When someone you love gets sick, the diagnosis itself is difficult enough, however, the logistics surrounding diagnosis and treatment can feel impossible to manage. The insurance appeals that take weeks to resolve. The specialist referrals that get lost between systems. The medication prior authorizations that delay treatment. The follow-up appointments that somehow never get scheduled.

This administrative maze not only frustrates families – it actively prevents people from getting care. And for the more than 10,000 Americans turning 65 every day, navigating this system becomes a full-time job that nobody taught them how to do.

Connor Sweeney understands this better than most. After his grandmother suffered a stroke, Connor watched his grandfather – the man he calls Baba – suddenly become her primary caregiver. His grandfather did everything he could. But overnight, he was expected to understand insurance rules, coordinate between providers, manage therapy schedules, and make medical decisions he'd never been prepared for. The system didn't slow down to help him learn. Care simply fell through the cracks. That experience is why Connor built Baba.

We're proud to be leading Baba's seed round to build the infrastructure that deserves to exist – so the next family facing the caregiving associated with a loved one’s illness t doesn’t have to face it alone.

Transforming Advocacy Through Continuous Care

Advocates are dedicated healthcare experts who help caregivers and patients navigate the maze of doctors, benefits, and administrative paperwork. But patient advocacy is inherently episodic, not built for the compounding nature of aging. You call when there's an emergency, someone helps, and the relationship ends. When the next issue arises (and with aging, there's always a next issue) patients start over with someone new who has no context.

Connor sees a different path. A world of abundance where every patient has access to a continuous advocate with context to handle a crisis and touchpoints to prevent the next one. What if the same person who helped appeal an insurance denial last month already knew a medication was due for a refill this week?

Baba pairs seniors with dedicated human advocates who know exactly who to call, how to word appeals, and which forms unlock outcomes. Between crises, Baba’s AI tools maintain daily engagement through check-ins, medication reminders, and proactive monitoring, surfacing issues before they become emergencies.

The focus shifts to prevention: alerts for a prescription about to lapse, an appointment that needs rescheduling, a benefits question brewing with seamless escalation to a human advocate when necessary.

With Baba, we can now imagine a world where a single advocate can manage dozens of patients without anyone falling through the cracks, where patients get more responsive care, where families finally have a partner who doesn't disappear when the emergency ends.

Building For Scale

Connor studied biological engineering and computer science at MIT, where he was also a varsity swimmer, a combination of technical depth, empathy, and intensity that's evident in how he's approached building Baba. He has assembled a stellar founding team from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stripe, Liquid AI, and Palantir who share his drive and mission.

The potential to change how America ages is massive. Patient advocacy is reimbursed by Medicare, which serves 70 million beneficiaries. More than 95% manage at least one chronic condition, but only the top 1-5% receive continuous case management. Baba's model enables it to serve patients who need help most but who previously could never afford traditional concierge advocacy. This is the shift from scarcity to abundance, towards a world where every senior has an advocate in their pocket.

By partnering with home health agencies, nursing homes, and post-acute care organizations, Baba is building advocacy directly into the care ecosystem, ensuring millions of seniors can age with dignity.

Our Conversation with Connor

Vedant recently sat down with Connor to talk about his journey building Baba and his vision for the future of aging in America. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What's the most counterintuitive thing you've learned?

The American healthcare system has a lot of contradictory incentives, including how AI-driven efficiencies that improve patient outcomes are not currently compensated under existing reimbursement structures. With that said, the current CMS administration is the most innovative in the last 25 years, and it's exciting to be building in healthcare under leadership that has repeatedly championed the use of AI to improve outcomes and reduce waste.

What have been your most important lessons around execution so far?

Everything is downstream of your team. A smart team can start with an incorrect thesis but iterate into a winning opportunity. At Baba, we’ve prioritized candidates that have shown lifelong competitiveness, which is how we’ve built a team that’s over 50% former founders and includes competitive programmers and college athletes. I’m also keen on finding people who have built careers outside of healthcare and can bring fresh perspectives to our industry.

What's your approach to building team culture early on?

We've made hiring a team sport. We have a #hiring-ideas Slack channel where everyone routinely shares candidate profiles, and every few weeks, the entire team goes through their LinkedIn profiles and personal CRMs to flag the people they’d be most excited to work with. When we extend an offer, each person has a specific role in closing that candidate, which builds team cohesion and personal buy-in to Baba’s long-term success.