by Carolina Santos | Apr 13, 2018 | Featured, Startups
This third edition is even more ambitious than the previous ones. The goal still continues to be the contribution of startups and their innovative ideas to a better, smarter and more efficient city. But this year you can count with new verticals and a “SOL Lab”. The program keeps its power to link partners, corporates and startups to face the challenges of smart cities, it’s only perfected.
According to Duarte Cordeiro, Vice President of Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, “the Smart Open Lisboa is a project that fits the innovation strategy that the City Hall has designed for Lisbon, adding the fact that we can transform the city into a true Open Innovation Lab. We learned a lot from the first two editions and that’s why we’ve made some changes. For instance we created several smaller verticals dedicated to specific areas instead of having the whole program focused on different areas”.
So the program starts focused on Mobility and during Summer is having a vertical focused on Housing. Also “SOL Lab” makes its debut, the goal of this lab is to help these new ideas to be introduced in the city.
The program is promoted by Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, with collaboration of Sharing Cities, with Axians, Cisco, Daimler, NOS, Santa Casa da Misericórdia and TOMI as associated partners. Carris, Metropolitano de Lisboa, EMEL, Brisa and Ferrovial will help with the startups’ pilots. Infraestruturas de Portugal and CP will have data available.
Applications are open until June 12.
by Carolina Santos | Mar 27, 2018 | Startups
Applying to an open innovation program is not only about the prize money. It’s not as much about winning as it is about getting to know the corporates and getting pilots with them. Applying to an open innovation is a business decision.
That was the case for Neuropsycad. Despite not having won Protechting’s last edition, they managed to get the wanted pilot with Luz Saúde. When speaking with Diana Prata, Co-founder of Neuropsycad, last week I asked her if the fit between her startup and Luz Saúde was something built throughout the bootcamp and she told me that even before they had a meeting they already knew they would be good for each other.
Diana says that the biggest advantage of Protechting is making the access to data easier. For example, Luz Saúde already had the ethical board approve sharing data for future pilots that could come out of Protechting and Neuropsycad ended up benefiting from that. Usually it takes a long time until a startup has access to patient’s data.
One year later the startup has studied 20 patient’s brain scans and identified their diseases. How does it work? Luz Saúde sends them the scan but doesn’t disclose the disease and through that scan Neuropsycad has to identify the disease and come up with a diagnosis.
They are now working as a sort of second opinion and the good thing about working with medical doctors, besides soaking up their knowledge, is to improve what features in their report like what kind of graphics doctors think are more relevant, which information is more important to have.
When it comes to accuracy the percentages vary. The startup is able to identify with 100% of accuracy if a patient has Alzheimer or if it’s healthy but those numbers change when comparing a patient with Alzheimer with a patient with dementia to 87%. In order to keep up with the work they’ve been doing so far they’re waiting to receive more data from patients and they expect to have studied more until the end of this year.
by Carolina Santos | Mar 26, 2018 | Startups
You’re probably wondering: soft what? I’ll explain. Soft-Landing is a program for startups and tech companies that have a world scalable business. This year we are offering a Soft Landing program on TravelTech vertical as Portugal is one of the most promising country for TravelTechs and one of the global poles of innovation and technology. The goal of this joint venture between Beta-i and uGlobally is to help to connect your business with Lisbon’s ecosystem and help in your internationalization process through an immersive, hands-on experience.
In order to do so, startups will get to stay in Beta-i in our co-working space, they’ll be mentored by Portuguese market experts, they’ll have meetings with a specialist in opening businesses in Portugal, the opportunity to participate and pitch their company in meetups as well as assistance in logistics and business overview.
How can you take the most of it? Well, you need to know where you are in your business and where you want to be after the program ends. And it’s not me who saying, it’s Francisco Lang who participated last year.
It’s been over a year since he read about the program on the Internet and decided to participate and it has been almost a year since he moved to Lisbon and he’s still here, on the same co-working space he was when he first arrived.
As soon as I started speaking with him about the program, one of the first things he said was “I knew exactly what I needed, I knew exactly what were my goals”. And that, according to him, made everything easier. There was no wasted time on meetings that weren’t lead nowhere and the time was used to focus on the meetings that truly mattered.
Francisco believes it’s easier to scale up in Portugal than it is in Brazil and the repercussion of working here is way bigger. He never intended to move to Lisbon but it ended up happening and now he’s become friends with everyone from Beta-i and has no date to return to Brazil.
Keep in mind, though, that Soft-landing is not an accelerator program, there’s no equity taken and the organizer will not provide any investments. That’s why Francisco is now looking for investment just when his product is about to be released.
by Carolina Santos | Mar 23, 2018 | Startups
When Ectosense participated on Protechting they ended up with a pilot with Luz Saúde. Since then they’ve come a long way, managing to secure a €1.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Saffelberg Investments, a leading Brussels-based private equity group, this week.
One year ago they spoke with Maria Almeida about their product, how they closed important partnerships with big corporates in the industry and how is it like to build a startup in healthcare.
In light of the recent events and since Protechting has its applications open it’s only fair we republish the interview they did a year ago.
So, Duarte, for those who don’t know, what is Ectosense?
Ectosense is a startup in the area of medical devices, more specifically to diagnose sleeping disorders, particularly sleep apnea. For those who don’t know, sleep apnea is a condition that makes people stop breathing while they’re sleeping. Imagine that you’re going to bed and after you fall asleep I cover your mouth and nose with my hands and you can’t breathe, so you wake up to take my hands from your mouth and nose and fall back to sleep. After a few minutes of sleep, it happens again, and you can’t breathe, and so on. It happens during the whole night. In serious cases, this can happen up to 100 times per hour. The problem with sleep apnea is that prevents oxygen from flowing into your brain, leading to an adrenaline charge, which speeds up your heart rate so that you can wake up and breathe again. This has some pretty negative consequences for your body. Not just for the low levels of oxygen but also because of the effort your heart makes.
Sleep apnea can lead to many chronic diseases that contribute to a considerable loss in quality of life. This also represents significant healthcare costs, which are usually supported by insurance companies, and for us, this was actually one of the reasons why we wanted to join Protechting.
And how are you currently developing your product?
What we initially developed was a software that would automate the diagnosis for sleep apnea through sensors which could be integrated with mobile solutions. Instead of having the usual method of diagnosis that is very complex. They basically make you sleep with many different sensors attached to your body, like on your head, on your face, on your eyes… Or, if you want to do the most accurate exam you have to sleep at the hospital and be monitored during that time. Later on, the doctor will review the results manually. This is very expensive, people have to wait for a long time to schedule this exam, in Portugal for example, it takes you between 6 months and 2 years to schedule the exam.
What we do is take a few sensors from this complex system, which can be integrated with mobile solutions, and we add artificial intelligence to these sensors so that we can have better quality in the diagnosis and more information from these sensors that weren’t previously extracted. Nowadays, you register the results and analyze them manually, while we use algorithms to extract more information from these sensors.
The current method of diagnosis makes no sense. It’s complex and costly, and it deals with a condition that affects 4% to 7% of the population and in more than 80% of the cases people haven’t yet been diagnosed. We’re talking about a condition that has severe consequences in your quality of life, in your work, in your productivity, so we thought why hasn’t somebody developed an easier solution?
As any healthcare product, you must have to conduct studies to test it before you actually launch it. How is it going so far?
These tests or studies serve 2 different purposes actually. First, it helps in the development of the product, because as we have machine learning algorithms we need a large amount of data to make it reliable. Second, it’s needed to validate the product with doctors, university professors, and showcase it to the medical community and show it has a good performance when compared to the current solutions. And actually for us, it helps in terms of marketing because we’re not selling this as a gadget, we’re selling it as a medical device to be used in the medical practice.
Who are your customers then? Who is your target?
Our customers are the hospitals, but also the healthcare insurance providers. These insurance providers are the ones who mostly feel the economic impact of this condition not being diagnosed. Just to give you an idea, in the US the hidden costs of sleep apnea are estimated to be between 60 and 65 billion dollars, which is a tremendous amount.
Which studies have you conducted and how were you able to get the hospitals to run these tests?
In Portugal we’re running a study with one of the major hospitals in Lisbon, “Hospital Santa Maria”, and that on is still on-going. And another one that’s about to start at “Hospital Beatriz Angelo” that will be longer as we will monitor people’s sleep during several nights in the patient’s home. The goal is to see how the patient responds to sleeping with this device for several nights, and it has a particular advantage because sleep apnea can vary a lot from night to night, and sometimes the current diagnosis method can miss this because they only do it for one night. This means that 1 out of 4 patients can miss his or her treatment because of this. So, during this study will analyze the benefits of using the device more than once.
What feedback have you received so far?
It’s been really good and we’ve achieved the CE certification with these studies. So, that’s already taken care of. The doctors see this as a necessary solution that is very different from what’s now available, and that can diagnose many cases which they struggle with in the past. As for the insurance providers, they spend enormous amounts of money which correspond to a significant percentage of their revenues. So, insurance companies have all the interest in the world in having this kind of product.
Talking about insurance providers, you have participated in the first edition of Protechting, the accelerator by Fidelidade and Fosun. Fidelidade is one the leading insurance companies in Portugal. Were you able to work with them while developing your product?
Yes, we did work closely with them, particularly with Luz Saúde, which belongs to Fidelidade. Actually, the “Hospital Beatriz Angelo” where we’ll conduct one of our studies is from Luz Saúde and this deal came from Protechting. After the program, we kept on talking to Luz Saúde and this opportunity came out. However, we haven’t yet focused on having Luz Saúde using our product, because we’re not there yet, we’re still conducting the study so, we’ll see where it goes from here. From Multicare, which is the insurance provider of Fidelidade, we’ve been talking with them regularly and they’ve been giving us a lot of support and mentoring on how we can deliver the best value proposition to insurance providers. Multicare is actually considering including this exam in their insurance plan so, we’ll see.
Protechting, overall, was a great experience. It is actually very different from most acceleration programs because it allows you to have direct contact with very experienced mentors from your industry and with a wide network of contacts mostly in the areas of healthcare and insurance. It would be extremely difficult to reach out to these high-level players if we weren’t in Protechting. Another thing is that you also get plenty of exposure from Fidelidade, Fosun, and Luz Saúde, so in the end, Protechting acts like a shortcut for you to tap into this tough industry.
What is your current biggest challenge?
The health certifications and bureaucracies were one of our biggest challenges, but fortunately, we’re done with that. So, for now, we have two big challenges ahead of us. The first one is that our product has to be used with a specific hardware that the hospital needs to buy. This equipment is very expensive so, our plan is to go for a different model in which we also provide a specific hardware that can be used with our software. This hardware will be development in partnership with the biggest investigation and development institute of nanoelectronics in the world, which is also based in the same city we’re in, Leuven. This institute also has part of our company and we’re working closely with them to develop a hardware that is produced at a lower cost and that can be sent by mail. So, one of our biggest challenges is developing this hardware, and getting the medical certification, as this is another medical device.
The second and probably biggest challenge is going to market with this product. So, we’ll have to sell the software, which already exists, in combination with the hardware we’re developing. This includes selling to insurance providers and a few hospitals, even though our main focus is the insurance providers because they can reach to a larger number of people and their main focus is in prevention, which is greatly aligned with what we’re doing. Sleep apnea causes many chronic diseases including, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and many others, so, this early exam to diagnose sleep apnea can be extremely helpful to prevent these diseases.
Healthcare is an over-regulated and expensive industry to disrupt, and it has a history of failing to implement ambitious IT projects. What makes you think you’ll be able to disrupt this industry?
In this area, startups have lots of disadvantages. For example, for us, it’s much more difficult to start from a medical certification process from scratch, because we have very little experience, and the process is extremely arduous and bureaucratic. On the other hand, startups have the advantages of being small, efficient, and young. So, we usually work very long hours and we execute faster. In our case, for instance, the development of the product and getting the certification took us 1 year. Every time I say this to anyone who is working in healthcare, they’re usually surprised that it took us so little to get a product in healthcare up and running in so little time. And, I honestly think this has to do with us being a small company which allows us to be more efficient and cut the bureaucracies that most big companies have. However, these big companies have the industry knowledge that we don’t have, and they also have the funds to invest in this kind of solutions, which for a startup is usually harder to get. So, it’s obviously crucial for you to get partnerships and work together with other players in the industry.
I strongly believe that Ectosense will overcome all the obstacles and be successful because we are the most cost-effective, convenient, and accurate solution in the market. We have the only solution that allows you monitor sleep for several nights, and it’s the smallest and cheapest device.
by Carolina Santos | Mar 22, 2018 | Startups
Lisbon Investment Summit is less than three months away and the excitement is growing by the day. After I spoke with Jenny Fielding, I interviewed Zach Coelius, the Managing Partner at Coelius Capital, an advisor and investor in early stage technology companies.
Zach is a first timer in Lisbon Investment Summit and besides talking about his expectations for LIS and his amazing 1B exit, we talked about the Republican Party and gun control. In the end I asked him to teach me in June how to be recommended for “general awesomeness” on LinkedIn, like he is.
Read the whole interview below and make sure you register here for the Lisbon Investment Summit 2018, on June 6-7.
It’s your first time as a speaker at Lisbon Investment Summit, what are your expectations?
I’ve heard great things and I love Lisbon. One of the things that as an investor I really look for are the opportunities to explore the amazing stuff that is happening outside Silicon Valley. If you look at the history of innovation and technology the real exciting stuff tend to happen on the edges, I think international problems, international startups and international teams are some of the most exciting edges in technology right now, so Lisbon is a great opportunity to go see some cool stuff.
Your sister wrote that you have “an amazing ability to understand and see markets emerge before they become obvious”. Can you tell us which markets are emerging that aren’t obvious?
I don’t know if I necessarily see markets emerging but I like to pride myself on getting to listen to entrepreneurs who have discovered an emerging market. Truly if I knew where those new markets were I would just go start a new company to do it. The secret to the investing business is that entrepreneurs are the ones who discover those things and then hopefully they’ll share it with me and hopefully I’ll be smart enough to listen to them and jump on board for the crazy ride that is building a company. Obviously there’s a ton of interesting stuff happening all over the world, there’s stuff happening in crypto, there’s stuff happening in every market in fintech, but the best opportunities are found underneath the rocks and I don’t know where those are.
You got a 1B exit, what did you feel?
When it happened I woke up and I was shocked, it’s a huge number I never would have expected that. As a matter of fact, I’m still in shock.
Do you still find it weird that people call you “unicorn whisperer”?
(Laughs) it’s super weird. I don’t know what to say about that, but it works, people think it’s funny so I don’t mind. I’ve had worse nicknames so I’ll go with what I can get.
To be a successful entrepreneur is it hard work or is it luck?
Both. If you don’t work hard as an entrepreneur you better be really lucky and hope that you can win the lottery. On the other hand if you work hard you probably don’t have to be as lucky and you can figure out how to get to the right place and do great things. I believe that 90% of success is finding magic, find a product that your customers are desperate for and you can solve their problems. It’s hard work to find that, it’s one of the hardest things in the world. Hard work goes a long way in making things happen.
There’s this recommendation on LinkedIn from a friend of yours that says: “You work mornings, nights, weekends and holidays”.
Now that I live a cushy and better life I don’t think I work nearly as hard as my entrepreneurs do by an order of magnitude. Being an entrepreneur is the hardest job in the world because you can work yourself to death and still not do enough, compared to those guys and young ladies I’m living a very cushy life right now.
If an entrepreneur wants to reach out to you at Lisbon Investment Summit what do you recommend?
The best way to get a hold of me is LinkedIn or just grab me when i’m walking around.
As an investor, do you keep in touch with the startups you’ve invested in?
Absolutely. I’m a 4 time entrepreneur, I spent 20 years as an entrepreneur and I love to pretend I’m still useful. My companies will call me up and I get to help out on fun problems and I can’t really do that unless I keep in touch and stay on top of what they’re up to. I get to pretend I’m still in the game even though I’m definitely not.
You tweeted “being a VC is like having hordes of people throwing rocks at you in terms of requests for your time. But some of those rocks are diamonds”. Do you speak with everybody who reaches out to you?
Obviously not. When you give away money for free a lot of people call you and they’re like “hey do you want to give me some money?”, there’s a lot of people who are always trying to raise money. I look for stuff that is not obvious, that’s exciting. I look for entrepreneurs who can communicate in a single sentence, something that catches my eye, that is unique and different. I look for new things. A lot of the startups that are trying to raise money from me I’m just not the right fit for, because I don’t know their market and I don’t get excited about the problems that they’re working on.
What would your advice be for startups struggling to find investment?
Finding the magic is the hard part. When the startups are struggling to raise money often times my suggestion to them is that maybe they haven’t found it yet, they got to keep looking to find the magic. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to hear that they think they know the right answer. I don’t think that’s always true, sometimes they haven’t found it.
Second thing is sometimes people don’t like your market for one reason or another and it’s actually really good for the entrepreneur when that’s true, because that means your competitors aren’t being able to raise money either so that means you get to go slower and be more careful. Sometimes it’s to your best interest when it’s difficult to raise money because your market is difficult.
Truth is: raising money is one of the hardest things in the world to do, you have to communicate what you’re doing in a very short period of time to people who like me tend to be ignorant about your market and don’t know as much as you do. It’s a challenge.
You’re pretty vocal on Twitter about the Republican Party and also gun control. What’s your take on that?
Actually I agree with a large percentage of the traditional republican position on economics. I’m a capitalist, I believe in the market, I believe in the power of companies to change the world, I believe in allowing the entrepreneurs to do great things and I think the Republican Party, at least historically, not anymore, used to really stand for that. So I think a lot of my frustrations with the current Republican Party is that they don’t stand for what I really thought they did and that makes me really angry. I think that their positions on gun control, and the environment and liberty, the rights of individuals to love who they want and to live the lives that they want are wrong, totally wrong.
In our country we sell weapons that are designed to kill people, their only purpose is to kill people and it’s easier to buy them than it is to buy a beer, that’s totally wrong, it’s totally silly, it’s stupid and it needs to stop. When you go hunting for deers in Minnesota where i grow up you’re only allowed to have 5 bullets in your gun because anything more than that would be unfair yet we are willing to sell people guns that hold 50 bullets and that makes me angry.
Could you teach me in June how to have “general awesomeness” as a skill on LinkedIn like you?
I can try. Everyday I just try to do a little better, it’s not clear I’m all that good at things. But I’m trying.
