Music. Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews, and live events. Welcome back, everybody. This is Joe from StartupRate.io, your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, also known as the Authority on GSA, German, Swiss, and Austrian startups. Our journey at the Business Angel Day 2024 in the lovely city of Mainz continues.
In this episode, we'll explore innovative ideas and transformative discussions that emerged during this event. From key investment trends to breakthrough technologies, get ready to hear firsthand from industry leaders and rising stars in the startup scene. Don't miss out on this inspiring and innovative episode. And please, please keep in mind that is also a live recorded version on site. So the interviews were taken on site.
There may be a little bit background noise, but we did our best to really delete this. Happy to get your feedback. Go down here in the show notes and leave us feedback in the feedback form. Thank you and have a good day. Hello and welcome to another interview from the Business Angel Summit 2024. I would like to welcome Thomas Roth from Incipio. What specific challenges in surgical planning does Incipio address and who are your primary target customers?
There are more than 6 million surgeries every year that require pre-operative surgical planning. Surgical planning is necessary when it comes to designing transplants or implants, patients specifically, such as... Facial reconstructions after tumor removal that's actually where we are starting, we will then scale from head and neck surgery into orthopedics because there's many interesting cases there these kinds of surgeries take place in hospitals university hospitals rather big hospitals.
Where they have the capability capabilities of treating the patients like that and the decision makers are usually the surgeons in the hospitals for the better patient treatment um you have one example a skull on your on your booth could you elaborate a little bit more on the specific example what is happening there and how your tool helps imagine you have a patient that has a bone tumor in the lower jaw or mid face these kind
of bone tumors have to be removed and the resulting gap in the jaw has to be closed of course so that the patient can chew and speak again properly and therefore a transplant from the own patient's body is used. For example, parts of the pelvic crest, the fibular bone or the scapula. And these bones have to be not removed but parts of them and will be taken and installed in the facial area to close the defect. That's the medical gold standard and we're not changing that.
We're changing the planning and designing of these transplants. Today, this is a very cumbersome and manual process. Surgeons have no tools or time to take care of that. So today, this is a very outsourced process. They have to outsource the planning to engineers out of the clinics, which costs a lot of time, takes a lot of their time. Costs a lot of money and leads to delays of several hours in worst cases, in extreme cases.
And basically, somebody external is planning for the surgeon and then the surgeon starts the surgery. And then at one point they realize, oh, that was a mistake in planning. Does this happen?
It might be possible usually they detect misplanning or imperfections before that because the surgeons usually check the results of the external engineers before they continue, however it still is a pain in the ass for them because if there's any anything incorrectly planned they have to set up another video call to discuss the changes and tell them what to do differently. So again they have to have the second or third web meeting which again takes their time.
These engineers only work from nine to five and during that time the surgeon is in the operating room so they don't really have time for that. With our automated solution they can do it whenever they want and wherever they want within seconds. Could you elaborate on the current development stage of Incipio and any significant milestones achieved to date? Yes of course. Incipio is a spin-off of the University Hospital RWTH Aachen. That's where the idea was born.
We have started with an idea and a patent application and what we have achieved so far is our patent is granted in the EU and the US for our novel technology. We have a very strong prototype that is almost completed and ready for use and we are working on the certification of our software as a medical device. Our company is already ISO certified and we already have a very strong and interdisciplinary team set up. We may add Germany is pretty strong in engineering, but your school is one of
the premier institutions for engineering. That's right. What are your current funding status and are you seeking additional investments or partnerships to extend your solution? Zipio is currently raising 2 million euro and we already have commitments of roughly 1 million. We are about to close the financing round in the next couple of weeks and with that we will get the market certification entering the market and growing our team and what was the rest?
Partnerships oh yeah and we are always interested in partnerships we are currently looking for investments mainly but we are always interested in partnerships at its clinics let me start it again, we are always looking for partnerships we are well connected in the medical world because of our spin-off situation we are well connected in germany also switzerland especially but also further abroad we're interested in speaking to additional renowned
surgeons in top hospitals around the world that are interested in medical innovation we are also interested in partnerships with medical device manufacturers and collaboration partners but mainly looking to close our fundraising at this point what strategies are you employing to integrate into existing surgical workflows and how are you approaching customer acquisition we have chosen a very lean setup of our technology Surgeons can use our technology in the web browser,
so it doesn't have to be integrated in the IT systems of the hospital, nor does it have to be installed on every computer in the hospital. Only a few decision makers and planners in the clinic will use our technology and we have the direct connection to them. So it's a very smart and easy approach to get installed or get into the hospitals. What approach do you use for customer acquisition?
One of the biggest advantages of Inzipio is that we are the spin-off of the University Hospital and our co-founder, Professor Ali Modaba, is a key opinion leader and head and neck surgeon. So that brings a lot of credibility and we don't have to do cold calls mainly, we always get the doors opened through Ali, through our network and that helps a lot when reaching out to users in the clinics.
What KPIs are you monitoring to assess the effectiveness of Incipio and what outcomes have you observed so far? I'm not sure if this question is relevant because we are pre-revenue, pre-market. We have some internal KPIs. Of course, we have some KPIs established in our company. For example, we are following an agile development approach in our IT and tech team.
So, we're doing sprint planning and detailed sprint reviews after two weeks, seeing whether our time scheduling and forecasts worked out. And we are getting better and better in accuracy and precision. And of course, we have some financial KPIs and controlling KPIs that we are following. Great. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. It was my pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Hello and welcome to another interview from the Mrs. Angel Summit 2024.
Hi, can you introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Julia and I'm from Carbon Instant. What problem does your startup solve and who is your target customer? Our startup really solves the question. Today, the concrete industry is quite CO2 intensive in their production. So if you produce cement today globally, that's about 8% of the global CO2 emissions.
One of the main problems in terms of climate change. And we work with a negative emission technology where we treat this negative emission technology so that it can actually be included into, for example, concrete. Instead of bodies, you're cementing carbon dioxide.
We are working with Biochar and Biochar is one of the recognized negative emission technologies by the IPCC and we developed a patented process where you can actually treat the Biochar so that it gains, for example, reactivity and is better usable really for the guys in the construction industry. And it basically absorbs more carbon dioxide than it produces? No, actually, the storing process happens really at the beginning.
So the process in general, you have CO2 in the air, plants take up the CO2. For example, the trees, they grow, they build themselves basically out of carbon and release the oxygen back in the air. And once, for example, a biomass is not used anymore, for example, if a tree is like the leaves are cut, they fall down. Usually they degrade or today they get incinerated often.
And we work with a process called pyrolysis, takes this waste biomass basically and basically fixates the carbon in a solid form. And this this is a negative emission material and what we do there are a lot of really cool people doing this a lot of good plants and plant technologies and we are really treating in this carbon so that it can be used in the construction way in a in a way that actually has a functional benefit.
What is your current stage of development and what milestones have you achieved so far? So far, we have patented our process. We have found partners in the industry to really scale the process, the first patent process that we have, and now we're on the verge of scaling the second and third. In terms of, you're at the Business Angel Summit, in terms of funding, what would you say is your current stage?
So far we are funded with turnover and grants and we have just got the first Business Angel round set up.
Now we're really looking for partners or Business Angels that want to come to us but have some additional know-how so we're really looking for for business angels from the industry like construction industry cement industry anything in that direction would be really cool somebody would knowledge in chemistry would also be welcome and we do have a couple chemists on board already but if you if you're from that area you're always welcome to have a chance in terms of VC terminology
are we talking about seed or pre seed I'd say we probably, kind of in the middle, like with the first product, we are already in the market and with the second, we're still a bit in the scaling process and the prototyping. What is your go-to-market strategy and how you're acquiring customers or users? So, we really have a licensing model so that we are not going to be the people really producing the materials. It's a lot of great people that can do this already.
We're really enabling the people along the supply chain to do this. Ah, yes. We're really lucky. We have a couple of very good industry partners, and of course they themselves are quite well connected. And we have some people in team which are really good connected in the construction industry as well. What key metrics or KPIs are you tracking and what results have you observed so far? So what does your startup have to do better? Yeah.
For us, really the key is functionality. So for us, to have a solution which is really good is really that we can outperform conventional material. Do you have any metrics that you can quote here? For example, we are always looking at reactivity, we're always looking at, of course, the standard things like compressive strength, flexural strength, but also metrics which are a bit more delicate, like, for example, durability and, of course, CO2 footprint is one of the main things as well.
Can you give us a rough idea? You're better like two times, five times, 50 times?
We're still working on this but it looks like we we will probably be a bit better than um than the one i can i can tell a bit more once the patent is released next year, okay so you cannot tell due to patent restrictions okay thank you very much it was a pleasure having you thank you so much i'm bringing you another interview from the business angels summit, germany 2024 hey can you introduce yourself briefly hi my name is christoph grün i'm um CEO of Kavichan.
We are a spin-off of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and we are aiming to revolutionize oxygen sensing in 3D cell cultures. How do undetected side effects during drug development impact the pharmaceutical industry and how does Kevigin aim to address this issue? So, if you are looking at the drug development at the moment, most of the cell cultures are done under ambient atmosphere,
so far away from the human conditions. with the results that the results of your experience are not direct transferable to the patients. So side effects can occur and with every side effect the time to market is longer for the drugs. This means for example up to 45 million dollars. This can lead to up to 200,000 of deaths due to side effects in Europe alone. So this is a high impact that you have good in vitro models for your drug testing.
What specific challenges in in vitro testing does Kevigen address and who are your primary customers? So you need a drug development in vitro model that's close to the human body. Not only that you have 3D cell cultures, but you need the right oxygen concentration. For example, in the heart, you have around 5% of oxygen. Current methods are done under ambient atmosphere with around 20% of oxygen. So you need to adjust the setting to the human conditions.
And this can be solved with our products. And you're already holding something in your hand. Can you show that? Yeah. We are using... Yeah, you can't... Maybe you can't see it. These are micro-cavities. They are around 300 micrometers in diameter.
And these micro cavities are out of an oxygen sensitive polymer film we thermoform it to these cavities and now you can culture your cells in this tiny little micro cavities and measure oxygen in the direct micro environment of the cells and with our technology you can get up to 15 000 of micro cavities in such a blade which means you can do high throughput experiments and create a lot of results on a single plate.
Could you elaborate on the current development stage of Kevigin and any significant milestones achieved to date? Well, the last four years we've done our proof of concept of this technology. We created first prototypes and now in the seed round we are looking for investment to bring the idea from the prototype phase to the market.
What is your current funding status and are you seeking additional investments or partnerships, and at the moment we are funded by the helmholtz association with a funding program and we are in a seat financing route and looking for up to 500 000 euros for the first round, to bring this idea to market we need investment for sales and for software development.
What strategies are you employing to integrate Kevigin's technology into existing drug development workflows and how are you approaching customer acquisition? We can integrate our technology directly in the drug development process because you can do your current methods like microscopy as well in our microplates. So we add additional information in the ongoing process.
This means customer can easily integrate our system in the process and in the end, with our method, you have one system from the beginning of generating spheres and organoids to the end, to the results.
With our system, you can start by generating the spheres and organoids, adjust to a physiological oxygen level, do your experiments under conditions that are transferable to humans, and also do your ongoing methods like microscopy or other essays, and in the end get results that are next level because you have done it under physiological conditions.
What key performance indicators, KPIs, are you monitoring to assess the effectiveness, of Kavigen's solution and what outcomes have you observed so far? So far we can see that you can significantly reduce your time of experiments because, as I mentioned, with one system you can do the whole process from generating the cell cultures to the results. This is one thing, reducing the time of your experiments.
And you can also do high-throughput experiments. As I mentioned, 15,000 spheres on one blade. Current systems mostly can do like 100 to 400. So you're significantly scaling up the process? You're scaling up the process, reducing time, reducing money because you are saving time and you don't need so much sales for your experiments. You have a higher number of data. You can do more statistics, get better results and with a higher impact.
Do you have a rough idea how much faster the process is with you? It's hard to just say in general because it depends on every single process, on the application, on your organ type. But what we can say is that we can provide a solution for different applications because of our process. We can adjust the sizes of the micro cavities to the specific need. So with this in mind, it's hard to say, okay, we can reduce it five times because every process is different.
And if you're looking for spheres, organites, yeah, you have great difference. But with our system, we can cover the whole thing, starting with small spheroids up to bigger or larger organoids. So, yeah, you have to look at a specific experiment. Great. Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you for the interview. My pleasure. Music.