Andrew Adams

Andrew Adams co-founded Oak HC/FT in 2014 to invest exclusively in healthcare and fintech entrepreneurs. In 2023, Oak HC/FT was named one of the ten best-performing venture capital firms in the world.

Andrew has spent over 25 years investing in leading healthcare companies. His investments include One Medical (NASDAQ: ONEM; acquired by Amazon), iHealth Technologies (merged with Connolly), Therapy Brands (acquired by KKR), CLARiENT (acquired by GE Healthcare), PharMEDium Healthcare (acquired by CD&R), Limeade (ASX: LME; acquired by WebMD), Benefitfocus (NASDAQ: BNFT), Core Informatics (acquired by Thermo Fisher), LDI (acquired by Diplomat Pharmacy), Maestro Health (acquired by AXA Group), CareMedic Systems (acquired by Ingenix), American Esoteric Laboratories (acquired by Sonic Healthcare Limited), Argus Information & Advisory Services (acquired by Verisk Analytics), Health Dialog (acquired by British United Provident Association), NetSpend Corporation (NASDAQ: NTSP; acquired by TSYS), PayFlex Systems (acquired by Aetna), United BioSource (acquired by Medco Health Solutions). Andrew serves on the Boards of August Bioservices, Curana Health, DispatchHealth, Eating Recovery Center, Everside Health, Galileo, Infusion for Health, Reveleer, Rialtic, Unified Women's Healthcare, US HealthVest and Veda. He is actively involved with Noom and Precision Medicine Group.

Andrew began his career at Alex. Brown & Sons. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University.

I grew up on a farm in Central Texas and the two lessons I learned on the farm during my childhood and high school years were: 1) work hard and 2) take pride in your work. One of my jobs was to spend countless hours walking up and down rows in our fields pulling weeds to make sure that they were as "clean" as possible.

There is a sense of pride and satisfaction looking at a field with no weeds – knowing all of the hours that went into getting the field to that point – and also knowing that yield on that crop will be incrementally better from that work.

My day job has certainly changed from working on the farm but I still feel that same deep sense of fulfillment in leaving things better than we found them. That is our goal for our portfolio companies and the healthcare system: Seeing a company start with a determined CEO and a few employees, customers, and millions of dollars of revenue grow into a national presence led by a world-class team and impacting millions of patients’ lives and customers.

I've had the privilege of working with great entrepreneurs, and co-founding a firm has added new perspectives on the day-to-day work of building an enduring organization.

The first perspective is about leadership. Many different styles can work but Annie and I believe the most effective people lead from the front, proactively lean into hard decisions, and strike that right balance between incisive and decisive. These principles distinguish the founders who build the strongest organizations, and are what we strive to apply at Oak.

This second perspective is about time horizon and endurance. Any investor can ride a hot cycle but that's just one moment, one data point, and the arc of building a lasting institution doesn't include shortcuts. You must pace yourself and be prepared for managing interrelating long-term and immediate strategies and making big and small decisions. Big decisions are existential; you must get these right and then make them successful. This earns you latitude on the thousands of small decisions. These factors yield an outcome, and we learn from the successes and mistakes equally and then move on swiftly. Treating a marathon like a sprint makes it impossible to cross the finish line.

The final perspective is about complex organizational decisions. As an investor, it's easy to sit in a boardroom and point out something that's not working and push the CEO to make the "hard decision." What's needed is an appreciation for the ripple effects of that decision across the entire organization. This applies if you are ten people or ten thousand people, because all companies are living organisms. They are complex intertwined ecosystems, where one decision will have second and third-order effects on the team and enterprise. This doesn't exempt you from making hard decisions, but it adds nuance to their timing and progression. Founding and running Oak has given us a much clearer picture of these dynamics and shapes the counsel Annie and I offer to our entrepreneurs.