Build an Effective MBA Application as a Female Candidate
Plenty of time left to give! Any gift counts!
Make a gift right now and support the areas at Cornell you care about most.
An important reminder on Earth Day. Here’s to Plan A.
Join us at Merage's PhD Research Fest on Thursday, May 12 from 12 - 1:30 pm in SB1, Executive Terrace. Learn more about the innovative research from presented by PhD students.
Astraeus Technologies is awarded $50,000 at the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition
The key to a winning startup in a business competition, believes Jay Kumar, is having a significant problem and a viable solution. To be sure, Kumar and his three co-founders have taken his own advice to heart–and then some. The foursome, who founded Astraeus Technologies last autumn, are going after lung cancer. And so far, things are going quite well.
In the past six or so months, Astreaus Technologies has won the MIT $100K Accelerate business plan competition, along with the audience choice prize. They’ve also picked up the audience choice prize at the MIT Sloan Healthcare and Bioinnovations Conference. And just last week, the team of medical students, MBAs and a PhD took home the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition Student Business Track grand prize of $50,000.
Besides the added confidence, support and legitimacy that comes with an elite B-school startup competition win, the team joins a growing list of impressive ventures to earn the prize. Some of Astreaus Technologies predecessors include CloudFlare, Oscomp Systems, Vaxis Technologies, Alfred and many others. So what exactly does it take to mold a prize winning startup and team? Poets&Quants was able to catchup with Kumar after the HBS New Venture Competition to find out.
FINDING THE TECHNOLOGY
Kumar, Alex Blair and Graham Lieberman all met on the first day of orientation at Harvard Medical School in the fall of 2012. Kumar came from the University of Oklahoma, Blair from Carnegie Mellon University and Lieberman from Harvard. It didn’t take longer than the first day to establish a common passion for impacting medicine through entrepreneurship and innovation. The trio spent the next three years of medical school brainstorming they ways in which they could do just that.
“We thought of ideas wherever we could find them–in policy, health care delivery, medical devices and in basic sciences,” recalls Kumar, 26. “We were looking for any idea, big or small, that could improve the lives of patients, lives of providers, the efficiency of systems, etcetera.”
Hundreds of ideas were generated. But it wasn’t until last fall when they came across an important problem and solution–and a new teammate. During the first year of Lieberman and Kumar’s MBA portion of a joint MD-MBA program, Blair happened upon some research. It’s been known for a while lung cancer patients have distinct and specific gases in their breath. Blair set out to find some sort of local technology that could detect the gasses. He certainly didn’t have to go far. About two-and-a-half miles away at the MIT Department of Chemistry was Joseph Azzarelli who had recently co-authored a paper along side MIT Chemistry Yoda, Tom Swager, who Kumar says is “a bit of a genius.” Within the paper was a way technology able to inexpensively detect distinct gases, dubbed a Chemically Actuated Resonate Device (CARD). The trio of medical students met with Azzarelli and “kicked it off” immediately. And the CARD would shortly become the technological basis of Astraeus Technologies.
THE L-CARD IS BORN
“Outside of the iPad, it’s hard for me to think of a technological innovation in recent memory that did not address a pain-point that people felt,” says Kumar, noting the first step in a successful venture is finding an important, real-life problem.
“It all starts with the problem,” Kumar continues. “The problem you are solving has to be a real problem. This is where a lot of smart people get tripped up. They come up with a cool idea but there is a difference between a cool idea and a cool idea that solves a problem.”
No doubt the CARD is a cool idea. But the next piece for Kumar and the team was developing a lung cancer-specific card, which they soon did. Now the idea is cool and solves a problem. Essentially, the L-CARD, which is a little bigger than a postage stamp serves as a one-time use sensor. You breathe on the sensor and within moments a connected app on your smartphone reveals if your breath contains the lung cancer-specific gasses. The benefits of the technology are numerous. First, it essentially eliminates the more expensive and invasive CT scan. It’s also more accurate and faster with results than the CT scan. Not to mention, a physician could easily add the breath test to a routine checkup.
An example of the L-CARD. Courtesy photo
FINDING A ‘GO-TO-MARKET’ PLAN
There is an immediate ‘wow’ factor surrounding a technology that can help identify and diagnose lung cancer at an early stage. Still, even a potentially live-saving product isn’t an immediate market success. True to their physician and scientific form, the foursome took a very methodical and intentional approach to developing a go-to-market strategy. Kumar ticks off the questions they were deeply thinking through: “How complex is this? How much money will this require? What are the steps to carry this out?”
Kumar believes thoughtfully mapping out that “A-to-Z pathway” of product to market is incredibly important to communicate to business competition judges. “In these business competitions it quickly becomes apparent and obvious who has done their due diligence on this process and who has perhaps spent their time on other things,” believes Kumar.
This strategy leads to another essential piece to the startup puzzle–finding the best team possible.
“The more you’ve that about that process earlier, the better you’ll be,” insists Kumar. “Because it allows you to really identify what you lack, whether that’s a technical co-founder or a particular type of advisor or money or access to certain skill sets.”
COMPILING A ‘DIVERSE’ TEAM, BUT NOT THAT ‘DIVERSE’
And the team has to be right and specific, says Kumar. “There is a lot of talk about how you want diverse teams,” Kumar reasons. “And I think the word ‘diverse’ has lost some of its original magic.” Kumar says diverse was initially a word akin to ‘balanced’ or ‘comprehensive’ and “constituted a lot of elements.” No longer. “Now diverse has come to mean a bunch of different things,” Kumar believes. “And that definition of diverse is not the definition that makes for successful teams.”
For a team looking for ‘diversity’, Kumar says to focus on concrete elements like skill sets or ways of perceiving problems or even a diverse balance between risk-takers and risk-adverse team members. The caveat? “It really works nicely when the founders are personally similar as opposed to personally diverse,” says Kumar. “What I mean by that is that they get along well.”
And that can prove difficult for someone entering an MBA program hellbent on finding a perfect team, admits Kumar. For instance, most people are at least cordial with others. And in many cases, important friendships are forged through happy hours, study sessions and group projects. But that’s certainly not enough, Kumar insists.
“Going into a venture with someone applies a different kind of stress, because you are going into uncertain territory for most of you and you’re going to have to figure it out,” says Kumar. “And when you can get along with someone during coffee or dinner or in a classroom, that’s different from being able to work with someone and still get along with them while arguing with them.”
FINDING TEAMMATES TO GO INTO THE ‘TRENCHES’ WITH
For Kumar, a bond forged through the trials of his first clinical rotations proved fruitful. “You don’t know what you’re doing, you are the least educated person there, you are the least experienced person there by default, and so for you, this is a period of uncertainty,” Kumar says of his full year of medical rotations before enrolling in B-school. Good news was, Kumar went through the experience with Blair. “When I saw that Alex and I were able to work together well in that environment, it was a good clue that this is a guy I’ve been to the trenches with and perhaps I could be in other trenches with,” says Kumar.
And they indeed have found themselves in the trenches again, figuring out how to earn FDA approval and take the L-CARD to clinical trials. Kumar says the team has already experienced plenty of heated arguments over strategy, marketing, development and other issues. But a genuine respect and humility has assisted in navigating those situations.
“There is a lot of respect for the individual,” Kumar says of his teammates. “Even if they passionately disagree with you, we know this is a smart person and a caring person and they are going after the same goal as you. And if they disagree with you it’s not because they are trying to be a problem for you. They likely have a point that you are missing.”
With that humility and respect, Kumar and the team are looking at the next business plan competition and getting the market into clinical trials. No matter what, they join an elite line of startups to emerge victorious from an uber-competitive startup competition.
DON’T MISS: THE $3.9 TRILLION IMPACT OF A HARVARD DEGREE or INSIDE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL’S STARTUP MACHINE
The post Med Students Win HBS New Venture Comp appeared first on Poets and Quants.
Learn how Kellogg student Zipporah Gatiti, founder of Taste of Kenya, is revolutionizing the coffee industry by connecting Kenyan coffee growers with worldwide specialty roasters: http://kell.gg/1Xz6Uci
After witnessing the frustrations faced by roasters in getting access to coffee from small-lot farms, student Zipporah Gatiti decided to address their needs by creating Taste of Kenya.
Rise and shine, Krannert! Purdue Day of Giving is here and we are just getting started! Follow our Facebook and Twitter pages today to join the conversation and take part in the hourly challenges throughout the day.
The Carnegie Mellon Buggy preliminary races are underway!
2nd year MBA students in our Leadership Immersion Capstone course take over Cafe McColl as part of a business challenge
Five reasons why the Queen is good for UK business, by WBS' Professor Qing Wang http://bit.ly/1SIds9O
Qing Wang, professor of marketing and innovation at Warwick Business School, revealed five reasons why Queen Elizabeth, is a distinct advantage for UK business following her recent research of Chinese consumers in 13 cities covering five regions of China.
Last weekend saw Team XX win the fourth annual WBS Healthcare Case Challenge. Tasked with finding an innovative new way to enable dementia sufferers to live in their homes for longer, Team XX's idea beat the competition, and won the £4,500 prize. The team have decided to donate £500 of their prize money to a dementia charity. Congratulations to Team XX!
An all-woman team from Warwick Business School pocketed £4,500 after winning a case challenge focused on helping dementia sufferers.
Every Wednesday this month, there are 1-1 meetings in Paris with members of our admissions team, to discuss our part-time program. Find out more and book a session!http://www.mba.hec.edu/Meet-Us
Diverse company leadership leads to better business performance, but still Asia Pacific lags well behind other advanced economies in board diversity data. NUS Business School Associate Professor Marleen Dieleman and Alicia Yi of Korn Ferry explain the latest board diversity report.
La 6ª edición del Encuentro, organizado por el IESE-CIF y EY, se centra en aquellas actividades que resultarán claves en el seguro de los nuevos tiempos http://ow.ly/10rw6C
Thomas Kail, Tony Award-winning director of Hamilton: An American Musical, & playwright Sarah Burgess (NYU alum) joined Prof. Dolly Chugh's Managerial Skills course last month! Check out their conversation:
Tune in today at 11:45 a.m. for "Social Media in China," a discussion with David Wertime of Foreign Policy. This event will be broadcast live: http://som.yale.edu/event/2016/04/social-media-china-discussion-with-david-wertime-yc-01
Comments
Post a Comment