MedStartr 4.0: Enabling the Healthcare (r)Evolution

by Alex Fair

New York, TX United States Community BigData Equity Raise
All Team Company Patients Physicians Hospital Partners Innovation Details Due Diligence Docs Supporters Comments Updates

About our project

The problem we solve: Innovation in healthcare is hard. So is picking winners. The problem for startups and investors is figuring out which ideas to put their time and money into for the maximum impact and how to make them sustainable and profitable. The challenge for employers, healthcare providers, hospitals, executives, institutions, and governments is figuring out which innovators have the ideas that will help them achieve their goals faster, better, and at lower costs. As a result, innovation goes slower and healthcare, especially in the US, does not evolve fast enough.

About our solution: Since our 1st event in 2008, we saw that success in healthcare innovation was easier when you connect, collaborate and create with a crowd of like-minded, impact-oriented healthcare innovation enthusiasts from diverse backgrounds. In addition to running over 1,270 events, we created over 200 online platforms and discussion groups. This led to a global community of over 250,000 innovators and 1,300 MedStartr Mentors. We ran over 120 challenges and contests to help people select great ideas and many of our winners have found great success. Now it is time to scale up the platforms, programs, challenges and crowd-validation data to help everyone who cares about innovation help the ideas they love best. To do so we are doing three things: 1. Developing MedStartr.ai, a significant upgrade to this site 2. Expanding our #MedMo World Tour and Community Development 3. Opening a family of funds to invest in and accelerate the companies you like best.

Progress to date:

Briefly, here is our progress in each area noted above:

1. Online Platform: MedStartr.ai: With millions of site visitors here and billions of data points collected in over 100 different areas, we have built the large data model to predict which companies will be most likely to succeed.  On this site and others, we have built an audience that cares about innovation and wants to drive impactful change in healthcare.  We have been making rapid progress and will launch the alpha of the MedStartr.ai platform this summer. For now, we will run challenges, continue expanding our events and community building here, at MedStartr.nyc and in our MedStartr Salon. (Yes, we know this platform is no longer cutting edge, we cleaned it up a bit but are focusing on making the next one great - please report any bugs you find.)

2. Events and Community: Our community management platform, originally built in 2017 is being upgraded and rolling out across five cities.  With satelite communities in several cities already, we intend to recruit, sponsor and train community leaders in every major city to develop a global healthcare innovation ecosystem at scale.  With over 250,000 members and 1,273 events online and in 42 cities already, we have made great progress, but this is just the beginning.  See figure below.

3. Our Family of Funds based on risk and stage: MVF III-V: While SEC regulations prevent us from discussing the progress of our funds, syndicates, SPVs, or past performance, we can say this has gone well so far and if you are an accredited or institutional investor that fills out our KYC form AND are approved by our team, within this campaign site under the "Investor Information" tab is a full dataroom that has everything you need to know.  In general, though, we have performed well while others in the healthcare VC space have not.  If you would like to book a time to discuss, please contact Alex Fair or Bruce Kaufman, two of our founders.

Note: This is not a solicitation to buy or sell securities.  All investing bears risk and all investors should be prepared to lose their entire investment.  Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Investing in MedStartr Venture Funds is only for accredited investors.  Please review all investment opportunities with your trusted and licensed investment adviser.

About Our Team

Creator: Alex Fair

Education: Medical College of Wisconsin

Bio: While working on his Ph.D. in Pathology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Alex took a break to found his first health tech startup. That first company was bought by a company that had just gone public and he has never looked back, starting new companies and running them ever since. He still wants to cure cancer and fix healthcare, but now he does so by enabling thousands of new companies to get to market faster and more reliably. He has also served as adviser or mentor to over 120 startups, sits on boards, invests, and thinks of new ways to drive the evolution of healthcare faster. He lives in Manhattan and has two kids he is very proud of, just ask him!

Title: CEO / Managing Director

Advanced Degree(s): MS

About Team Members

Sharad Mishra
Venture Partner: Due Dilligence, MBBS, MBA
Biography: MedStartr Venture Partners co-founder, Physician, Crowdologist, and partner since 2017 in all things MedStartr. Healthcare innovation professional | Interested in new techs, ideas, concepts and in people who make them happen.
Title: Venture Partner: Due Dilligence
Advanced Degree(s): MBBS, MBA
Twitter: @CrowdfundVC
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsharad/

Mike Pence
CTO, A.B. Computer Technology
Biography: Tech lead for MedStartr since 2012, Mike Pence (not that Mike Pence) has developed 32 online platforms in partnership with MedStartr and our clients, including this one and the next one. Self-taught, like most of the best coders, Mike co-imagines and has built out some of the top sites you love and will love. Notably, he didn't build this version of MedStartr, which will soon be on the scrap heap, replaced by his next iteration.
Title: CTO
Advanced Degree(s): A.B. Computer Technology
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepence/

Jon Fair
Managing Director: Business Development, B.S., MBA
Biography: After careers in public service, media and real estate, Jon Fair (older brother to Alex Fair) joined the team when we opened our second fund in 2019. In 2020 he opened our business development division, enabling and brokering deals for the companies in our portfolio and beyond.
Title: Managing Director: Business Development
Advanced Degree(s): B.S., MBA
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-fair-6584358/

Robert Schinazi
Managind Director: Medical Devices, PhD, Industrial and Systems Engineering
Biography: With 35 years of experience building medical and consumer devices, Dr. Schinzi has served as an investor, advisor and mentor to MedStartr and portfolio companies since we began. As leader of our medical device efforts Rob has been a critical leader and "fixer" of medical device companies and has been a Board member since 2016.
Title: Managind Director: Medical Devices
Advanced Degree(s): PhD, Industrial and Systems Engineering
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-g-schinazi-ph-d-1a416927/

Jasper Cannon
Venture Partner: Dallas, MBA
Title: Venture Partner: Dallas
Advanced Degree(s): MBA

About Our Company

MedStartr Dallas

Location: 1 Main Street
2nd Floor
New York, TX 75021
US

Founded: 2025

Website: https://medstartr.com

Blog: https://about.medstartr.com/blog/

Facebook: http://facebook.com/medstartr

Other link: http://medstartr.nyc

Other link: http://medstartr.vc

Product Stage: In the Market

Employees: 1-2

How We Help Patients

How We Help Physicians

How We Help Hospitals

How We Help Partners

Innovation Details

Intellectual Property Summary

Our IP resides is several categories, each is discussed herein:

1. Trademark /Branding: The MedStartr Brand is well established and a trademark was issued in 2012.  Our unique logo is well recognized and in frequent use with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

2. Community / Collaboration: By building a community locally and globally since 2008, we have one of the strongest groups of healthcare innovation activists, builders, adopters, and investors we are aware of.  While there is no protection of such a community, this community and how we have managed the growth and expansion of that community is open source.  We publish rules of engagement and have built a culture and hundreds of community leaders who help the community grow and thrive.  This is a methodology we freely share within the community and also train other community leaders, both within and outside of healthcare, on the same.  As with all community building, sharing this IP builds bridges and enables inter-community collaborations and relationships when goals are aligned.

3. All Software and Content is copyrighted, but this doesn't really protect anyone except maybe from content farms.  Many organizations have seemingly "copied" us, but honestly, who cares?  If the goal is to drive healthcare innovation, then we are happy to help.  Building software is simple these days, and no one would want this code :)  The agentic AI version we are building next may be a different story and we may submit some patents around that.  We have done that before and have been awarded many for our portfolio companies and previous companies.  Passion can not be stolen, and that's the secret sauce around here: projects fueled by personal experience and the idea that we can make healthcare work better for everyone.  To this point, we have learned a great deal from organizations like Health 2.0 and so many of our community members, and even count Matthew Holt among our mentors and key influences.  We also "hyper-collaborate" with those who share the same passion for impact in healthcare. In point of fact, we have made 32 white-label versions of our software for collaborative organizations, built networks and communities on contract, designed award-winning city and country-wide health innovation programs, and taught our proprietary processes to aligned leaders and organizations all across healthcare. We consider teaching the MedStartr methods core to our mission of spreading innovation enablement and are happy to partner with any organization with similar mindsets. If this is you, please choose a reward that suits you, and let's schedule a call.

4. Algorithms, ML, AI, and our LDM: MedStartr has developed myriad proprietary algorithms to assess and predict the companies most likely to be successful since 2012.  We collect data in over 100 ways to do so, many of which are impossible to do without the unique websites we build.  We are constantly adding new analyses and now, with the help of AI, even deeper dives into the data.  We keep these methods trade secrets and while most are obvious from using the platform, many datasources and transforms are only performed in-house and thus kept confidential.  

Clinical Information

A note on Clinical Efficacy for what you find on the MedStartr sites:  All projects that are allowed to go live on MedStartr are reviewed for clinical efficacy data.  If they do not yet have it, we require preliminary data and  / or a plan to obtain it.  As we are considered "pre-marketing" publication, the FDA does not require us to perform duties similar to their own, nonetheless, we do not want to support claims that can not be made with our platforms and do our best to prevent such things.  We are providing best efforts, but please review all claims for clinical efficacy you see on the platform and always contact the creators of any project if you have questions before you buy, take, use,... any product or service you find on the platform.

Prediction Efficacy: In a study we did across the first 2,644 companies that entered our contests or used the MedStartr platforms we selected the top 3% based on the MedStartr Predictive model alone.  No additional review akin to due diligence or "cherry picking" was performed by the outside party (a 409A service provider) that performed the valuations.  The MedSartr System predicted success 22 better than a typical VC fund does, showing a statistically significant correlation (p<0.01).  The predicted IRR of that portfolio was over 187%.  In the seven years we have been running funds we have validated the model with actual investments.  Our IRR, MOIC, TVPI and exits to date speak for themselves and can be accessed through the Investor information areas of this campaign for accredited investors.

*Note: This is not a solicitation to buy or sell securities.  The "Invest" button is only an expression of investor interest, not actual investment.  Past performance is not a predictor of future returns.    All investment bears risk.  Please discuss any investment decision with your trusted, licensed professional advisor.  This site does not provide equity fundraising services, Reg CF or otherwise.. 

 

Regulatory Status

A funny thing happened with the FDA back in 2012 when we started.  Paypal, back then the biggest online payment processor involved in crowdfunding, gave us 30 days notice to shut down because we were "selling" non-FDA approved health and medical products and services.  So we set up a call with them and the FDA's legal lead for such things, Bakul Ptel.  Bakul explained to the Paypal team that what we were doing was considered "pre-marketing" research and was not only allowed, but encouraged as part of the process of enabling innovators in healthcare.  Papal backed down and we switched back to using Paypal two years later when they gave us a special deal for volume and because their tech was better.

As for the FDA status of the projects on the site, the FDA status is a required field and we review for all projects and involve our cadre of FDA experts as needed.

How we will use the funds raised

Investment Leads: We will set up a time to talk and go through the due diligence process.  Once the first closing for Fund III is done, we will utilize the funds to invest in and accelerate 130 companies as we have since 2016.

Donations and Rewards: See each individual reward, but in general, margins on the rewards are at least 25%.  Profits and donations will go towards web development, event management, rent, insurance, and staffing.

Thank You

Thank you for your interest, support, ideas, mentorship, and trust.  As a website, community, accelerator, and event platform builder for innovators and those who love to connect, collaborate, and create, we are nothing without you. We are inspired by the creativity and invention we see every day and have tremendous faith in what humanity can build if we work together.  MedStartr has been a collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people, which we expect to expand to millions in the next version.  Our donors, investors, creators, and partners have been critical since our first campaign, where we built the first version of MedStartr (1.0). The GE Healthy Imagination fund (Lisa Kennedy), HHS (Todd Park), AHA (Cheryl Pegus), and many others sponsored the creation of the Crowd Challenge platforms (2.0) and the AMA (Jeff Blackmen / Meg Barron) and Takeda backed the creation of this platform which increased engagement 42-fold in the first month and helped even more companies get found and funded faster with 396 teams applying to win that first challenge on the new platform (3.0).  We started our first fund and accelerator based on the data from that first challenge and the winner, Twiage, was our second fund exit.  Now, as we augment the model with AI agents, deeper data, and a better user experience, we are looking to you, our crowd of healthcare innovators, adopters, investors, and impact-driven enthusiasts, to get behind this effort.

We made many rewards to choose from, accept tax deductible donations and are happy to discuss investing offline or through our partners at Young America Capital, a registered and licensed Broker /Dealer.  With look forward to collaborating on the fund as well, although we can't talk about that much here.  We have garnered a great deal of support already and look to launch crowd challenges, ecosystem expansion to more cities, Fund III and MedStartr.ai version this summer. 

Once Again, Thank you for your support of us and the ideas that we love helping get found and funded faster.

Yours Truly,

Alex Fair

CEO, MedStartr

Managing Partner, MedStartr Capital 

Due Diligence Docs

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  • 54 Days left

$250,000 pledged of $5,000,000 goal
$250,000 Investor, Pilot & Parnter
interest to date.


Alex Fair

CEO / Managing Director
Medical College of Wisconsin

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Rewards All contributions are tax-deductible.

Important Disclosure: MedStartr.com is a website owned and operated by MedStartr, Inc., which is not a broker-dealer, funding portal or investment advisor; and neither the website nor MedStartr, Inc. participate in the offer or sale of securities. All securities related activity is conducted through Young America Capital, LLC, a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. No communication, through this website, email or in any other medium, should be construed as a recommendation for any securities offering.