From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Michael Morris, CEO of Torc (Part 1)

Michael has not only transitioned successfully from a developer to an entrepreneur, but he has also built communities of developers and 2-sided marketplaces around them over and again. Torc is his third run at this overall mission of enabling and empowering developers to have great careers.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 5)

Deepak Gaddipati: If you’re over 65, that person is 33% likely to fall. Of the 33%, 20% will get a major injury, about 6% will have falls with major injuries. Once you have a fall with a major injury, your immediate cost is about $34,000 for treatment. If a person falls – not just falls with injury – the likelihood of dying within the next 12 months is over 70%. The stats are pretty much stacked against someone who falls.

When we look at hospitals, it was reacting. What we did in 2016 was we took a portion of the company and asked them to work on the LiDAR technology in-room. We had a sensor that goes on the wall. It reconstructs the whole room in 3D and figures out where everything is.

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many nursing homes are using the product?

Deepak Gaddipati: We did a lot of trade shows. In 2018, we got connected with Ziegler, which is an investment banker that does underwriting for hospitals and nursing homes. Whenever you want to build a new nursing home or a new hospital, they put out bonds and they raise $50 million, $100 million, or whatever it is.

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you raised angel financing, did you already have these nursing homes working with you on the pilot?

Deepak Gaddipati: No. First, we developed the product. We looked for the biggest physical therapy conference. There was one conference in Vegas within three days. They had a booth open, so we bought it. We wanted to present at this conference to see if the product sticks. We hustled. On the spot, we sold a couple of systems. We said we were going to deliver within three months.

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we in now?

Deepak Gaddipati: 2012. In 2013, we licensed some of the technologies we developed and started Virtusense. The single objective when I started was to prevent falls. I was very passionate about it. I really wanted to figure out a solution. We didn’t have a solution, but we had a lot of ideas and technology on how to do it.

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t really have an idea of what market you were going after. Are we talking B2C?

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 1)

Deepak has built a capital-efficient fall-detection company from Peoria, Illinois with a backend engineering team in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

It’s an impressive entrepreneurial journey with a mission-driven company that is making real impact in the lives of seniors with fall risk.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about financing. Before the pivot, you raised $3 million. What happens after the pivot?

Felix Ohswald: We raised $600 million in all.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next round immediately after the pivot?

Felix Ohswald: We pivoted in 2019. We had 12 months where we tested out a couple of things. At the beginning of 2020, we raised our Series A round of €8 million from a VC firm in New York and London. With that money, we pushed in our international expansion.

From Developer to Solo Entrepreneur to $5M+ Revenue: Sporcle Founder and CTO Matt Ramme (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is the financial engineering of an acquisition like this? You have not raised any money for this company, right?

Matt Ramme: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: Private companies acquiring private companies is very complicated to pull off. Talk a little bit about that.