Life after Montreal Startup Camp 2.0

Last Thursday's event leaves me with mixed feelings.

First, I think that I was OK overall. The first few minutes of the presentation went actually pretty well as it was very focused and clear. Then I made the mistake of exposing a 20,000-foot view of the long-term vision, which scared and confused people. At the same time, the experience that I had in other occasions with experts of the healthcare industry confirmes that the vision is right, realistic and feasible.

Second, there were actually very few real investors and lots of watchers. Not a good thing both from a funding perspective and from a market protection perspective.

In the end, I made some nice contacts and received a few appreciation/encouragement emails. It also obviously allowed me to try and test the various components of my sales pitch with a very diverse audience and get some tough (though expected) questions.

Now I'm questioning my funding approach. VCs and angels can't be knowledgeable in all industries, even if there are some universal principles (risk/return balance for instance). From now on, I think I'll focus much more on investors that actually know healthcare inside out. They are proving to be very receptive to the idea and are better positioned to help me avoid pitfalls.

In my last post, I mentioned that I would be attending Montreal StartUp Camp 2 and that I was hoping to get selected to present the Healthivate concept. Well, done deal!!! Philippe Telio just informed me that Healthivate was selected to present! Needless to say that I’m extremely happy. There seems to be some very interesting concepts among the other attending start-ups and it will be very interesting to hear about them too.

On other fronts, Healthivate is definitely getting VC’s attention, including some big names. I don’t want to settle only for the required seed funding, although it could be tempting. In many ways, it’s also about putting the right team together. Who the investors are is strategically more important than the amount of funding they can put on the table.