Chris Ellis
Co-founder & CEO, Thatch. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveLinkedIn ↗thatch.ai ↗
Chris Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of Thatch, a healthcare benefits platform using ICHRA models for personalized health plans. A former MIT cancer researcher who held commercial roles at Sophia Genetics and Agilent, he has raised over $80 million for Thatch from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures.
2shows
2appearances
32statements
10resolved
6supported
0contradicted
60%fully supported
Everything Chris Ellis said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ellis: Choosing the right co-founder is the top determinant of PMF
“The single most important determining factor to getting to product market fit is actually who you choose as your co-founder.”
Ellis: George Washington accumulated $38B equivalent pioneering early VC concepts
“Over 15 years, he pioneered a lot of the concepts in BC, like general partnership, limited partners, carried interest. He accumulated over that time assets that today would be equivalent to like thirty eight billion dollars in, you know, adjusted GDP terms.”
Ellis: Roughly 10% of US VC Dollars Go Directly to Health Insurers
“Something like 10% in the U.S.,
10% of VC dollars go directly to health insurance companies.”
Ellis: VCs are art critics who lack operating experience
“One thing I've realized is VCs are kind of like art critics, where they know what greatness looks like. They can distinguish between okay art and great art. But in many cases, it's been some time since they've, you know, picked up a paintbrush, or in some case…”
Chris Ellis: Healthcare is shifting from defined benefit to defined contribution
“And so we're seeing signs that the same shift from defined benefit to defined contribution that we saw in retirement happening, happening here in, in healthcare.”
Ellis: ICHRA will be health insurance's primary growth tailwind for 10 years
“And there's only one pocket of growth that is small today, but is seeing triple-digit growth year over year. That could be that next big secular tailwind for the next 10 years.”
Ellis: A startup demands more time invested than raising a child
“Doing a startup is A lot more work, or at least a lot more time invested than you know, raising a kid.”
Ellis: Founders should not optimize for financial outcomes over big tech
“I don't think that if you want to start a company, you should be optimizing for financial outcome, actually, because if you run all the numbers and you break it down, you're much more likely to be just on a, you know, excluding your own personal desire. You're…”
Ellis: Startups can get 80% of demand signal from 20% of development work
“The learning out of here is you can almost always get 80% of the signal from 20% of the work. Like, if you think about the eighty-twenty principle, we put in 20% of the work building a full product and got 80% of the signal. And if you think about it, you can …”
Ellis: Aggressive customer complaints about bugs indicate real product demand
“When I, one thing I learned is if your customers care enough to complain and get you on a call and rake you over the coals, it means you're onto something, right? Because if they didn't care, then they would just leave, you know?”
Ellis: Healthcare Startups Require a Higher MVP Bar Due to Patient Risk
“I think the bar for an MVP in healthcare is also a little bit higher. Because this is people's like large sums of money. This is people's health that we're talking about. Like the cost of messing up is someone can't see their doctor or have an appointment or g…”
Ellis: Tatch closed an embedded distribution partnership with QuickBooks and Allstate
“We were able to close a really big partnership with QuickBooks and Allstate to distribute that into their payroll system.”
Ellis: Tatch rejects offering payroll despite margin gains to maintain mission focus
“A lot of people have said, you know, why don't you go offer payroll? Because if you have the payroll yourself, then it would be a lot easier. You could be the one-stop shop. I said, I, you know, I can see how that would be beneficial to our margins and our NRR…”
Ellis: B2B product-market fit resembles a continuous sawtooth curve
“Particularly in B to B, there's not one moment of product market fit. Product market fit in B to B looks kind of like a sawtooth curve, where you've got it with one subsection, and then you kind of have to go to another subsection, and you have to, and so you'…”
Ellis: One in six Americans stays in a job to keep healthcare
“You have this situation today where, you know, one out of six Americans actually stays In a job they would otherwise leave for fear of losing their health care coverage.”
Ellis: ICHRA is here to stay despite potential regulatory shifts
“Like I think IPRA is here to stay, but there are certainly things that you know, are coming that could affect could affect the business model and the market overall.”
Ellis: Enhanced IRA subsidies grew individual health market from 11M to 21M
“The government created these enhanced subsidies for the individual market that allowed individuals to take advantage of more and more government help to purchase individual plans, and this had the effect of both increasing the total participation from around 1…”
Ellis: On-exchange and off-exchange health markets may soon decouple
“And so we may see a decoupling of the on exchange and the off exchange markets quite soon.”
Ellis: Expanding individual health rails will make launching insurance startups easier
“When you play this forward, you know, 10, 2030 years, one of the things that gets us really excited is this idea That it will be a lot easier to start a health insurance company and to create a competitive product.”
Ellis: All major employer health insurers predated the internet
“All of the major employer sponsored health plans Blue Cross, United, Cigna, Aetna, they were all founded before the internet and there has been no new companies formed in decades.”
Ellis: US Healthcare Accounts for Nearly 20% of GDP
“Almost
20% of GDP is healthcare.
If it was its own country, it would be bigger than basically every other country but China.”
Ellis: Tatch reached $500K run rate and 100 companies in one month
“And if we weren't ready at that time, I mean, we go up with like zero customers begging our first users. So having like a hundred companies and, you know, half a million run rate in like a month from zero.”
Ellis: Tatch's original 2023 HSA product flopped completely upon launch
“And you know, 22, we built the HSA and we actually launched it in 23. It was a total flop. Like nobody wanted it.”
Ellis: Tatch generates mid-hundreds in annual ARPU per employee
“We charge per employee per month, and then there's a component around actually getting commissions from the insurance companies when you do enrollments for them, and so it adds up to kind of a nice you know, average revenue per, per user, kind of the mid-hundr…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Chris's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Thatch | 1 | 18 | 67% 2/3 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |
 a16zLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Thatch | 1 | 14 | 57% 4/7 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |