HTI Pitch Competition Finals!

Hey everyone,

Incredibly excited to announce the top 3 finalists for our pitch competition: 

Tim Fitzpatrick at IKONA Health is building AI/VR solutions which will drive patient activation, empowering patients to be more informed about their health and accessing more care at home.

Andy Olson and Kristin Brogaard, PhD at Inherent Biosciences, Inc. are building an AI enabled epigenetic platform for the future of diagnostic and therapeutics. Their first product SpermQT is identifying significantly more male factor infertility.

Vince Hartman, Ritika Poddar and Giordana Pulpo at Abstractive Health are building an AI enabled SaaS solution which summarizes a patients history, saving physicians time, increasing revenues and improving healthcare.

Amit Garg from Tau Ventures joined me for a fireside chat and here are the take aways:

1. Pro rata rights are an important factor in portfolio construction.

I spoke about pro rata rights previously and will expand on portfolio construction at a later date. Another concept to explore here is conversation rate, essentially what percent of your investments do you forsee "converting" to future fundraising rounds (pre seed to seed to series A and beyond). 

2. Realistically one person can manage 10 companies/ boards. 

I think this is self explanatory, my experience so far helping/ advising entrepreneurs leads me to believe that a considerable amount of this time is likely managing people, emotions and expectations. Launching and growing a company is an emotional rollercoaster and finding stability is difficult.

3. Maturation in the ecosystem is driving the specialization of funds.

This one is very insightful, where I find most still consider investing alongside the "power law" to be true. While the statement isn't against the power law per se, it leads me to believe just investing broadly within a vertical is an unlikely strategy for success. As the market matures, so do the sales processes and commercialization pathways. To succeed, a better knowledge of the path to product market fit is helpful.

4. The best picks are "just plausible", consensus not unanimity.

Risk is inherent in startup investing. Especially in early stage, the old adage “No risk, no reward” rings true. Looking for certainty in seed stage startups is an exercise in futility. If you find certainty, the most likely explanation is that:

A. You are missing something and with enough diligence you can always convince yourself to not invest.

B. The startup is too late to market.

Incredibly thankful to our judges, taking the time out of their busy schedules to support us. In my humble opinion, they are truly amongst the best investors in healthcare currently:

Amit Mehta, MD at Builders VC
Sharon S. Huang at Tau Ventures
Xue Hua at Propel Bio Partners
Ricky Mehra at Continuum Health Ventures

Special thanks to Saumitra Thakur at MedMountain Ventures for stepping in last minute to give closing thoughts!

Thank you for reading,

Rishad