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Ballad Ventures' four focus areas, medical devices, events to attend and more to read.

Ballad Ventures' four focus areas, medical devices, events to attend and more to read.

Healthcare through a Kentucky lens. Yeah, it's niche. But neat!

Andrew Steen
September 08, 2026

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Ballad Ventures’ investment themes

“We write checks from $250K to $2M. What we bring besides the check is a live health system to validate in, operators who've already named the problem, and a rural, community footprint the rest of the market is now treating as its stress test.”

I love this. In fact, it brings a tear of jealousy to my eyes.

Four Places We're Pointing Capital | Ballad Ventures

We promised to start with the problems our operators are actually trying to solve. We now have over 400 of them written down. After running them against the market and against Epic's roadmap, four focus areas came out the other side: regulatory and compliance, med-tech for our core service lines, pharmacy, and the entry point to cancer care. Here's how we got there and what we're asking founders for.

balladventures.io/thoughts/four-focus-areas

Ballad Health is an integrated community health improvement organization serving 29 counties of the Appalachian Highlands in Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, Northwest North Carolina and Southeast Kentucky.

Biomedical devices

An informative read by First Star Ventures’ Teddy Blank.

The Golden Age of Biomedical Devices Has Arrived

A long-hated VC category is turning a corner

Teddy Blank

NIA Start-Up Challenge and Accelerator

Every two years, the National Institute on Aging hosts an intensive accelerator program for early stage entrepreneurs with ideas for innovative technologies to enhance healthy aging. I was a Mentor last cycle.

This year’s program is offering a total of $994,000 in cash prizes, in addition to entrepreneurial training from industry experts, one-on-one mentorship, networking opportunities, and of course, guidance on preparing a competitive SBIR/STTR application.

https://www.nih.gov/challenges/2027-nia-start-challenge-accelerator

AI search

This is a good read.

How marketers are measuring AI search

Perfect GEO/AEO attribution doesn’t exist. The marketing leaders getting ahead are building their measurement stacks and moving anyway.

Bessemer Venture Partners • Taj Shorter

Speaking of good reads…

I’ve written a series of articles over on LinkedIn based on the 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Ranking. Here’s one of them.

The Top 50 Biotech VC Firms | Kentucky Ties

The inaugural 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Ranking was released earlier this year, ranking of the top 100 US-based VC firms. Ilya Strebulaev has now published a biotech version of the ranking.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-50-biotech-vc-firms-kentucky-ties-liverpoollane-com-vpnpc

If you aren’t following along on LinkedIn—why not? Different content. And connections.

Louisville Health Innovation Meetup

Sign up. Show up.

Bar Nada Nada. Tuesday, September 15. Tell a friend.

Conversations. That's usually how things start. Conversations start here.

Louisville Health Innovation Meetup · Luma

This is where the people building the future of healthcare in Louisville connect. If you want a better understanding of what's happening in Louisville…

luma.com/lna4ek0p

Accept no substitutes.

Science on the Rocks

Consider going to this, as well.

Science on the Rocks, Featuring Clareo Biosciences · Luma

Join LifeSciKY for Science on the Rocks on September 10 from 5:30–7:00 PM at Stites & Harbison in Louisville. Hear from Melissa Smith, Founder & CEO of Clareo…

luma.com/z2xp03ov

Liverpool Lane connects healthcare startups, health systems, investors, corporations, researchers and economic development organizations.

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