Highlighting Women Founders

Hello,

I'm kicking off a monthly email series to more broadly share insights, startups and knowledge on innovation and venture capital. Hope you'll enjoy following along ~ grateful to have you in my community as colleagues, partners, clients and friends!

I speak with startup founders and innovation stakeholders daily and this email series will highlight these interactions. More often, this email will shine a light on health and wellness, as this is an area I'm passionate to impact. With having a diverse network, I will also share happenings in other industries, markets and geographies, with the goal of bringing awareness to innovation and impact.

With this first email edition I wanted to continue the celebrations during Women’s History Month and highlight the below amazing female founders in my network and the work they are doing.

Dr. Natasha Shur, medical geneticist and innovator

Daniele de Mari, founder of Neurogram

Carly Simenauer, founder of Strapt

Jennifer Roberge, wellness & sustainability entrepreneur

If you'd like an intro to these founders or want to support them in some way (ex: connecting to your network of investors, customers or partners), please let me know.

Ok, let's dive in!

~ Alison

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Natasha Shur, a medical geneticist at Children’s National Hospital, who works closely with the Rare Disease Institute and the Sheik Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation. Dr. Shur has received multiple grants to develop innovations in pediatric growth screening for improved early identification and diagnosis of rare diseases.  

I met Natasha during a Virginia Venture Partner call, and connected on a topic that's important to both of us, rare disease.   We were excited to learn what the other is working on, which led to this interview.

First, I'd like to provide some high-level context on the rare disease market and total economic burden.

Rare Disease Market Size: 

In 2020, the Global Rare Disease Market was $161.4 billion, growing at a CAGR of 13.1% and estimated to be $547.5 billion by 2030.  Source: GlobeNewswire 

According to The National Economic Burden of Rare Disease Study, published in 2021, it is estimated there are more than 7,000 rare diseases affecting 30 million Americans and that half, 15 million, are children.

Estimated Economic Burden of Rare Disease:

The National Economic Burden of Rare Disease Study estimates in 2019 the overall economic burden of rare disease is $966 billion:  $418 billion in direct medical costs, with children having a higher per person direct medical cost, and $548 billion in indirect and non-medical costs. This estimated total of $966 billion surpasses other costly chronic diseases of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The findings in this study “demonstrate that the rare disease community has a significant unmet need with tremendous public health impact, one that requires urgent support to advance research and development of resources for prevention, management, and ultimately, cures of these often devastating diseases.”

With nearly a $1 trillion total economic burden, rare disease presents a massive opportunity area for innovation, identifying new ways to help improve care and treatment of rare disease. 

In this interview, we’ll identify an area of innovation for early identification and diagnosis of rare disease: pediatric growth screening. Innovations in pediatric growth screening enable doctors to better identify concerns for genetic rare disease by age 2 in children and triage sooner, helping to reduce overall patient and economic burden.

Interview Abstract:

• Babies grow the most in the first 6 months of life, a critical time in neurodevelopment
  

• Currently, the average age of diagnosis of a genetic syndrome can be between  2.5- 5 years of age
  

• With 3.6 million births in the US, we estimate 360,000 babies with growth concerns where 36,000 have an immediate need for referral - our goal is to work with multidisciplinary teams of pediatric providers to help identify and triage those children.
  

• When children have a genetic diagnosis, they're often special growth curves available for the particular syndrome. However, these growth curves are not always easily accessible in electronic medical records (EMRs) - some EMRs have curves automatically available, while others do not.  And the paper versions are not always in pediatric clinics. Additionally, these special growth curves are often based on very small, homogenous populations of patients.
  

• Better growth analysis with clear evidence-based algorithms and improved comparisons with each syndrome can help clarify when changes are concerning
  

• Blue and pink growth curves only became standard of care in 1977 when the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) adopted the growth curve as a clinical tool for health.  The last several decades there have been many improvements but limited innovation in the way pediatrics measurements are obtained and analyzed.  
  

• Routine growth screening can be done more uniformly with better risk stratification so providers can instantly focus on children with highest level of concern: 1) Measurements could be more accurate, particularly length and head 2) Uniform interpretation of growth patterns and interval velocity could be better and faster 3) Clear communication to families and caregivers regarding children’s growth could be more understandable and instant 4) Identifying children who need more evaluation and specialty referral.
  

• To increase education and awareness, Children’s National, along with the Rare Disease Institute and Dr. Kevin Cleary's team created the app Gene Clips, educational videos on genetic topics and testing.
  

• Future opportunity in pediatric care is in optimizing digital scales, measuring tools and analytics.   

Thank you Dr. Shur for the work you are doing to help identify and diagnose children earlier with rare disease! I'll be continuing to follow Natasha on her entrepreneurial journey as she develops innovations in pediatric growth screening.

Highlighting Atlanta female founders

Neurogram

Daniele de Mari studied neuroscience at Georgia Tech and with four years research experience in neurophysiology, she founded Neurogram in January of 2021 because of the need for better tools to inspect EEGs in research and clinical neurophysiology.

I listened to Daniele pitch during a startup event held by Atlanta based Startup Runway in 2022 and was inspired with what she was building and the potential impact of Neurogram.

Neurogram's AI allows for increased accuracy in diagnosing neurological diseases, saving patient lives, cost and doctor's time. Beginning with epilepsy, Neurogram can receive an EEG exam and return only the epilepsy biomarkers with 97% accuracy in as little as 60 seconds.

Most neurological diseases are manually diagnosed by doctors who visually search for anomalies. Because of this manual process, 30% of people with epilepsy are misdiagnosed.

Neurogram helps to more quickly identify epilepsy, with the ability to summarize 8,000 EEG screens into 1-2 screens, decreasing doctor inspection time from 1-2 hours to 5 minutes. 

Neurogram can be applied to any diseases detected by electrophysiological equipment and is easily integrated with existing hospital equipment through API and file uploads.

Other potential markets for Neurogram include Dementia, Sleep, Ischemic Stroke and others.

Neurogram currently has contracts with a Brazilian neurology clinic and neurology equipment provider, and partners with two portable EEG companies from Australia and Canada. Overall, they have contracts for more than 30,000 of EEG hours to build their data set.

Neurogram is backed by Starship Ventures.

Current asks:  Connections to potential partners and customers in Brazil and USA; Connections to investors as currently collecting commitments.

Interested in an intro to Daniele at Neurogram? Click the button below.

Strapt

I met Strapt founder, Carly Simenauer, at a startup event in Atlanta in 2022 and was inspired by her bold confidence.

With Strapt Vending, she's expanding access to personal care through automated, data-driven product sampling, helping connect brands to consumers. Strapt is initially focused on the feminine hygiene products market, then expanding into beauty and other personal care.

Strapt's value includes their interactive marketing and data analytics platform. Strapt creates engagement with brands' promotional content, driving measurable traffic, conversions and upsell opportunities, helping brands better understand and target their customers. With Strapt, brands see 68% email open rates by customers.

Strapt comes at good timing in the market, where in the last 5 years, 17 states + DC have passed legislation mandating free access to menstrual products. Other countries are also following suit and now universities are vending products for women's health.

You can find Strapt at some of the most popular hot spots in Atlanta and in May, Strapt will be going into Mercedes-Benz Stadium (where the NFL Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer Atlanta United FC play), among other businesses. Strapt's brand pipeline includes feminine hygiene brands, Cora and STIX, among others.

Strapt is backed by Outlander VC.

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Current asks:  Brand sponsor for dispensers going into Mercedes-Benz Stadium - if you have a contact, please send email to the address below or reply to this email; Connections to potential brands for pipeline; Connections to investors as currently collecting commitments.

Interested in learning more about Strapt? Email founders@straptvending.com

Interested in an intro to Carly at Strapt? Click the button below.

Jennifer Roberge

Please meet one of my dear, good friends, Jennifer Roberge. Jennifer is a humble and tenacious entrepreneur, with a passion for holistic living and sustainability. Jennifer lives with her husband, two kids and Sheepadoodle in Montreal, Canada. And I love that her birthday, March 8th, aligns perfectly with International Women's Day during Women's History Month.

Jennifer's creativity and marketing savviness have been the catalyst for her entrepreneurial pursuits. Her entrepreneurial journey began when seeking support for her son's severe eczema when he was 3 years old. This experience led her to start her first blog, Its an Itchy Little World, as a way to connect with parents going through challenges of managing severe eczema. After much research and trial and error, Jennifer was able to heal her son's skin naturally by 98%, which encouraged her to adopt a more natural, non-toxic lifestyle and inspired the idea for her first business, The Eczema Company, in 2011.

With The Eczema Company, Jennifer personally curates all products - everything is 100% natural and is tested on eczema prone skin. Through product curation, Jennifer learned honey was naturally anti-inflammatory and that sparked the idea to develop an Organic Manuka Honey Cream that is 100% natural, soothing and good for diaper rash, sunburn, psoriasis, eczema, etc. She began selling the manuka honey cream on Amazon, generating rave customer reviews. Jennifer also decided to develop a line of clothing called Remedywear, designed to soothe and protect eczema and psoriasis, with fabrics aligned to her holistic and environmental values. With these products, she launched her second business, YoRo Naturals.

Jennifer has bootstrapped her way to over a million dollars in revenue, all while raising kids from toddler and baby to now teens and inspiring her husband to become a successful entrepreneur.

If running two businesses and managing a family household while traveling around the world wasn't enough, Jennifer co-launched her third business, The Kind Pet, in 2022, to bring sustainable products to pets and the planet. With The Kind Pet, Jennifer makes it easy to shop by values such as compostable, recycled, upcycled, organic, plastic free and more.

Jennifer is keen on reducing her carbon footprint and making a positive difference on the planet. She's a fierce sustainability advocate on initiatives like zero-waste and bank divestments from fossil fuels, among other.

Learn more about Jennifer's businesses via the buttons below!

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