Tag Archives: Logan Plaster

Aaron Kowalski, PhD, CEO of JDRF, Brings His Professional & Personal Experience to StartUp Health’s T1D Moonshot Impact Board

October 25, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAaron Kowalski, Cure Disease, diabetes, Health Moonshots, JDRF, JDRF International, Logan Plaster, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:40 — 22.5MB)

For this StartUp Health NOW episode, we are joined by Aaron Kowalski, PhD, the CEO of JDRF International. Anyone orbiting in the universe of Type 1 diabetes will know that JDRF is the world’s largest nonprofit funder of T1D research. In his role atop the organization, Kowalski has combined his professional experience as a molecular biologist and executive with his personal passion to fight Type 1 diabetes in order to impact patients like his own brother.

Kowalski is also a recent addition to StartUp Health’s Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot Impact Board. This board is a cross-disciplinary team of T1D experts spanning the gamut from research to funding to commercialization. We are thrilled that Kowalski is bringing his vast experience to this cohort in order to speed up innovation and support a generation of health entrepreneurs.

Join us at the StartUp Health Festival @ HLTH, Nov 13-16 in Las Vegas, to learn more and get involved with our T1D Moonshot.

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Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

AI-Powered Health: Naheed Kurji of Cyclica Takes a Deep Dive into Artificial Intelligence for the Healthcare Industry

October 18, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, Cost to Zero, Cure Disease, Cyclica, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, machine learning, Moonshots, Naheed KurjiNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:28 — 40.6MB)

Our guest this week is Naheed Kurji, the CEO and Co-founder of Cyclica, which joined StartUp Health way back in 2014. He’s going to get us up to speed on the world of AI-powered drug discovery. We’ll learn how artificial intelligence and machine learning are speeding up our ability to identify molecules and find new uses for market-tested drugs. Naheed will give us an inside look at how Cyclica is specifically trying to reshape this market, then he’ll zoom way out. As the chair of the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Health, Naheed can help us understand where the AI for health industry is going.

Join us at the StartUp Health Festival @ HLTH, Nov 13-16, 2022, in Las Vegas to meet Naheed Kurji in person.

Learn more and connect with the team at Cyclica.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

How to Partner with Investors to Grow & Scale Your Company w/ Cheryl Cheng, CEO & Founder of Vive Collective

October 11, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, StartupsCheryl Cheng, Digital Health, Health Tech, Innovation, investing, investment, Logan Plaster, mindset, Vive Collective, WisdomNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:34 — 65.9MB)

This week we welcome Cheryl Cheng to the interview chair. Cheryl is the CEO & Founder of Vive Collective. Previously Cheryl was a Partner at BlueRun Ventures, one of the top VC firms in Silicon Valley.

At Vive, she’s taking her 15 years of experience growing startups and putting it specifically into building, funding, and scaling digital health companies.

Cheryl is also an advisor to the Stanford Biodesign program and is on the advisory board for Yale Medical School’s Digital Health and Innovation Center.

We wanted to have Cheryl on one of our Fireside Chats to learn about Vive Collective – since it’s a relatively new kid on the block – and hear what kinds of opportunities she’s seeing in the market. We held this conversation in front of a live virtual audience of Health Transformers from the StartUp Health Portfolio, so you’ll get to hear some of their tactical questions mixed in throughout the session.

The goal for these sessions is to have candid conversations with people who can cut through the corporate speak and investment jargon, and Cheryl Cheng understood the assignment. We hope you enjoy.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

How Brian Neman Has Cultivated an Award-Winning Workplace at Sanguine Biosciences

October 4, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Startupsbiopharma, Brian Neman, COVID19, Cure Disease, Forbes, Health Moonshot, Health Transformer, Logan Plaster, Pandemic Response, Sanguine Biosciences, StartUp HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:12 — 27.7MB)

This week, our guest is Brian Neman, the CEO and Founder of Sanguine Biosciences, a company that joined the StartUp Health portfolio in 2018.

Brian and his team first made a splash by bringing an at-home on-demand business model to specimen collection for clinical trials. Instead of having to get yourself to a lab, you tap a few buttons on your phone and a nurse shows up at your house to take your blood. That business has evolved significantly over the years, which we’ll get into in the interview. But the spark for this interview had more to do with people than products.

You see, Brian’s company was just selected for the Forbes list of 100 Best Small Workplaces and top 10 in biopharma. Sanguine was also on Inc.’s list of fastest growing private companies, and Comparably named him on their list of best CEOs for women and for diversity in the workplace.

In this interview, Brian will talk about how he cultivates company culture, particularly in an era of remote work – and he had loads of wisdom to share, so we hope you enjoy.

Connect with the team at Sanguine Biosciences via email.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

Health Innovation Implementation: Dr. Robert Wilson on How Partnering with PreventScripts Enhanced His Medical Practice

September 27, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Brandi Harless, chronic care, Cost to Zero, CovenantCare, CovenantCare Family Practice, Cure Disease, diabetes, Digital Health, Dr. Natalie Davis, Dr. Robert Wilson, health innovation, Health Moonshots, health transformation, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, md, Natalie Davis, PreventScripts, Robert Wilson, Type 2 Diabetes, Type II DiabetesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:39 — 21.2MB)

Typically on this show we talk to the health tech founders – who we call Health Transformers – that are creating the tools and platforms that will modernize our health system. This week we have a different kind of guest who will help round out the picture of how healthcare innovation goes from idea to real-world implementation.

Our guest is Robert Wilson, MD, a family physician who runs CovenantCare Family Practice, a multi-site medical practice in Tennessee. Dr. Wilson popped up on our radar because he was an early partner for PreventScripts, a startup that’s part of the StartUp Health portfolio. PreventScripts, led by Brandi Harless and Natalie Davis, MD, has created a platform that helps family doctors like Dr. Wilson identify patients who would benefit from chronic care management. Think about a patient who is pre-diabetic and all signs point towards a long battle with Type 2 diabetes. While Dr. Wilson might be too overextended to identify and coach this patient before the disease sets in, PreventScripts can identify the risk and put the patient on a clinically-proven program. Patients with chronic diseases, or the risk of disease, get heightened care between visits, and Dr. Wilson gets added reimbursement.

We wanted to talk to Dr. Wilson to understand why he was interested in partnering with a health startup, as this is one of the key hurdles for any health innovator. How do you find the right clinical partner, a place to prove out your brilliant idea in the real world, and then iterate based on user feedback?

In the conversation, we’ll get into the real-world challenges that Dr. Wilson faces, his motivation for evolving his practice, and how PreventScripts has helped him fill gaps in patient care.

Learn more and connect with the team at PreventScripts.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

KP Yelpaala Shares the Mission & Vision Behind StartUp Health’s Health Equity Moonshot

September 20, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsHealth Disparities, health equity, Health Equity Moonshot, health inequity, Health Moonshot, InOn Health, Kaakpema Yelpaala, KP Yelpaala, Logan Plaster, SoDH, StartUp HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:32 — 35.1MB)

As our listeners will know, StartUp Health invests in what we call health moonshots. These are big, audacious health goals that guide us as we push innovative health entrepreneurs — our global army of Health Transformers — to collaborate and focus on long-term impact. We have health moonshots around curing cancer, improving women’s health, ending the opioid crisis, and we’ve recently added another focused on Type 1 diabetes.

This week, we launched a Health Equity Moonshot at the Clinton Global Initiative in order to build a framework that re-orients these inspiring problem solvers to tackle the challenge beneath the challenge, the social and systemic factors that drive health inequities. This transformative initiative will be integrated into all of StartUp Health’s other health moonshots, breaking down silos and encouraging local and global collaboration.

Leading StartUp Health’s Health Equity Moonshot is Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala, a global health entrepreneur and long-time Health Transformer (he is the CEO & Co-founder of StartUp Health portfolio company InOn Health) who has dedicated his life to reducing health disparities. Yelpaala is an American of Ghanaian heritage and sits at the intersection of the immigrant and Black experiences in the United States.

In this StartUp Health NOW podcast episode, Yelpaala will share his vision for a Health Equity Moonshot and why it is necessary today.

Want to join this Health Equity Moonshot? If you’re an investor who believes in this vision, we want to hear from you. Are you a founder focused on breaking down health barriers for historically marginalized communities or who has been held back based on systemic bias in race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation? We want to hear from you.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Why Jon Miller, Former CEO at AOL and IAC, Joined StartUp Health’s Board of Directors

September 6, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAdvancit Capital, AOL, IAC, Integrated Media Co, Jon Miller, Logan Plaster, Media, Moonshot Mindset, News Corp, StartUp Health, Storytelling, WisdomNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:23 — 22.2MB)

Jon Miller is best known for being a former CEO of AOL, Head of Digital Media at News Corp, and Chief Executive of the media powerhouse IAC.

With all of that experience in media, Miller might seem like an interesting choice for the StartUp Health board of directors, which he joined recently. After all, on the board he joins the likes of Toby Cosgrove, MD, whose pedigree as the former head of the Cleveland Clinic needs little explanation.

Obviously, Miller’s experience in business, finance, and media has been vast, but how does that translate to health moonshots, these audacious goals that guide investments at StartUp Health? To find out, we called him up for a chat. Specifically, we wanted to know what tools of media could be used to speed up health innovation and help startups bring their solutions to market more successfully.

What we learned was that many of the advancements and opportunities Miller has seen in media over the last couple decades – advancements in consumerism and community – are absolutely core to improving health in scalable digital ways.

Listen in to hear Miller explain that vision and why he’s more excited than ever to support a global army of health tech entrepreneurs – this band of like-minded founders we call Health Transformers.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Affectifi’s ThinkHuman Platform Uses Streaming TV to Make Emotional Regulation Easy, Fun, and Accessible

August 30, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAffectifi, Health Moonshot, Health Transformers, Ilya Lyashevsky, Logan Plaster, Melissa Cesarano, mental health, Mental Health & Happiness, ThinkHumanNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:47 — 49.2MB)

Emotional regulation. It’s a fancy term for something very simple, and something we often take for granted. Emotional regulation is a person’s ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience. We do this work unconsciously all day long, deciding how to respond when we’re cut off in traffic or when we see something we disagree with on social media.

How we respond to emotional situations can have massive ramifications for our lives, yet we don’t typically spend much time thinking about it or trying to improve.

Our guests this week, Melissa Cesarano and Ilya Lyashevsky, got their PhDs at Columbia University studying the science of this field, called social-emotional learning. Now, they’ve poured their academic work into a startup called Affectifi, which StartUp Health backed last year.

In this conversation, we’ll hear from Mel and Ilya about their unique methodology for teaching emotional regulation to young people. It’s a platform called ThinkHuman and it actually piggy-backs training modules on top of popular content on streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+.

Listen in to hear how it works.

Learn more and connect with the team at Affectifi.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

At Trusty.care, Joseph Schneier Is Building a Better Infrastructure for Medicaid and Medicare Benefits

August 23, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedHealth Transformer, Health Transformers, Joseph Schneier, Logan Plaster, Medicaid, Medicare, StartUp Health, StartUp Health Now, Trusty.careNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:55 — 30.1MB)

This week on StartUp Health NOW we’re talking to Joseph Schneier, the CEO and Co-founder of Trusty.care, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2018. Joseph holds a special place here at StartUp Health because not only is he a four-time serial entrepreneur, but he’s heading up his second StartUp Health-backed company.

Joseph’s latest endeavor, Trusty.care, is a platform that makes sense out of the byzantine world of Medicaid and Medicare benefits. It’s not flashy work – which Joseph is the first to admit – but therein lies the opportunity for impact. The chance to build a better infrastructure for health, the pipes and roads that make health insurance a more palatable, patient-centric experience.

Trusty.care is making waves in the Medicaid/Medicare benefits market, and in this interview we pull back the curtain on that success and get a glimpse of what Joseph is planning next.

Learn more and connect with the team at Trusty-care.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Salvo Health: Travelocity and Foursquare Exec Jeff Glueck Has Raised $10.5M to Disrupt the GI Health Market

August 16, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsFoursquare, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, Nutrition and Fitness, Salvo, Salvo Health, TravelocityNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:22 — 41.7MB)

In health innovation – which is the world we inhabit at StartUp Health – there are certain issues that get the lion’s share of attention. Think wearables for tracking daily activity or new mental health solutions. A lot of attention is going towards interventions for seniors and addressing issues of loneliness and isolation. These are wonderful areas of development. But there are other areas of health that have huge implications across society, yet have a way of flying under the radar. There’s stigma – like our hesitance to talk about mental health struggles – and then there’s society’s reaction to gastrointestinal conditions. GI problems. Irritable bowel syndrome or IBS. Celiac disease. The list goes on. Each year, 62 million Americans are diagnosed with a digestive disorder. Another 30 million go undiagnosed. They’re often too embarrassed to even talk to their primary care provider about it, so they suffer in silence, and it has negative ripple effects across their entire life.

Well, all that seems to be about to change. The virtual healthcare revolution has reached the GI market with the launch of Salvo Health, a company that’s using virtual care to bring the best gut health tools and therapies to millions of people.

Heading up the effort is CEO and Co-founder Jeff Glueck, who is our guest on today’s episode. Jeff is a tech industry veteran, having been Chief Marketing Officer at Travelocity during their meteoric rise, and the CEO of the social app Foursquare. He’s leveraging that experience to disrupt an old school industry and bring relief to millions. The company, which joined StartUp Health last year, has just announced a $10.5M Seed raise to bring Salvo out of stealth mode and start to scale in earnest.

How’s Jeff going to use his experience at Travelocity and Foursquare to disrupt the GI health market? We’ll let him explain in the interview.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.