This story appears in the April 2025 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
Giv. is an agency and software that hands caregiving control back to parents. Historically, Medicaid supported severely disabled children through agencies because compliance and billing were too complex for individuals. Agencies picked the caregivers, set the goals and ran the schedule. With Giv.’s app, the parent picks the caregiver, tracks the goals and sets the schedule. They can be paid $24 per hour in Utah for caring for their severely disabled child. At the time of our investment last spring, Giv.’s agency had eight-figure revenue and seven-figure EBITDA, and the software was pre-revenue. They’re now in the process of selling a large stake in the agency and have gone full bore on software development.
Diogenes, the founder of Cynicism, once said, “Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody?” The corollary, had Diogenes spared a thought for venture capitalists, would be, “Of what use is an investor who never breaks the mold?”
Investing in Giv. forced me to break three cardinal rules of investing:
- Don’t mix social good and investing.
Giv. makes life easier for parents who have taken on the massive task of caring for a severely disabled child. That’s wonderful! But what’s really compelling about Giv. is its large, underserved market. Agencies have had to cobble together billing software from Medicare, scheduling software from clinics, etc. The result is that data doesn’t flow between functions, and spreadsheets fill the gap. Giv.’s laser focus on Medicaid leads to a streamlined, error-free experience. That means value to customers and money to investors, with social good as a byproduct.
- Never invest in a service business that says it will build software.
Because Giv.’s agency was so large and software so nascent, I feared the worst. Yet among the first unprompted words out of Giv. CEO Andrew Larson’s mouth was that he spends no time on the agency (which would proceed to double in 2024) and that his sole focus is on the software opportunity. COO Monroe McKay brought his experience from JobNimbus and Weave to Giv. Turns out, Giv.’s team members were software people in agency clothing!
- In the herd, there’s safety; alone, there’s peril.
An investor is never more blameless than when investing alongside several other VCs, but real value comes from finding opportunity before it’s obvious and acting with conviction before others do. Giv. has an enormous opportunity to modernize families’ access to Medicaid, and Frazier VC is thrilled to be part of Giv.
