Greg Geehan is co-founder of Carna Health, a connected health startup. Carna is removing friction from blood testing with an at-home kit for patients unable to go to a lab for a draw. Great chat with an interesting entrepreneur.
Highlights:
Sal Daher Introduces Greg Geehan
What Carna Health is Solving
"... You guys aren't actually doing the testing or anything like that. You're basically integrating these devices, you're doing the software around these devices..."
What Stage Carna Health is At
Carna Health's Founding Story
Greg Geehan's Backstory
“...We'll go back and forth a couple of times and see if it's worth investing in, and then if we all agree that there's something there, then I'll bring it to the core fund under NextGen Venture Partners and put it up for pitching and see if it goes through the process…”
Advice to the Audience
ANGEL INVEST BOSTON IS SPONSORED BY:
Transcript of “Carna Health”
Guest: Greg Geehan
Sal Daher: I'm really proud to say that the Angel Invest Boston podcast is sponsored by Purdue University Entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, patent attorney at Fish & Richardson. Purdue is exceptional in its support of its faculty, faculty of its top five engineering school, in helping them get their technology from the lab out to the market, out to industry, out to the clinic.
Peter Fasse is also a great support to entrepreneurs. He is a patent attorney specializing in microfluidics and has been tremendously helpful to some of the startups which I'm involved, including a startup that came out of Purdue, Savran Technologies. I'm proud to have these two sponsors for my podcast.
Sal Daher Introduces Greg Geehan
Welcome to Angel Invest Boston, conversations with Boston's most interesting angels and founders. Today, I am privileged, we are privileged to have with us Greg Geehan, founder of Carna Health. Welcome, Greg.
Greg Geehan: Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Appreciate it.
Sal Daher: Great. I am grateful to Sal Viscomi for connecting us. Thank you, Sal, for making this connection. Greg is involved in the space of really trying to address a very important problem that exists today, and that is that the hospital in the home, meaning all types of connected devices that live in the home of the patient, which provide information that is useful to physicians and that have to be put into an EHR.
What carna.health, C-A-R-N-A.health, basically, what they're doing is they're a layer between all these devices and the EHRs. Let's get a little more granular here. Explain the problem, how it manifests itself, and how you guys are solving it.
What Carna Health is Solving
Greg Geehan: I'm happy to. It's really great to be here and talking a little bit more about what we're doing. As the at-home-hospital is here, it's been here for a while. COVID has really pushed it forward exponentially in the way that you think about being able to improve the healthcare of patients. There are a lot of people who are involved in that home hospital space that think that this is the way to do it, being able to care for people in their own home.
Now, a lot of that at-home-hospital, there are over-the-counter devices or devices, physiological devices that you can hook into it now, whether it's blood pressure monitors or weight management or other devices that you can buy every day and hook them into different apps, but what's missing is the capillary blood tests. This is important for the next version of at-home-hospital because 70% of all medical decisions are actually based on diagnostic testing. In order to do that, you need to have the ability to draw blood and test it in real time.
There are some devices that are out there right now that can come with a provider that goes into the home, but what's not available is the ability for patients to be able to do it themselves.
Sal Daher: A capillary blood test means you got a finger stick and then you have a thin glass pipe that you put in the drop. Because of capillary action, it sucks up the blood into the pipe, and then that's sent into a lab to be tested. It's like instead of self-phlebotomy, it's something to be done at home, albeit with a lot less blood.
Greg Geehan: That's right.
"... You guys aren't actually doing the testing or anything like that. You're basically integrating these devices, you're doing the software around these devices..."
Sal Daher: Anybody who's dealing with serum is living under the shadow of Theranos. You guys aren't actually doing the testing or anything like that. You're basically integrating these devices, you're doing the software around these devices?
Greg Geehan: That's right, yes. We're starting to see the first generation of these devices that are going to be available in the market soon. A lot of companies have been pushing towards it, but there's one that we have, as a partner, that we're still working through under wraps for now. There will be the ability to do some testing in at-home, FDA approved, CE mark approved very soon. Right now, it's available for clinical trials or other pilots or testing.
Sal Daher: I could swear that my primary care physician has something like that that they use to measure blood sugar in the office and give you an instant reading.
Greg Geehan: Maybe potentially for glucose. In this case, where we're seeing the big shift is to other types of measurements. The creatinine is going to be a major measure for us. These will be some of the first devices that come out.
There are others that we're connecting into as well, but creatinine is important because it's a measure of your kidney health and anybody who's involved with kidney health or has somebody within their life they understand that chronic kidney disease is a massive problem here in the United States and globally. There's a big push because of the cost and expense and impact of people's lives to really start making better changes to the patient's life. You can test for it now if you go to the lab and that's fine.
What that generally requires though, is a patient-- Let's use a patient that's postop liver transplant and they may have to go three times a week for a while and that could be upwards of five hours round trip. By the time you drive, you go and you do the test, you wait for it, you go and see the doctor for five minutes and then you go home, you do that three times a week and you end up in a hospital setting where you're already immunocompromised. It becomes a negative impact on these patients' lives.
Imagine if you can take that device home, do a finger prick right there and you measure it, and in real-time, the data is pulled into your smartphone through Bluetooth in a clinical API format. It's secure and we've made sure that the device is working as needed and is required and then we are able to put that into the hands of the provider right away.
Sal Daher: Very good. My audience is not alien to the idea of connected health devices because we've had people who are integrating connected devices right now. One is a robotic glove that is used for therapy for stroke patients who have their hands are clenched like this. The glove helps them open, its company called Imago Rehab, came out of the Harvard i-lab.
Greg Geehan: Oh, great.
Sal Daher: Very compelling founder. Her name is Chrissy Glover. There are a lot of connected devices. Another one that's been on the podcast is Jeremy Weigel, a urologist in New York City. He is an academic physician as well and research physician and he's dealing with problems in the pelvic floor. There is a connected device for the pelvic floor as well. One of the nerve systems that's accessible externally, has feedback and so forth.
I think there's a Cambrian explosion of connected devices for health that's happening right now. There's a lot that can be done. The fact of COVID, the lockdowns, and all of that of people not accessing hospitals as easily, has given a great impetus to companies setting up in this direction. There's an opportunity, I think, if you find the right niche, the right market fit to be extremely valuable to build a lot of value for the patient and for investors.
Greg Geehan: That's right. You are seeing other companies that are out there that are focusing on being able to do that Bluetooth integration. Where we're unique at this point is we're going to be the first to market to actually do that clinical API to devices that is truly at-home-hospital. You can pull in information and you can use it for many different symptoms or issues or problems that you have.
If a doctor needs to make a decision about your health based on a blood test, they need to make sure that data is correct and that it's actually the same as a lab. A lab, it's in a controlled setting and you know that those devices have been tested and have efficacy. How do you make sure that a device that's in the hands of somebody in their home is actually working and calibrated it as needed?
We're not looking to just connect into one or two devices. There are a lot more decisions that you can make based off of many different inputs. We're going to have the ability to do things like getting into your scale and being able to measure that or glucose or other indicators. We're not looking to just house. We're going to be collecting data and we're going to be first to market with this type of data, but we're not looking to just be a silo.
We want to hook into some of the big connected device platforms because the type of data that we have and the way that we're able to make sure that the data is correct at a hospital level is going to be really important for other platforms in order to improve their services as well.
Sal Daher: Basically, your approach is you're coming in with a capillary blood drawing systems because that's a very high-value area where you can add a great deal. By the way, just for people who are not familiar API, Application Program Interface, is basically a way of making data available in a secure way to authorize users of that database so they can draw information from the database. So it's one of the big developments in software world, that APIs became a useful thing.
I remember people used to have to build APIs. I've been investing in the [chuckles] spaces there in the '90s. This is part of the huge revolution that led to software eating the world, as Marc Andreessen talked about it back in 2011 but we take them for granted now. We don't even, we say API just like like we say with thermometer or something. All of these things were big step, big leaps forward, and now, we're standing on top of these things, using them to create even more value on top of all the value they've created. Greg, you want to go a little bit into what stage is Carna right now? Do you actually have a platform up and running?
What Stage Carna Health is At
Greg: Good question. We have an MVP that's essentially going out for our first pilots. We have plans for really rolling it out rather quickly, but we do have an MVP. We are getting ready to launch it with our first set of pilots, which is going to be actually in the international spaces is likely where we start with the first two.
We have a number of projects in place, but we're looking at some underrepresented regions in Latin America, where working in the heat for migrant workers is a big impact on their health and there's not a lot of education that's tied to it. We're able to go in with these devices, and in real-time, be able to provide feedback about their health that can help them to make good choices and also inform backup to the employers.
Sal Daher: I heard from Sal, people who are cutting sugar cane or something like that, which is a grueling work. I was born in Brazil. I've been to sugarcane plantations. Basically, people who are doing physical work, that you have to monitor their level of hydration and other things.
Greg Geehan: That's exactly it. We're looking at some central Latin American regions, El Salvador, Guatemala, and some of those other regions where traditionally some of the migrant workers that work in this high heat without a lot of protection, they've suffered from a health perspective because they don't have protection at a health level as well as at an employment level. This is exactly as you said, they're working in the fields and the high heat and high stress can lead to kidney failure over time. A lot of times they just don't know that that's happening.
There's an educational component of it going out and helping them to understand, but also, very quickly and efficiently, go to where they are and being able to pull the information in to help both at the provider level, understand what the population is suffering but being able to help that to inform government, inform other NGOs as well as the employers, there's a lot of multinational employers that are working down there as well, who are interested in this because there are PR things tied to it.
There are also other issues tied to it that are making them become more and more aware of it and this is a way for us to get out there and prove out the technology, the software, and be able to make a positive impact for a population that does not have a lot of champions.
Sal Daher: This is very, very important. It reminds me of another digital health startup, which is working in the space of pregnancies that are problematic, Delfina. It's surprising, certain underserved populations in the US, the kinds of problems that exist with pregnancies. Basically, what they're doing is they are integrating all the data that exists. They find a way to put it all together and to make it accessible to the providers and also to the patient in a way that's actionable. They are starting with this underserved population where the need is the greatest.
If you're someone who can monitor preeclampsia or signs of that and so forth, even though it is a problem for everyone, but particularly for populations where they may not be looking out for these kinds of problems. There's a lot of promise in this area. There's a lot of innovation going on. Good. Are you guys bootstrapping this? Have you gotten outside funding? How are you doing this?
Greg Geehan: Currently we're bootstrapping it and we are just starting to pull together some of the documentation and pitch to start raising money soon. We already have a couple of potential investors that we're talking to, that are very interested in investing but we haven't even really kicked it off fully yet. [chuckles] There are certain things that we're being very quiet about as we're launching but very soon, we're going to be coming out to talk more openly about everything we're working on. With that, we're going to be going out and raising money pretty quickly.
Sal Daher: Basically, you are bootstrapping yourselves but you anticipate in the future you will be raising some funds on the outside when you have certain results from your pilot programs.
Greg Geehan: That's right. I would say, within the next couple of months or so, we'll still be looking to raise money.
Sal Daher: Good. What kind of business model do you anticipate pursuing? How do you think you're going to get paid for this?
Greg Geehan: There's three different ways that we're actively working on. One is in the clinical trials CRO space, there's an opportunity to get paid directly for different projects. We're in negotiations with a few different groups right now on what that looks like. That will be interesting. Those will be one-offs, potentially leading into something that's longer. We are looking to have recurring revenue tied into it based on a traditional SaaS model, in order for the pharma in clinical trials to be able to access the data over an extended period of time.
The second way which is happening more right now is grants, especially when we're working in some of these underserved regions and other parts of the world, there's a lot of grants that are out there. The initial group that we're working with to roll this out and test all the data, they're able to access grants with us, which has been fantastic.
Then the third is your traditional SaaS model that's rolled out to the provider groups and hospital systems. This would be based off of recurring revenue tied to user access or data access, and then, we're going to be using the data to build out some different analysis models in digital twins, which will give us the ability to add in other revenue models in the future, but there's already CPT codes and billing models that are tied to at-home-hospital that we're going to be able to use as we go to the providers to help them to add to their revenue base off of using our model.
Sal Daher: Can you unpack that digital twins for the audience?
Greg Geehan: Absolutely. [chuckles] One of our co-founders, he's brilliant when it comes to AI so he would answer this probably a little bit better than I would, but essentially, a digital twin is using data in order to create a digital twin of a certain problem or issue that's happening or it could be the makeup of a human DNA sequence or it can be tied to certain things that happen when, let's say, in the kidneys phase, when you see progression in the kidney, you are basically modeling that out.
What it allows you to do is to run test scenarios without having to run it on human being and it allows you to extrapolate what are the likely outcomes based on certain inputs. The more data you have, the stronger your digital twin becomes and it allows you to do research and figure out how to treat an issue or how to deal with an issue, or how to think about the best outcomes without necessarily having to impact that person directly.
This data that comes in because it's going to be structured and it's going to be real-time and it's going to be more frequent than what you'd see in the labs, we're going to be able to access some significant amount of data that would allow us to put together models that will allow people to think about their future without having to necessarily cut themselves.
Sal Daher: Digital medicine is putting us in a position where, for example, when they do a clinical trial, it might be a few dozen people, it might be a few 100 people are involved in a clinical trial, but then when you're able to follow a population looking at the EHRs and keep track of what's happening to them in, I don't know if the term is phase four or whatever, after approval by the FDA and just following the use of the therapy in real life, people learn tremendous amounts about that. You get a much more fine-grained understanding of small populations, populations that are underrepresented in the original samples.
If you have 400 subjects, if you belong to a group that's half a percent of the population, you may not have a significant number of people in that 400 sample to really say much, and there are a lot of these results that can be based on people's ancestry. There's amazing stuff that's happening with being able to gather data, not hundreds of people, but millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people and to have that immediately available in a way that's actionable. Very powerful and people are definitely willing to pay for it.
We've seen that in other cases here on the podcast. Very good. Greg, at this point, is there anything else that you want to say about Carna Health? Because what I wanted to do is get a little bit into your founding story and about how you came to this business.
Greg Geehan: I think we talked a little bit about what Carna Health represents and there's a lot more that it's going to become a big opportunity or real items to talk about as we start to launch and look at other tests that we can do. There's probably three or four other tests that are going to become prevalent that we're going to be able to help to manage as we roll this out. It's going to make a big difference in people's lives across the globe. We have some significant populations we're running out on now, and then this is really going to help us to think about how we can help more in the US population.
We're already starting to talk to some big hospital systems here and some big platforms as well and being able to hook our data into it is going to really be-- I think it's going to end up being a game changer for helping to bring some of these tests into the home market and help people to feel comfortable with actually doing the blood tests and being able to action items off of it or create action off of it.
Sal Daher: The second part of the podcast will be focusing more on background, the founding story, and how you came to this area of activity. First, I want to ask listeners, if you're enjoying this conversation, if you're finding this useful, there is a way that you can give us a little bit of a bump and being found in the podcast world, having more people listen to us and that is to leave a written review on iTunes Podcast or some other places. We're looking in the future, probably having some how-tos on the website on angelinvestboston.com. You don't have to write much, but a little writing separates it from just a star rating.
Of course, you would never give this podcast anything less than a five-star rating, but if you're able to write a few sentences, coherent sentences, it tells the Apple Podcast algorithm that this is a podcast that people are motivated enough to lift a finger and do something about it. It's surprising, when you listen to podcasts and it's launched recently, if you leave a review, you're giving a vote of confidence to that current podcast because that's the podcast that the algorithm looks. It's all what you've done for me lately. It's amazing. [chuckles] If you look at rankings of podcasts, always the most recent podcast is most highly rated. Anyway, have a moment to do that, really appreciate it. Greg, tell us, the founding story of Carna Health. Who's involved? Is it just you as a founder?
Carna Health's Founding Story
Greg: There are actually a few of us. It's an interesting story actually because we found a group that was coming out of Serbia and Europe that is there are a developer group that has worked for many of the big fortune companies as well as some of the big unicorns that have come out in the last five, six years and helping to do a lot of the development work. As part of this, they've done some work for the other big device manufacturing companies, et cetera. They had an idea for Carna. The idea was how do we create this interoperability layer? It had gone back and forth for a while with these original founders.
They weren't sure how to really take it to the next step except they knew that they wanted to launch in the US. Through some mutual connections, they found Salvatore Viscomi, who you've had on here before. Now, Salvatore and I have known each other for five, six years. We've done a lot together, even if it's just thinking through different ideas. We met working together at a startup that had been in the market for a while. They had a really interesting technology. They were in the health tech sector and there was an opportunity to really grow it. He came on as a chief medical officer, just as the CEO recruited me as the COO to help figure it out.
That company was one of the companies that we didn't move forward with too much longer. It was an introduction for Salvatore and I. [chuckles] We always saw eye to eye on how to really think through different sticky problems in the healthcare sector. When COVID first hit, with connections that he has globally and a lot of the connections that I have globally, we were looking at a number of interesting companies and products that were trying to find global footing back as COVID was hitting through different equipment manufacturers as well as testing, et cetera.
We looked at even working with some companies to bring them from Europe over to the United States. Over the years we just maintained a really strong relationship because we think very similarly about launching companies and investing in companies and we looked at deals together potentially to invest in as well. I have an investor network as well. Sal then, he's come and met with my different startups and different companies. He's just been a really great asset. We looked at a lot of things together.
When Sal had met with this group that was looking to create this, he brought together a US-based team. There's four of us here in the United States, and then there's three in Europe that are all involved with this. I'm the CEO. Salvatore is really the chief business officer, business development, but also the CMO and really the connecting tissue with a lot of the things that are going on here. As you know, you've met him before, he's very, very connected.
Sal Daher: Believe it or not, in real life. We get together for coffee pretty regularly.
Greg Geehan: Oh, you do?
Sal Daher: Yes.
Greg Geehan: You know him really well. We have David Vogel, who's our CFO. We have Andrea Ridi, who does a lot on our strategy. He's our AI guy. He's just fantastic. Then we have Boris Berat, who leads up our technical team over in Serbia, in Europe. We have Radivoje and Mladen, who are part of that team over there as well. We came together because we realized how big this opportunity can be with the global perspective in place because what we're doing has global implications.
The United States is one market, but kidney malfunction and kidney issues is a big impact on many, many governments and health systems. From there, you can start to add in these other measurements to really have a big impact on it. We're all passionate about healthcare. We're all passionate about making change. We all saw that this was a way that we could come and contribute.
We all have some other things going on as well. It took us a little while to start to figure out exactly how we were going to bring this to market. Now, we have such momentum, we're all shifting all of our attention to making sure Carna's our number one priority and we can really roll it out.
Sal Daher: It's interesting that you have these Serbian coders approaching you guys and saying, "We've worked together before and we think there's an opportunity in this, integrate this kind of data." [chuckles]
Greg Geehan: That's it.
Sal Daher: That's pretty cool.
Greg Geehan: They're really smart over there and they've worked on a lot of US companies. They know what's going on from a technology perspective.
Sal Daher: They're located in Belgrade?
Greg Geehan: Boris is actually in Germany and he has things in Netherlands. The others are in Serbia and a couple of other cities. They have a pretty big presence in the area.
Sal Daher: Serbian ex-pats.
Greg Geehan: He is. The others are still in Serbia. [chuckles]
Sal Daher: Very interesting. How did you get into this line of business? You're a local guy, right?
Greg Geehan's Backstory
Greg Geehan: I am, Boston area.
Sal Daher: Boston.
Greg Geehan: I grew up in Acton, just west of the city. It's an interesting story. I've always been an entrepreneur. I always wanted to start companies and I started a few of them. For the most part, when you first get started, I didn't really know what I wanted to do or how I wanted to do it. Failed miserably at the first few, but I learned a lot.
Sal Daher: What space were you working in?
Greg Geehan: I've always been into the international space. I was looking at wine import using technology into other places in Eastern Europe. My wife is from Poland. We got married there. We go there all the time. We were looking at--
Sal Daher: You're traveling there and you're looking things across borders?
Greg Geehan: Yes. where the opportunity. I started a gaming company at one point, just trying to figure out how this could all work. Where I ended up really getting into the entrepreneurial space, is I started working for health tech companies that was in the FinTech sector of healthcare, fringe benefits, FSAs, DCAs, HRS, et cetera. It was really creating the ability for people to use fringe benefits to help pay for the healthcare. This is where I really learned about healthcare, I learned about startups. I was there for 10 years. I was running a big portion of the operations group and I just learned a lot.
One of the things I learned is how to build a team and build operations without having a lot of money. [chuckles] Always feeling like there's not enough to really do it. We were bought and sold multiple times during that. Then ended up going public and then PO and then all these different crazy things that were happening. Then I got into the more general startup space, working for one of the big EHRs, Athenahealth, working in their More Disruption Please program, which is working with startups.
Sal Daher: EHR, electronic health record firms?
Greg Geehan: That's right.
Sal Daher: We talked about this here a bit. I'm an investor in Healthjump. Have you run across them?
Greg Geehan: Yes, I know who they are.
Sal Daher: My brother-in-law is the founder and I was one of the early investors. They're now off to the races. Basically, what they're doing is they're taking data from EHRs and making that data usable.
Greg Geehan: That's right. There's a whole program with that. All of the major EHRs have it.
Sal Daher: Athenahealth--
Greg Geehan: The More Disruption Please program, which is, essentially-- At the time, when I first joined, they had a venture capital fund-ish. It was coming off their balance sheet but they were investing in startups. There was an incubator space, accelerator-type program, and then there was working with startups to help them grow through hooking into those APIs. Collecting the data just like how Healthjump is doing and basically helping to grow their business by helping providers.
This is where I really started to see the value of different types of companies making an impact in the space, and so I ended up joining NextGen Venture Partners on the side. It's a network-driven firm looking at different deals. I joined as one of the early venture partners to help figure out the healthcare sector. There was a bunch of us in Boston because of everything that's happened here. We did a lot of due diligence, et cetera, on this and this is where I really got passionate about the investing side.
Fairly soon after that, I co-founded a company called AccelHUB, which I still have. My founding partner is originally from Mexico and we were looking at startups that were coming out of the Mexico and Latin American region that had the technology and the ability to jump into a global market but didn't know how to do it. We started combining our network as well as helping them to understand how to run operations and how to go and pitch and how to enter the United States and built quite a program around it.
We were actually paid by the federal government of Mexico. We're paid by Columbia. There was a lot that we did. We actually ended up doing some things in Western Europe. It eventually led to us joining with some other partners and we just raised the venture capital fund. It's where [chuckles] checks still waiting to get them into the bank but the past couple of years the partners and us have been trying to really raise a fund that allows these interesting technologies to jump into a global ecosystem.
Sal Daher: Ah, okay. You're taking technologies in these markets in South America and so forth, which may be appropriate for those markets and you're trying to figure out a way to take them to the international scale.
Greg Geehan: That's right. A lot of times they're underserved from a support perspective. They're getting investment over there but it's usually too little money for too much of their company, which leaves them underleveraged or over-leveraged, I guess, in this case. They're not able to really control their company after they take a couple of rounds there, and then once they get the money, there's no follow-on funding or people that can mentor and advise them like you get in a place like Cambridge, which is densely populated with founders and mentors and advisors and investors.
Sal Daher: Basically, you're providing a little bit of the infrastructure that we have here for startups. Startups that are in places where there's not as much support. The type of human being who is capable of creating a company anew is very evenly distributed throughout the globe but the support systems and all those things are not. They're heavily skewed towards certain spots [chuckles] in the USA and a few other places, but the US is decades ahead in this in a lot of areas. Although there're some areas in other parts of the world that are catching up.
I think there's a lot of value in that because you can run across some tremendously capable founders. I call it the Superman effect. They can jump over buildings because they're used to working with all these problems that they have in these places. Then when they are working in an environment like the US, everything is so easy here. They can jump over buildings. Anyway, very curious, I would like to know a little bit more about NextGen. I've heard about them, I know some people who invest through them. I'm just curious how that came about, the idea of venture partners that collaborate in sourcing the deals that they're investing in, and so forth.
Greg Geehan: It's fascinating, actually. We tried to do a little bit with that, with the AccelHUB, too, by finding a bunch of investors. It really originated, Dan Mendez and Brett Gibson, and a couple of other people from the Washington DC area were investing and they decided that they were going to pull together some of their friends to invest. I'm not part of that core team so I don't know all the backstory beyond what they told.
They started to see some really interesting deals and they found that if they were to bring in this ever-growing larger group of angels that were really smart, they could do a better job at sourcing and vetting and then supporting the companies that they ended up investing in. It started off as a small group. They kept growing and growing and they started to go to other areas of the US. They had friends, et cetera, and then their friends introduced them and started to grow. Then they ended up raising a small fund from a couple larger LPs, investor fund to funds, and they continued to grow their venture partner base. I think they're well over probably 1,500. I don't know exact numbers.
Sal Daher: Pretty remarkable.
“...We'll go back and forth a couple of times and see if it's worth investing in, and then if we all agree that there's something there, then I'll bring it to the core fund under NextGen Venture Partners and put it up for pitching and see if it goes through the process…”
Greg Geehan: Yes. It's massive, but when I joined, there weren't that many. I was one of what they called the founding venture partner because there was like a group of like 10 of us or something like that in Boston that all came together to do all the health tech stuff and it just kept growing from there but we look at all the deals we used to go. We used to have big events. We'd go to the events. We knew each other. It was great.
You could look at deals together and I brought a lot of interesting companies. Because I'm in the health tech group, I have a group of-- There's like 10 or 12 people that like that sector that I know pretty well so I'll bring it to that group first and be like, "What do you think about this?" We'll go back and forth a couple of times and see if it's worth investing in, and then if we all agree that there's something there, then I'll bring it to the core fund under NextGen Venture Partners and put it up for pitching and see if it goes through the process.
Sal Daher: Interesting. The thing that I'm excited about is how to create support for academic founders that are taking some type of wet lab technology from a lab, preferably a platform with some strong IP and protection. How to take it to the point where a strategic player will become interested and how to support angel investors in that space because there is an explosion of really, really interesting technologies and the technologies are being democratized.
The term Cambrian explosion is perhaps overused, but there is something like that happening in these little areas, microfluidics with hydrogels. There are all types of technologies that we're-- Also, quorum sensing molecules is another area. There are gazillions of these areas and you have some academic who is like one of the top five experts in the whole world in this field, who has this crazy idea of actually taking the technology from the lab and to the clinic.
I'm trying to figure out a way to create an infrastructure, to support them with money, but very importantly, also to support angels in supporting them so that you can have the due diligence, you do the due diligence on the project to make sure the project makes sense, and so forth.
The way that NextGen works is intriguing to me and there are some other models. I'm looking at just scratching my head saying-- I see so many opportunities that I'm able to invest in. I've invested. It's one recently, I even told people I was going to write up a due diligence report. I didn't have time, I didn't have the bandwidth and I wish I had more support to put that together but--
Greg Geehan: I have some ideas around that. It's a combination of a studio model of what NextGen is doing. We're actually a part of AccelHUB and our partners, venture partners, where we're working on a studio model with innovation companies and one of them is actually in the neuro space.
It's going to be a social impact fund where we're going to be sourcing really promising technologies and discoveries and putting some of those resources with the founder in order to help them use the shared resources. There's HR, accounting, et cetera. There's hiring a CEO, there's all of that stuff but then it's also preparing that product to actually launch and putting them in front of those investors, to your angels, being able to give them first access to it.
Sal Daher: You're looking for actual product? The stuff that I'm looking at is actually developing a technology to the point where-- These are enabling technologies that a strategic player would be interested in so it would 10X somebody's existing business because I find that I've invested in a few of those and I find that those can be extremely capital efficient. This is where $4 million or $5 million in capital can get you into something where the company just gets bought out at a very nice multiple.
Greg Geehan: I think there's a lot to be said about that and I agree with that. That's something that I think is worth continuing to explore because there are a few models out there that you can leverage and really it's where is your exit? Are you trying to bring it to like a flagship pioneering does and you bring it to an IPO?
Sal Daher: No. We're filling in the gaps.
Greg Geehan: Yes, that's right. It's which one do you want to do? There's a model that can support both of them.
Sal Daher: Greg, you'd be surprised. Venture firms, you think that they do the same thing all the time? I actually interviewed somebody who told me that in the '70s, venture firms, they were financing computer stores. [chuckles]
Greg Geehan: I didn't know, computer stores. Is that where the money was?
Sal Daher: I knew a guy, he got funding from VCs. He had a Mac store. Massachusetts is one of the early Mac stores here. He got venture money in those days. They didn't know what they're doing. It's like, do they know what they're doing now? They change. One of the things that's been happening in the life sciences is they created this idea of their own, created entities. It's gotten so big that they can spin out a multi $100 million startup because they need that. They have to do moonshots because their portfolios are so big.
They have to get stuff that moves the needle. They don't have time to think pitches. They don't think pitches anymore. It's like they create their own entities.
Greg Geehan: They're too big.
Sal Daher: Greg, as we think about closing up our podcast here, this has been a really fascinating tour d'horizon, tour of the horizon, that you've seen many horizons here in your international travels. Oh, by the way, Poland, MIT Enterprise Forum in Poland. Have you ever run across Adam Poole?
Greg: Oh, I know Adam very well. He's actually one of our venture partners. He looks a lot of deals with us. He's great. I love Adam.
Sal Daher: He's awesome. He's been on a podcast twice. He's a CleanTech and then one is BlueTech investor.
Greg Geehan: That was BlueTech, that's right.
Sal Daher: BlueTech does not mean working blue. It means the ocean. It's not using naughty words.
Greg Geehan: That's right. We've crossed paths many times because we both the Latin American connections that he has, but mostly Poland connections. MIT Enterprise Forum, I've done a bunch of presentations and pitches for them. Him and I, we used to tag team on a couple of calls, meetings things here and there with them. We all know the same group over there. He's a great guy. That's a great program that he's a part of.
Sal Daher: He's tremendous. Very good. Are there any thoughts that you want to leave our audience that you think could be valuable to them?
Advice to the Audience
Greg Geehan: I've been involved with the entrepreneurial space for a long time and I failed a lot. Failing is part of growing. You have many of those nights you wake up and you're like, "What am I doing? Why am I doing this? How am I going to make this happen? How am I going to pay this bill?" There's a lot of stress with it. At the end of the day, when you wake up and you have that good day, where everything feels like, "Maybe I should go buy a jet today."
[laughter]
Greg Geehan: Not yet, maybe I need to do it because yesterday, I couldn't afford a cup of coffee.
It all starts to even out. It's an invigorating way to run your life, and there's good ways to do it, there's not great ways to do it, but there's no right way to do it. There are better ways to think about growing your business. I think the number one thing that people started telling me early on when I started doing this is, just when you think you're going to fail, if you continue to push on, that gives you the best opportunity for success.
The number of times that I almost quit early on, I just remember being like, there's no way I should continue this. I've got to quit and do it. Then the next morning, I got up and I just did it again. Then you go a couple more days, and all of a sudden, it's like their opportunity happened. You start to really see it. This is where we were with the fund that we raised, It's been a long slog. It took us two years to get through even the legal side of it because it goes across Latin America into the United States so there's a lot to it, but we did it.
Money is now going to be we're working on bringing that to the bank. Carna is the same thing. We've been working on this for a little while, and you start off with an idea of we can change the world, but it's not totally clear when you first start, how you're going to change the world. You know that there's an end goal.
Sal Daher: Absolutely. It's got to change. The way you're going to change the world is going to change. [chuckles]
Greg Geehan: You pivot and you pivot. It's really important to have smart people around you that can help you, and they're not always going to give you the best advice. You're not always going to see eye to eye on exactly how to make it happen, but the more advice you get, and the more you think about getting to that end goal of really changing the world, even if it's your own world, the more advice you can get, the better off you're going to end up being.
My co-founders, if I didn't have them, this would not be where it is today. Having people that have done this before, have invested in companies, have run venture capital funds, have started them, have had failure, and have had success. We've been able to just really play off of each other and to keep figuring out where the market was. Did we think our market was going to be as big as it is when we first started this? We hoped so, but we didn't know it was going to be this big global thing.
We knew that there'd be something that we could start for the clinical trial to launch it, but we didn't know that we were going to be selling [laughs] within multiple continents before we even launched our product. Being an entrepreneur's hard, being an investor is really hard and you see a lot of failure, but learning from people and embracing people, and being willing to make a pivot and take advice and make a change is so important to having success.
Sal Daher: Well said. Tremendous. Greg Geehan, founder of Carna Health.
Greg Geehan: Co-founder, but yes. [laughs]
Sal Daher: Excuse me, co-founder. Yes.
Greg Geehan: Co-founder. There are few of us. [laughs]
Sal Daher: Mention your co-founders, please.
Greg Geehan: Yes, we have Salvatore Viscomi, who you've had on here.
Sal Daher: Yay, Salvatore, Sal, part of the Sal club.
Greg Geehan: That's right. David Vogel, who's run multiple venture capital funds.
Sal Daher: Yey, David. He's been in the podcast.
Greg Geehan: [chuckles] Oh, David has?
Sal Daher: Yes. He's been on.
Greg Geehan: Oh, that's perfect. Then Andrea Ridi--
Sal Daher: CFOs. Yes, he's a fractional CFOs.
Greg Geehan: Yes, that's right. Then Andrea Ridi, who's from Italy originally, and he's brought an AI firm over here and had himself an exit, great guy as well. Then we have Boris Berat, who leads up our team over in Europe.
Sal Daher: Wow. What a team. Sounds like a fun team.
Greg Geehan: It's great. It really is. We learn a lot from each other.
Sal Daher: Awesome.
[music]
Sal Daher: Thanks, Greg Geehan, co-founder of Carna Health, for being on the Angel Invest Boston podcast
Greg Geehan: I really appreciate it. It was great to be here and great to chat.
Sal Daher: Thanks for listening. I'm Sal Daher.
I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.