Havi Nguyen grew up helping her immigrant family navigate America’s Medicaid system. Years later, she turned that experience into Abby Care, a healthcare startup that trains and pays family members to look after their loved ones. With $82 million in fresh funding, her idea is gaining serious attention.

Long before Havi Nguyen became a startup founder, she was a child in Baytown, Texas, trying to make sense of America’s healthcare system.

Her parents, Vietnamese immigrants who ran a nail salon, relied on Medicaid to cover the family’s healthcare needs.

Nguyen helped complete paperwork, handled renewals and sometimes missed school to interpret conversations at medical appointments. She was learning how much work it took to keep a family healthy before she was old enough to understand the business of healthcare.

Years later, those experiences would help shape Abby Care, a startup built around a question that millions of American families might recognise: If someone gives up their time and income to care for a loved one, why shouldn’t that work be paid?

Abby Care trains eligible family members to become certified caregivers and employs them to provide authorised care at home. The company works within Medicaid programmes to compensate people who, in many cases, were already doing the job without a salary.

The idea has now attracted some of Silicon Valley’s biggest investors. Abby Care recently raised $82 million in a Series C round led by Transformation Capital, with participation from CVS Health Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures and Pivotal Ventures. Existing backers include Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital.

But the more interesting part of Abby Care’s story isn’t the money. It’s how a founder who experienced the difficulties of Medicaid firsthand identified an overlooked workforce hiding in plain sight: the families themselves.

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