Florian Otto

Background

• M.D., D.D.S. and PhD (University of Freiburg); started in business at McKinsey's healthcare practice.
• Founded ClubeUrbano in Brazil, sold it to Groupon, then ran Groupon Brazil as CEO; later a commercial executive at Zocdoc.
• Co-founded Cedar in New York in 2016 after his wife's poor hospital billing experience.

Current focus

• Product suite spans Cedar Pay, Cedar Cover and Kora, the agentic voice agent launched April 2025. By June 2026 Kora had handled roughly 400,000 patient calls across ten provider organizations, with reported results including a 24% cut in live-agent handle time at Gastro Health and a 42% lift in patient payments at ApolloMD.
• Pushing beyond urban academic systems into rural care; the May 2025 Sanford Health partnership covers the largest rural system in the country.

What he cares about

• Consumer-grade transparency: plain-language bills, real-time HSA balances surfaced at payment, personalized payment plans.
• Measured outcomes over AI narrative. His own framing: "We have heard enough about AI promises."

Recent moves

• $200M Series D (March 2021, Tiger Global) at $3.2B; $425M OODA Health acquisition closed June 2021, bringing payers onto the platform alongside providers.

Potential sensitivities

• The $3.2B mark is a 2021 vintage and no new priced round has been announced since. Valuation and exit timing are live questions, not settled ones.
• Cedar cut 24% of staff (roughly 100 people) in July 2022 while integrating OODA. Do not open there.

Ask him

1. Is Kora deflecting call volume or just relocating it, and does that change how you price?
2. Post-OODA, what is the payer-side versus provider-side revenue split, and which is compounding faster?
3. Which RCM adjacencies would you buy today rather than build?