According to the NY Times, investors are beginning to take an interest in science, engineering, and clear-technology startups again. There was a long period of time during which investors “shied away” from science startups, but those days are over. It’s a new era of scientific funding, and in an effort to encourage those investments, here are a few scientific startups that prove it’s possible to earn money and help the world through technological and scientific achievement.
The Founders Fund and the Power of Social Media
Advanced coding has resulted in some of the best apps and social media technologies. The Founders Fund, a group of investors, smartly backed “social networks like Facebook and Yammer and the streaming-music service Spotify.” Those companies are all household names today, and used by millions worldwide. Reddit is another fine example of a startup that resulted in buckets of money for its investors. Coding is a technology worth investing in.
FirstApp is another health-tech company that operates to develop applications specifically in the healthcare industry. The Mobile Clinical Trial Congress held in Edinburgh in April reinforces that 50% of healthcare and clinical trial industry still uses the manual “pen and paper” to capture data which is not efficient in this day an age. FirstApp, a company that developed mHealth applications using customized development as well as the Apple ResearchKit, enables data to be captured via surveys, questionnaires and integration with EMR. FirstApp is proving to streamline the patient and clinician engagement by encouraging a smoother way to capture data via a smart device i.e. smartphones, iPads and tablets.
Startups Improve the Efficiency of Healthcare
According to Inc.com, “Paper medical records are quickly becoming relics of the past.” It’s expensive to update all those paper records to Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Or, is it? Enter PracticeFusion, a cloud-based cost-efficient way to quickly update paper records to EMR. Moreover, the service is ad-supported, so it’s completely free to all who wish to use it. “As a result, PracticeFusion is the fastest growing EMR community in the U.S. with over 150,000 medical users who have access to the health records of 33 million patients.”
Another rapidly growing healthcare startup is drchrono iPad Patient Care Platform, which helps doctors do their jobs. The iPad is capable of running an entire practice, and includes EMR storage and the ability to “paperlessly bill any U.S. insurance company.”
These are just two examples of the hundreds of healthcare startups that are both scientific achievements and capable of easing a human’s workload.
Bioscience Startups Generate Jobs
According to the University of California San Francisco, “When QB3 opened its ‘garage’ for bioscience entrepreneurs in 2006, detractors deemed it a quixotic venture, sure to fill with aspiring startups that would never leave campus.” These detractors couldn’t be more wrong. “Six years later, QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and its partners have helped launch 60 new bioscience companies…” Moreover, the science startups have generated more than 250 jobs.
Pacific BioStorage was a startup incorporated in 2000. Its founders understood the need for more compliant off-site biological repositories. Biological storage provides necessary support to the bioscience community because it provides secure storage of sensitive and sometimes dangerous materials. According to the company’s website, it is “The first and only Independent, offSite cGMP compliant biostorage facility in Southern California.”
A Piece of Advice for Scientific Startups
You spend a lot of time in a laboratory or research facility. Your idea is a good one, but do you know how to market that idea? It’s sometimes harder for scientists to deal with investors because they struggle with the entrepreneurial and marketing aspects of their business. If necessary, try to learn some communication and marketing skills. Don’t be afraid to hire a marketing professional to handle this department of your startup.
All-in-all it’s easy to see that scientific startups are on the rise, and will continue to make great technological strides. If you’re a scientist, now is the time to seek out investors and crowd-funding opportunities for your great idea. If you’re an investor, now is the time to seek out innovative new technologies and scientists to invest your dollars in.
