Linnify is the main partner of the Global StartupCities eHealth Program 2022

What is HIVE?

HIVE strives to be a stimulating environment for private sector initiatives, supporting research in the field of innovation and creating a community of health innovators.

What did Global StartupCity Cluj-Napoca involve?

This Multi-stage EU eHealth start-ups competition is a chapter of the Global StartupCity Cluj-Napoca affiliated with the Center for Health Innovation HIVE and it was designed to help early-stage health innovation entrepreneurs transform their ideas into world-changing companies - in a much faster and smarter way. 

Participants in the program had the unique opportunity to grow their business skills and global network through carefully designed trainings, mentoring sessions, and evaluation stages.

The program included four different stages:

• Orientation
• Solution Validation Workshops by Linnify
• Scientific Validation Workshop by Răzvan Cherecheș. Ph.D
• Mentoring sessions (Technical mentoring, Business Mentoring, and Health mentoring)

Four start-ups decided to take the next step in their journey and worked hard towards validating their idea:

• Synaptiq.io reduces by 95% the contouring time required in radiotherapy for identifying cancerous tumors and organs at risk enabling doctors to treat more patients and increasing their chances of survival.
• Acertivo aims to relieve mental health issues experienced within the demanding fields of innovation by offering tech companies a platform that combines valuable input from mental health professionals and stand-alone courses.
• Eros is built to raise awareness and construct knowledge around sexual education, a determinant aspect to reduce the number of unplanned teenage pregnancies.
• HeroDoc helps patients reduce the time required to get access to a doctor consultation through the help of telemedicine.

On October 17th the participants had the chance to pitch their ideas in front of a jury of experts, one of them being our own Co-CEO, Alexandru Bogdan. Besides him were also: Paul Oarga (Co-Founder Academia de Prim Ajutor), Philip Cioban (CEO and Co-Founder Telios), Georgiana Lupu Florian (CEO and Founder Wolfpack Digital), and Bogdan Blaga (CTO at FundMore.ai).

Who was the winner you might ask yourself? Read on.

Let’s talk about what they won first. The prize of this edition was:

• 1-year mentoring by a high-profile IT Company offering tech support;
• 1-year support for pilot and validation within the healthcare system;
• training program on grant writing and how to access funding.
  

Why did Linnify get involved?

We truly understand the risks of transforming an idea into a successful product ready to hit the market and be embraced by users. We've gone through them ourselves. 

We’ve grown and developed our company in Romania for the past six years. During this time, we’ve built over 60 products. We decided that one of the best ways of giving back to the local ecosystem is by sharing our knowledge and expertise with startups with people that are at the beginning of developing and launching their products. Healthtech products which are going to make a difference in the way people experience the medical field. 

With 70% of tech startups failing after around 20 months after their first financial raising, it felt essential to share the expertise built on the whole spectrum of product failure. 

We are dedicated to creating a healthy environment of growing tech companies that not only have the potential to change the way people experience life but also enable them to make informed decisions in validating their products. 

When startups do not understand what the market needs, they run out of money and most of their products fail. V​​alidation helps build the right product for the market and do it as fast and cost-effectively as possible. And that is what we wanted to share with the health tech startups involved in the competition. 

‘Even though, as the saying goes "the market has a different plan than yours", going through the Solution Validation Process designed by Linnify sure gives you the best chances to match your plan to Mr. Market's plan.’ - Toni Ghercha, Acertivo

What are the two main reasons for product failure and what can startups do about it?

Understanding market needs is done in order to build something of value through a validation-based process.

It is as much about raising capital as it is about efficiently using existing resources.

Without following a validation process, you are basically going in the direction set solely by you.

You are developing your product without consulting the most important stakeholders: your customers. 

We developed a unique validation process that combines different methodologies into a structured and clear approach. The process that helps founders by:

• Improving predictability;
• Attracting investors more easily;
• Diminishing risks.

Product validation is an innovating paradigm shift in the product development domain. It puts at the beginning of the development process the verification of whether the product that wants to be created is actually needed by its desired market. 

What is the real benefit this approach brings?

Validating first, the entrepreneurs behind the ideas know from the start how their product needs to be created in order to reach the success they desire. This saves up in terms of costs and, implicitly, time. 

By knowing exactly what the market wants or is expecting from the product that aims to solve a real pain point they have, the development plan can prioritize accordingly to step closer and closer to success in each iteration. 

‘I feel like we were able to learn a lot of new interesting things about how we can make our product a reality.’ - Raisa Remes, EROS

What did Linnify bring to the table?

Linnify brought all this knowledge in the form of five workshop days in which the participants had to:

• Explore and define the problem they want to solve;
• Conduct Market Research to see to whom they address and understand their needs and desires;
• Learn how to carry out market validation through qualitative and quantitative methods;
• Have an intense hackathon to create their Unique Value Proposition, a foundation piece of any successful product;
• Engage in two in-depth workshop days on Ideation and proper Validation;
• Pitch their ideas as defined over the week.

‘My expectations, in the beginning, were to understand better the market and how to approach it in the best way, to get the best responses and results. The workshop had a great structure which brought new ideas and new ways of thinking. It met my expectations indeed.’ - Diana Andritchi, Synaptiq

Who was the winner?

Synaptiq was the one that won the pitch competition. They were represented by one of their Co-Founders, Diana Andritchi. This is a startup that you’ll most probably hear about more in the future. 

All the teams worked hard during the solution validation workshops. They conquered blind spots and built strong and efficient pitches. They’ve also gone through a scientific validation (conducted by Răzvan Cherecheș Ph.D. and professor at Public Health Faculty in Cluj-Napoca), and took part in three general sessions of mentoring: 

• technical mentoring 
• business mentoring
• health mentoring

The team that was part of the mentoring sessions were: MD Bogdan Procopet Ph.D (Regional Institute of Gastroenterology and Hepatology), MD Ion Petrovai (Director of Innovation and Co-Founder FreshBlood HealthTech), Mircea Hotoleanu Ph.D. (CEO at Rofinntech 3D), Dumitru Petrus (Co-Founder, COO at Wello.ai), Ovidiu Stan Ph.D. (Associate Professor at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca), Andrei Nae (Senior Consultant in Advisory Division at KPMG), Cristiana Bogateanu (Analyst in Life Sciences and Healthcare at Nagarro).

Congratulations to the organizing team of HIVE, and everybody who was involved in this project. 

Good luck to each team that took the next steps in their journey, amazing things are happening for the health industry. 

In the end, we’ll leave you with some words from Alexandru Bogdan: 

'People talk about innovation all the time and how things should change. Well, a lot of these discussions stop there. I am grateful to shape the future alongside people from the ecosystem who do something instead of just talking about it!'