On May 15th TIgerLabs, a New Jersey business accelerator, held its Health Demo Day at its headquarters located near the center of down town Princeton. Entrepreneurs benefiting from the accelerator’s many sources of support over the last six months made presentations to an audience of fellow entrepreneurs, investors, and interested healthcare professionals. Also, present were representatives of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Jumpstart Angel Network, New Jersey’s largest angel group.
TigerLabs was founded by entrepreneur Bert Navarette and a team of serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Its goal was to help grow the Princeton entrepreneurial ecosystem. Prior to Tigerlabs, Bert was a co-founder at Connected Sports Ventures, a startup that builds interactive sports applications for Connected TVs and second screen devices. His other previous positions included handling M&A and venture investments at Internet Capital Group (ICG) and Investment Partner at Mitsui & Co. where he led the New York Technology Investment Group. He has also served on the board of several notable companies such as The Wedding Channel (NASDAQ: KNOT) and has personally invested in early stage technology companies across a range of industries.
In his welcoming remarks Bert described the key factors that influenced his decision to start his technology accelerator in Princeton New Jersey and focus on healthcare. The state’s large healthcare industry was paramount in his thinking, “In New Jersey you are a stone’s throw away from big pharma. That proximity offers many opportunities to startups that include access to both industry talent and New Jersey’s highly educated workforce”. Bert also touted the Princeton location as being ideally situated between Philadelphia and New York. It provides a connection to both the healthcare industry and investment community across three large states.
The value of the New Jersey connection that Bert described was evident in the Demo Day presentations. Three of the six presenting companies that are resident in the accelerator were from outside of New Jersey and they came from as far away as Denver, the West Coast and even Berlin.
The depth of experience of the founders of the healthcare ventures was showcased in their presentations. Some had successfully exited other venturesan important element to investors considering an investment in the current venture. When asked about the depth of the management teams involved in the accelerator’s ventures Bert explained, “Healthcare startups are very difficult due to the nature of the product or service being complex and requiring a longer time to develop. The healthcare ventures with longer commercialization times place greater importance on the founders having prior experience, as well as having strong personal resources.”
Following the Demo Day TigerLabs starts another cycle through its accelerator. James Smits, Partner and Managing Director, handles the next program which he describes as a “university like” approach. That program which starts June 3rd focuses on student entrepreneurs drawn from both New Jersey and the surrounding states. It will run through the summer and will provide student entrepreneurs with capital, intensive mentorship, inspiration, and assistance that will continue after the end of the program.
Tigerlabs also extends an outreach to the broader entrepreneurial community of New Jersey through its “Commons”. The Commons provides flexible co-working space, a collaborative work environment, community events, and sources of diversion for the overworked entrepreneurs that is represented as “epic ping pong battles” for those who choose to become card carrying members of their accelerator.
For more information and the application for the next Healthcare Innovation Track, visit www.tigerlabs.co.
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HealthCare IT Demo Day Profiles:
CareTree: improves caregiver operations and communication with families by replacing paper records in the home, health and senior care industries with an online portal that centralizes information and automates communication with care stakeholders.
Team: Carl Hirschman, Brian Bauer, Dan Zauber, and Albert Pak
Location: Chicago
Site: caretree.me
Clue: Shows women when they are fertile, on their phone.
Team: Ida Tin, Hans Raffauf
Location: Berlin
Site: helloclue.com
DentBoard: Provides cloud-based business intelligence software to dentists, offering a roadmap to help dentists better manage their practices and increase patient standard-of-care.
Team: Caleb Bastian, Jose Garmilla, Tim Kunisky
Location: Princeton, Nashville
Site: thedentboard.com
LifeVest Health: Through a stock tied to each employee’s health, LifeVest connects dollars spent with actual improvements in health.
Team: Jon Cooper, Brad Patterson, Mike Logsdon
Location: Denver
Site: lifevesthealth.com
New York City Technology in Medicine: Building a series of apps based on a computer vision engine that analyzes pupil behavior to evaluate and monitor a host of medical conditions.
Team: Jeff Myers, Ryan Saleh
Location: New York City
Site: nyctm.com
PLOM.io makes model-based science social. Embraces the web to create a new collaborative ecosystem to deliver scientific results and unleashing the power of crowdsourcing to tackle global problems.
Team: Sebastien Ballesteros, Tiffany Bogich, and Joseph Dureau
Location: Princeton, Paris
Site: plom.io
