer, no repetition, no “start over” moments. This is what modern CX looks like: Low friction, high personalization, and support that finally works the way it should. Huge thanks to @Sarung Tripathi of @Together AI for sharing the playbook behind a 96% automation rate that still protects the customer experience, and to @Aaron Lee of @Smith.ai for insights drawn from 5,000+ customers on what really drives trust in AI-first support. If you’re building the next generation of customer experience, this deep dive is for you (link in comments).