Why we invested in Solace: Making healthcare advocacy a standard of care

Healthcare in the United States does not fail because of insufficient spending. We spend trillions annually—more than any other nation—yet even patients with medical degrees frequently find themselves lost in the "black hole" between a diagnosis and the start of treatment. 

Fragmentation and complexity in our healthcare system leave many patients without adequate support during their most vulnerable moments. Nearly 40% of them delay or avoid care entirely due to cost, confusion, or system friction. These gaps drive missed diagnoses, preventable hospitalizations, caregiver burnout, and billions of dollars in unnecessary downstream costs.

Solace exists to close that gap.

Today, we are thrilled to announce our follow-on investment in Solace Health’s $130 million Series C led by IVP, with participation from existing investors Menlo Ventures, Torch Capital, Inspired Capital, and Riverpark Ventures. This round values Solace at over $1 billion, marking a pivotal moment where healthcare advocacy shifts from a "nice-to-have" concierge service to essential national infrastructure.

Solace is making healthcare advocacy a standard, reimbursed, and scalable part of care delivery.

The growing problem Solace solves

The healthcare system failed Jeremy Gurewitz’s mom. He built Solace so others wouldn’t be left behind.

When Jeremy’s mother, a radiologist, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, even her deep knowledge of the U.S. healthcare system couldn’t protect her from its complexity. Watching her struggle became a painful turning point and the inspiration for Solace.

The U.S healthcare industry implicitly assumes patients can act as their own care coordinators. In reality, even highly educated patients struggle to navigate referrals, insurance requirements, scheduling, treatment decisions, and follow-up care.

The company pairs patients with dedicated healthcare advocates—such as nurses, social workers, and health administrators—who coordinate care across providers, manage logistics, and identify clear next steps. These advocates handle everything from appointment bookings to insurance claims. 

This intervention happens between diagnosis and treatment, the moment when delays are most costly, and support matters most. 

A full-stack model built to scale

For the 66 million people on Medicare and 129 million with chronic conditions in the U.S., our healthcare system is especially hard to navigate. What sets Solace apart isn’t just the human layer, but the operating system behind it. 

Solace has built a HIPAA-compliant, full-stack platform that integrates patient intake, advocate workflows, physician oversight, documentation, and billing into a single system. Experienced advocates, including RNs and social workers, are supported by supervising physicians and technology that ensures consistency, quality, and compliance. 

‎Unlike traditional patient advocacy and healthcare navigation startups that offer either software or services, Solace combines both. Its platform powers a national network of over 2,000 advocates through a custom portal that handles task routing, triage, and EHR interoperability.

By absorbing the administrative burden, Solace enables advocates to onboard quickly, operate at high capacity, and focus their time on judgment, guidance, and trust. The result is a longitudinal care model that scales with strong unit economics, delivering faster time-to-care and measurably better outcomes.

This model reflects SignalFire’s broader “business in a box” investment thesis of backing infrastructure platforms that offer everything that a provider needs, from back-office operations to patient acquisition, so that they can focus on what matters most: the patients. Examples of similar companies in our portfolio include Grow Therapy and Moxie.

Solace enters the care journey during times of maximum patient need and builds scalable, defensible platforms around that access point. Capturing patients at a critical part of their care journey—when the system is hardest to navigate—creates both immediate impact and durable expansion opportunities across care coordination, chronic care management, and downstream services.

The team: Growth DNA meets clinical rigor

Founders Jeremy and Sara both bring a unique "growth-first" mindset from their time at companies like Imperfect Foods and Literati. In healthtech, the ability to build a brand that patients actually trust is often the missing ingredient. 

By pairing their consumer expertise with clinical heavyweights like Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Taylor (formerly of Harvard Medical School and Humana), they’ve built a company that speaks the language of both patients and regulators and assembled a team that pairs empathy with execution discipline.

The momentum: 10x YoY growth in a $20B+ market

Since our Series B investment, Solace’s trajectory has been nothing short of exceptional. The business has successfully transitioned from a 100% cash-pay model to a fully Medicare-covered service, driving a massive surge in adoption. This 10x YoY growth isn’t driven by marketing arbitrage, but by structural demand and durable reimbursement alignment.

The total addressable market for reimbursed navigation is vast. By focusing on Medicare, the Veterans Affairs system, and other payers, Solace is tapping into a large market exceeding $20 billion.

Advocacy as a reimbursed standard of care

For years, healthcare advocacy was a luxury or a manual, low-margin service. One major shift changed the landscape, forming the core of our investment thesis:

A breakthrough in reimbursement unlocks the market: In 2024, CMS introduced Community Health Integration (CHI) and Principal Illness Navigation (PIN) reimbursement codes, a true inflection point for patient navigation. This wasn't just a minor policy tweak; it was a paradigm shift. It transformed patient navigation from a cash-pay model into a reimbursable clinical service. 

Solace moved quickly to operationalize this shift, building a full-stack platform that embeds billing logic, clinical oversight, and compliance directly into its core workflows. The result is a model designed for scale from day one.

Looking ahead: Scaling infrastructure for healthcare advocacy

At SignalFire, we look for "undiscovered" regulatory tailwinds and founders with the technical grit to build the systems required to capture them. Solace Health embodies that strategy.

With $130 million more on the balance sheet, Solace is moving beyond its direct-to-consumer roots. They’re positioned to expand their national advocate network, deepen payer and provider partnerships, and scale advocacy as essential infrastructure in the U.S. healthcare system. 

We are proud to continue our partnership as they ensure no patient has to navigate the hardest moments of their life alone.

Learn more about SignalFire’s “Business in a Box” investment thesis and get playbooks from Grow Therapy and Moxie here. If you’re building in this space, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to our Health & PharmaTech team by emailing Sooah Cho at sooah@signalfire.com.