TJ Parker, former Amazon Pharmacy consultant and vice president, is rejoining the world of healthcare innovation after leaving the tech giant in September 2022.
Mr. Parker is co-founder of PillPack, which Amazon acquired in 2018 for about $750 million. After the acquisition, Mr. Parker and co-founder Elliot Cohen joined Amazon as vice presidents of pharmacy and helped guide the launch of Amazon Pharmacy, which launched in 2020. The entrepreneurs exited Amazon in September 2022.
"Personally, it was pretty painful going from the CEO of a thing and having lots and lots of autonomy, to being a VP at a big company, and all the process that came along with that," Mr. Parker told Bloomberg. "It became clear I could have been successful at the job, but I don't think I could have been both successful and happy at the job."
Mr. Parker is now joining venture firm Matrix Partners, an early stage investment group based in San Francisco and Boston. He will serve as general partner and focus on early-stage healthcare startups, Bloomberg reports, with great interest in redirecting healthcare around the consumer.
"There’s a ton of opportunity around helping consumers understand what the price of something is, how you make an appointment, how do you make it easier to navigate health care," Mr. Parker said, while noting how few consumer-focused healthcare startups get "into the guts of healthcare, like actually taking insurance."