Hospitals, Startups

Robbed! Healthcare team loses WSJ competition to energy startup

At least a hardware company won, and one led by a woman, even. SwipeSense did […]

At least a hardware company won, and one led by a woman, even.
SwipeSense did not win Wall Street Journal Startup of the Year. Rebellion Photonics took home the prize.

The Houston company is commercializing a monitoring system to detect gas and oil leaks. They are raising $10 million to sell a Gas Cloud Imaging camera that uses hyperspectral imaging technology to spot leaks in real time.

I met the founders of SwipeSense – Mert Iseri and Yuri Malinaway back in April 2012 when they presented at Health Box’s Chicago demo day.

Part of the WSJ competition included giving an elevator pitch in an elevator to a pitch coach. Each team then had an hour to rework its pitch based on the coach’s feedback. SwipeSense got a perfect 10 and Rebellion got an 8. The third finalist, The Muse and Kathryn Minshew, got a 9, but her company looked like a lightweight with a much tougher ramp- up compared to the other two. The Muse is a career site.

I had the same reaction to Iseri’s presentaion as coach Nathan Gold did: It is fantastic.

“His pitch was among the top 2 or 3 I have ever seen,” he said. “Mert’s voice and face conveyed 95 percent of the message.”

Iseri and Malina both come across as thoughtful, genuine, energetic and friendly. I haven’t met many people with that particular combination of personal traits as well as the business smarts to back it all up. I was disappointed that they didn’t win. What better platform than the WSJ to bring more attention to hospital-acquired infections?

In the last round of the competition, each of the three finalists got to grill one another. Iseri asked Minshew, CEO of The Muse, for scientific proof of the company’s claims about employee/employer matchmaking. The Muse was the third finalist.


Watch this video
to see this exchange and to hear how Malina and Iseri debated design changes for the hand sanitizer.

Allison Sawyer is the CEO of Rebellion. She asked Iseri how he would compete against competitors like Purell and GE. She also suggested a different business model to give SwipeSense a bigger runway and a clearer exit strategy. When it was his turn to question Sawyer, he said that four years was a long time to be a startup.

“When you make true innovations in science and carry it from proof of concept out to a refinery, in this space, three-and-a-half years is blazing,” she said. “We have had over $4M go into R&D and I’m proud to say it took us three-and-a-half years.”

Sawyer also held her own when she was talking to Vivek Wadwa. Each of the startups went through a mock interview with a mentor. Wadwa apologized in advance for being mean and valuing money above all else in the venture capitalist role he was playing in this session. Sawyer called her technology revolutionary and Wadwa said flat out that he didn’t believe her. He challenged her to explain why he should believe anything coming from a couple kids.

“Oh honey, I’ve been getting that for years. Is that the best you got, attacking my age?” she said. “Last year I brought in $1.2M just through bootstrapping.”

My favorite line from Sawyer as she defended her company: “We didn’t just come from a business school. We came from deep in the labs of NIH health systems.”

Sawyer has degrees in engineering physics and nanotechnology as well as an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship. Dr. Robert Kester is Sawyer’s co-founder. He has a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Rice University and an M.Sc. in optical sciences from the University of Arizona. The company was founded in 2009.

SwipeSense has been keeping quiet for most of this year. We have been checking in with them about fundraising and process with their product, but they have not said much about either topic.

All three CEOs are fresh out of school. This recognition from the WSJ should make it easier for all of them to raise money.

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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