Initiate’s Owens on early funding and what it takes to be AI-native

Founding Partner Jessica Owens details firm’s strategy, how proprietary data beats proprietary models, and gaps in evidence generation: The BioCentury Show

As AI becomes increasingly commoditized, healthcare and life sciences companies must use it to solve historically difficult problems, rather than merely facilitate workflows with off-the-shelf models, Initiate Ventures founding General Partner Jessica Owens told The BioCentury Show.

Owens co-founded Initiate Ventures in 2020 with former GE Ventures director Iana Dimkova and serial entrepreneur Randy Scott. She previously co-founded Grail Inc. (NASDAQ) and was a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

Owens said the firm funds or co-founds AI-native healthtech and techbio companies at a very early stage, writing checks “big enough to own a lot and be with companies over the long term.” She also shared lessons from her time at Grail and Kleiner Perkins, what she looks for in founders, and the importance of maintaining a long-term vision.

Owens outlined what Initiate believes it takes for a company to be truly AI-native, with a core principle being that AI must change decision-making, scaling, or problem-solving.

She argued that proprietary data is more valuable than a proprietary model. “I actually think the proprietariness of the model is less important now,” Owens said. “The models are not as important as what they’re driving.”

Owens also discussed gaps in evidence generation for diagnostics, playbooks for company growth, and the growing opportunity to improve the staging of liver fibrosis in MASH in the GLP-1 era.