Function Hires Spotify CMO to Build Healthcare Brand at Scale

Function, a healthcare technology company at the $250M+ valuation stage, has appointed Taj Alavi as its first Chief Marketing Officer. Alavi previously led consumer brand positioning at Spotify, Uber, and Instagram—three companies that built discipline around how they appear in physical space, in transaction moments, and across stakeholder touch points. This hire marks a structural pivot: Function moves from engineering-led visibility into what principals call the identity layer. For a healthcare startup, this means manufacturing coherence across clinical partnerships, investor relations, premium customer onboarding, and the physical assets that travel with the brand into hospitals, research labs, and boardrooms.

The timing signals what operators know: growth-stage companies that reach $250M+ revenue threshold without a dedicated CMO have managed product adoption but not brand architecture. Alavi's background at consumer-scale platforms means Function intends to reverse-engineer that discipline into healthcare—where identity infrastructure carries clinical weight. A hospital partner or payer doesn't evaluate Function based on messaging alone. They evaluate the consistency of materials, the precision of written language, the durability of collateral, and the coherence between what's promised and what's kept across twelve months of interaction.

What the hire signals about growth readiness

When a company that young hires a CMO from platforms that manage billions of daily interactions, the board is saying: we have product-market fit, and now we manufacture trust. Alavi's work at Spotify involved imprinting brand discipline into cultural moments—the Super Bowl activation, the playlist strategy, the way the logo appears in stadiums. At Uber and Instagram, the work was about trust building at scale: how do consumers understand what we are, how do they know we're consistent, how do we show up in a crowded space. Healthcare operates under the same logic, except the stakes are clinical reputation and regulatory compliance. Function's board is signaling they're ready to move from "we have good product" to "we are a brand that operators can trust across contract cycles."

Where branded identity infrastructure now becomes operational

The first 90 days of a CMO at this stage typically produce three deliverables: brand guidelines that are actually kept (not merely produced), a customer experience architecture that connects every touchpoint—from proposal stage through renewal—and a portfolio of printed, physical, and digital objects that imprint the brand across a partner's organization. In healthcare, this means: clinical one-sheets that a hospital's VP of Innovation keeps on their desk because the design and language make the science visible; partnership decks printed on stock that signals durability; invitation collateral for events where payers and providers gather that makes Function's presence architectural, not decorative.

Alavi will inherit a company that likely has scattered brand assets—good marketing, poor consistency. The CMO's mandate is to build what the industry calls "brand infrastructure." This includes the physical objects that travel with sales conversations: presentation folders, leave-behind materials, event signage, the way a booth at a healthcare conference is constructed. Each object either reinforces or undermines the message. At scale, this infrastructure becomes a competitive edge because it's difficult to copy and expensive to maintain poorly.

What operators do in this window

For Single Family Offices and heritage brands aligned with healthcare or life sciences, this hire opens a visibility window. Function's incoming CMO will need to build or audit vendor relationships—the partners who manufacture, imprint, and keep track of branded objects as the company scales. Event planners at the $250K+ tier should note that Function will soon require elevated activation infrastructure: not booth presence, but curated experiences at medical conferences, investor forums, and partner strategy retreats. The company will need advisors who understand how to move premium brand identity into clinical environments, where the bar for restraint and precision is high.

For CMOs and brand leaders in heritage houses, Alavi's hire is a signal that even fast-moving consumer platforms recognize what healthcare already knows: when you move into institutional relationships, the physical and experiential layer becomes your brand. The way this gets handled—the precision of the collateral, the durability of the relationship infrastructure, the consistency maintained across a 18-month sales cycle—is what separates companies that scale from companies that plateau.