MedStartr

MedStartr is a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for healthcare. It grew out of the Health 2.0 NYC meetup group organized by our founder, Alex Fair. After trying to list a healthcare project on Kickstarter he learned that they did not allow healthcare projects. A little more research showed that while other sites did allow healthcare projects, they had a dismal track record with an apparent successful funding rate somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. So he partnered up with his friend and previous co-founder Mike Pence, who also happened to be the former lead developer at KickStarter. About a week later they launched an Alpha and sent it out to 71 friends.

Would you believe that six of them funded the project? This first video shows how passion trumps perfection in crowdfunding videos! Of the original “crowd” of 71, 22 shared it with thousands more and suddenly there was a groundswell of support, interviews, press, new team members, and applicants. Needless to say, Mike and Alex were enthused and kept at it, launching the private beta on the 4th of July, 2012. Since then we have learned a great deal, gotten tons of press, helped dozens of great ideas get found and funded, and developed our Corporate Services Model to not just help Startups, but to enable great companies become even greater through innovation driven by crowd sourcing and crowd funding.

One of the first things we realized is that MedStartr isn’t just a Crowdfunding solution, it is an Acceleration Platform that enables companies to get up to speed faster than ever. No more are healthcare innovators alone, caught on the reef between prototype and adoption or adoption and profitability. MedStartr helps companies create a Wave that begins with patients and doctors, continues to hospitals, and ends with the perfect partners, VC funding, and sometimes an outright acquisition. We crowd funded ourselves with the above video so we eat our own dog food too. But don’t listen to us, hear it directly from our first successful client, Dave Chase of Avado interviewed for the March 2013 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.

One of the most important lessons we have learned is that it isn’t just about the funding raised online, but the awareness, adoption, and offline fund raising we have been able to facilitate for our clients. Over $150,000 has been contributed by the “Crowd that Cares” made up of Patients, Physicians, Nurses, Partners, Healthcare Leaders and regular folks like you and me through MedStartr in our first half year. But this is nothing compared to what it inspires from VCs, Partners, Angels, Venture Philanthropists, Grants, our Government, and Family Offices. With millions being invested offline in our clients, what happens on MedStartr is often just a “Crowd Test before we Invest” where the investors watch and wait for the successful projects and then call them in for private meetings. This is because every VC and Angel knows that the Best Term Sheet is a Bill of Sale...

Let’s say you have a great discovery or have developed a great product in healthcare, what is the best way for a startup to get supporters or customers in healthcare? Pitching to investors, cold calling, taking doctors to lunch, pitching partners, advertising? Honestly, all of these methods are very time consuming and have low success rates. Furthermore, you need to develop your products, forge partnerships, drive awareness, get customers, test and get feedback, and so much more all in the same 20 hours a day, so you need to find efficient methods to suceed. Talking to 37 investors to get a 2% success rate is very risky if you have no traction yet. This creates the classic catch 22 situation where the VC says,

“we would fund you if you had more traction or results“

and of course, you can’t show results without spending more money on R & D or Sales. This is the “Valley of Death” for most startups – but we now know that there is a way out.
Money Talks and Smart Investors Listen

The BEST way to convince partners and investors that your idea or company has value is to show that potential and actual customers care deeply about your solution and are willing to pay for it. This is why MedStartr projects speak to all healthcare stakeholders: Patients, Providers, Partners, and Institutions – not just Investors or one set of stakeholders. Once an idea generates a little traction, or even gets some sales where applicable, the conversations get easier and easier.

A Funny Thing Happens When 67,000 Healthcare People Hear Your Pitch

Since we average over 4,000 views for each project and sometimes over 67,000, we have observed a “Crowd Effect” when a Crowd of people have backed, shared, or watched your video, read your pitch, and perused your offerings. A well-crafted and publicized project with at least 25% funding generally leads to at least one news story which then leads to more visits to the project. This creates a virtuous cycle and results in more backing, more partners, more sales, and more press. The first few times this happened it caught us by surprise, but now we understand The Wave and work to make it happen for every project, every day. Through the dozens of news stories published about our clients, millions have become aware of new ideas in healthcare. How do we make this happen? We aren’t going to tell you it’s easy, but if you want to learn more about it, please read about our Crowdfunding Optimization methods.

How Well Does it Work?

When we apply the full Crowdfunding Optimization model, a package of marketing, PR, strategic, investor relations, and partnership development services, we find we can help over 80% of projects succeed. Overall our success rate is about 62%, about six times the industry average for healthcare projects. Recently, our projects have been showing up on IndieGogo and Angellist too, reaching a broader, more consumer-focused or investor audience. Since first and foremost, we want our clients to succeed, indeed sometimes that does mean cross-listing projects for broader audience. Our Mission is to drive innovation forward and to this end we will work with clients and collaborate with competitors to make sure that maximal funding is achieved. If you look at projects on our competitors, you can see that many of them started on MedStartr. This works well and our clients are raising millions online, as well as in private conference rooms with VCs, Angels, and giant corporations. All told, our first clients have raised over 6 Million dollars, online and off, and started over 50 partnerships. This is just the beginning though.

What’s Next?

We crowdsource everything, including our logo, bug testing, and even our business plan. Our Corporate Innovation Services and Challenge Platform were created at the behest of great companies that want to drive innovation faster and better. We think Equity crowdfunding is our next creation once the SEC passes the rules, but we would love to hear from you. What would YOU like to see? Call us or use the contact form or just email [email protected]. We actually answer our phone and you will most likely get a founder.