The Heart of Healthcare | A Digital Health Podcast

Can We Make Cancer Nonlethal? | Reed Jobs & Matt Bettonville of Yosemite

Sep 29, 2025

Reed Jobs, an investor leading Yosemite, is driven by a personal mission to make cancer non-lethal after losing his father to the disease. Joined by Matt Bettonville, they discuss the need for affordable cancer drugs and the surprising effectiveness of digital health tools in improving survival rates. They explore the potential of synthetic control arms to reduce clinical trial costs and emphasize the critical importance of early detection. Reed and Matt also highlight the urgency of maintaining U.S. leadership in global healthcare innovation.

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ANECDOTE

Personal Origin Story For Yosemite

Reed Jobs describes his personal journey into cancer research after losing his father and working in labs since his teens.
That origin drove him to create Yosemite to build companies that change cancer care delivery and outcomes.

INSIGHT

Delivery Can Match Drug Impact

Matt Bettonville highlights a digital symptom-monitoring intervention that improved overall survival more than most new drugs at ASCO.
He argues delivery methods can be as impactful as novel therapeutics for patient survival.

ADVICE

Use System Fixes To Lower Drug Costs

Reed Jobs urges changing the system that controls drug pricing and dissemination rather than only building drugs.
He recommends creating system efficiencies like synthetic control arms to lower phase III costs and speed trials.

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Cancer drugs cost more than ever, yet survival benefits are often modest—and in some cases, patients can’t even access the care that already exists.

After losing his father, Steve Jobs, to pancreatic cancer, Reed Jobs committed himself to making this the last generation that loses parents to the disease.

Reed now leads Yosemite, a venture fund spun out of Emerson Collective in 2023, alongside Investor Matt Bettonville. Yosemite pairs life sciences and digital health investments with a grantmaking model to accelerate cancer research and ensure breakthroughs actually reach patients.

We cover:

📉 The tension between drug pricing, patient access, and real-world value

🩺 Digital interventions that have outperformed cancer drugs in survival outcomes

🧪 Why phase 3 clinical trials are so costly, and how synthetic control arms could change that

🧬 The promise and limits of early detection—from liquid biopsies to at-home pap smears

🌍 The global race for healthcare innovation and why the U.S. can’t afford to fall behind

About our guests:

Reed Jobs is an Investor at Yosemite and manages Yosemite. Yosemite works exclusively in the oncology space, using flexible capital to advance science with the goal of making cancer non-lethal in our lifetime. Over the years, Reed has supported hundreds of researchers and invested in dozens of therapeutic, diagnostic and digital health companies across the U.S. and Europe. Before the launch of Yosemite, Reed served as the Managing Director of Health at Emerson Collective. He serves on the board of directors at Conservation International, Harvard Medical School, PICI, Stanford Medicine and Waverley Street Foundation.

Matt Bettonville is an Investor at Yosemite where he leads the team’s investment efforts in digital health and healthcare delivery. He previously worked on Emerson Collective’s Count Me In non-profit partnership with the Broad Institute. Matt started his career working on user interface software engineering at Apple, where he was on the Mac team and a part of the AirPods product team. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. Matt serves on the board of directors at Atropos, Maia Oncology, Turquoise Health, Count Me In and Getlabs. He serves as a board observer at Proximie.

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🙏Thank you to our show sponsor, LookDeep. LookDeep pioneers AI that can see, hear, and respond with care to help hospitals be Ever Present for Every Patient. Learn more at lookdeep.ai/aimee.

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