Roon raises $15 million to replace ‘Dr. Google’ with real doctors sharing videos about disease treatments

Vikram Bhaskaran was leading creator partnerships at Pinterest when his father began experiencing the first symptoms of ALS, a rare and terminal neurodegenerative disease.

“It turned my world upside down,” Bhaskaran said. He worked during the day and spent his evenings researching illnesses and treatment options on Google and in Facebook groups. But Bhaskaran discovered that it was incredibly difficult to find clear and useful information about his father’s condition.

“I was sitting in Silicon Valley, surrounded by some of the brightest minds in engineering and design,” he said. “But when it came to health, I felt like it was like the Dark Ages.”

So during the pandemic, Bhaskaran teamed up with his two friends, Rohan Ramakrishna, a neurosurgeon at Weil Cornell Medicine, and Arun Ranganathan, an engineer on Pinterest, to build Roonan online resource that provides complex, clinically accurate medical information created by doctors and people living with a specific disease.

Roon aims to replace Google (commonly known as Dr. Google) and legacy healthcare content sites like WebMD and Healthline, with video Q&As on thousands of health issues created by doctors at top medical institutions.

Dr. Ramakrishna has noticed that he and other doctors often answer the same questions when seeing patients. However, these answers are only provided during the doctor’s appointment.

“Doctors have billions of pieces of inside information in their brains that they share with you in the clinic, but that doesn’t really extend outside of their own medical practice,” Dr. Ramakrishna said.

Roon has invited thousands of doctors to share this information on its platform. Anyone looking for answers about a disease can go to Roon and watch more than 16,000 short videos on ALS, glioblastoma, dementia, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and fertility and family building. In the coming months, Roon plans to expand its coverage to women’s health (menopause, breast cancer, cervical cancer and basic gynecological health), and will later expand its content to include pediatrics, cancer, neurology and metabolic health.

Bhaskaran sees Roon as a creative platform for doctors. “It’s kind of like the early days of Pinterest,” he said.

Physicians join Roon because they want to provide valuable information and share knowledge. The company’s platform gives them the opportunity to be creators, but not necessarily to make money from their content.

Roon offers doctors fees for their participation, although some refuse them due to conflict of interest rules. So this is not a platform that will try to turn doctors into well-paid social media star creators, Bhaskaran said.

However, Bhaskaran believes that doctors find Roon helps them save time and provide better patient care. They can, for example, share Roon videos as an educational supplement before or after the appointment.

The appeal of Roon’s content for patients is that they hear medical advice from real doctors and other patients also struggling with the disease.

Even though the company has not yet started generating revenue or understood its business model, investors are confident. The startup raised $15 million at a valuation of $68 million co-led by Forerunner Ventures and First Mark, and joined by previous investors Sequoia Capital and TMV.

Eurie Kim, managing partner at Forerunner, resonated deeply with Roon’s offering. She spent more than a decade treating her mother who had cancer.

“You don’t have a lot of time with your surgeon or your doctor, so when they say, ‘Do you have any questions for me,’ you panic,'” she said. Kim sees Roon as a way to allow patients to be better informed and better prepared for their appointments.

As for how Roon will monetize its content, Kim believes there are several paths Roon can take. It could sell ads or offer a subscription service to hospitals and doctor’s offices wanting to share educational videos with patients. The site could also potentially be expanded into a doctor directory that would help patients find doctors or a second opinion, she said.

As a consumer-focused investor, Kim believes business models become clear once a platform has attracted a critical mass of followers and loyal users.

“You have to start with content, you have to start with trust, the right information, and then grow from there,” Kim said.