Early Stage Venture Capital on Quantifying Happiness

Health and happiness is a compelling and exciting sector for private equity investors.

We asked SH2 (Social Starts Health and Happiness), the only venture fund focused on the emerging science of individual health and the delivery of happiness, to walk us through the opportunity set and its potential for investors.

In 2017, SH2 began investing in the science of health and happiness, covering an arc from transforming the human organism (genetics, bioscience), to creating new forms of human chemistry (the microbiome), to reading, understanding, or altering our minds (neuroscience), to expanding human experience (virtual and augmented reality), and even to new perspectives on what we eat and drink (next-generation food and ingredients) and how we interact with one another (emergent community).

SH2's primary focus is on Delightful Moments, the small, but powerful, separations from the daily humdrum when we feel stronger, calmer, more joyful, more in control, more distant from pain and anxiety. Meditation. Massage. The endorphins from exercise. The transcendence of opera. The smell of vanilla and the taste of chocolate and fine wine. These are all historic examples of Delightful Moments.

Now, breakthroughs in science and technology have the power to deliver these experiences at an individual scale. Science can help individuals be a bit happier, which can lead to greater health. Or a little healthier, which can lead to greater potential for happiness.

This is driven by a rising generation determined to control its personal health and be its best selves. It is this new, transformative cycle of human experience that we see as one of the greatest investment opportunities in decades, a $15+ Trillion market opportunity.

What Is Health And Happiness?

Not only is health and happiness science a huge opportunity, but it is also entirely transforming core human experiences. That, in turn, is driving the health experience through fundamental change. Looking back, healthcare was all about disease, drugs, hospitals, and payers - monochrome and institutional. Today, we are already moving from disease toward prevention, from institutional toward individual focus. Health is becoming increasingly diverse and personal. And the future of health will look utterly different from the past. Every aspect of medicine and care is about to be overthrown by an army of new possibilities and choices.

This strategy uncovers big breakthroughs. You see some of those here.