Sep 4, 2025, 12:00 PM ETInterview, Fireside Chat

Meme Lord CEO Raises $22.5M Series A for Hello Patient

Hello Patient secured a $22.5 million Series A funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from original investors 8VC, Blink Capital, and Max Ventures.
The funding process spanned three weeks, involving discussions with 20–25 firms, followed by diligence and a term sheet signed on the Friday of the third week.
Additional strategic investors in the round include Alumni Ventures, Lord David Pryor (former UK NHS chairman), and Remus Capital.
The company is launching a parody video series culminating in a spoof of the Sam Altman and Johnny Ive product announcement video to mark the Series A close.
The CEO replicated the exact attire of Altman and Ive (gray sweater, blue jeans, Lego shoes, safari jacket) and even purchased a specific Banana Republic safari jacket on eBay for the parody.
Hello Patient raised an initial $3.8 million seed round, followed by an extension from existing investors before the current Series A.

Hello Patient builds conversational AI agents exclusively for patient-facing healthcare workflows, handling inbound answering, outbound appointment reminders, and website chatbots.
The company targets five primary verticals: urgent care, primary care, ENT and allergy, mental/behavioral health, and med spas, with emerging expansion into vision and dental care.
Adoptionship shifted significantly in Q1 2024 as providers grew comfortable with AI latency and voice quality, moving from skepticism to active experimentation.
The company's competitive advantage lies in the "last 30%" of integration: custom triaging flows and deep practice management system integrations that generic agent builders cannot replicate.
Current technology stack relies on OpenAI for models (deemed too smart/fast for competitors), Cartesia and ElevenLabs for voices, and Deepgram for transcription.
Growth metrics include processing tens of thousands of conversations daily, with a 12-month goal to scale to millions of daily conversations across thousands of clinics.
The business model utilizes flexible pricing strategies, including per-clinic monthly fees, per-patient volume fees, or usage-based models for texting/calls.

The company is HIPAA compliant, signs Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with all customers, and maintains high liability insurance to mitigate data leakage risks.
Hello Patient avoids clinical decision-making, strictly focusing on administrative tasks like appointment booking and triage to transfer urgent cases to human staff.
The technology is not currently regulated by specific specialty licenses, but operators must adhere to telephony communication laws regarding call timing and frequency.
The CEO estimates AGI, defined as an agent capable of autonomously learning a new practice's entire workflow without custom prompting, is at least 5–7 years away.
The firm argues that legacy EHRs (Epic, Oracle Health, Athena) are designed for billing rather than patient engagement, giving Hello Patient a 2–3 year head start in the patient engagement niche.

Alex Cohen has been fired or laid off from 11 distinct companies, including Astronomer, Elon Musk's teams (twice), Meta, CrowdStrike (for accidentally pulling server plugs), the Harris campaign, and Wendy's.
His tenure at Wendy's ended after he proposed "search pricing" for menus, which was fired by leadership citing Elizabeth Warren's recent tweet on dynamic pricing.
His departure from Carbon Health was voluntary after the company pivoted to clinic operations only, removing the need for a large software R&D team.
Cohen has built a personal brand on Twitter with nearly 230,000 followers, generating an average of 5,000–10,000 likes on top posts and using satire as a primary marketing and networking tool.
His social media presence has directly contributed to inbound leads, with healthcare providers reaching out after seeing his Twitter and LinkedIn content.

Cohen is currently undergoing hormone optimization therapy (TRT) and experimenting with various peptides to improve muscle growth, recovery, and sleep.
Specific peptides used include CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin for muscle growth, Tesamorelin for reducing visceral fat, VPC 1295 for injury recovery, and DSIP for deep sleep regulation.
He utilizes GLP-1 agonists (such as Ozempic) at a micro-dose (half the starting dose, approx. 1.25mg weekly) to manage appetite without the side effects of higher doses.
Cohen tracks health metrics rigorously using an Oura ring, Whoop, and EAT (Eat, Sleep, Train) app to measure the efficacy of peptide cycles.
He notes the U.S. food system is a primary driver of poor health, citing obesity and hormonal imbalances exacerbated by processed foods and microplastics.

Hello Patient is currently a team of 15–16 people and is actively hiring "Agent Architects" to bridge natural language processing with clinical workflow logic.
The company is building a small engineering and implementation team in Mexico City to handle practice integrations.
The CEO predicts that while core EHR platforms (Epic, Athena) will remain dominant for the next 3–5 years, an AI-native EHR that handles scribing, billing, and engagement may emerge after that period.
The company aims to become the standard for patient engagement, leveraging the fact that 30% missed call rates in healthcare result in significant lost revenue.