Are You Really Listening to Your Customers? Probably Not, But You Should.

In 2020 and early 2021, funding poured into digital health. Name-brand VCs led the charge, with General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, and Alphabet’s GV playing a particularly active role in cultivating innovations. Beyond the obvious pandemic-driven need for remote care delivery, healthcare innovations fueled explosive growth in new companies.

While my firm, a hearing health company called Nuheara, took a different funding path through the public markets, we’re on a similar trajectory and can share some of our learnings. On launch, we started with one proprietary technical feature, Super Intelligent Noise Cancellation (SINC™) technology that allows users to focus on what they want to hear in the world. This feature caught the attention of users in 80+ countries around the world. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned, it’s to let the customer tell you what they need. You just have to be willing to hear it. In our case, it’s what they need on their hearing health journey. So what journey are you on with your customers?