SXSW Startups: X-Biomedical
The Forrest Four-Cast: March 3, 2019
Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Winners in 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Award Ceremony at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 10, at the Hilton Austin.
A finalist in the Health and Wearable category, which will pitch at 5 pm Sunday, March 10, X-Biomedical is a medtech spin out from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), formed to capitalize and commercialize on cutting-edge, next generation, portable surgical visualization technologies, developed over several years in labs at CHOP.
Their technologies shrink down prohibitively expensive, enormous, room-sized status quo visualization equipment into a single briefcase, providing tenfold more value, and costing 10 times less. They currently have a fully functional, engineering class prototype.
The company is led by a seasoned team of highly experienced medtech professionals. They work closely with the U.S. military and have been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the Department of Defense. They’re currently in the middle of raising a $1.5 million seed round as convertible debt.
Godfrey Nazareth, President & CEO answered some questions about the company.
What are your goals for X-Biomedical in 2019?
Finish development of the production device, complete a first in man trial and regulatory approval, and get to 10 paying customers.
What is your competitive advantage?
In addition to our expanding IP portfolio our competitive advantage includes our empathetically designed, super ergonomic technology. This radically transforms the way a surgeon today looks at surgery, both literally and figuratively. The value proposition that our affordable and ultra-compact system offers to surgeons across the world will be second to none. The first word from almost every surgeon who has looked through our system has been “WOW!” We also have a highly experienced, deeply passionate, and totally committed team. Teamwork makes the dream work!
Congratulations on the $25,000 award granted by the Fifth Annual Pediatric Device Innovation Symposium (which recognizes innovative medical devices designed to address unmet needs). What does this recognition mean to you?
Thank you so much! This was the first extramural award we received and the first formal recognition from a preeminent awarding body that our idea had merit. To us, it was great validation. More importantly, it was a badge of early accomplishment that caused investors and other funders to pay attention and say, “I want to be part of the X-Biomedical journey.”
Who does X-Biomedical partner with to distribute the surgical visualization technologies to low-income and under-resourced countries?
We have a growing partnership with the United State Department of Defense, whose ophthalmic surgeons also run humanitarian, non-combat medical missions to low-income countries. Additionally, we have several budding collaborations with physicians in low-income countries. To be clear, our visualization system is still in the prototype and testing stages, but we are forging partnerships constantly to ensure we can meet the market need in low-income and high-income countries.
Your product is more portable and less expensive than status quo systems. What are your company’s projections for the amount of time it will take to distribute Portable Surgical Visualization Systems to the majority of states in need?
We are currently working towards our first in man trial, regulatory approval, and getting our first 10 paying customers in the developed world. We are building our product for scale, so from there on we estimate it will take us about 24 to 36 months to have worldwide distribution, and make it available to surgeons globally.
Has X-Biomedical been involved with other pitch events and/or tech conference before?
In addition to the $25,000 prize from the NCC-PDI, we were finalists at Exponential Medicine 2017. We have done well with funding over the past year and expanded our investor network enough so we saw no need to enter any other pitch events, until the SXSW competition opened, and we knew we had to throw our hat into the ring. The opportunities at SXSW to meet investors is unprecedented, especially as we head towards raising our Series A round in about 12 to 15 months.
How and when did your team come together and please fill us in on any relevant startup experience?
Our core founding team came together at CHOP in 2013/2014, and we began work together in earnest while working on other projects. I have extensive experience working with startups in a variety of roles, and co-founder Matthew Maltese PhD has worked on more than 100 medical device projects over his nearly 25-year career, with several hits in the critical care medicine space. Board of Directors member Steve Kelly is a world-class expert in changing payer dynamics, as our medical system embraces value-based care.
If your team members weren’t involved in building X-Biomedical, what would they be doing?
Each would be working on some other wildly successful project. I would be working full-time on Assistive Avionics (I currently pursue this in my spare time and proactively battle ALS).
Matt would likely be back in the lab at the University, looking for another med tech project to commercialize.
Looking at the entire tech industry, what trend is your team most excited about?
We are absolutely ablaze with excitement about digital democratization and demonetization of converging exponential technologies. And when an additional 5.5 billion people gain access to information, currency, commerce and markets through high speed internet, the explosion of innovation for the betterment of humankind will be fabulously epic!
Looking at the entire tech industry, what technology would you call the Myspace of 2019…in other words, something we won’t be thinking so much about in 2020 and beyond?
Modes of mobility will change dramatically over the next few years. In the short term, riding in cars will persist but with the advent of self-driving cars, need to drive a car will phase out sooner than we all imagine. Also, personal aircraft that are super-sized versions of hobby drones are already being developed by startups. So before too long the roads as we know them today may be diminishing into obsolescence, as we fly to work during the week and to our kids’ soccer games on the weekend.
What aspects of the startup experience do you enjoy most and least?
We have a blast at X-Biomedical: Constantly growing and developing our set of skills combined with a thrill of the unknown!
Look for more interviews with other SXSW Pitch finalists in this space between now and March.
Click here to see all 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2019, along with the links to their interviews on Medium.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur, check out all the cool panels and presentations in the Entrepreneurship and Startups Track, which runs March 8–12 at SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
