Company leader
Michelle Davey
Co-founder and CEO
Wheel
Michelle Davey is co-founder and chief executive of Wheel, an Austin, Texas, company that supplies clinicians and software for other companies' telehealth programs. Davey is trying to make good care reachable for patients like she once was, far from specialists and waiting years for answers.
Growing Up in Rural Texas
Davey grew up in rural Texas with an autoimmune condition that went undiagnosed for 15 years, until her mid-20s, she told Crunchbase News in 2021. The experience left her focused on how hard it is for patients outside big cities to see the right clinician.
Recruiting at Google and Favor
Her career started in recruiting and operations, at Medtronic and then Google. At Favor, the Austin delivery company, she helped recruit nearly 50,000 drivers, and she later worked at a telehealth startup.
Starting Wheel
Davey co-founded Wheel in January 2018. It launched as Enzyme Health, a marketplace that matched clinicians with telehealth companies, and grew into a 50-state clinician network, according to the Digital Medicine Society. The name Wheel refers to the first wheel, which let people move what one person could not move alone.
Wheel raised a $50 million Series B in May 2021 and a $150 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation in January 2022.
Saying No to GLP-1 Money
As compounded GLP-1 weight loss drugs drew telehealth companies in, Davey declined to build Wheel's revenue on them, she told the Slice of Healthcare podcast in 2026. She had already walked away from small digital health clients in 2021, and two co-founders left. "I shut off LinkedIn for about three months," she said of that period.
She now pitches Wheel's Horizon platform to pharma companies and health systems, and she says clinicians are wary of new software. "The truth is they don't trust it, because of how much bad software has been put in front of clinicians who were expected to adopt it blind."