Hi, I'm Sherman

Emergency Physician @Stanford | Venture @a16z bio+health

I'm a reformed programmer, product manager turned early-stage healthcare investor and emergency medicine resident physician based in the Bay Area. I care deeply about leveraging my hybrid technical and clinical background to support underserved patient populations. In addition to the privilege of serving patients at their most vulnerable moments, I also work on the investment team at a16z bio+health supporting founders building a more equitable, efficient, and cost-effective healthcare system.

About

Sherman is an emergency resident physician at Stanford where he cares for patients at Stanford, Kaiser Santa Clara, and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, the safety net hospital for the region. He also supports the investing team and a dedicated portfolio of healthcare companies as a venture fellow at a16z bio+health, where he focuses on the intersection of AI and healthcare, care delivery model innovation, and improving Medicaid infrastructure.Previously as a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at New York, Sherman helped launch AlleyCorp Healthcare, a physician-led venture capital firm and venture studio where he led investments behind tech-enabled specialty care models and incubated healthcare companies focused on primary care and value-based care enablement. He also founded MD+, a 501c3 non-profit which now supports over 3000 aspiring physician-innovators and medical students across the country.Before transitioning into medicine, Sherman was an early product manager at PatientPing where he was named to MedTech Boston’s “40 under 40 Healthcare Innovators” for his work on a national care coordination platform. Sherman graduated from Stanford with a BS in Computer Science and MS in Management Science, where he conducted machine learning research under Fei-Fei Li (PD Soros '99) and was named a Greylock X Fellow and a Kleiner Perkins Fellow.Sherman was born in Maryland to immigrants who emigrated from Hong Kong. His father, a biochemist-turned-software engineer, and his mother, a literature major-turned-math teacher, taught Sherman the importance of interdisciplinary thinking from an early age.Though he thoroughly enjoys working with patients and talented entrepreneurs, he derives the greatest joy in spending time with 10-month old son, Jaysen, and wife!

mentorship

I'm passionate about helping others take the next step in their careers as a way of paying it forward to the countless mentors and advisors I've had along the way. Every week, I set aside 1-2h to chat with folks that fit one or more of these profiles. If this sounds like you, I'd love to hear from you and ask how I can be helpful:

- aspiring healthcare founders
- "non-traditional pre-meds" considering medicine coming from tech/industry

Speaking

I speak on healthtech innovation, product management, and venture capital. Past engagements include speaking at classes and/or panels at Stanford University, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan. Feel free to reach out to me if I might be a good fit for your event.

Past Talks
- From PM to PM: a product manager's path to practicing medicine
- VC 101 a crash course on why/when/how to raise venture capital as a student-entrepreneur
- Product Management in Healthcare covering challenges, and lessons learned from building product in healthcare (slides)
- Needfinding in the Biodesign Process finding and articulating problems via user-oriented research in a healthcare setting

I love being helpful to aspiring healthcare founders. I'm especially helpful with connecting with founders as they're in the "idea maze" iterating on various potential ideas in healthcare, and I enjoy opening up my clinical and healthtech product talent networks to folks looking for co-founders or key hires. I am currently only considering new engagements on case by case basis if it doesn't conflict with an existing investment I'm involved with through my role at a16z.

My current advisory portfolio consists of:
Bunkerhill Health (YC, Sequoia, Felicis, Optum) - clinical AI model marketplace
Kubera Health (Upfront Ventures) - managed contracting infrastructure
Ansible Health (AlleyCorp, Bessemer, First Round) - tech-enabled COPD
Fortuna Health (YC, a16z, Boxgroup) - Turbotax for Medicaid
and 3 other unannounced companies backed by firms like a16z, NEA, Accel

If I can be helpful, I'd love to hear from you!

COMMUNITIES

One of my greatest passions is building communities and connecting people. Here are a few of the communities I've had the pleasure of starting with other like-minded people:

- MD+, a growing group of 2000+ aspiring physician-innovators from all around the country
- Social EMpathy, a national group of 50+ medical students and residents passionate about Social Emergency Medicine
- Food as Medicine, a working group of Mt Sinai graduate students serving patients through food as medicine
- PMs in Healthcare, 1000+ of the brightest product minds in healthcare across startups, growth-stage companies, and health systems
- Diversity and Innovation Hub, a Mt Sinai venture addressing social determinants and increasing the representation of minorities in healthcare innovation
- Off Their Plate, a non-profit that has raised $7M+ to provide free meals to healthcare workers and food-insecure communities while also restoring working wages to local restaurants during the COVID-19 crisis
- Path to Product, Medium's largest product management publication (40K+ followers) supporting aspiring and early-stage PMs
- SHIFT, an interdisciplinary healthcare innovation group at Stanford
- TreeHacks Health, a hackathon vertical focused on healthcare needs
- health++, Stanford's inaugural healthcare hackathon

Let me know if I can plug you into any of these groups!

Contact

Thank you for stopping by! Drop me a line at (first +last name)md@gmail.com and I'll do my best to get back to you in a timely manner

Happy holidays everyone from Alexis and our newest addition to the family - baby boy Jaysen! We're so excited to be new parents and celebrating many firsts together this year. The journey of parenthood has been incredibly humbling but filled with so many joyful moments and memories, we can't believe he's grown up so fast even in the last 3 months.Alexis just went back to working as a new EM attending in San Jose after 3 months of maternity leave and we were both able to spend some time in Hawaii visiting Jaysen's great grandparents on Oahu before returning to our clinical duties in the Bay Area.Grateful especially to Jeni, Alexis's mom who's been moved in with us to help with childcare over the last few months and our families and friends who have supported us throughout this journey.