We’re deep into week 2 of teaching a Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Health Care (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health) this October at UCSF with a team of veteran venture capitalists.
Part 1 of this post described the issues in the drug discovery. Part 2 covered medical devices and digital health. Part 3 described what we’re going to do about it.
This is post is a brief snapshot of our progress.
Vitruvian is one of the 28 teams in the class. The team members are:
- Dr. Hobart Harris Chief of General Surgery, Vice-Chair of the Department of Surgery, and a Professor of Surgery at UCSF. Dr. Harris is also a Principal Investigator in the UCSF Surgical Research Laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital.
- Dr. David Young, Professor of Plastic Surgery at UCSF. His area of expertise includes wound healing, microsurgery, and reconstruction after burns and trauma. His research interests include the molecular mechanisms of wound healing and the epidemiology and treatment of soft tissue infections.
- Sarah Seegal is at One Medical Sarah is interested in increasing the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. Sarah worked with Breakthrough.com to connect individuals with professional therapists for online sessions.
- Cindy Chang is a Enzymologist investigating novel enzymes involved in biofuel and chemical synthesis in microbes at LS9
Vitruvian’s first product, MyoSeal, promotes wound repair via biocompatible microparticles plus a fibrin tissue sealant that has been shown to prevent incisional hernias through enhanced wound healing. The team believed that surgeons would embrace the product and pay thousands to use it. In week 2 of the class 14 of their potential customers (surgeons) told the team otherwise.
Watch this 90 second clip and find out how the Lean LaunchPad class saved them years.
(If you can’t see the clip above click here.)
Lessons Learned
- Get out of the building
Listen to the post here
Download the post here
Share this:
Filed under: Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad, Life Sciences (NIH), NIH (National Institutes of Health), Teaching |
hahaha, I agree with the fact that everything gets solved by getting out of the building, but this time it’s funny to see that the only lesson learned is just that. Great post! Unimaginable possibilities.
Steve – so current!
How can I add you to our new show?
V
Paul Graham says at the 22 minute mark of this video interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDA0t49AaZ4#t=1337
that “Most startups that fail do it ultimately because they did not make something that people wanted, they made something that they thought people would want, they were either in denial about it about whether it was actually any good or someone else came along and made something that people wanted even more. ….”
Great post! Thanks for sharing and I look forward to the teams Lessons Learned.
This is a very remarkable knowledge to learn. I may not fully understand the world of medicine, but I can understand what benefit it can bring to many people. I admire their minds, it’s really amazing! I can’t imagine what more new development and innovation they could come up in the future.