Exclusive: Health startup Roon is raising $15 million from Sequoia to replace ‘Dr. Google’

Health information site Roon is raising a new funding round, B-17 has learned.

The startup is raising $15 million at a $65 million pre-money valuation, according to two people familiar with the efforts.

Existing investor Sequoia Capital has recommitted to the funding round, according to those people.

Roon aims to replace “Dr. Google” with its website and app for consumers to ask their health questions and get expert answers.

The company previously raised a $7.5 million seed round in 2022. Firstmark, TMV, and Sequoia Capital led the round, with SV Angel, Maveron, and M13 participating.

Terms of the deal are not finalized and could be subject to change. Roon did not respond to requests for comment. Sequoia declined to comment for this story.

Roon pitches itself as a “trusted guide for health” on its website. The company provides accessible medical information to users and partners with trained medical professionals to answer specific medical questions about users’ health journeys.

Currently, Roon’s site says it can help patients navigating fertility and family building, dementia, the neurological disease ALS, or the brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme.

The company initially began by providing medical information on glioblastomas, sourcing experts on the specific condition before expanding to additional topics, per TechCrunch. Roon also offers to connect users with other people experiencing similar health conditions.

Roon CEO Vikram Bhaskaran, a former Pinterest executive, founded Roon in 2021 after struggling to find accessible information about his loved ones’ medical conditions. He partnered with his former Pinterest colleague Arun Ranganathan, who serves as Roon’s CTO, and Rohan Ramakrishna, a trained neurosurgeon and Roon’s chief medical officer.

Today, expert health information isn’t always easy to find with a simple Google search. Patients may turn to resources like WebMD, forums like Quora, or even social media for advice on their conditions — with unsurprisingly unreliable accuracy.

AI platforms, such as Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are increasingly becoming a resource for medical questions as well. However, there have been concerns around the reliability and accuracy of these platforms’ outputs.

Consensus, a search engine that helps people parse scientific papers, raised a $11.5 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures in July to tackle a similar market.

Roon aims to differentiate itself with its focus on “medically vetted” information, Bhaskaran told TechCrunch in 2022.

“There’s so much medical misinformation… it’s crazy that patients don’t have anywhere to go to answer questions,” he said.