About us
Reinventing The $700B Child Health Market
We Invest Philanthropic Capital in Companies Transforming Child Health Through AI And Technology.
The $700B child health market is ripe for disruption. It is underserved by traditional venture capital firms that look for 10x returns. There are vital opportunities for impact and return. These require patient philanthropic capital.
Every day, families face astronomical costs for treatments that fall short. We’re changing that.
Our focus – under-served areas in pediatric care where AI & Technology can transform children’s health. We back pioneers who create better outcomes at lower costs.
Our evergreen model means every win fuels the next breakthrough. We amplify the power of philanthropy to help children thrive.
Why Pediatrics?
One in four Americans is a child. Child health drives $700B in healthcare spending. Yet millions still suffer needlessly. Rare diseases alone have 20 million sufferers.
The cost? Shortened lives. Stolen childhoods. Poor quality of life.
This isn’t acceptable. And it isn’t inevitable.
At NextStep, we want to change this.
The NextStep Difference: Where We Invest
Fetal-Maternal Health & NICU
Rare Diseases
Mental Health Disorders
Congenital Disorders
Childhood Onset Disorders
Neurodevelopmental Disorders
WHO WE ARE
Clinical + Technical Excellence: The NextStep Edge
Our team brings the perfect mix of skills to drive breakthrough innovations. Our expertise is broad: AI, technology, drug development, surgery, and medical devices. Our operating experience spans seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 giants. We’ve shaped philanthropy, led academic research, and guided venture investments.
Our network opens doors. It powers everything from deal discovery to company growth.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, we tap into top medical institutes nationwide through our expert advisors.
Our Team
James Wall, M.D.
Medical Officer, Intuitive Surgical
Pediatric Surgeon, Stanford
James Wall is an Associate Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Stanford University who specializes in minimally invasive approaches to children’s surgery. He is a physician entrepreneur who has developed multiple health technologies from idea to commercialization. James is currently the Director of the Stanford Bio design Innovation Fellowship and co-director of the UCSF-Stanford Pediatric Device Consortium. He has a foundation in double-bottom line venture investing with his work on the 2006 Pandemic Fund at Kleiner Perkins.
James is passionate about building sustainable businesses that address the needs of the underserved patients in the pediatric, maternal and fetal populations. James graduated from Tulane University with an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and has a master’s in bioengineering from Stanford. He earned his M.D. at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Nick Triantos
VP, Autonomous Vehicles & Robotics Software, NVIDIA
Nick Triantos is a computer scientist, a multi-time entrepreneur, and a VC. In his technical roles, he’s worked at Apple, as the VP/chief software architect of NVIDIA in their early days (from pre-revenue through the IPO to ~$4B/year), as well as 5 other startups. He co-founded 3 companies, one in the 90s which sold to Oracle, one in 2010 which he sold to NetApp, and one in the field of neuroscience, where he was CTO.
He has also been a Sequoia-backed CEO (at Tokbox) and on the management team of several other companies. He has worked as a Venture Partner at Quantum Technology Partners and Ignition Partners, and was a Managing Director at SRI International, where he helped commercialize numerous deeply technical software projects. Nick earned his BS in Computer Science/Math from SUNY Buffalo and dual MBA degrees from Columbia University in NY and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Julia Schaletzky, PhD
Executive Director, Center for Emerging & Neglected Diseases, UC Berkeley
Julia is Director of the Henry Wheeler Center for Emerging & Neglected Diseases (CEND) at UC Berkeley, which includes the Immunotherapy and Vaccine Research Initiative (IVRI) and the Drug Discovery Center. Dr. Schaletzky previously spent 11 years in the private sector, discovering and developing novel, first-in-class medicines against heart failure, HCM and neurodegenerative disorders, which have been evaluated in clinical trials by Cytokinetics, MyoKardia, Amgen, Astellas and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Passionate about innovation and translational science, she teaches bio entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business, and has advised many successful startup companies from inception through IPO. Dr. Schaletzky earned her Diploma (M.Sc.) in biochemistry at Bayreuth University and in the laboratory of Prof. Francis Barr at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She obtained her PhD with Prof. Tom Rapoport at Harvard Medical School/HHMI.
Gita Gupta
Executive Director, The Gupta Foundation
Gita is Executive Director of The Gupta Foundation, which funds basic science research and translation Executive Director, The Gupta Foundation that have the potential to improve quality of life for children and adults with neuro-developmental disorders, including autism. The impetus for philanthropy was her experience as a parent to a child with autism and several comorbid medical conditions, including primary immunodeficiency and epilepsy.
Prior to this, Gita spent 18 years in software, and has extensive executive experience in companies at each stage of growth, ranging from seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 corporations. Gita holds an MS in Computer Science from Rutgers University and an MS in Engineering from Purdue University.
Join Us in Transforming Pediatric Healthcare
Together, we can transform lifetimes. Join Our Mission to Redefine Pediatric Medical Care