Silicon Valley is one of the country’s best-known hubs of innovation, and that didn’t happen by accident. The region’s most successful startups have famously focused on accessibility, scalability, and overall user experience. Haven Headache & Migraine Center has adopted the same intentionality, bringing empathy, access, and meaningful change to migraine care.
Haven is a virtual-first clinic based in San Francisco. It was founded to help people with migraine connect with headache specialists and receive customized care plans.
Patients who work with Haven can avoid long wait times for appointments. And when they see a headache expert, it’s not just a one-off meeting and treatment recommendation. Through clinician-reviewed headache diaries, patients can enjoy continuous care in between visits.
Izac Ross, Haven’s founder and CEO, has lived with migraine since childhood. He also has a background in health technology. This dual experience motivated him to create an uncommon type of company: a healthcare institution powered (at least in part) by Silicon Valley thinking.
Photo credit: Haven Headache & Migraine Center
“I didn’t come to migraine care as a doctor. I came to it as a patient and a designer,” he says. “I’ve lived with migraine since I was two years old. I also spent over a decade building products at the intersection of design, healthcare, and technology. Both of those experiences shape everything about how Haven operates.”
When Ross started Haven Headache & Migraine Center, he sought to improve the patient experience. His time in Silicon Valley showed him what traditional migraine care was missing.
“In tech, you obsess over the user. You watch where they struggle. You remove friction. Most headache centers were built around the provider’s convenience, with months-long wait times and a system that patients have to fight through,” says Ross. “We flipped that. Haven is virtual-first because someone in the middle of a migraine attack shouldn’t have to drive across the county to get help.”
Rapid scaling is an integral part of the Silicon Valley playbook. However, when patients’ health and well-being are at stake, founders need to scale access, not just revenue.
“Health-tech taught me to think about reaching thousands of people, not dozens,” Ross explains. “There are roughly 40 million people with migraine in the U.S. and only a few hundred headache specialists. You can’t solve that gap with a single in-person visit at a time.”
“You solve it by building infrastructure, clinical protocols, technology, and workflows that let great specialists treat far more patients without cutting corners on quality.”
Many healthcare startups promise drastic results while mainly focusing on profitability. The tech industry’s focus on the user experience has greatly influenced Haven’s approach to care.
“In tech, you live and die by outcomes data, so we measure what actually matters to patients,” says Ross. “We’ve brought that discipline to clinical care. We track whether patients are actually getting fewer migraine days and whether their function is improving rather than just whether we billed a visit.”
As Ross knows all too well, navigating the healthcare system can be frustrating, even demoralizing, for many people living with migraine. While the Haven team pays attention to the fine details, it never loses sight of the importance of providing informed, empathetic care.
“My design training means I see the whole journey: the booking flow, the intake, the follow-up, the moment a patient gets a real answer after years of being dismissed,” Ross says. “A confusing, cold experience makes people sicker. A clear, humane one helps them get better.”
