John Capecelatro

Nearly nine years ago, @TJParker and I went to Bentonville to talk to @Walmart about building a different kind of pharmacy. While we were there, we visited The Walmart Museum. If you haven’t been, go! I loved seeing the history of a company that started with a single store and changed what people everywhere could buy and afford. We were building PillPack at the time, and spent much of that trip talking about what healthcare could learn from retail. Today we’re launching the new Walmart Better Care Services, a healthcare store powered by General Medicine. Starting today, customers can browse more than 900 products and services across a dozen different provider groups, compare cash and estimated insurance prices, and get what they need. Walmart defined the experience, chose the products, services, and providers. Our technology makes it all shoppable. A lot has happened since that first trip. We sold PillPack, built Amazon Pharmacy, and started @GeneralMedicine. We’ve spent most of our working lives trying to make getting healthcare easier. And somehow it still feels like we’re just getting started. We have incredible clinicians and treatments in this country. But finding the right care, figuring out what something costs, and actually getting it remains convoluted and complicated. Something that should have been a quick purchase becomes a project. Too often, people just put it off altogether. And when the problem is serious, all that hassle lands on top of what’s already hard. When transactions are easy, you take a whole layer of complexity off the table. We launched General Medicine a year and a half ago. A few weeks ago, we wrote about the idea behind it: healthcare needs a store. Helping Walmart build one for its customers is that idea reaching the scale we’ve been aiming at since PillPack. I love that we have our own store. We get to build things we’ve wanted to exist for years, hear directly from customers, and keep making them better. But I’m just as excited about helping other companies build theirs. We learned at PillPack how much more you can do when you work with companies that already serve millions of customers. Tech platforms, retailers, health systems, payers, and manufacturers all bring something different. There’s a lot more we can do together than any of us could do on our own. With Walmart, we get to work with a retailer and pharmacy that’s part of everyday life all across the country. This one is particularly special to me. We walked into Bentonville nine years ago hoping to build something together. It took a little longer than we expected, but here we are. Build the store. Then build more stores.

I joined Amazon Pharmacy in 2019 to lead pricing because I wanted my work to really matter. I didn’t know much about pharmacy pricing, or healthcare, for that matter. But, I knew how to build marketplaces and create simple, lovable consumer experiences, even when everything under the hood was wildly complex. I also thought the newly acquired PillPack team was exceptional and that we might have some fun along the way. We kept pulling on that thread — reorienting healthcare around the consumer while working with the existing system — first at Amazon, and then at @GeneralMedicine , which I co-founded with @tjparker and @elliotcohen in 2023 and have led as CEO since. A few years in and it’s working. General Medicine’s store is the only place where a customer can shop for and purchase whatever care they need, from a simple medication refill all the way to finding the right in-person specialist, nationwide, with clear, upfront pricing both with and without insurance. 83% of our customers tell us we’ve helped them address something they had been putting off. A third say it was something they had put off for six months or longer. The business has never been in a stronger position. And we’re just getting started. Earlier this year, TJ — who led our first funding rounds, serves on our board, and has been a co-founder since the beginning — told me he wanted to leave venture, get back into the weeds of operating, and do it with us at General Medicine. Bringing him on full-time was an obvious yes. Figuring out how to organize ourselves to make the most of the opportunity ahead was a harder question. I spent a lot of time thinking about where each of us could have the greatest impact and I ultimately concluded that TJ should join as CEO and that I should move into the CPO role. It’s an unconventional decision, particularly at a moment when the company is doing so well. But, that momentum is exactly why it felt like a unique moment to reorganize ourselves to maximize the opportunity ahead of us. As CPO, I’ll continue to own our consumer business and lead product, engineering, design, clinical and ops and much of the company’s day-to-day work. My focus will remain what it has been from the beginning: building a healthcare experience that puts the consumer first. One of the beautiful things about startups is that when we win, we win together. Titles, roles, and responsibilities are all downstream of organizing ourselves to have the greatest possible impact. There’s no one I’d rather build this with than Elliot, TJ and the rest of the General Medicine team, and I’ve never been more excited about what’s ahead for us. TJ, I’m sure the venture world will miss you, but we’re pretty stoked to have you back in the weeds with us. More to come from us later today.

Tens of millions of people are turning to AI for health questions. Not because they think AI is smarter than a doctor—because it's a place they finally feel heard. It’s available 24/7, never rushed, and speaks plain language. But those conversations lack context and often go nowhere. They’re not connected to health history or to actual care. General Medicine is changing that. Today we’re sharing a new way to connect feeling heard to getting care. We automatically gather your health history in one place where you can discuss with an AI chat that’s designed by our doctors to help summarize your health and figure out what should come next. You can schedule exactly the care you need directly from your chat and your General Medicine doctor will review everything in advance. At your visit, they know exactly where to start. You’ve almost certainly never seen your health story like this before. Try it, ask questions, get care you might be putting off, and share your feedback: Generalmedicine.co/ai