7 to 7,000 employees in 9 months
Curative scaled from 7 to 7,000 employees in just 9 months during the COVID testing ramp-up.
Snapshot · The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: $5BN in Revenue, 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months, 206,000 Tests in a Single Day: The Craziest Story in Startups: Curative with Fred Turner
Explore episode
Jul 18, 2026
Where this was said
When Did Fred Realise COVID Was Massive—and How Did Curative Scale to $5BN?
At 31:17 · chapter starts 21:00
The COVID chapter opens with Fred watching infection rate data on Twitter in mid-February 2020 and realising the trajectory was worse than anyone in public was admitting. With a COVID test already developed in his CSO's spare time but no lab license to run it, Fred scrambled — eventually striking a 50/50 JV with a sports doping lab in San Dimas, a small city best known as the setting of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Their first government customer was the San Dimas sheriff's department, followed quickly by the City of LA — a contract that came about because longevity investor Laura Deming tweeted about Curative's testing capacity and the Deputy Mayor slid into her DMs. To fund scaling, Curative collected daily invoices from LA with net-1 payment terms, sending someone to City Hall each morning to collect a check. The largest single contract — worth hundreds of millions — was Florida's statewide nursing home testing programme, which every other lab said was impossible to deliver [1] — Fred Turner "Hundreds of millions single contract: Curative's single largest contract — with the state of Florida for nursing home testing — was worth h…" 27:23 . Fred explains the orthogonal supply chain philosophy: use no consumables your competitors are fighting over. Curative sourced swabs from electronics testing vendors, replaced magnetic bead extraction with filter plates that could be manufactured at scale, and built from scratch rather than optimising existing processes. Hiring was done with 5-minute interview slots in socially distanced parking lot queues. The peak came in December 2020: 206,000 tests in a single day [2] — Fred Turner "206,000 tests in a single day: Curative's peak single-day COVID testing volume was 206,000 people, reached in December 2020, just 8 months …" 30:55 , with 7,000 employees. The margin profile was brutal — highly profitable at surge peaks, deeply loss-making in the troughs between variants. Over three years, total revenue hit $5 billion [3] — Fred Turner "$5 billion total COVID revenue: Curative generated approximately $5 billion in total revenue from COVID testing over a 3-year period." 31:46 . After paying out a 10x dividend to investors, roughly $500 million was reinvested into the health insurance company.
Hundreds of millions single contract
Curative's single largest contract — with the state of Florida for nursing home testing — was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
From 7 to 7,000 Employees in 9 Months
Curative went from 7 to 7,000 employees in 9 months, hit 206,000 tests in a single day, and generated $5 billion in revenue over three years. The scale was achieved by building an entirely orthogonal supply chain — avoiding every consumable that competitors were fighting over.
206,000 tests in a single day
Curative's peak single-day COVID testing volume was 206,000 people, reached in December 2020, just 8 months from zero.
$5 billion total COVID revenue
Curative generated approximately $5 billion in total revenue from COVID testing over a 3-year period.
$500M invested into health insurance
After COVID testing wound down, Curative invested approximately $500 million of retained earnings into building its health insurance business.
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