HLM Venture Partners

HLM Venture Partners

HLM Venture Partners was founded in 1983 and has operated from the Boston area for four decades, giving it a generational view of American healthcare's venture cycles. The current partnership group — Marty Felsenthal, Peter Grua, and Edward Cahill — took over the firm's direction in the 1990s and has since focused it exclusively on healthcare services, digital health, and tech-enabled care models. The firm's longevity means it invested through the managed-care revolution of the 1990s, the consumer-directed health era, and the current wave of data-driven value-based care companies. HLM targets early-stage, growth, and expansion-stage companies — often leading or co-leading first institutional rounds. The firm has concentrated its capital across care delivery, payer technology, and health IT infrastructure, with a particular focus on companies that align financial incentives between providers and payers. Portfolio companies named in public filings and press releases have included on-demand nursing platform CareRev, specialty care navigation firm Pager, virtual primary care provider 98point6, and value-based kidney-care company Strive Health. Geographically, HLM invests across the United States, with a historical concentration in East Coast and Midwest healthcare markets. The firm makes both direct equity investments and follow-on commitments across its healthcare-only mandate. While total assets under management are not publicly disclosed, HLM has raised multiple funds and operates with a team that partners closely with portfolio company management teams on go-to-market strategy, payor contracting, and regulatory positioning. In recent years, HLM participated in large growth rounds for companies including Strive Health, which raised $166 million in a 2023 Series C to expand value-based kidney care arrangements with national payers (per the firm, 2023). HLM's structural differentiator is the depth of specialization — it is a pure-play healthcare venture firm that has outlasted most of its contemporaries. The same partnership group has worked together for roughly 30 years, navigating multiple reimbursement regime changes. That tenure gives HLM a network density inside large U.S. payers and health systems that generalist funds cannot replicate, making the firm a gravitational node for founders building in regulated healthcare markets.