Founders: Ken Abel & Matt Renfro
Founding: 2021
Mission: Close the gap between health and finance for all Americans
Employees: 50 FTE & ~15% Local
Workplace: Remote
Stage & Capital Raised: Series A & $44M total raised
Investors: Flare Capital Partners, .406 Ventures, CVS Health Ventures, McKesson Ventures, Obvious Ventures, Frist Cressey
Key Customers: Large Health Plans, Financial Institutions & Digital Health companies
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $100M – $200M (assuming average equity dilution in the $27M Q1 ‘25 Series A fundraise)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!
Lynx is building modern fintech infrastructure for healthcare, making it easier for healthcare institutions to build great financial products. This growth stage team is using APIs to become a “Stripe for healthcare”, consolidating various legacy platforms so healthcare companies can build next generation infrastructure.
Matt Renfro and his co-founder Ken Abel worked together at Fidelity and then Optum Healthcare leading their payments platform. Matt started in a product role, ultimately becoming their Chief Product & Strategy Officer, while Ken was deeply enmeshed in their technical infrastructure as the CIO of Optum Bank. Optum processes $200B in annual claims from plans to providers.
When Matt was assigned to help launch Optum’s next generation DTC business, building new products at the intersection of healthcare & financial services for millions of consumers, his eyes grew wide as he waded through 30 year old banking infrastructure.
Healthcare is a bit behind when it comes to financial services. For example, HSA assets are over $100B and the giants in the space include HealthEquity ($22B), Optum ($20B), and Fidelity ($19B) (src).
What does it take to run an HSA? First, you’ll need a core banking app. Then you’ll need a payment processing system. Toss in a broker dealer for investments. Sprinkle in some compliance systems, security infrastructure, analytics, communications systems, and the ability to integrate with third parties. Are you dizzy yet?
To build best in class healthcare & fintech products, more flexible infrastructure is needed. Cards for Medicare plans need to be designed to accept produce at Walmart but be intelligent enough to decline cigarettes. EBT processors and legacy gift card companies have similar challenges.
Lynx is building the unified platform Matt & Ken wished they had access to when they were running one of the nation’s largest HSA businesses at Optum. Their platform enables anyone to build their own HSA, FSA, or restricted payment card down to the SKU at retail in under 10 weeks. Their partners don’t need to find banks or broker deals or investment advisors. Lynx comes fully wrapped in one API-driven platform where they handle all the hard stuff.
Most importantly, their platform is built to be embedded within the experience of larger platforms so Lynx can be white-labeled to provide a branded digital ecommerce experience. Just like Stripe enabled business online, Lynx is upgrading the infrastructure of some of the legacy healthcare players with modern fintech capabilities.
Whether it’s providing custom rewards or revamping benefit experiences, they handle all of the banking administration, compliance and fraud monitoring, payment processing, and more. Lynx can issue one physical or digital card with multiple accounts embedded. They can broaden investment options for a more curated experience, including robo advisor capabilities.
Their customers range from Medicare partners to a Fortune 10 company and include CDH (consumer-directed health) administrators like HSA providers, banks & TPAs (third-party administrators), top insurance health plans, and newer healthtech startup entrants too.
Lynx is a team of 50 with some offshore employees and they’ve scaled rapidly. Everyone on the team is currently focused on execution, including supporting enterprise deals with Fortune 500 companies, and working with some of the nation’s largest Medicare plans. They recently announced a $27M Series A led by Flare Capital Partners and will use the investment to innovate in Medical Advantage benefits, enhance CDH (consumer-directed health) account admin and compliance, and continue developing tailored, API-driven products to make the end-to-end experience better for their customers.
The core of the Lynx team is being built in Boston and they hope to continue to grow their employee base here, tapping into a great pool of talent around the city and our local universities. Lynx is backed by Flare Capital Partners, .406 Ventures, CVS Health Ventures, McKesson Ventures, Obvious Ventures, Frist Cressey, Winter Street Ventures, Shields Capital, and Huntington Avenue Ventures.
Operators to Know:
- Jack Allard, VP of Business Operations
- Dirk Anderson, VP, Product Enablement
- Surinder Dhall, VP of Software Quality
- Ben Fernando, Software Engineer
- Joseph Firnstahl, Chief Product Officer
- Venkee Gargy, VP Engineering
- Ryan Leary, Product Manager
- Taylor McMurtrie, VP of Sales
- Ravi Pendkar, VP of Platform Development
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Lynx team if I missed any up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
- Who are the core customers for Lynx? Core partners? Competitors?
- What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 20 employees?
- What are the most important projects the company is working on today cross functionally?
- What is the 2-3 year vision for the company?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Lynx you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more HSA & health companies into the digital age. All consumers applaud your efforts. See you around town!