BuiltInLA Demo Day Review

First Ever Techstars Offer Advice to Startups

June 23rd marks the end of the first ever Techstars Healthcare Accelerator. The program, which we previewed in April, saw Techstars partner with Cedars Sinai, bringing in 11 of the hottest healthtech companies. Here's what the soon-to-be graduates had to say about their time in the program.

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HomeHero 

Kyle Hill, CEO

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

We were optimistic entering the Techstars program after seeing the results of their past accelerators, and we're incredibly excited to get an inside look at the inner workings of a world-leading health system like Cedars-Sinai. We expected to have enormous access to healthcare physicians, administrators, entrepreneurs and more. Techstars definitely delivered on this promise.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Focus on building "moats" for your company (a term used by Warren Buffet). This means differentiating your product in a way that makes it very difficult for competitors to reproduce. For us, our "moat" is integrating directly with a hospital as an extension of their healthcare continuum. Home care, by itself is not a new service, but we've reimagined it from the ground up and added a critical technology component, and that makes it fresh and innovative. 

What's next for your startup?

We will continue to work with Cedars on various initiatives aimed at reducing healthcare costs while also improving patient outcomes and satisfaction. We will also publish a case study to prove the actuarial value and ROI on home care and leverage this to partner with other innovative health systems around the country.

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Inscope Medical

Maggie Galloway, CEO

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

We had high expectations for the Techstars program after talking with several Techstars alumni. We knew that Techstars had an incredibly strong mentor and investor network and provided valuable startup guidance. Even with these high expectations, we were blown away by our Techstars experience. Techstars has helped us make more progress in three months than we could have made in years. The clinical expertise and resources we have had access to at Cedars-Sinai are unattainable by start-ups outside of this program. 

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Seize every opportunity that comes your way, you never know what doors it will open.

What's next for your startup?

We are moving into manufacturing with our first device this summer. Our clinical study with Cedars-Sinai will start this fall. We are focused on channel partner development and are moving full speed ahead on R&D of our second device.

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Deep 6 Analytics

Wout Brusselaers, Founder and CEO

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

To validate our assumptions about the healthcare industry, work closely with actual decision makers and product users, and to close a deal with a reference institution like Cedars. All that, and to test the limits of sleep deprivation.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Marry rich.

What's next for your startup?

Growth. Use the momentum from the accelerator program to keep executing rapidly, and sign up more clients.

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Well Health Inc.

Guillaume de Zwirek, Co-founder & CEO

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

We wanted to find a product-market fit and identify a path to rapid scale.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Hire some interns because it's going to be really hard to take advantage of everything this program has to offer.

What's next for your startup?

We're doubling the size of the team and opening up offices in St. Louis and San Francisco to support our pipeline. Our next big milestone is $1M in ARR [Accounting Rate of Return], and we hope to get there by end of year!

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Applied VR

Josh Sackman, President

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

Although we didn’t know that much about the Techstars/Cedars-Sinai program, we had high expectations. We expected to develop a commercial agreement with Cedars-Sinai, begin commercial sales with surgery centers and get introductions to other hospital systems. Despite our high expectations, Techstars and Cedars-Sinai blew them away! This has been a phenomenal program.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Look for that unique competitive differentiator that will truly accelerate your company. In our case, having Cedars Sinai as a strategic partner is opening up a ton of doors.

What's next for your startup?

Expansion and execution. Now that we are about to complete the program, it’s critical that we maintain the high level of performance that Techstars demanded of us each and every day.

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Zendy Health

Vish Banthia, Founder, CEO, Chief Medical Officer

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

Implement a hospital pilot and increase network opportunities to access payers, employers and other hospital institutions, which represent different pipelines of customers for us.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Take every opportunity that presents itself — and just keep going. Never take 'no' for an answer, especially if you really believe in what you are doing. Believe that what you are doing makes a positive impact.

What's next for your startup?

We want to expand our provider, partner, and customer base, and also add more services that we can offer in a systematic, methodical fashion. To do this, we will need to expand our team to accelerate all these processes.

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Grace

Annie Luchsinger, Co-Founder

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

Coming into the Techstars program, we knew the industry partnership with Cedars-Sinai was going to have a compounding impact on our company. On the Techstars side, the network is stacked with industry experts that span all business aspects. You get personal attention and direct access to resources and mentorship in ways that you would never get on your own. The staff from the top down are engaged and excited to help grow your company, and therefore, you receive practical insights that create impactful results.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Having a well-rounded, agile team will make all the difference in getting the most out of the program. Culture and trust were a big piece of why we were able to move as quickly as we did. Bottom line: get the right people in place and put in the work, and it will be worth it in the long run.

What's next for your startup?

Our team is growing rapidly to keep on pace with demand. We'll be in three states by the end of the year, and we're on pace to solidify three more influential partnerships to continue growth.

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Stasis Labs

Michael Maylahn, Co-Founder

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

We anticipated it to be a combination of helpful business strategy and help in fine-tuning our product through working with Cedars-Sinai clinicians. We have been extremely impressed with the amount of support we've received from Cedars and the Techstars network! It has exceeded our expectations.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Every young company must really understand the 'why' in what the company is doing. Use conversations and observations of potential customers to really learn their needs, and how the company's proposed solution meets the observed needs.

What's next for your startup?

We are transitioning into sales efforts and working to develop strong relationships with early customers.

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Yosko

Javier Ortin, Co-Founder

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

Our goal for the program was primarily to work closely with clinicians from Cedars-Sinai on expanding the functionality of our care coordination solution. At the same time, we wanted to learn from the program and its mentors how we could scale the business. The program has exceeded our expectations and has been a great experience.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Be prepared for a very intensive program that will push you to work very hard in multiple areas of your business. The knowledge you will get from this program, as the popular MIT saying goes, is like drinking from a fire hose.

What's next for your startup?

Pilot our new product in a clinical setting.

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Silversheet

Miles Beckett, CEO & Co-Founder

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

We expected to meet incredible technology and healthcare mentors, tap into the Techstars and Cedars-Sinai network and pilot our product at one of Cedars-Sinai's institutions.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Focus on your product, your KPIs and revenue.

What's next for your startup?

We've just announced a big partnership with Cedars-Sinai, we're in conversations with several other large health systems, and we're looking to expand and grow our network of healthcare providers.  

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Ella

Alexandra Skey, Co-Founder

What were your expectations for the Techstars program?

Our goal was to work with world class entrepreneurs and leaders in healthcare to help us build a solution for people with chronic pain. It's been an incredible experience.

What advice would you give to a startup in your place six months ago?

Great question! Don't underestimate the amount of work, learning and growth you'll go through. Startups are intense, and being in an accelerator like Techstars magnifies the experience. It's amazing how much we've learned in the last three months, and we know that's only a taste of what's to come.

What's next for your startup?

We're growing fast, and our next stage is to start offering our solution to patients outside Cedars-Sinai. We're really excited about this milestone, because it will give more people who are suffering from chronic pain the opportunity to find relief through mindfulness programs.

DigiPharmaLog Demo Day Review

Eleven Health Tech Startups with Innovative Products on Demo Day

Virtual reality goggles that immerse patients in scenes of beauty that can help manage pain and anxiety. A new type of laryngoscope that increases the speed and safety of intubation. An online healthcare marketplace where patients pick their own prices for standardized medical and dental services.

These are among the innovations that will be showcased during “Demo Day,” when 11 health tech startups will offer hundreds of investors and executives a first look at their new products that can improve the delivery of medical care, save lives and reduce healthcare costs.

Demo Day caps three months of furious activity for the health tech startups chosen from a field of 500 global applicants by the Techstars Healthcare Accelerator, in partnership with Cedars-Sinai.

“This is the biggest day of the program for these promising startups,” said Omkar Kulkarni, MPH, Healthcare Innovation Accelerator director at Cedars-Sinai. “Each company will share its story, demonstrate its project and hopefully convince investors to share their vision.”

For the accelerator, Cedars-Sinai has partnered with Techstars, an organization that supports health tech startups. Working out of a loft-like office space across from the hospital, the startup companies have received mentoring from Cedars-Sinai medical and scientific experts as well as benefited from Techstars’ network of successful entrepreneurs and corporate partners.

Thumbnails on the 11 companies from Demo Day:

AppliedVR: The first mobile virtual reality platform that enhances the patient experience through improved management of pain and anxiety.

Deep 6 Analytics: Analyzes unstructured data to build leading-edge artificial applications for healthcare and the U.S. intelligence community.

Ella: A mindfulness-based mobile platform that reduces healthcare costs by helping patients manage chronic pain.

Grace: A comprehensive, technology driven platform providing end-of-life management solutions for both consumers and healthcare providers.

HomeHero: One of the largest, nonmedical home care providers in California.

Inscope Medical Solutions: Developers of a laryngoscope that increases the speed and safety of intubation.

Silversheet: A talent management platform enabling healthcare facilities and medical staff to connect and work together.

Stasis Labs: Creators of a health monitoring system that allows doctors to intervene before declining patients experiencing critical events.

WELL: A secure communication platform that helps administrators and care coordinators reach patients between visits.

Yosko: A care coordination platform for hospitals that improves team collaboration, transitions of care and efficiency in procedural areas.

ZendyHealth: A Priceline-like digital health marketplace where patients can bid and pick their own price on standardized medical and dental services with top providers.

89.3 KPCC Demo Day Review

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has teamed up with a startup accelerator to provide a boost to firms developing new products for the health care field.

A key idea behind the effort is that providing access to medical and other experts who can give an invention a test run can make the difference between failure and success. 

The program, which Cedars recently launched with the global startup accelerator Techstars, runs for three months.

The partnership invests $120,000 in each company chosen to participate, and provides work space in a lab across the street from Cedars. The goal is to help the startups fast-track their products into the marketplace. 

Cedars and Techstars selected 11 firms for the initial three-month program after sifting through 500 applications, says Omkar Kulkarni, the hospital's point man for the project.

"In those three months we surrounded them with mentors," he says. The mentors include "about 500 people from Cedars-Sinai, from local hospitals, from the investment community, other startup communities." 

The firms in the program "learned whether or not their product was a fit for the health care market," Kulkarni says. "We really had a chance to closely work with these companies to build and pilot technologies that would otherwise have been really difficult for these companies to do in such a short period."

The initiative's first class of health care entrepreneurs graduated last week.  On graduation day, each company demonstrated its product for an audience of potential investors. 

Among the 11 new products: virtual reality goggles that immerse patients in calming scenes of beauty as a drug-free way to manage pain; an inexpensive endoscope designed to eliminate the risk of infection because it’s disposable after one use, and a secure text messaging system that allows patients to set up appointments and communicate with their health providers. 

The second crop of startups will go through the program early next year, says Kulkarni.

Releasing Some Pent up Thankfulness: Techstars/Cedars-Sinai Healthcare Accelerator

I have to preface this by saying that I can’t claim the title here. It’s a brilliant line from one of our cohort-mates, Kyle Hill of HomeHero about the power of intentionally taking time to encourage outward displays of thankfulness in company meetings:

People have a lot of pent up thankfulness just waiting for the right forum to express it.

What struck me about Kyle’s comment was his insight that his team’s thankfulness was pent up, as in under pressure, waiting for an excuse to be released. We often think of anger, aggression, or other negative emotions in this way and recognize the need to provide a constructive outlet for the negativity to ensure an overload doesn’t occur. For me, the release used to be boxing or working out, but I can’t seem to find time here in LA…

Anyway, as far as I know, there’s no common outlet for expressing thankfulness on a regular basis. For whatever reason, it is nearly as uncomfortable to directly thank a colleague for doing their job as it would be to chastise a colleague for not doing their job. This shouldn’t be true, but we even see it between the closest co-founders here at Techstars. But by simply giving his team an open, welcoming forum where they could truly and publically recognize their co-workers’ efforts, Kyle was able to ensure that no good deed went unrecognized.

The result? According to Kyle, an increased sense of company cohesion and renewed vigor to achieve the goals ahead. I’m sure it was pretty powerful to be in the room during this exercise.

Before Kyle’s comment, I thought I was pretty committed to recognizing what I have to be thankful and showing my colleagues that I appreciate their efforts. But I realized that I too allow my thankfulness to get pent up or go unsaid. So, in the spirit of Kyle’s comment, I want to spend most of this blog releasing some personal pent up thankfulness. I haven’t re-read any of my previous blogs, so some parts of this may be a bit repetitive. If that happens, take it as a sign that I’m especially thankful.

Either someone’s not paying out when we pass Go, or we haven’t passed Go yet… Both are scary. (credit: BGR.com)

Startupland is a roller coaster. We all know that, and on some level accept when we pick our character and put it on the first square. But the last couple weeks for Inscope have been a daily, and often hourly, roller coaster. To put it simply, every day has felt like Tuesday. And Tuesday is the worst day of the week, guaranteed.

The Inscope roller coaster has very nearly left the rails on a couple occasions recently, and it’s only thanks to the heroic efforts of a few people that we’re still on track.

First, and probably most important, is our development team at Occam Design back home in Louisville. To say that I’m thankful for our relationship with Occam is an understatement. If you have any need for an team to help you design/develop/manufacture a medical device, there is no company I’d recommend more.

Minor deviation, but I’ve realized recently that startup founders/employees aren’t the only ones affected by the ridiculous pace of Startupland, not to mention accelerator programs. Everyone associated with each startup, but particularly development teams and corporate partners, gets at least a taste of Startupland, whether they like it or not (I keep capitalizing Startupland because I kind of want to make a board game by this name about entrepreneurship). My experience has been that most partners can’t handle the kind of rapid changes we’ve thrown at Occam.

On a similar note, I have to thank my friend Daniel Johnsen, who has completed several last-minute 3D prints for us when no other options would work and we needed results in less than 18 hours. He and the LVL1 makerspace have been clutch, to say the least.

We haven’t just been saved from product development mishaps recently. Maggie can tell you more, but a recent seminar from Techstars co-founder and startup guru, David Cohen, has radically changed our perception of how to successfully fundraise. Are we thankful for his insights and time? You bet. Despite a couple unexpected setbacks recently, we’ve used David’s advice to build even more momentum than we had before the setbacks. As a result, we should have a big announcement soon.

Really? You filed TPS reports all weekend? Sounds thrilling. (credit: Office Space)

You may have experienced this in the break room at your office; there’s always that one (dozen) coworkers who will ask about the project you’ve been struggling with just to make small talk. They don’t actually care, they just don’t want to re-caffeinate in silence. Buncha jerks.

I don’t have enough digits to count the number of co-founders, employees, and TS/CS staff who have asked about our struggles, not to make small talk, but to find a way to help or lend a truly empathetic ear. I can honestly say I haven’t experienced anything like this before and I’m incredibly grateful. I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out a few individuals from this group (in no particular order):

- Monica Jain — a wealth of knowledge about navigating product testing in a regulatory-compliant manner that also happens to have seemingly endless energy and willingness to help each company here.

- Omkar Kulkarni — I’m pretty sure his middle name is Magic. Need a contact? Done. Need killer advice? Just ask. How about a reminder that it’ll all end up working? Just in time, every time.

- Sri Batchu — social media, entertainment, boundless energy and optimism all in one Indian Teddy bear (his words, not mine). He also knows all of DJ Khaled’s major keys now, so watch out world!

Adam teaches us about tea and how to de-stress for a few minutes.

- The Techstars Associates — Adam, Elana, Mattieu, Michael, and Timur make our accelerator life work. They make snacks appear, keep us on time to meetings, rebuild websites, make pitch decks, collect product feedback data, teach us traditional tea ceremonies, and any other crazy task we ask, all with a smile. They live #givefirst.

- Maureen and Matt — our accelerator mom and dad that always have time to talk through our daily/hourly challenges, set up great speakers and connections, and much more we probably don’t see. And, it’s their first time doing this Techstars thing…

- Dr. Hopp, Dr. Gold, Dr. Liu, Dr. Torbati — four of our mentors that always have time to give us advice. I’m pretty sure they also take really good care of patients in what little free time we leave them.

- The Cedars-Sinai legal department and executives — basically the (benevolent) puppet masters that pull any string we ask for and have shown a willingness to move both rocks and hard places for every company here. They are proof that big organizations don’t have to be slow and can foster innovation.

- David Brown and Kevin Tapply — Techstars executives and two of our mentors. Proof that the commitment to building companies and founders runs deep top to bottom in Techstars, these guys lead by example by making connections for us that otherwise would take months or longer. The crazy part is that, in making these connections, they have never made us feel as if we’re asking too much; quite the opposite.

Lastly, I have to release some personal pent up thankfulness to my brother, my sister-in-law, my mom, my girlfriend, and my fraternity brother. The random reminders of home, pictures of family, and terrible jokes are always perfectly timed. A successful founder recently gave us some advice to help overcome the rough patches: keep an image of the handful of people you’re building your product for in mind. You guys are that core group.

I was originally going to call this blog post Whack-a-mole, or Zen and the Art of Problem Solving in an Accelerator, but I decided to change it at the last minute. Why? Mostly because it didn’t seem right to keep bitching about how often problems occur in startup life when we have so much to be thankful for. New and inventive problems are guaranteed, new and incredible support is not.

To everyone that has helped so far, and especially to those that we have somehow neglected to thank, please know that we recognize and appreciate everything you do.

Rise and Fall and Rise of a Startup By Adam Smith; Art by Ruolin Li

Stasis Labs: A Startup Story