Jeffrey Wessler On Raising Over $65 Million To Build The Largest Virtual Cardiologist Practice In The US, Serving All 50 States

Jeffrey Wessler’s story is a captivating blend of medicine, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is a cardiologist and the founder of Heartbeat Health, the largest, countrywide virtual cardiologist practice in the US.

Heartbeat Health has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Cressey & Company, 406 Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, Optum Ventures, and Kindred Ventures.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Jeffrey Wessler identified a major gap between advanced healthcare in top institutions and most patients’ lack of access to it.
• Heartbeat Health was founded on the desire to bring high-quality cardiology care to millions via telehealth and remote diagnostics.
• The company’s growth accelerated when it shifted from direct-to-consumer to a B2B model, focusing on underserved cardiovascular patients.
• Jeffrey’s ability to raise $65M in capital was rooted in his belief in healthcare’s value and his company’s strong market performance.
• Heartbeat faced a crucial decision to consolidate its focus on cardiology services, streamlining its business and ensuring its long-term viability.
• Transitioning from medicine to entrepreneurship involved a steep learning curve, but it ultimately fueled Wessler’s passion and growth.
• Founders need a strong support network to weather entrepreneurship’s ups and downs and stay grounded through challenges.

 

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About Jeffrey Wessler:

Dr. Jeffrey Wessler is a Cardiologist and the Founder and CEO of Heartbeat Health, the largest Virtual Cardiology company in the US.

Dr. Wessler graduated from Williams College, received an MPhil in public health and epidemiology from Cambridge University, and his MD from Harvard Medical School.

He completed a cardiology fellowship at New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center and was named Chief Resident of the medicine program.

Dr. Wessler is currently an assistant professor of medicine at Northwell Health. Dr. Wessler is a father, an avid squash player, and was raised in Boston.

Connect with Jeffrey Wessler:

• LinkedIn
• RocketReach
• Crunchbase
• TheOrg

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All right. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Dealmaker Show. So today, we have a ah great founder you know joining us. We’re going to be talking about the building, the scaling, the financing, you know going through the apps, through the downs, raising money from tier one investors, ah and then, you know again, another very inspiring conversation that we have ahead of us. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Jeff Wesler. Welcome to the show.

Jeffrey Wessler: Thank you, Alejandro. Nice to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Jeffrey Wessler: That sounds good. um Life was ah good. i’m I’m a huge fan of Boston. I’m a now New Yorker who still carries my Boston allegiances. I grew up as the youngest of of three boys. I have a family that’s had a lot of medicine and healthcare care in it. my One of my older brothers is a cardiologist. My grandfather i was a cardiologist. and um i i After leaving Boston, went over to Williams College where I studied and moved to England for a year to study at Cambridge doing public health in epidemiology and I’d say this is where I got my first inkling of interest in working in public health and healthcare care at a broad scale. how can we

Jeffrey Wessler: great population level changes and effects. I came back, went to med school at Harvard, moved to New York, and studied medicine and cardiology before starting Heartbeat Health, which is a virtual cardiology company.

Alejandro Cremades: so I can say out of all things, obviously, you know you had it in the family, cardiology. so Did you know at a very early age that this is the path that you wanted to take because maybe it was like the dinner ah table conversation every night?

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, I would say it was um my default pathway. So I certainly tried lots of other things. I was a chemistry major, organic chemistry major in college and I loved other fields of medicine. um I loved things like architecture, but ultimately I kept coming back to healthcare care and frankly, cardiovascular disease and heart health as something I couldn’t escape me and I couldn’t seem to escape in my career.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about that moment where you are now, you know let’s say, working at the Columbia or you know maybe the New York Presbyterian Hospital, or even Northwell Health. What was that point, especially when you were at Northwell Health, where you start to think that maybe there’s like a different way to think about you know the heart and the way that people have the right education and guidance and access and stuff like that? like How did you start to incubate the idea? Because it’s a really big leap ah to go from being in medicine to all of a sudden being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur especially after all that training, after all those years. I mean, it’s is’s quite a big jump.

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, it’s ah it’s an interesting question and I’ll talk about it on two different planes. I think on the one hand, those institutions from Northwell to New York Presbyterian, this is where most of advanced medicine is being done at its highest level across the world right now. um You’ve got amazing clinicians working on amazing science to deliver care and therapeutics that um are at the top level,

Jeffrey Wessler: you know better than anything you could have imagined as as recently as a decade ago. um And yet there’s something missing in it. the There’s something missing, which is there’s a huge, huge group of patients and population that doesn’t get access to that high level of care. And this is the majority of the world. It’s the majority of world who does not show up to the hospital, doesn’t get their care in these advanced settings. And I think that began gnawing at me during residency, during my training, ah when it felt like there were two different two different worlds of healthcare, care those in this you know academic health system bubble and those everywhere else. So i I’d put that as um plane number one. Plane number two was my personal drive of saying, look, I really want to be able to work at a scale of affecting millions of patients at a time

Jeffrey Wessler: um not the one patient, one clinician interaction, which is so important, of course, and I still value that as one of the most purest forms of care out there. ah But for me, it was how do we get standards of care and high-quality care to groups of populations in numbers that ah can really change the course of a disease state, things like heart disease, heart attack, strokes, um and that takes a a new way of looking at it and and frankly a new innovative approach to delivering care.

Alejandro Cremades: What was that day when you said, screw it, let’s do it? How did it became so obvious to you that day, that day when you pulled the trigger?

Jeffrey Wessler: ah um you know it’s It’s funny, i so i I lived in the city on the Upper West Side and used to take the train up to Columbia at 168th Street um And a lot goes on in your mind when you’re you’re taking that train in very early mornings and very late nights on call. And I can distinctly remember ah a you know a week of night call that pushed to the point of exhaustion when ah i’d I’d been you know running all of these different ideas and concepts in my head and um had a had a you know a really particularly hard night. And the hospital on my way home was saying, you know this is it. this is

Jeffrey Wessler: It’s time for me to um give this a shot, give this a real go, move the idea into an action. and i can I can say that started what now is an eight-year journey from moving forward of bringing um a concept into fruition and then building something that now has ah you know a reasonable amount of of staying power.

Alejandro Cremades: so Then talk to us about the business model of a heartbeat. What ended up being the business model of a heartbeat? How are you guys making money?

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, so Heartbeat Health um is a is at this point the largest virtual cardiology company in the US. You should think of us like a big cardiology practice. So we’ve got clinicians, including cardiologists and nurse practitioners and physician assistants and nurses and care coordinators and medical assistants. All of these, ah like any division of cardiology, are are practicing and caring for patients with one main exception, which is we do it all without a brick and mortar footprint. um So it’s ah it’s a roaming cardiology group that works with populations that need cardiology care and patients that need care, but doesn’t bring them into an office. So we use telehealth, we use remote diagnostics to actually care for these members and these patients. we Our business models changed over the years. And in the last few years, um we’ve really found our strongest

Jeffrey Wessler: i ah and fit in the market, if you will, by bringing this care and selling this care to ah provider groups that are either bearing risk on cardiovascular patients or ah who are understaffed to manage cardiovascular patients. And the to give you a sense, in any large population, heart disease and heart issues are probably the number one or two driver of patient problems, comorbidities, cost,

Jeffrey Wessler: ah And so managing these is a huge priority for any group of of providers managing these patients. And cardiologists are severely understaffed and, and um you know, over ah-needed in these groups. So we can come in and really help. We can be part of your group, but um help take care of these patients and ah ah bring the care right to you instead of having to um hire a whole new set of cardiologists for your own group.

Alejandro Cremades: How was it like for you crossing that bridge from being more on the technical science side of things to now becoming an entrepreneur to now being on the business side? That’s quite the jump too.

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, it was hard. um I always loved business. And so i I thought about it and read about it and you know watched videos about it. um But doing it was really different. And you know there was a long period of time where I was in the first couple of years had to come up to speed with just and entrepreneurship 101. And that was that was a one of the largest points of growth for me as an individual. It was also the most exhilarating of my career so far. And it was what the the internal feelings I was having building this business are what made me realize this was for me and this was right for me. It felt unlike anything I was i had done in the decade prior training in medicine, which is exhilarating in its own way. um But this felt for me a culmination of bringing a set of of clinical skills into

Jeffrey Wessler: a world of um you know innovation, entrepreneurship, and business where you could actually commercialize um opportunities that use these skills. And that was right for me. And eight years later, this still feels right. like I love the day-to-day. I love the work. And um that’s how I know that ah you know something’s going well.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about the capital-raising efforts, too, because i mean you guys have raised $65 million. bucks So how has it been the journey of raising the money and and all these different cycles that you’ve jumped, especially the last round? You know you guys raised quite a significant amount, too.

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, um so at the beginning, I always said I i actually really enjoyed fundraising. um I liked being a clinician in the room trying to convince smart people to dedicate their capital and their money into a field that ive I felt could be of you know no bigger value than healthcare. care um So in the early days when you’re really pitching a journey and a story and an idea, that that’s what matters. um In the later days, it becomes,

Jeffrey Wessler: ah you know highly about the financial opportunity for your capital partners, for the investments. Heartbeat has been, as a company, very fortunate that in the face of a lot of headwinds in the capital markets, our progress has been very, very strong. and and you know We’ve had and for fairly unprecedented growth over the last year. That has allowed our fundraising and our financing to be very successful. and so we and this last round, ah which was our Series C, was led by a group called Kressian Co., which is a fantastic investment firm out of Chicago, along with some existing um ah partners of ours, 406 Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, Kindred Ventures, to name a few. And ah these partners have been with us for the long run. They’ve been

Jeffrey Wessler: um tremendous ah help for me to bring me up to speed to on you know how to conduct a successful financing. And I think we’ve been both fortunate by the support, but also, you know frankly, it’s been the value of the business that that has helped make these so successful. And um hopefully we’ll see it keep going as the you know the market starts potentially to open up again, especially for health tech.

Alejandro Cremades: What do you think was the toughest piece on the fundraising journey of the last say race? Because that was quite a big race.

Jeffrey Wessler: um for For us, it was you know one of the things that was very interesting is we but we were a moving target, meaning um our our growth had ah we we started to hit an inflection point of growth probably around January of last year or of this past year. and so ah Things had changed rapidly while doing the fundraise, fortunately for the better for us, but you never really know how that’s going to happen. and Anytime you go out for a financing,

Jeffrey Wessler: you can expect it to be a one to three month process. And so you’ve got to be aware that your numbers are going to come in month over month um while you’re in the middle of the fundraise. And that changes expectations. It changes the modeling, the forecasts, the underwriting, et cetera. That was something we had to stay ahead of to make sure we were feeling good about the fact that our we were beating budget month over month while we were also um projecting our new forecast model. And ah that led for a lot of um you know, late nights of making sure we were ah ready to present and ready to defend all of the modeling that was happening.

Alejandro Cremades: So talk to us about that moment where you felt, I think this is going to work out. You know, that moment where all of a sudden you’re like, wow, I think that we’re into something.

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, so I’ll i’ll um mention two of these. um The first happened about three years three years ago. We had made a transition, I’d say, like many companies, of moving direct-to-consumer into B2B sales. And I think the the goal behind that was to say, if we’re going to really add value to our to this world in cardiology, we’ve got to be able to see patients who really need our services, not just

Jeffrey Wessler: patients who want to sign up for a new healthcare trend, even though you might be able to build a good business on that, um the longer business and the bigger upside opportunity comes if you’re bringing real value there. So we made this transition, began selling into Medicare, um and i all from the beginning, from day one, we’ve been collecting evidence and data on everything we do, and you started to see that the value we were adding um ah was happening.

Jeffrey Wessler: We were improving outcomes. We were reducing hospitalization rates. Patients were thrilled with the service. And that was my first moment. This was far beyond far before we had any real financial numbers that were um ah all that interesting. But the the value was there. And that was my first moment of saying, you know what? like this is This is going to work. If we can keep this up, then we’re actually bringing value into the specialty world in healthcare, care and that’s you know fundamentally what you need to be able to do to sustain a business.

Jeffrey Wessler: So that’s point one.

Alejandro Cremades: So.

Jeffrey Wessler: And then just very briefly on the second point, um i I think this this past year, um we we put the way our sales and our our our care works is it takes a long time for groups to um get us, bring us through a sales cycle, get to know us, start patient care, and then grow it from there. ah And so we have to be patient. And a lot of that patience began paying off financially in 2024. And this was sort of the second inflection point of saying, all right, the economic health of the business is now happening. And we’re seeing that there’s there’s really a path for this to be not just a nice business, but potentially a great one.

Alejandro Cremades: Let’s talk about that the moment where you guys were operating two businesses you know so simultaneously and where there was almost a reckoning event there that they could have been catastrophic. Tell us about what happened there.

Jeffrey Wessler: Sure. um So not everything has been roses and sunshine forever. In fact, about a year ago, Harpy was in a very different place. We were, as you say, effectively had two different businesses that we were building. We were building a platform for cardiology with the intent on bringing that to market and um commercializing that.

Jeffrey Wessler: And we were doing and selling services of cardiovascular care. This was costing us a lot of money. It was very difficult to reconcile the fact that we were ah doing two different things. And ultimately, our customers were not were only buying one thing, and we’re only benefiting from one thing, and our patients were only benefiting from one thing, which was the care we were delivering. So we made the very hard decision to um i

Jeffrey Wessler: you know really close down the intent to commercialize our platform, but rather ah ah just build and sell our services and use the platform as a backend really just to make us more efficient and be able to scale. um it It came with a lot of changes in the company um ah and ah you know it took us months to actually sort through the right way to reorganize the company to provide this. And you know a year later, im very pleased with how things are going and the outcomes, but um it was certainly not a foregone conclusion. We would have got to this point if we had kept building two separate products.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in this regard to um what what would you say that da from one of those say tough moments, you know, that you experienced as an entrepreneur. what What have you learned too about being able to bounce back? you know Not to get caught up on the what-ifs, and just to keep going, because I’m sure that there’s like a lot of founders that are listening to us right now that maybe they’re dealing with, you know one day they wake up, everything is in flames, and then at night, you know everything is beautiful. It’s just like that rollercoaster. Who have you found that you need to be in those moments in order to be effective?

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, it’s a great question. It is one I’ve struggled with over the years. um Number one, being a founder can be very isolating and lonely. You have to have a support system, a group that you can call that you can talk through issues that are not your board or groups that are going to have ah you know potentially a diff for your investors that might have a different ah incentive than you.

Jeffrey Wessler: um So you you you need to find a way to keep yourself, I’d say, stable through the rockiness that is foundership. There’s going to be lots of ups and lots of downs. um It’s always easy to remember the downs and forget the ups. And so one of the first pieces of advice is celebrate those wins and remember those wins because they’re there. You would not be wouldn’t be on this journey and it wouldn’t be continuing if you didn’t have enough of the wins to sustain it.

Jeffrey Wessler: and don’t let those ah you know fall prey to the the the down times and the bad things that are happening such that you forget about them and it just becomes too negative.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of the company, of Heartbeat, is fully realized. What does that world look like, Jeff?

Jeffrey Wessler: I love this question. um I don’t think about this enough, so that would I would encourage everyone to think about, remind yourself of the vision. For me, cardiology care in its fully realized version with heartbeat is one in which every patient across the US who needs it ah can call and get a clinical ah visit yeah within a day or two. um That sounds pretty simple, but that alone

Jeffrey Wessler: would drastically improve the clinical outcomes across cardiovascular disease. Our care works. If we can get it to people when they need it on time in the right place, then the outcomes will present themselves and patients will do much, much better.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about to the um you know we’re talking about the the future here, but I want to talk about the past and doing so with a lens of reflection. If I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back to, let’s say, 2016, that moment where you were thinking about a world where you could put a gap to the problem that you were encountering you know and starting to think there at that point of becoming an entrepreneur, if you were able to go back and see that younger Jeff,

Alejandro Cremades: And you were able to give that younger Jeff one piece of advice before launching a business based on what you know now. What would that be and why?

Jeffrey Wessler: Well, ah um first and foremost, I would i would say that the ah the people you want to surround with your yourself with need to be um exceptional, great like-minded friends and people. It is so easy to be wooed by, and especially in the early days, um people that have a promise to and a resume that you think is going to unnaturally accelerate things when what you really need is a group that you can figure it out with. um I was lucky early on to have some great co-founders that helped me think through this, but also have had some employees in some early ah groups that um I was hoping would ah you know accelerate some aspect of the but business that it turned out we needed to figure out on our own. There was no hack.

Jeffrey Wessler: And I think that’s probably the other big lesson that I tell myself is there is no hack to speeding things up. You’ve got to be patient. You’ve got to learn from the market, what the market wants, what it doesn’t want, how to build this, and be in it for the 8, 10, 15, 20-year journey, especially in health care in services and tech enabled services, um nothing can happen much faster than that. And ah and so, you know, the patience is something I continually am reminded about, wish I had been reminded about sooner and and more often and um would would help anyone thinking about the initial starting point.

Alejandro Cremades: So in that regard, I mean, you’ve been at it with a company for over eight years now. you know Eight years is a lifetime you know as a founder with one company. It’s like 150 years in corporate. right So obviously, you know the heartbeat that you have now is a different heartbeat.

Alejandro Cremades: than the one that you got started. And every 18 to 24 months, the life cycles tend to change. So I guess you as a founder, you as, you know, ultimately the founder and CEO of the company, how have you been able to really develop yourself so that you were able to keep up up the same pace of the company’s growth, which I think is a really big one, because in many instances, unfortunately, companies, you know, they just leave founders behind and then the founders need to be re replaced by you know another operator or something that is able to take the company to the next stage. How have you been able to develop yourself to keep at the same pace with the company’s growth?

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, it’s a goodness’s a really interesting question. So I’d answer it in a couple of ways. Number one, um surround yourself with great people. We’ve got a ah truly A plus team um and that that pushes me. it It means that I have people that are so much stronger than me at many aspects of the business from finance to operations, you know to obviously product and development.

Jeffrey Wessler: um but those Those people, I learn from them every single day. They push me, they push the business forward, and ah you’ve got to cultivate this leadership group of of you know learners and co-pilots on the way. The second thing I’d say um is i you you’ve got ah you’ve got to grow you’ve got to grow. You’ve got to intentionally grow as a person, and I’ve grown I had to grow personally. I’ve had to grow you know from a career standpoint. I’ve had to learn things about finance and um sales and you know operations and product that I had to go to school again to do. And you if you don’t go in with that learner’s mindset, then you’ll be left behind as the business outgrows you. um Part of that involves personal reflection, so not just career-minded, but personally, you’ve got to grow. i

Jeffrey Wessler: had a fantastic coach for a year who helped me really, I’d say, step up my maturity as a leader. And um you you really you have to invest in the in your own growth if you’re going to be able to grow with the company.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it. So, Jeff, for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Jeffrey Wessler: Yeah, my um I’m always on LinkedIn, Jeff Westler, W-E-S-S-L-E-R, and my email is Jeff, J-E-F-F at heartbeathealth dot.com. I love hearing from people and always happy to get on a call and chat.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being on the Dealmaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Jeffrey Wessler: Alejandro, thank you. This was a lot of fun.

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