SA国际传媒

Lynne Chou O鈥橩eefe鈥檚 version of the Super Bowl includes a penthouse, 300 entrepreneurs, small groups and fireside chats about healthcare providers: the JP Morgan Digital Healthcare Conference.

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And this year, she said, it鈥檚 going to be more hectic than ever. O鈥橩eefe just closed an oversubscribed $87 million fund focused on early-stage healthcare companies, , per . She plans to invest with checks sized between $750,000 and $6 million across 15 to 18 investments. Current portfolio companies include , a direct-to-consumer wellness company, , a womens healthcare platform and Lightship, which provides direct-to-patient clinical research solutions.

It took O鈥橩eefe a little over a year to raise this inaugural fund, and the ex-Kleiner Perkins partner declined to disclose any LPs.

While O鈥橩eefe hails from , she pointed out that operating experience is the key differentiator between her fund and the number of healthcare funds out there.

鈥淸Define VC] really came from entrepreneurs,鈥� she told SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淭his is not an easy space to innovate in, they need people with experience building successful companies in digital health, people with real operating experience.鈥� She explained that is why she prefers to call her investments 鈥減artners鈥� instead of portfolio companies.

Describing it as 鈥渋n the trenches operational experience,鈥� O鈥橩eefe spent time travelling the world–from India to Western Europe–training sales teams on behalf of Abbott, a digital health management product. She also led the effort on revamping an entire logistical chain, from research and development to manufacturing facilities, and all the way out to the customer–just because one of her products needed temperature-controlled storage.

The other member of Define, Chirag Shah, a principal, also comes from both investing and operating backgrounds.

Before heading back to prep for the digital healthcare conference–and the three forums she鈥檚 participating in along with it–O鈥橩eefe shared a note on diversity: 29 percent of her portfolio companies are founded and led by women.

鈥淲hen you look at the business of healthcare, women control 80 percent of the healthcare decisions in the home, they are the chief medical officers of the home,鈥� she said.

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