We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Idicula Mathew a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Idicula, appreciate you joining us today. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
The beginnings of Hera Health Solutions merely were a biomedical engineering research project at Georgia Tech. I helped develop the core technology behind the company as my senior design capstone. It’s sort of an understatement to say I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started. I had a passion for biomedical engineering and healthcare innovation, but I had no real experience in navigating the startup industry.
It was a steep learning curve and there were many challenges I had to face along the way at the seed stage. I had to learn how to pitch my idea, how to secure funding, and how to build a team. It was a challenging experience, especially as a young founder with little industry experience. But I had a great support system, including some early mentors from Georgia Tech and Atlanta; I was determined to make it work.
It wasn’t until a year into prototype building that I received an unexpected offer from a venture capital firm and startup building accelerator program. After weeks of meetings and due diligence calls, they were impressed by our technology and were interested in being an investor in our company, but there was a catch, they wanted me to move to Memphis, TN (a place I’ve never even visited before) – in less than four days.
“So, are you in?” “Yes, let’s do it”, I responded on the call excitedly. I quickly booked the cheapest flight to Memphis, figured out housing in Memphis, and packed up my entire apartment in a suitcase. It so turned out that the cheapest flight to Memphis had a 10-hour layover in Philadelphia.
It was during that 10-hour layover that I began to question my decision. I was sitting in an airport terminal with my suitcase and little prototype wrapped in tin foil in my backpack with nothing to do but second-guess myself. After a few stress-eaten cheesesteaks in me, I was calling and talking to everyone I could get a hold of to get more insight on the decision I just made. I got expert advice from everyone including my mom, cheesesteak vendors, uber drivers, and even one of my startup mentors that was a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur. Everyone had something different to say about how I should have maybe thought this through more. Before, I started to imagine all the things that could go wrong, I had landed in Memphis around 1 AM. I got into the city, and the streets were like nothing I’ve ever seen before – jam packed with horse carriages, excited crowds of people, music blasting everywhere. It turns out that I just flew into Memphis in May music festival which I didn’t even know about. As soon as I saw the excitement in Downtown Memphis, I knew that I was ready to buckle down and start building our company.
It was a crazy day – filled with great conversations and second doubts and the rollercoaster ride of emotions. Memphis turned out to be a great place to start a healthcare company. The people were friendly and supportive, and the ecosystem was ripe for growth. Thanks to the support and funding from the local venture capital firm, we were able to take our innovative ideas in nanofiber research to the next level and create a product that is currently going through the FDA and also now have many other technologies in the our pharmaceutical pipeline. We now look forward to more collaborative efforts with our current and future partners as we expand our technology and scale. At the end of the day, startup building includes many days where you jump into an abyss – and looking back, I wouldn’t change anything.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I was a recent biomedical engineering graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology when I decided to potentially take a past class research project forward into commercialization. Our research focused on a novel way to deliver long-acting therapeutics to the body for extended periods of time. I was always passionate about innovation in healthcare and was excited to see how our novel technological innovation could actually be used in the industry. We researched and identified that our technology could be a great use case in hormonal contraception release. Coming from an engineering background, our early investors urged us to focus on interviewing the customer before we built up any technology. Albeit reluctant at first, especially because I was a young guy talking to people (and especially women) about contraception – it’s safe to say that it wasn’t the most comfortable task. But eventually, our team and I sucked it up and got the hang of it. We spoke to over 500 people, experts, OBGYNs, medical device engineers, and pharmaceutical companies. We pinpointed the exact needs of the industry and customer and are now ever more confident about the market placing of our technology. We learned how there are billions of dollars invested into the discovery of new drugs, but the delivery mechanism to the body is often overlooked. Often times drug compounds are not as efficacious as intended due to drug adherence. And as a result, the space of drug delivery is a space that is ripe for disruption. This is where our technology comes in.
Our first product, utilizing our novel nanofiber-based drug delivery technology, is a first-of-its-kind biodegradable contraceptive-releasing implant. This product is currently undergoing trials for FDA approval. We have also pinpointed our technology in other key pharmaceutical areas including opioid addiction treatment, animal health medicines, and even oncology. We are currently exploring and conducting PoC trials with other pharmaceutical companies and API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient) manufacturers to use our drug delivery technology for existing and novel medicines. Needless to say, we haven’t stopped our customer discovery efforts. Our team still consistently meets with future customers, pharmaceutical companies, and physicians to learn about the evolving ecosystem and ensure that the technology that we are developing is much needed for the industry.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I grew up in a family of classic first-generation American immigrant entrepreneurs and had a front-row seat all throughout my childhood in witnessing resilience. My parents started their first small business when I was in the fifth grade. It was a local mom-and-pop-style restaurant in suburban Texas. Luckily, as a fifth grader, I landed my first job as the Chief Marketing Officer, I designed flyers on PowerPoint using ‘word art’ and my parents always made me feel like I had a board seat with voting powers when it came to making real decisions about the business. Throughout the years, I was able to take on many different roles all the way from cashier to inventory management to pastry chef. The real takeaway for me was that navigating a business is not easy, with high highs and low lows. During one of my high school Christmas breaks, I remember having to stay up all night helping fix a pastry catering order.
This mindset probably allowed me to stay calm throughout my journey with Hera Health Solutions. Throughout the years, our team has had countless sleepless nights working on and discussing IP strategies, manufacturing mix-ups, grant opportunity missed deadlines, and much more. If my childhood and entrepreneurial upbringing taught me anything, its that resilience is the name of the game and when you need to roll up your sleeves to make something happen, you’re not looking at the clock but the finish line.
Any advice for managing a team?
When you are the CEO of a startup, managing a team and maintaining high morale can be especially challenging due to the fast-paced, high-pressure environment and limited resources. There are many days that you may be doubting yourself but you can’t let that show to your new hires. A few best practices that I learned along the way include:
Be transparent: Share your vision and the company’s progress with your team regularly. This helps to build trust, and it also helps to keep everyone on the same page.
Be flexible: Startups are often characterized by rapid change and uncertainty. Be open to new ideas, and be willing to pivot when necessary.
Be supportive: Understand that the startup journey can be stressful for everyone. Provide support and be available to your team members when they need it.
Be realistic: Be honest about the challenges that the company is facing, but also be optimistic about the future.
Be hands-on: As the CEO of a startup, you are likely wearing many hats. Make sure to be actively engaged with your team and to lead by example.
Be generous with equity: Be generous with equity and make sure that everyone understands how they are a part of the company’s success, this will help increase employee retention.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.herahealthsolutions.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idiculam8
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/idicula_
Image Credits
Anthony Jakobs – Photographer