Healthcare IT · Medical billing and revenue cycle management
Apero Health
An API driven practice management platform that folds scheduling, visit notes, insurance billing, patient payments and e-prescriptions into one system for medical clinics. Y Combinator backed since 2019, it has grown quietly, with almost no press coverage, on a small team and a customer list it mostly does not name.
A billing problem close to home
Apero Health's origin story is small and specific: a founder's mother ran a medical practice in Washington, DC, and struggled to get paid on time. That is the detail the company and its accelerator both point to when asked why Apero exists. Nick Shelly, the company's co-founder and CEO, is credited on Y Combinator's own listing and on South Park Commons' company page as having started the work on billing for that practice before building it into a company.
What Apero sells now is the unglamorous middle of running a medical practice: scheduling, clinical note taking, real time insurance eligibility checks, claim submission, patient statements, e-prescriptions and the financial reporting that tells a clinic whether it is actually making money. The company's own pitch is speed, in an industry not known for it: implementation in under a day, payer enrollment across all 50 states, and an average of about 12 days for ERA enrollment.
The problem it is aimed at
When a patient is seen and treated, a second, mostly invisible transaction begins. A billing code is chosen, a claim is built, and it goes to an insurer, which may pay it, deny it, or sit on it. Someone appeals, resubmits, and reconciles a bank deposit against a statement that rarely matches. That is the revenue cycle, and for a small or mid sized practice it is usually a slow, expensive leak handled with a mix of legacy EHR billing modules, outside billing services and spreadsheets.
Apero's bet is that this back office work belongs inside a single, API accessible system rather than spread across a legacy EHR and a separate revenue cycle vendor. Its own materials describe custom validation rules and machine learning applied to denial codes, aimed at stopping a claim from being rejected before it is ever submitted, rather than appealing after the fact.
Founders
Nick Shelly's path to Apero runs through the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he earned a B.S. in computer science, a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford for an MFE and MBA, and service as a captain in the Air Force. Independent career records place him as a software and network security specialist at the National Security Agency, then a software engineering intern at Apple, a member of technical staff at Nicira before its acquisition by VMware, and an engineer at Forward Networks, where he worked on projects that helped the company raise $30 million from Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ and VMware's founders. He began a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford in 2015, earning an M.S. along the way, and joined South Park Commons as a member in 2018 before co-founding Apero in 2019.
Jacinda Shelly is Apero's co-founder and Chief Business Officer. An independent record from an O'Reilly OSCON conference bio, published in 2019 while she was still there, lists her as Chief Technology Officer at Doctor On Demand, a telehealth company, and describes her as a regular speaker in the Python and Django communities. Apero's own materials describe its founding team as including “the CTO of Doctor on Demand having helped raised $240m and process millions of video calls,” without naming which founder held that title; the independently sourced OSCON bio is the clearest record that it was Jacinda Shelly.
A quiet build, not a loud launch
Apero has not run the kind of press cycle that produces a searchable paper trail. No major outlet appears to have covered a funding round, a product launch or a partnership. What exists instead is accelerator data, enterprise software marketplaces, and a scattering of independent snapshots: an O'Reilly speaker bio from 2019, a LinkedIn derived career history, a listing on the enterprise software marketplace Vendr, a single customer review on the healthcare software directory Elion, and one aggregator, CB Insights, tracking five funding events between 2019 and 2022. By Y Combinator's own count, as of September 2026 the company has 24 people and is listed as active.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Y Combinator batch | Summer 2019 batch, primary partner Garry Tan. As of Sep 21, 2026, Y Combinator's own listing shows a team of 24 and status “Active.” | Accelerator record |
| South Park Commons | Nick Shelly joined South Park Commons as a member in 2018, a year before Apero was founded; the company is listed on South Park Commons' own companies page. | Accelerator record |
| Jacinda Shelly, Doctor On Demand CTO | An O'Reilly OSCON 2019 speaker bio, published independently of Apero, lists her as CTO of Doctor On Demand at that time. | Independent |
| Nick Shelly's career history | A LinkedIn derived profile lists an NSA software and network security role, an Apple internship, roles at Nicira/VMware and Forward Networks, a Stanford CS Ph.D. candidacy with an M.S. earned, and a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. | Independent |
| Named customer: Spring Health | A live, branded patient payment page is hosted at spring.aperohealth.com, a subdomain of Apero's own site, indicating Spring Health uses Apero for patient billing. | Observed technical evidence |
| Other named customers | A single feature article names Meru Health, Pelago Health, Groups Recover Together, Tia, Legacy Health, 4D Healthware and Bickman as customers. No other source corroborates this list. | Single source |
| Independent customer review | The healthcare software directory Elion carries one review describing Apero as used to power “all backend aspects” of a revenue cycle management process, from claim submission to reporting, with the reviewer calling the company satisfied overall. | Independent review |
| Enterprise pricing data | The software marketplace Vendr reports a median annual contract of $34,500 among buyers it tracks, ranging from about $18,000 to about $54,450. | Independent |
| Federal and clinical records | No FDA 510(k), PMA, registered clinical trial, NIH award or NSF award record was found for Apero Health, consistent with a billing and practice management company rather than a device or drug maker. | Not applicable |
| Revenue and headcount claim | One feature article reports about $5 million in 2024 revenue on a team of about 14, a figure it attributes to unspecified “public reporting.” No independent financial filing or second outlet confirms this figure. | Single source, unverified |
Read plainly: Apero Health is a real, operating company with founders whose credentials check out independently and at least one named customer confirmed through a live technical artifact rather than a marketing claim. What is missing is anything close to third party financial verification. No SEC Form D appears under the company's name, no major outlet has covered it, and the specific revenue and customer figures that circulate come from a single source each.
What to watch
- Whether the company files anything with the SEC as it raises further capital, which would put dollar figures on the public record for the first time.
- Confirmation of named customers beyond Spring Health, and whether the company discloses its full client roster.
- Independent reporting on revenue, since the only figure available, about $5 million for 2024, comes from one uncorroborated source.
- Whether Apero's own materials settle the discrepancy between customers having raised “over $1B” (Y Combinator page) versus “over $750m” (LinkedIn page) in venture funding.
In their words
“We help healthcare companies run their practices. Eligibility, BI, claims, patient payments?”
Apero Health, Y Combinator company page, accessed Sep 2026 · Company-stated
“Founded by former National Security Agency and industry veterans, Apero was built to withstand hackers and ransomware attacks.”
Apero Health, company website, accessed Sep 2026 · Company-stated
“Founded by the former Chief Technology Officer of Doctor On Demand and ex-NSA and Apple engineers, Apero serves fast-growing healthcare practices who've raised a combined total of over $750m, and are backed by Y Combinator and the former Head of Innovation at Stanford Hospital.”
Apero Health, LinkedIn company page, accessed Sep 2026 · Company-stated
“Apero was primarily used to power all backend aspects of our Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) process, from claim submission to reporting.”
Unnamed customer, review on Elion, healthcare software directory · Independent review
“Apero excels in offering granular tracking and reporting on each individual claim throughout the RCM lifecycle.”
Unnamed customer, review on Elion, healthcare software directory · Independent review
Related companies
Sources
- CompanyApero Health company page
- IndependentApero Health company page
- IndependentJacinda Shelly speaker bio, CTO Doctor On Demand
- IndependentNick Shelly org chart profile
- IndependentApero Health company and financials profile
- IndependentApero Health investor summary
- IndependentApero Health pricing and marketplace listing
- Independent reviewApero product page and customer review
- IndependentApero Health: Making Medical Billing Boring on Purpose
- IndependentApero Health company page
- Public recordEDGAR company search, “apero”
- CompanyApero Health homepage and product pages
- CompanyApero FAQ page
- IndependentSpring Health patient payment page hosted on Apero's platform
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
