Our Investment in Walnut

When I first met Roshan Patel (🙏 to Will Manidis for intro’ing us!) — before he even incorporated his startup — I knew we needed to back him.

Roshan started the call by telling us a story. When a loved one of his was hit by a car, and subsequently got a medical bill for several thousand dollars, it got Roshan thinking about how so many Americans struggle to pay for the medical care they consume.

Why is it that we can finance a new television at 0% APR on most checkout screens, but can’t do the same for our healthcare?

Enter Walnut.

Walnut is on a mission to help patients buy-now-and-pay-later (à la Affirm / Klarna, but for the expense line that the median Americans spends 10% of her pre-tax income on).

For consumers, Walnut breaks large medical bills into small monthly payments — currently at 0% APR. For providers, Walnut offers a simpler way to offer payment plans to patients — higher case acceptance, no paperwork, and no risk of default.

With Walnut, long gone are the days of predatory healthcare financing, subpar medical credit cards, and lackluster consumer experiences. It’s as simple as 1, 2, 3.

We are thrilled to finally announce our first-check investment in Roshan, Yash, Abel, and the whole Walnut team.

It didn’t take long for others in the venture community to appreciate the team’s massive vision & rockstar execution to date.

We are also excited to announce Walnut’s $3.6M seed round with an all star cast of investors, including: Gradient Ventures, AforeVC, TA Ventures, Supernode, and prolific angels including: Alex Chung of Giphy, Karim Atiyeh & Alex Song of Ramp, and TJ Parker of PillPack, amongst many others.