1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Lisa Chai, General Partner at Interwoven Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: We have this Entrepreneur Journey series where we love to invite entrepreneurs to come tell their stories, just like you’re telling your story in this session. So, if these guys have crossed the $5 million revenue benchmark, please send them over to tell their story if they want to share.

Lisa Chai: Okay. Yes, I would love to do that. I would love to help the ecosystem of founders helping each other. I think that we have founders that are very open about being transparent and even sharing the deck that helped them raise. And then we also have founders are a little bit on the shy side and just want to do one-on-one calls.

Sramana Mitra: The Entrepreneur Journey series is a great story from a PR point of view. We’ve done thousands of these stories and the who’s who of the tech entrepreneurship world have been in the series. So, it’s a wonderful PR exposure for them.

Anyway, let’s get back to what else you have found interesting. This was a really cool use case.

What else are we invested in?

Lisa Chai: Yes, on the flip side, another company that we have investment in is another US-based company. They have an AI-powered diagnostic platform for cancer detection and drug discovery. It’s a traditional AI company but bridging that gap between physical and digital AI.

The company’s name is called Proscia, and they’re based in Philadelphia. We invested about four years ago. They have a platform called Concentric, which is AI powered, and it’s really built to accelerate drug development and diagnostics for pathologists and scientists. It’s currently being used by the top pharma leaders. Many of the diagnostic labs are also using it.

I think this is where the AI really shines in healthcare. It’s not just about helping physicians for that quicker and more accurate diagnosis, but also reducing that physician burnout. I really believe that we need to help pathologists and physicians from burnout and explain the time that patients receive their biopsy results.

I had a biopsy result last year. It took eight days for me to receive that. I thought it was kind of ridiculous. I’m like, with all this technology that we have, why do I have to wait eight days?

So, these are AI engineers and biology scientists that came together from Johns Hopkins. They spun out and they left the company to start this. I’m so proud of what the team has accomplished as a young team. They’ve hired some experienced operators to help build. It wasn’t always a very smooth path for them because, healthcare industry is super slow.

Sramana Mitra: Very slow.

Lisa Chai: And they don’t like new technologies coming into their industry, but they really stuck through it. They have grit. Recently, they had a very successful fundraising round led by Insight partners. I’m so proud to be the early investors of this company.

Sramana Mitra: You said they’re selling to pharma?

Lisa Chai: Yes, they’re selling to the pharmas for the research scientists for drug discovery. The other part of their business is, they sell to the pathology labs where you could use their software platform. That’s digitizing the entire workflow from the time that you send a biopsy, they upload the data using AI to detect whether these are suspicious looking sales. Then you’re able to kind of provide that output for the physician to deliver the results.

So, the two parts of business is great because when you have this type of software platform, it could be used both for the research community and the pharmas.

It can also be used in the lab setting. These research universities are, by the way, sponsored by the pharma to come up with new drugs.

Sramana Mitra: So Lisa, is this a seed investment for you?

Lisa Chai: We participated when I was still in global investing through the private funds there. We invested in the Series A round, and now they just completed Series C.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. The reason I asked you about the seed question is that the early-stage journey of these kinds of companies playing in the drug discovery ecosystem, or in the health ecosystem, in general, tends to be quite complicated.

I love to hear about how they have navigated the early-stage journeys to get to a point where investors are willing to write checks because they have to navigate a very cumbersome go-to-market strategy.

Lisa Chai: Yes. We were investing a little bit more A and B, and now we’re going a little bit earlier.

What I learned from them is the fact that you need to spend time talking to that early stage pre-seed seed investors. Otherwise, you’re going to waste a lot of time talking to the later stage investors that kind of pretend to be early stage, but they’re not.

Sramana Mitra: Yes. That’s that we have covered. At 1Mby1M, we focus very heavily on investor-entrepreneur fit. We are very careful about whom we send entrepreneurs to, just not to waste a lot of time.

Lisa Chai: Yes. Sometimes you can get the connection and you talk to them and maybe they’re ready. We have seen situations where later stage investors say, “I’m really ready for early stage.” You make the connection and take that leap. But you could usually tell as a founder by the kind of questions that they’re asking you. They’re going to say, “Why is your revenue only $4 million?” Or, and “You’re wow”.

Sramana Mitra: We’re very much aware of that.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Lisa Chai, General Partner at Interwoven Ventures
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