Today was a BIG day! We just won the New York City Entrepreneur Week 2009 Business Plan Competition .
This entire exciting and busy week was leading up to the final pitch today; a great pitch in the semi-final round on Monday and a smooth demo at the health 2.0 conference on thursday. As two of us were on our way to Colorado, our third partner was making an awesome pitch to the judges at the NYC ENT competition. He had been practicing and practicing and it all came through effortlessly when it mattered the most.
We were the last of the 7 final teams to present (selected from 21 semi-finalists)and it just so happened that as we landed at Denver, the pitch had begun. So we just holed up at the lounge of the airport (btw, the Denver terminals are really nice) and began following the event tweets(a sample below).
(@Ericschonfeld): ‘TrialX, lets patients use their health records to find clinical trial matches. Really smart’.
And then came the wait, almost for four hours (yes we kept waiting at the airport, both anxious but also enjoying our new found freedom of being in a big open space with super fast internet via the sprint air card). After a few hours of anticipation they finally announced….
That yes, TrialX had won!!! Absolutely, frickin Unbelievable! We were so excited that our Advantage Car rental guy also shared the excitement (btw – he was really nice and waived the fee for one day of the rental).
For a healthcare information technology company with a niche product and competing with some great tech companies in the NYC area, this was a big win. But more importantly, it is an acknowledgement of the potential of our technology to enable patients to find clinical trials of new treatments and connect with the trial investigators effortlessly.
As we take small steps to achieve our goals, such acknowledgements stimulate us to go leaps and bound. Thanks NYC ENT for giving us this opportunity and to all the judges for recognizing our efforts. And above all we thank all our users, who motivate us every day to keep doing our best in reducing the barriers to finding life-saving treatments.
Our journey has just begun and it coudnt come at a more exciting time as the healthcare industry lies at the cusp of major technology disruptions. And we as a young startup, hope to do our bit.