Adrian Aoun
Healthcare startup Forward just closed its doors last week, but its executives are already onto their next venture.
Adrian Aoun, Forward's former CEO, is cofounding a new company alongside the startup's former head of operations, Jonathan Lesser, and its former head of product, design, and engineering, Bali Raghavan, according to messages seen by Business Insider.
Lesser told former Forward employees that Aoun will serve as a cofounder, board member and advisor to the new startup, per the messages.
It's unclear what the startup will focus on as a business or if any of Forward's previous investors will be involved in the new venture. Forward raised over $650 million from top investors like Khosla Ventures, Softbank, and Salesforce's Marc Benioff.
Aoun, Lesser, and Raghavan didn't respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
It's an ultra-quick turnaround from Forward's leaders after the startup announced on November 13 that it would immediately shutter its more than a dozen locations and lay off its nearly 200 employees.
Launched in 2017, Forward sought to reimagine healthcare with ultra-modern clinics and grabbed a $100 million Series E round in November 2023 to power its AI-powered healthcare kiosks, called CarePods.
But a series of logistical and technical challenges — from the CarePods' self-service blood draws not working as expected, to patients getting stuck inside the large metal boxes — hindered Forward's CarePods rollout, Business Insider found. And patients didn't flock to the CarePods as Forward hoped, according to former employees.
On a Friday episode of The Information's More or Less podcast, Aoun said he's already hearing interest from Forward's investors to back his next venture.
"On Tuesday morning, I was like, I've decided, I'm doing nothing for six months to a year. I need a break, I'm licking my wounds, this really f—ing sucks," he said. But that day, he said, one of Forward's biggest investors called him to ask, "So what are you doing next, and can I cut you a term sheet?"
"We just burned not quite half a billion dollars on an idea. And a lot of people's reaction is, what are you doing next? Let's do it again," he continued. "What sort of special ass culture did we create in Silicon Valley where this is reality? This is absurd."
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