Venture Leaders Medtech 2022: Captain’s blog by Oncobit CEO Claudia Scheckel

04.07.2022 15:30, Tracy Woodley

In mid-June, the Venture Leaders Medtech 2022 traveled to Boston to connect with and learn from investors and experts in one of the world’s major life sciences hubs. We asked Venture Leaders Medtech Team Captain Claudia Scheckel to share her experience and take us behind the scenes of the week-long roadshow.

Sunday
While a few of us arrived several days earlier, most of the Swiss National Startup Team Medtech 2022 flew into Boston on Sunday, June 17th. After a 5-minute bag drop-off at the hotel, we immediately set out for a hunt for food that turned out to be surprisingly challenging at 9:30 PM on a Sunday night near Harvard Square (and almost reminded us of Switzerland). The mood rose significantly when we finally managed to find a pub and had the first of many burgers and beers in front of us. Cheers to a great week ahead!



Monday
With slight jetlag, we were ready for a busy week of learning, pitching, and lots and lots of networking. The program was officially kicked off by the one-and-only Jordi Montserrat on Monday morning at Swissnex, our office for the week, and a warm welcome by Swissnex’s CEO Benjamin Bollmann. 


  
Before exploring the area for lunch options, Liza Frusztajer gave us a very helpful introduction to how we should present our financial storyline in the US and highlighted some of the differences when pitching and fundraising compared to Switzerland. In the afternoon we split into three groups and delivered our first pitches to experts of the Boston Startup ecosystem. We got insightful and down-to-the-point feedback from the experts, which was great preparation for the week. The session was followed by an invite to the consulate’s residence in beautiful Lexington – there are definitely worse ways to close the day than with networking on the patio and watching pheasant families walk by. Benjamin also gave us a tour through the residence, which included a peek into the guestroom suite that is always prepared for a potential visit by a Bundesrat. His hospitality went so far that he allowed us (or maybe was rather not left with a choice) to hijack his very well-equipped and high-quality minibar. Let’s see if he is leaving his minibar out when welcoming future Venture Leader groups...



Tuesday
The morning session got kicked off by Mark Lesselroth from BioportUSA, a company that specializes in helping international companies with US market entry. He was joined by his colleague Lisa Michels via video to give us a workshop on regulatory topics in the US with a focus on different types of FDA submissions. 

Finally, it was time for our first VC visit: jumping into several Ubers we made our way downtown to visit RA Capital. The company invests in healthcare and life sciences and several of the associates joined our first official pitch session. Each of the attending associates has a different medtech-related specialty, and not surprisingly, we were confronted with excellent questions! As soon as we delivered our pitches it was time to head back to Swissnex.



Several partners of MedScience Venture were already waiting for us at Swissnex where we got another round of great questions and feedback on our pitches. The final item on the agenda was storytelling: with illustrative examples from Disney and Hollywood, David Riemer explained to us what makes a good story and how a good story is told. We practiced this with two use-cases (Endri’s and my pitch) and David gave us all a copy of his book to go into more detail on our own.

Pretty pitched out, we were ready for an evening off. The two competing activities were a Red Sox Game (a background hum of Sweet Caroline was heard several times the next day) and a Lobster Dinner at the Crab Shack (Henry, the largest lobster in the shack, had his turn).



Wednesday
The day started off with a company visit to Helbling. After introductions by Michel Brühwiler, Managing Director of Helbling Precision Engineering, we met two of Helbling’s partners: Mark Kapij, CEO of Movably, who got us all excited about a smart office chair, and Chris Stepanian, CEO and co-founder of Windgap Medical, who convincingly illustrated the urgent need for a better alternative to the EpiPen. Helbling provides engineering services to both companies, and we got a further glimpse into Helbing’s partners and their innovative solutions with a tour led by Cole Constantineau, Head of Development Medical Devices. The visit was completed by pitches from Matthieu F. and Philippe who presented their projects to Helbling to explore potential synergies in the future. After lunch and the obligatory team picture it was time to head back:
 

To give us an overview of the legal aspects of setting up and running a US entity we had a workshop with Todd Boudreau in the afternoon. And then: it was time to get on a boat (we were in Boston after all)! Swissnex organized an amazing Pitchfest with more than 100 attendees from the Swiss/Boston ecosystem. All dressed up in our polo shirts, we were ready to board!





This time, the 11 startups from Switzerland were joined by five US startups on stage to deliver three-minute pitches in two sessions. The whole program was accompanied by plenty of food and drinks (especially the lamp chops were quite popular in our group and captured instantly). The audience got to vote and both Margaux and I made it under the top four, with me winning by a narrow margin in the end. 



While the pitch cruises ended at 9 PM – the night was beginning. Since what happens in Boston stays in Boston let me just end by sharing an early night picture.



Thursday
Following the motto “work hard, party hard” we were all on time to start the day with a workshop on the healthcare system and industry by Sandeep Karnik, a corporate strategist of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. His insights were complemented by Oded Eran, Co-founder and CEO of Connie Health, aiming to help with navigating the complex healthcare system in the US. 

After the workshop, we had two pitch stops: the Wyss Center, where people shared a novel angle with their thoughts on commercialization and Wyss startups. And Gurnet, a private equity company for our final (!) pitch – with a view, and where the team awaited us with impressive insights in the medtech field and sharp feedback. 



We were all glad to get back to the Swissnex office, where Nicolas Mosimann from Kellerhals Carrard presented a few selected legal issues, he considered to be of particular importance and interest to startups. Conveying legal issues after a long day can be tricky but in fact, we were in for a real treat: Nicolas delivered several critical startup issues down to the point in an interesting and fun way and his presentation turned out to be one of the most helpful and favorite sessions of the entire trip for many of us! At this stage, we also had to say our first goodbyes: to Christian and Nicolas. While the two of them headed towards good old Switzerland, the rest of us headed to dinner.

Friday
The final day of this busy week started with a visit to Portal Instruments, which is developing a needle-free jet injection platform. CEO Patrick Anquetil not only shared the story of Portal Instruments with us but gave us super helpful advice and feedback on essentially any medtech and startup topic we bombarded him with. Afterward, we got a tour through Portal Instruments’ impressive prototyping garage. 



With the official program over, Jordi took us on another boat ride! Ahoy from the Swiss National Startup Team MedTech 2022!


 
And with that – all that is left for me to say is THANK YOU!

Thank you to the sponsors: Andre Catana who represented EPFL, Christian Peterhans from Helbling Technik, Juliette Ivaney representing Canton Vaud, and Nicolas Mosimann from Kellerhals Carrard. Thank you so much for the financial support – but also or maybe even more so for joining us in Boston! It was a pleasure to meet you all!

Thank you to Swissnex for hosting us, for providing us with an office, for organizing so many events for us, and for helping us to connect and network! Thank you, Benjamin, Leslie, Seba, and Sagit! Without you, we would have been lost!

Thank you to VentureLeaders, Adriana, Daniel, and Jordi! I can’t imagine how much work went into organizing this trip! Thank you for introducing the Boston ecosystem to us, for connecting us with experts and investors, for making sure we also had a lot of fun, and for selecting this great group of startups and getting us together. It was a truly amazing experience!

And finally: thank you to my fellow startups! It was an honor to be your captain and get to know you, and it was truly inspiring to see the products and companies all of you have built! I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us and am looking forward to hanging out and exchanging more ideas in Switzerland soon!



Learn more about the Venture Leaders Medtech 2022 startups below: