Define Ventures

Define Ventures is a digital-health-only early-stage venture firm founded and led by Lynne Chou O’Keefe, formerly a partner at Kleiner Perkins, where she built a substantial healthcare track record before launching Define in 2018. The firm raised $460 million across two vehicles in 2023, including Fund III for new investments and an Opportunities Fund for existing portfolio companies. The Define thesis is unusually focused: incubation, seed, Series A, and Series B investments in digital health companies that are redefining how care is delivered, paid for, and experienced. The firm explicitly frames its portfolio companies as ‘partners’ and runs an active community-building practice that connects entrepreneurs to a network of payers, providers, employers, retailers, and life sciences partners.

Lynne Chou O’Keefe is the public face and primary check writer, and her track record before Define included partnering with founders to build Livongo, Hims, and Unite Us. Her current Define portfolio includes FOLX Health (LGBTQ+ telehealth), Tia (hybrid women’s health primary care), DexCare (a digital care orchestration platform spun out of Providence Health and acquired by Best Buy Health, then partially separated), and Laudio, a healthcare workforce management platform for frontline managers in hospitals. Other Define investments include companies in chronic care, virtual specialty care, and health-data infrastructure. The team has expanded over time but remains small relative to peers, with senior investors including operating partners drawn from healthcare provider, payer, and operating roles.

Define writes initial checks of $3 million to $20 million across seed through Series B, with the capacity to lead at all of those stages and to support follow-on through the Opportunities Fund. The firm prefers to lead at Series A and frequently writes the first institutional check in companies at the seed and incubation stages. Define is selective by design: O’Keefe has stated publicly that the firm aims for a small number of high-conviction partnerships per year rather than a high-volume portfolio. Geographic scope is North American with a US center of gravity.

Founders who should approach Define are healthcare operators and clinicians building tech-enabled care, virtual specialty practices, women’s health, LGBTQ+ care, behavioral health, and back-office software for providers and payers. Repeat founders with prior digital health exits are particularly well aligned. Founders building therapeutics, devices, or pure DTC consumer wellness brands should look elsewhere. Define’s value-add is most powerful for companies that intend to sell to or partner with traditional healthcare incumbents and that need help navigating payer contracting, employer go-to-market, and provider partnership structures.

Entry path is best through warm introduction from portfolio CEOs, fellow healthcare investors, or O’Keefe’s broader network of healthcare operators. Define maintains a high public profile through HLTH, ViVE, and JPMorgan Healthcare appearances, and O’Keefe is regularly on stage and on podcasts including the Healthevolution circuit. Cold inbound through the firm’s website is read but converts at lower rates without a credible referral or a strong commercial proof point. Diligence runs three to six weeks from first call to term sheet, with substantial customer reference work given the firm’s network density.

In a pitch, lead with the founder story, the customer wedge, and the commercial proof. Define’s partners are not technologists by background and will not be impressed by a slide on transformer architecture. They are operators and former clinicians, and they will want to see the founder market fit story, the early customer traction, the unit economics, and a clear thesis on how the company plays inside the existing reimbursement and care delivery system. They will also want to see that you understand the politics: hospital boards, payer medical directors, employer benefits leaders, and the actual operational realities of the buyers you are selling to. Founders who can demonstrate that fluency, plus a credible plan to scale beyond pilots into multi-year contracts, will find Define one of the more focused and operationally helpful early-stage partners in digital health.