From Clinics to Capital: A career at the Crossroads of Health, Venture, and Finance

by William Jones / ⠀Finance / October 3, 2025

When we think of innovation, we often think of Nobel Prizes, patents, or Wall Street algorithms. However, for Tim Wu, the real story lies in how breakthroughs fit into people’s daily lives. This might be anything from a vaccine in a clinic, to a startup finding its first customers, or a financial instrument that stabilizes capital markets. Wu’s career has spanned healthcare, venture capital, and finance, showcasing how a single individual can leave an outsized impact across critical industries. As innovation accelerates and industries converge, professionals who can span multiple domains are becoming increasingly rare – and increasingly essential.

Early Curiosity, Lasting Impact

Many entrepreneurs point to their “first experiment” as the spark that ignited their journey. Wu’s early projects were refreshingly pragmatic. As a teenager, he won Canada’s national innovation award for a solar energy experiment focused on not just efficiency, but also durability. He wanted to understand why so many promising technologies got developed in a lab but never lasted long enough to make a difference. While scores of research fade into oblivion, his stood out for tackling the real-world challenge of longevity, a theme that would carry through his professional career.

Stanford and the Making of a Builder

At Stanford, University, Wu earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering, graduating with distinction. Unlike many of his peers who narrowed their focus to lab research, Wu was drawn to bioengineering’s practical side: how MRIs, cardiovascular stents, and digital health apps evolved from research papers into everyday tools used by patients and physicians. He was selected for the Accel Leadership Fellowship – one of just 16 entrepreneurs chosen across Stanford annually to dive into entrepreneurship. The fellowship tackled crucial startup challenges, from organizational structure to product market fit, working directly with founders and startups from Accel’s portfolio. Accel is a leading venture capital firm with nearly $10B in assets, having invested in over 300 companies including Facebook, Slack, and Dropbox. This unique mix of technical knowledge and entrepreneurial training set Wu apart from others entering the startup scene.

Scaling Public Health at Carbon Health

Wu reached a pivotal point in his career during the COVID-19 pandemic when he joined Carbon Health’s Strategic Initiatives team. At a time when most healthcare systems were overwhelmed, Carbon Health was scaling and launching multiple business lines aimed at tackling the pandemic, ranked the second-fastest growing private company in the US by Inc. Wu’s work there wasn’t incremental; they helped shape the trajectory of the industry. Carbon Health created “care pathways” for various diseases and expanded its primary care services into 14 states nationwide. It launched a clinical research program leveraging its vertical stack to partner with Merck on molnupiravir, one of the first oral COVID antivirals authorized in the US. There was no precedent for the types of projects Wu tackled during the pandemic. Carbon Health administered over 1 million vaccinations, including operations at Dodgers stadium, one of the largest vaccination sites in the country. His contributions were cited by media, and industry experts later cited Carbon Health’s model as a playbook for handling future public health crises. During a pandemic where operational failures tangible lives, Wu’s role at Carbon Health impacted millions of patients and helped establish models for how the US could mobilize healthcare infrastructure in future emergencies.

Backing the Next Generation at Rough Draft Ventures

Having witnessed how critical operations was to technology adoption, Wu shifted his focus to helping other founders do the same. He became a Managing Partner at Rough Draft Ventures (RDV), an early-stage venture firm backed by General Catalyst. While many investors come from a strictly finance background, Wu brought the perspective of an operator who had already launched systems at scale. At RDV, he personally evaluated and led over $500,000 in early-stage investments across digital health, fintech, and consumer platforms. His portfolio includes:

Ocular Diagnostics: AI-enabled eye exams for early diagnosis of ADHD and other neurological diseases
Prende Health: Innovating digital health delivery models for women’s health, later funded by Soma Capital.
Garage: Consumer marketplace for automotive parts, part of Y Combinator’s 2022 batch.

Beyond direct investments, Wu’s influence spans RDV’s wider portfolio of over 150 startups, with founders who went on to be recognized by Y Combinator, Techstars, the Thiel Fellowship, and Forbes 30 Under 30. Unlike his peers, some of whom primarily focus on funding, Wu’s mentorship role was instrumental in guiding a generation of founders, startups, and products. Founders he worked with credit him for his active mentorship, helping them navigate early product market fit and build products viable for the real world. His operators’ lens allowed young companies to lay stronger foundations in deeply challenging fields like digital health and fintech.

Building Market Infrastructure at Jane Street

Wu later brought this operator’s mindset to another field: quantitative finance. At Jane Street, one of the world’s most influential trading firms and a leader in US options markets, he focuses on product strategy on the options desk. Translation here means turning theoretical trading strategies into practical trades: new financial instruments, workflows, trading strategies, and systems that many global institutions rely on. Today, Jane Street’s work is widely adopted across financial markets, with Wu contributing to the stability and resilience that millions of Americans depend on. Few professionals in finance can claim leadership and experience in both healthcare and venture capital. Wu’s cross-industry expertise makes him a unique thought leader, applying lessons from public health and early-stage startups to inform the design of complex financial instruments. His varied experience allows him to work across multiple sectors and blend technical insights with business know-how to launch new products and strategies – to the benefit of many. Though often invisible, these financial systems serve as the safeguards that keep retirement accounts, pensions, and institutional portfolios stable during fluctuations and periods of market volatility. Wu’s contributions play a direct role in enhancing the resilience that has come to define US financial markets.

Why Wu’s Approach Matters Now

Tim Wu’s trajectory stands out for not only its momentum, but particularly it’s breadth of impact on each individual field he has contributed to. In deeply technical domains that value narrow specialization, Wu is part of a select group of professionals whose work spans three of the nation’s most critical industries – healthcare, finance, and venture capital. He demonstrates that lessons from healthcare and startups can transform financial markets, and vice versa – providing perhaps the most valuable work is left to be done at the interdisciplinary connection between challenging fields. While most professionals choose to specialize early in their careers, Wu has made a substantial impact on all 3, with measurable results: millions vaccinated, industry defining startups launched, and financial products put into circulation. Looking ahead, Wu sees chances to apply his approach to the next set of national priorities: accelerating AI adoption, integrating general robotics into everyday industries, using financial engineering to scale renewable energies. If his career so far is any indication, his impact will extend far beyond labs and boardrooms into the products that Americans depend on every day. As industries grow increasingly interconnected, Wu’s career highlights the importance of professionals who can speak a “translational” language across different domains. For those outside Silicon Valley or Wall Street, the lesson is simple: innovation isn’t just about invention, it’s about building a pipeline to bring these inventions to consumers. Wu’s career illustrates that this approach is not only possible, but a crucial force that shapes everyday life.