Michael Serbinis co-founded League in 2014 with three friends.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Serial entrepreneur Michael Serbinis co-founded League Inc. to digitally transform the health care experience for consumers. Then the company transformed itself.
After two strategic pivots and some setbacks, League’s latest iteration is clicking. The 11-year-old Toronto company, which provides personalized, user-friendly online health care platforms used by benefits providers, governments and other large payers to interact and transact with consumers, has increased the number of contracted users to 58 million, up nearly four-fold in 18 months.
Recent clients include Manulife Financial Corp. MFC-PR-N-T, Telus Digital, the province of Alberta, U.S.-based Quest Diagnostics Inc., The Cigna Group and Health Care Service Corp., plus Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank Private Ltd.
League is expanding in the Middle East and Britain and has signed a North American customer that could expand its reach by 100 million users.
The 400-person company’s annual recurring revenue has increased by 55 per cent on average in the past four years and monthly cash use has dwindled to US$1-million. League aims to become profitable in 2026, despite investing heavily in artificial-intelligence tools to aid customers on its platform.
“This is the easiest and best version, and for me personally, the most exciting version of League,” the 51-year-old Mr. Serbinis said in an interview. “But it has been challenging to get here.”
Now he hopes investors will fund the next leg of that journey. This fall, Mr. Serbinis plans to seek US$100-million in growth financing after raising US$225-million to date from investors including Manulife, Telus T-T, Power Corp. of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada RY-T, OMERS, BDC, BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis, the Weston family, Australia’s TDM Capital and Workday Inc.’s venture capital arm.
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The last time Mr. Serbinis tried to raise funds, in 2023, he “could not get a second look” from new investors who only wanted to back profitable tech companies, in contrast to their prior enthusiasm for grow-at-all-costs stories, he said. (League lost US$42-million that year). He instead raised US$50-million from existing backers.
Today, with League’s expansion in full flight, break-even in sight, and a US$100-million bank facility in hand, Mr. Serbinis said he’s “not really worried” about fundraising despite continued market softness. “Many companies that have made it through this difficult time are stronger for it.”
League director Mike Butler said despite the market challenges, “we have as strong a story as ever. We’ve checked every box on the risks that people looked at last time.”
Mr. Serbinis co-founded League in 2014 with three friends, two years after selling e-reader company Kobo for US$315-milllion – his second lucrative exit after the sale of internet-based document sharing startup DocSpace in 2000.
League’s original idea was to connect consumers with health professionals on a modern online platform. The economics didn’t work, so two years later League pivoted.
It built a platform for employers to offer millennial workers flexible “lifestyle and health care spending accounts” and non-traditional benefits such as personal trainers, yoga classes and art therapy. It signed Shopify, Facebook, Unilever and Workday as clients and by 2019 had 200,000 users and US$10-million-plus in revenue.
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That summer, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. chairman Galen Weston Jr. asked Mr. Serbinis if League could build a digital front door for online health care services for his Shoppers Drug Mart chain. The League-powered PC Health app launched in fall 2020. That “wasn’t something you could raise money on,” Mr. Serbinis said, unless League could find more platform deals like it. He and his team shifted focus again to see if they could do that.
League’s second platform deal with Humana Inc. fell apart in October, 2021, as the U.S. insurer missed financial targets and began slashing costs. Mr. Serbinis had just received three offers from investors. “You can imagine what those conversations had to be the week after,” he said.
But League’s platform play was working. U.S. health insurer Highmark Health signed on in late 2021 and growth equity firm TDM agreed to lead a US$95-million financing, though League also cut 100 jobs.
League closed two platform deals in 2022, four in 2023 and eight in 2024; it’s on track to double again this year. While top-line revenue only nudged up to US$72-million in 2024 from US$70-million the year before, Mr. Serbinis said the real story is that annual recurring revenues increased by 42 per cent to just over US$60-million last December from a year earlier as the number of contracted users increased to 40 million from 15 million.
It is expected to reach US$70-million in annual recurring revenue by early July, and Mr. Serbinis believes League can generate another US$125-million from existing customers as it expands use of its platform.
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Mr. Serbinis now describes League’s product as a Shopify-like platform that customers can wrap around their core offerings, such as benefits processing and payments – and bolt-on modules such as appointments booking, care management, digital wallets and virtual care. Its customers pay an annual subscription fee plus per-user fees.
Beneath it all is an immense “data lake” League used to generate more than 100 million AI-driven recommendations in 2024, such as reminding users to book colonoscopy exams, guiding them on recoveries after operations or offering healthy cooking tips for diabetics.
A key principle guiding League is that higher user engagement drives better health outcomes for consumers and improved economics for benefits providers and employers.
Ashesh Desai, Manulife Canada’s head of group benefits, said that since his company launched a new digital platform on League last year combining benefits delivery and access to care, use of its mobile offerings by members and beneficiaries has increased by 17 per cent, while monthly mobile visits have jumped by 33 per cent. Nine in 10 users have used at least one of League’s new features.
“We are a very happy customer,” he said. “League is driving the results we want.”