Kathryn Weinmann on What’s Next in Consumer Health

I recently joined Venture Grounds for a conversation about where consumer health is headed, and what it takes to build durable companies in a category where trust, behavior change, and timing matter more than almost anything else.

Healthcare is full of compelling ideas. But the question I keep coming back to is more specific: what is investable now? Where have the incentives shifted enough, the consumer behavior changed enough, or the technology improved enough to support a company that can last?

One of the biggest shifts I'm seeing is also one of the simplest: the patient is increasingly becoming the payer.

That changes the entire company-building equation.

When patients pay directly, they behave differently. They compare options. They expect transparency. They notice experience. They come back when something works, and they leave quickly when it does not. In a system that has historically been built around third-party reimbursement, that is a profound change.

It also raises the bar for founders. Healthcare companies still need to create value for patients, providers, and payers. But the patient is the stakeholder that can never be compromised. That is not only a values statement. It is a market reality. The product follows the incentives, and when the patient is paying, trust becomes the business model.

That is what makes companies like Function Health (backed by FirstMark) so interesting. Function took a category that was expensive and opaque, and made it dramatically more accessible. But accessibility is not a downmarket move. Done well, it becomes the moat.

The strongest signal is not just that people buy. It is that they retain, expand, and bring the people they love into the product. In consumer health, a family purchase is one of the clearest signs of trust.

That same lens applies to GLP-1s. The obvious opportunity is the medication itself. The more durable opportunity may be everything that happens around it and after it.

Millions of people are changing their bodies, their habits, and their expectations. That creates new demand for protein, fiber, gut health, bone density, medical aesthetics, and other categories that support people through the full arc of their health journey. GLP-1s have also normalized behaviors, like self-injection, that once felt too high-friction for mainstream consumers.

The pattern is bigger than one drug. Healthcare is moving from episodic care to ongoing engagement. From waiting until something breaks to continuously measuring, managing, and improving how we feel.

Brain health is a good example. Most wearables today are read-only: they measure, infer, and report. The next frontier is write-oriented, using noninvasive tools to help change state, improve sleep, sharpen focus, or regulate stress.

That may sound futuristic, but it is really an extension of behavior we already know. Music, caffeine, breathwork, bedtime routines, and light exposure are all ways we try to modulate our state. Technology can make those interventions more precise, personalized, and repeatable.

I think a similar timing shift is happening in senior care. The category has disappointed many investors for years, but the need never went away. What changed is the cohort and the cost structure.

Today's 65-to-75-year-olds are far more digitally fluent. Many are still working. Many are comfortable with modern software, and increasingly with AI. At the same time, AI can reduce the administrative burden that made many services-heavy models difficult to scale. The best products for seniors often will not look like "senior products" at all. They will look like better, more intuitive ways to live independently.

Across all of these areas, the question I keep coming back to is durability.

Growth is useful, but retention tells you what people truly value. Reorder rate, repeat usage, expansion, family purchasing, and cohort behavior matter because they show whether a product has earned a place in someone's life.

For founders building in consumer health, my advice is to answer that question early. Do not bury cohort curves in the data room. Put them in the deck. Show that people return not because they were nudged, but because the product matters.

That is where I think the next generation of durable consumer health companies will be built: at the intersection of better access, clearer incentives, deeper trust, and products patients choose to come back to.

You can watch the full Venture Grounds conversation here.