Challenge

Launching a healthcare startup is extremely challenging. Pivoting, while useful in other startup verticals, is often realized too late when cash burn is peaking. Investing in the most accurately market aligned solution is critical.

  • Why do healthcare startups fail at such a high rate?
    • A perfect solution in no way guarantees success. The startup graveyard is littered with great ideas.
    • Poor understanding of market needs
    • Confirmation bias when solution value testing
    • Lack of experience with clinical workflow, enterprise systems
    • Multiple design cycles lead to cost overruns
    • Regulatory process is much more of a burden than anticipated
    • Inadequate preparation to market, sell, support product
    • 5,000+ hospitals, 1-2 person sales team
  • Selling into healthcare is challenging
    • Difficult / impossible to sell outside of annual budget cycle
    • Clinical champion with purchasing influence
    • Many competing clinical priorities
    • Establishing meaningful ROI ( all vendors claim exaggerated savings)
    • Determining payer ( covered expense, operational cost savings, etc)
    • IT sometimes runs the show and cannot be ignored
  • Designing healthcare solutions is fundamentally different than the consumer market.
    • FDA, HIPAA, demanding IT requirements, infection control, durability, liability
    • Fail fast is the wrong approach for healthcare
    • Pivoting can be a recipe for disaster. Up front research is expensive, but reduces failure
  • Startups lack exposure to challenges of real world technology and workflow
    • Hospitals are much more complex than the development lab
    • Solutions are often designed to solve a specific problem without larger system considerations
    • Enterprise wireless has 1,000’s of devices and multiple sources of interference