Pitch events, health system pharmacy, ranking VCs and more!

Healthcare through a Kentucky lens. It's niche. But neat!

Author

Andrew Steen
June 23, 2026

⚽️ and Ranch.

Ballad Ventures → pharmacy

Y’all. This is baller.

From this 🠗

The Prescription Is the Relationship | Ballad Ventures

A generation ago, filling a prescription meant one thing: the pharmacy down the street. Today a patient can fill the same script a dozen different ways, and new technology is making the choice faster, cheaper, and more confusing all at once. We think the local health system pharmacy should win that choice. Not because we say so, but because of what it can do that none of the alternatives can. Here's the case, and an honest list of what we still have to fix.

balladventures.io/thoughts/the-prescription-is-the-relationship

No reason something like this couldn’t happen in Louisville and/or Kentucky.
It’s an activity Louisville needs.

This is now old, but, yeah.

Pharmacy: A 'Hidden' Niche in Louisville?

Health Enterprise Partners recently published 2024 Reflections & Predictions in partnership with L.E.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/pharmacy-louisville-niche-industry-liverpoollane-com-sgabe

Physician entrepreneurship

We’ve shared stuff on physician entrepreneurship before, but this from Jared Dashevsky, MD is good.

Physician Entrepreneurship Is Rising. Medical School Still Isn't Teaching Business.

Physicians are founding unicorns and losing ownership to corporations. Explore the business education gap in medicine — and what the AMA is doing about it.

Healthcare Huddle • Jared Dashevsky, MD

Top 100 VC Firms

This is an interesting piece of work.

By our estimates, about 5% of venture capitalists have generated roughly 90% of the industry’s profits. The central question in venture therefore — for founders choosing investors, for LPs allocating capital, and for the broader economy that depends on good capital allocation — is identifying who sits in that 5%.

The 2026 Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Ranking: Complete Top 100 VC Firms

Inaugural release of the Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Ranking

Ilya Strebulaev

We shared this a few weeks ago; “One-third of deals in the venture capital (VC) market involve a founder and investor from the same university.” Along with Crunchbase data on where funded founders went to school. It matters.

So, what Commonwealth connections exist at these VC firms?

Startup pitch events

Three of them!

Application deadline for AgeInnovate is July 15.

AgeInnovate

Are you building technology that supports the aging ecosystem? Check these boxes and you're ready to apply.

ageinnovate.com/startup-submissions

Applications for HLTH’s competitions close June 26.

HLTH USA 2026 Startup Pitch Competitions | Las Vegas

Pitch at HLTH USA 2026. 4 Categories. Women's Health, Health Equity, AgeTech, and the main HLTH USA Pitch Competition! Apply by June 26.

HLTH Events

Applications are due September 21 to NurseHack4Health.

NurseHack4Health

NurseHack4Health™ is a community of nurses, healthcare professionals, developers, engineers, IT experts and other innovators focused on ideating and collaborating to address today’s most pressing healthcare challenges. Through specialized programming, NurseHack4Health empowers participants with the

NurseHack4Health

WalletHub

😱 

Normally I don’t give much credence to these things, but this did have a stated methodology. So, what did we think?

Best & Worst State Economies in 2026

Best & Worst State Economies in 2026

WalletHub

33rd for Startup Activity, by the way.

Someone you know needs to read this.
So send it to them.




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