Jumpstart Health Investors

Marcus Whitney, the co-founder and managing partner, drives the firm's overall strategy and leads the Jumpstart Nova fund focused on Black-founded health tech companies. Vic Gatto, a partner at the firm, leads Jumpstart Capital, the growth-stage vehicle that writes larger checks into later-stage digital health companies. The two partners share oversight of the Jumpstart Foundry accelerator program.

Jumpstart Health Investors is the parent entity housing three distinct vehicles: Jumpstart Foundry (pre-seed and seed accelerator), Jumpstart Capital (Series A and B growth fund), and Jumpstart Nova (a $55 million fund backing Black-founded health tech startups). The structure allows the firm to back founders from formation through growth equity while keeping each fund's mandate narrow and focused.

The firm invests directly in early- and growth-stage digital health startups and occasionally participates in syndicated rounds led by larger venture firms. While its primary activity is direct equity investments, the Jumpstart Foundry accelerator also makes smaller pre-seed investments in cohorts, which can function as a seed-stage platform for follow-on direct capital from Jumpstart Capital.

Coverage spans the full early-stage spectrum. Jumpstart Foundry invests $100,000 to $500,000 at pre-seed and seed. Jumpstart Capital targets $1 million to $5 million checks at Series A and B. Jumpstart Nova writes checks at comparable early-stage sizes but exclusively for Black-founded health tech companies (per the firm, April 2022).

The firm's Nashville headquarters gives it proximity to the largest for-profit hospital operators in the United States, including HCA Healthcare. Marcus Whitney has built a network of health system operators, clinicians, and payers around the Jumpstart Foundry accelerator, which sources pre-seed companies from within that ecosystem. The Jumpstart Nova fund additionally sources from a founder network that traditional health IT investors rarely access at scale.

The firm has not publicly articulated exclusion lists, but its portfolio concentrates on digital health, healthcare services, and enterprise health IT. Jumpstart Health Investors does not invest in biotech drug development, medical devices requiring FDA Class III approval, or pure-play health insurance underwriting platforms. Its clinician and hospital-operator network is built for care delivery and workflow startups, not therapeutics.

Marcus Whitney co-founded the Equity Alliance, a Tennessee-based political action committee that mobilizes Black voters, but this entity is separate from Jumpstart Health Investors. The firm's own activities remain strictly investment-focused. Whitney's narrative and book, 'Create and Orchestrate,' are published outside the fund structure and do not represent donor-advised or philanthropic capital managed by Jumpstart.