Revenue operations shouldn't feel like a lost cause for independent physicians. Here's how Youlify is changing that equation.
If you've ever spent time in a doctor's waiting room watching the office staff juggle phones, paperwork, and patient care, you might have wondered how these medical professionals ever manage to get paid. The answer? Often, they don't—at least not fully.
In the labyrinth of healthcare billing, physicians routinely write off 20% of what they bill simply because the claims process is so broken. When you're trained to save lives, not navigate insurance bureaucracy, this revenue leak becomes an accepted cost of doing business. But it doesn't have to be.
The Painful Reality of Medical Billing
Independent physicians and small practices face a particular nightmare when it comes to revenue collection. Here's what their world looks like:
- 21% of their insurance claim submissions are outright denied
- Doctors and administrative staff spend 1-4 hours chasing down each denial
- 75% of those denials are never pursued and written off as lost revenue
As a seed-stage venture firm specializing in B2B software, we see this as the perfect problem for AI combined with the right founding team to solve. Enter Youlify.
An Agentic Solution That Actually Delivers
Youlify replaces traditional, inefficient third-party Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) services with something far more powerful: an agentic AI system purpose-built to maximize healthcare revenue capture.
What sets Youlify apart is its ability to:
1) Determine exactly what data needs to be gathered
2) Properly submit claims with the right CPT codes and documentation
3) Understand the nuances of every payor and their denial tendencies
4) Contest denials instantly with far more efficiency than any human
The result? Physicians get paid what they deserve, with full visibility into their claims process and revenue patterns. Beyond just collecting more revenue, Youlify provides actionable insights on which procedures and payers yield the best returns, allowing practices to make smarter business decisions.
The Team That Makes It Work
Great technology is one thing, but Youlify's founding team brings something special to this problem space:
Bo Gu, a former cardiac surgeon and emergency physician who experienced this pain firsthand when he took over responsibility for revenue as the department chair during the pandemic
Sally Liang, 2nd time founder who led her previous company to beat Google in enterprise AI search for big banks with deep know-how in fintech and product.
Howard Peng, their CTO with a PhD in NLP and former head of AI at multiple startups architected and developed Youlify’s full-stack platform.
This combination of deep medical domain expertise, product know-how and cutting-edge AI knowledge creates the perfect storm for disrupting healthcare revenue collection.
From Due Diligence to "Wow Moments"
During our customer interviews, we heard stories that validated the urgent need for this solution. One physician group was so thrilled with Youlify that they considered legal action against their previous RCM provider—they had waited eight months to receive just 10% of their rightful payments, only to have Youlify collect everything they were owed within 30 days.
That's the kind of transformative impact that gets us excited as investors.
Why Now Is the Time
Healthcare providers are facing increasing financial pressures as reimbursement rates come under scrutiny. They're doing the same work (if not more) while making less money. The old way of doing things—outsourcing to third-party billers and accepting significant revenue leakage—is no longer sustainable.
With a business model largely based on a percentage of collections, Youlify aligns its success with its customers'. Better yet, they get paid on both the baseline revenue physicians were already collecting AND the additional 20% they typically recover.
The Road Ahead
Youlify is currently focused on expanding the types of physicians they support beyond their initial specialties and growing their coverage of insurance payers. With each new physician and payor they work with, their system gets smarter and deployment times shrink.
As Bonfire Ventures, we're thrilled to back this team as they build out their technology, expand their go-to-market efforts, and ultimately transform how independent physicians get paid for the important work they do.
In a world where too much software fails to deliver on its promise, Youlify stands apart. It doesn't just help you do your job—it actually does the job for you, providing visibility, insights, and most importantly, the revenue you've earned.
That's exactly the kind of B2B software innovation we love to support.
Bonfire Ventures is proud to have led Youlify's $4.3M seed round. You can read more about this exciting investment here.
