Consumer health & diagnostics · Longevity testing
Instalab
A New York concierge service that lets people order their own blood work, imaging and screenings, with a network of physicians authorizing the orders behind the scenes. Founded in 2022, it has grown its lab catalog past 600 tests without, on the public record, raising a disclosed venture round.
A lab report nobody would explain
Adora Cheung had just walked away from Homejoy, the on-demand cleaning company she had co-founded and run as CEO before it shut down in 2015. She had, in her telling, neglected her own health in the process: weight gain, inflammation, skin issues. She went looking for a baseline set of tests to see where she stood.
“Many tests I wanted were not considered necessary by my physician, claiming I was too young or not sick enough, and insurance wouldn’t cover them,” she said on the Terra podcast in March 2024. It took months to get a lab requisition. When the results came back, she said, her doctor struggled to explain them and suggested she find someone else for answers.
That gap, between wanting a test and getting one explained, became the company.
The problem, as Instalab frames it
Instalab’s pitch is that routine primary care runs on a narrow, insurance-driven set of tests, and that a lot of useful information sits outside it: ApoB and Lp(a) for heart risk, fasting insulin for early metabolic trouble, a full hormone panel, multi-cancer early detection blood tests, full-body MRI. Getting any of it usually means either convincing a doctor to order something off the standard list, or paying out of pocket at a functional-medicine clinic with membership fees Instalab says most people cannot access without insurance covering it.
The company’s answer is to let a customer pick from a catalog of more than 600 lab tests and imaging studies directly, order without a referral, and have a partner network of licensed clinicians authorize the order where state law requires a physician’s signature. “We are a medical practice with physicians who review everything,” Cheung said in the same interview, describing how the company built a small in-house clinical team, including a lipidologist, around the testing.
This runs into a real regulatory line. New York, along with New Jersey and Rhode Island, is one of a handful of states where consumers generally cannot order their own lab tests without a licensed clinician’s order standing behind them, a restriction that has pushed several direct-to-consumer testing companies to exclude those states entirely. Instalab, headquartered in New York, lists 312 partner lab and imaging locations in the state on its own site and says a physician order is included with every booking, which is the model state law requires rather than an exception to it.
Two founders, a pivot through three customers
Cheung and her Homejoy co-founder were not the team behind Instalab. Its Y Combinator listing names two founders: Adora Cheung and Alex Cheung. Cheung had spent time as a partner at Y Combinator itself and, earlier, as a product manager at Slide.com, before Homejoy.
By her account, the company did not start by selling to patients at all. “We actually started not with patients. We started with clinical labs,” she said, describing software built to make lab reports easier for labs to hand back to patients. That did not sell. Neither did a version aimed at physicians. “We said, okay, forget all of this, we’re just going to start from scratch,” she said, and the company pivoted to selling directly to the people most motivated to act on their own results.
The first customers were friends in New York City who agreed to roll up their sleeves for a hired phlebotomist, followed by a second hire in San Francisco. The initial panel was narrow, a cardiovascular screen, before it broadened into the 60-plus biomarker Longevity Panel the company now sells alongside hundreds of a la carte tests.
Scaling collection, not headcount
Instalab has stayed small. Cheung described a team of five as of March 2024. Company trackers put headcount at 11 as of mid to late 2026, a modest increase consistent with a service business rather than a company scaling toward a product launch.
What did scale was distribution of the blood draw itself. In April 2024, Getlabs, a nationwide at-home phlebotomy network, announced a partnership to handle Instalab’s in-home collections across the country. “We’ve set a new standard for what healthcare should be: prevention-based, individualized and comprehensive,” Cheung said in the announcement. Today the company also lists more than 4,000 partner labs and imaging centers nationwide for people who would rather book an appointment than wait for a phlebotomist to come to them.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Reference labs | The company says lab work runs through Quest Diagnostics or Access Medical, described on its site as CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited reference labs, the same standard hospitals and physicians use. No independent audit of this claim was found. | Company-stated |
| Physician sign-off | Instalab says no doctor’s order is needed from the customer’s own physician; where a physician order is legally required, its partner network of licensed clinicians authorizes it. Cheung independently described the company as “a medical practice with physicians who review everything” in a March 2024 interview. | Interview corroborates |
| Founding year | The company and Y Combinator both list 2022. PitchBook’s company profile lists 2021. Records reviewed here found no filing that would settle the discrepancy. | Differs across sources |
| Funding total | CB Insights, PitchBook and Startup Intros each report $500,000 raised from Y Combinator and Liquid 2 Ventures. A search of SEC EDGAR, by company name and by full-text search, returned no Form D filing for Instalab as of September 25, 2026. | No SEC record found |
| Employee count | Tracxn and PitchBook both list 11 employees as of 2026. Startup Intros describes the company as having no reported employees in the same period. | Sources disagree |
| Getlabs partnership | Announced by Getlabs via PRNewswire on April 23, 2024, with quotes from both companies’ leadership, for nationwide at-home blood draws. | Company and partner release |
| Customer reviews | Instalab’s Trustpilot page had no reviews as of an early 2023 snapshot. The company’s own site cites a 4.9 rating from 4,143 reviews on its blood panel product page; the platform hosting those reviews is not identified there. | Unverified rating |
Read plainly: the testing infrastructure Instalab describes, CLIA labs, physician review, a national collection network, lines up with what independent partners and interviews corroborate. The money side is thinner. Every funding figure in circulation traces back to data aggregators rather than a primary filing, and no SEC record confirms it.
What to watch
- Whether a Form D or other public filing ever appears for a company that outside trackers already describe as funded.
- Named, verifiable customer outcomes beyond the testimonials Instalab publishes on its own site.
- Independent confirmation of the CLIA and CAP status the company claims for its reference labs.
- Headcount and geographic expansion as the Getlabs partnership matures.
In their words
“Many tests I wanted were not considered necessary by my physician, claiming I was too young or not sick enough, and insurance wouldn’t cover them.”
Adora Cheung, founder and CEO, Terra Podcasts interview, March 2024 · Interview
“We are a medical practice with physicians who review everything.”
Adora Cheung, Terra Podcasts interview, March 2024 · Interview
“We said, okay, forget all of this, we’re just going to start from scratch, and we’re going to go directly to the people who are most incentivized to get the testing.”
Adora Cheung, Terra Podcasts interview, March 2024 · Interview
“Most recently, I co-founded Instalab, a proactive healthcare company.”
Adora Cheung, personal website about page · Self-stated
“We’ve set a new standard for what healthcare should be: prevention-based, individualized and comprehensive.”
Adora Cheung, CEO, PRNewswire release on the Getlabs partnership, April 23, 2024 · Company release
“Through this partnership, we’re not just providing tests; we’re delivering peace of mind to patients, right in the comfort of their homes.”
Kyle Michelson, CEO of Getlabs, PRNewswire release, April 23, 2024 · Partner release
“Instalab’s comprehensive approach blew me away. Their detailed reports focused on the issues most relevant to me, with intuitive summaries and clear explanations of my risk factors.”
Ed Suh, MD, Alpine Ventures, customer testimonial on instalab.com · Company-published
“Staying on top of your health is a must for the best founders. Instalab made it simple for me by arranging all the testing and breaking down my results into actionable steps.”
Gustaf Alstromer, Partner at Y Combinator, customer testimonial on instalab.com · Company-published
Related companies
Sources
- InterviewFounder of Instalab, Adora Cheung
- CompanyInstalab homepage
- CompanyLab Tests & Health Screenings catalog page
- CompanyInstalab Blood Panel Test product page
- CompanyLab & Imaging Locations page
- CompanyTerms and Conditions
- IndependentAbout page
- IndependentInstalab company page, Founders Adora Cheung and Alex Cheung, Batch W22
- IndependentHomejoy Founder Genealogy
- IndependentInstalab company profile, funding, employee count
- IndependentInstalab 2026 Company Profile, founded year, funding, employee count
- IndependentInstalab 2026 Company Profile & Competitors, unfunded status, employee count
- IndependentInstalab: Funding, Team & Investors
- Company and partnerGetlabs and Instalab strategic partnership announcement
- Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search and company search for “Instalab”
- No reviews foundInstalab reviews page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
