Hinge Health: Reimagining possibilities and better outcomes with virtual care

Daniel Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg met in London while pursuing PhDs in biochemistry and bioengineering at Oxford and Cambridge, respectively. The friends-turned-co-founders had already started two ventures together when they came up with their third idea: a virtual care platform for musculoskeletal (MSK) health. They called it Hinge Health.

Both Dan and Gabriel had personally experienced the shortcomings of traditional physical therapy, and believed strongly that patients deserved better. At Bessemer, we had the privilege of seeing this early conviction in action. We met Dan and Gabriel while they were raising their seed round; each time we met with them, they listened to our feedback and came back to us with the data to show us how their vision for virtual MSK care was possible. We were always impressed to see how these founders over delivered on what they said they were going to accomplish and continued to outperform their own plans.

Our team at Bessemer had already predicted that care would move beyond the four walls of hospitals into virtual-first models—an approach that showed potential to improve patient outcomes while reducing costs. Our digital health and virtual care roadmaps, along with early bets in healthcare AI, gave us a front-row seat to the industry’s shift. MSK, a $600 billion category riddled with inefficiencies and poor patient experience, was clearly ripe for disruption. After years following Hinge Health’s progress, we led the Series C in late 2019.

And then, the world changed. In 2020, virtual care transformed from a perceived novelty into an absolute necessity. Hinge Health—ahead of its time—was ready. The company met the moment with a sophisticated platform that helped transform care when the healthcare industry needed virtual solutions the most.

Hinge Health is a case study in what’s possible when visionary leadership, deep product conviction, and long-term partnership come together to help transform outcomes, experiences, and costs in healthcare through technology. As we celebrate Hinge Health’s IPO, we reflect on what made this partnership once-in-a-lifetime.

Why product innovation is never finished

Dan’s mantra,“the product is never finished,” is a foundational principle that led the Hinge Health team to constantly reimagine the best way to deliver care to their patients. “Hinge Health has always been stubborn in its vision but flexible in its execution, adapting to each wave of progress in edge computing, AI, and hardware to build a smarter, more scalable platform,” explains Dan.

In the beginning, Hinge Health shipped physical kits with tablets and wearable sensors so that patients could receive care comfortably from home, and now, the product has evolved to an advanced computer vision system that uses just the camera on your phone to track over 100 biomechanical landmarks in real time. Hinge Health’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach—letting patients use their own phones for care—not only unlocked more personalized treatment and better outcomes for patients, but also lowered costs for patients and provided SaaS-like margins for the business.

As the technology matured, so did the form factor—but the team’s mission remained the same: to radically improve outcomes, experiences, and costs by automating the delivery of care. And their patients were always at the center of this mission.

The importance of putting members first

Hinge Health built its business around a singular, uncompromising value: put members first. This wasn’t just lip service—it was embedded into every technical decision, design choice, and member interaction. As Hinge Health sold to self-insured employers, health plans, and benefits consultants, they won the hearts of the people experiencing the life-changing benefits of virtual care for MSK.

The product's simplicity, accessibility, and delight turned users into evangelists. Employees at client companies started creating Slack groups and other forums to talk about their Hinge Health experience. Some even did their Hinge physical therapy exercises together during lunch breaks in the office. And when something didn’t go right, the team owned it—quickly, openly, and with a commitment to improve. The result? A company with no customer churn in its early years (practically unheard of in enterprise healthcare), and a reputation for exceptional clinical outcomes and product love.

How leadership sets the pace for growth

One of the things that stood out to us about Dan and Gabriel was their ability to lead as “multilingual” founders—leaders fluent not only in technology, but also in the intricacies of clinical care, enterprise sales, and healthcare regulation. That rare cross-disciplinary fluency enabled Hinge Health to build a highly technical, clinically rigorous, and enterprise-ready product, without losing sight of the people they were trying to serve.

Gabriel’s operational excellence, grounded in his scientific background in orthopedic tissue engineering, made him the perfect complement to Dan’s visionary, high-energy leadership. As reflected by their partnership, Dan and Gabriel always understood that scaling a business isn’t just about having the right product—it’s about having the right people. “Leaders are the pacesetters of the team,” Dan says. And each leader played a pivotal role in Hinge Health’s success. To name a few, President Jim Pursley—who joined after having helped take Livongo public—played a pivotal role in scaling the business, while COO Lex Annison (formerly of Google and Wish), CFO James Budge, and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeff Krauss greatly informed the company’s culture of discipline, velocity, and commitment to clinical rigor.

Redefining what’s possible in virtual care

Hinge Health has always stayed true to its north star: delivering better outcomes through technology. But just as impressive has been the company’s ability to achieve best-in-class SaaS performance. In 2024, Hinge Health generated $390M in revenue, growing revenue by more than 33% year over year while improving gross margin, operating margin and net loss significantly.

Watching Dan and Gabriel build Hinge Health from the ground up has reaffirmed that leading companies, especially in healthcare, don’t simply iterate—they reimagine what’s possible and prove it. “Our vision is to create a new healthcare system that transforms outcomes, experience, and costs by using technology to scale and automate the delivery of care,” says Dan. “Whether it's 10 years, 20 years, or 200 years, we believe most healthcare will be automated by technology—software connected to hardware.”

We’ve always believed in Dan and Gabriel’s vision—and we’re thrilled to see how innovation is reimagining a new modality of patient care.