Hi, you've reached Sherman

Hi, I'm Sherman

Emergency Physician @Stanford & Healthcare Investor @a16z bio+health

I'm a reformed programmer, product manager turned early-stage healthcare investor and emergency medicine physician based in the Bay Area. I care deeply about leveraging my background in technology to support underserved patient populations and creating a more equitable, efficient, and cost-effective healthcare system.

About

Born and raised in the Washington D.C. area, I am the proud son of two immigrants from Hong Kong and alum of the Montgomery Blair Magnet Program. I completed degrees in Computer Science and Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University, where I conducted machine learning and social gamification research under Dr. Fei-Fei Li and Michael Bernstein.I was a Greylock X Fellow & early mobile engineer at Khan Academy and a Kleiner Perkins Fellow & product manager at Mango Health. In 2018, I had the honor of being named to MedTech Boston's 40 under 40 Healthcare Innovators for my work with PatientPing, where we launched a national care coordination platform.I translated my passion for helping startups find and scale product-market fit into early-stage technology companies with Underscore VC where I led investments in augmented intelligence, conversational AI, and future of work. More recently, I helped launch AlleyCorp Healthcare to invest in and incubate healthcare companies. I continue to support early-stage investments now on the a16z bio+health team and work hard to be the best thought partner to healthcare founders who are passionate about tackling problems in healthcare.As a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, I was extremely fortunate to have the support of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship. I'm passionate about supporting the next generation of physician-innovators as the founder & chair of MD++ and recently started my training in Emergency Medicine at Stanford with strong interests in redesigning acute care delivery innovation. When I'm not working with founders or with patients, I spend time tinkering with new cocktails as an aspiring mixologist, playing pick-up basketball, writing about systemic issues in healthcare with Margins of Medicine, and building meaningful communities

Sherman and Alex

Advising

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 2-3h 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 product managers
- "non-traditional pre-meds" considering medicine coming from tech/industry
- product managers interested in early-stage VC

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, and ProductCamp Boston. 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

Hi, you've reached Sherman

CONSULTING

I advise early-stage healthcare startups in finding and scaling product-market fit, and also support first-time founders in raising Seed and Series A rounds. I currently only consider new engagements outside of NYC given my current investing role with AlleyCorp. My current and past advisory portfolio consists of:

Uno Health (Cowboy Ventures, Floodgate, Meridian Street Capital) - connecting health insurers to non-medical services
Karuna Health (First Round Capital, Boxgroup) - copilot for patient communication
Marigold Health (Felicis Ventures, General Catalyst, Rock Health) - engaging behavioral health & substance use patients with chat-based peer support groups
Muvr Labs (YCombinator, StartX Health, Bolt) - wearable sensors enabling real-time and remote joint motion tracking

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 sherman@cs.stanford.edu and I'll do my best to get back to you in a timely manner