If you know how startup accelerator programs work, 18 is a seriously impressive number to achieve in 12 months. Having a program that can put that many startups, that quickly, through a rigorous process, enabling them to launch effectively out into the world, deserves some major praise. And I’m about to give it to them.
Hats off to gBETA MedTech! And especially to the program manager who runs it, Adam Choe. Adam is the man! If you’re not familiar with this program (a part of gener8tor Minnesota), it’s a free, seven-week accelerator that works with medical device, healthcare-
related software, biotech, and diagnostics startups. In 2018, it successfully ran three — count ’em, three! — cohorts of six startups each. So, yes, it prepared a total of 18 healthcare-related startups, from Minnesota and beyond, to go out and raise money, continue their product development, build out their teams, and start hitting their milestones. And it did all that very, very well.
I can say that because, as a gener8tor mentor since 2016, I was involved throughout. I have met and heard the pitches of every single one of those 18 startups — at least twice, actually. The highlight is always the final pitch of these startups at the demo night for each cohort, called “LiveBeta,” an event attended by at least a few hundred folks here in the Twin Cities (a large percentage of which are investors). That is where these founders shine! And you can really see the progress they’ve made during the seven-week program.
Hundreds gathered at the JJ Hill Center in St. Paul to hear the Fall 2018 gBeta MedTech class give their pitches.
I have never ceased to be impressed when I attend these demo nights that gener8tor and gBETA put on (and I’ve attended each and every one since gener8tor came to Minnesota in 2016). These founders get on stage and deliver amazing, very well prepared pitches that really focus great attention on the problem they’re solving and the attendant market opportunity. (And they each must have a total addressable market of hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, to participate in the program.)
The 18 startups that completed the gBETA MedTech program in calendar year 2018.
You can bet you’ll be hearing more about many of these startups going forward. Remember these 18 names! You can click through and read more about them on gBETA MedTech’s site here.
And what’s more impressive than 18? Well, try 23. That’s actually the total number of startups that gener8tor graduated here in Minnesota during 2018 when you count the five that went through its main equity program during the summer. (One of which is healthcare.) Congratulations to those startups as well: Cellular EMT, FaithBox, Onepanel, SpeechMed, and Virtue Analytics. I wrote about that cohort here.
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P.S. I should also mention here that the very first gBETA startup I mentored, which was part of the first class in Minnesota in late 2016, happened to be healthcare related — and it went on to be acquired just two short years later: CoreBiome. Congrats to them!
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