Welcome to Who Are These Startups?

podcast shorts featuring founder interviews of Canadian startups.

Welcome back to Who Are These Startups.

I am the startup coach founder of Toronto Starts and with me today is Amy Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of Vope Medical.

Welcome Amy.

Thanks for having me.

What does Vope Medical do?

So we are developing an AI driven software that improves vision and minimally invasive surgery.

This is compared to a mechanical cleaning process where a surgeon has to physically clean a camera lens.

We're taking a different approach and leveraging computer vision to clean the image feed that the surgeon sees so that surgeries can go on seamlessly and efficiently.

Is it for a specific type of hospital or specific type of surgeon?

It is for surgeons and patients and this is any surgeon that is performing endoscopic procedures.

So procedures that require a small camera lens to see a picture of the surgical site.

So for them, we're really solving the problem where as you can imagine, if you're performing surgery and can't see what you're doing, it's highly stressful and disruptive.

And surgeons really want to focus on the procedures they're performing and their patients.

So solving that problem for them.

And then on the patient side, with our software, we can actually reduce the time that they spend in surgery.

So that's better from a healing perspective and patient safety perspective.

So really developing the software for the surgeons and the patients.

What is your startup story?

This startup started from a surgical innovation program at McGill.

We interviewed 30 minimally invasive surgeons, found that vision is a problem where typically 37% of the total time in surgery, surgeons can't actually see clearly what they're doing.

So from there, we decided to address that problem with a different approach that is currently not on the market and really validated that problem with them and the product we're solving for using a computer vision approach and a software cleaning approach to cleaning this lens contamination.

And from there, really brought on different researchers on our team.

So we have a PhD researcher, Dimitri, who's our CTO from Miele, also Martin on our technical team to help us with the software development side of things.

So that's pretty much how we started and where we're at right now.

What drives you?

I have a background in industrial engineering, so I've always been really interested in optimizing processes and systems and I also have a really big passion for the healthcare industry and making improvements there.

So those two coupled and finding a solution to a persisting problem in the space that hasn't been solved yet is super motivating for me.

I think we have a chance to make a really big impact in surgery for patients and surgeons.

So thinking about that really, really drives me in the journey.

How do you define success?

I would define success in terms of our product to completely reduce all scope removals due to contamination such as fog or smoke.

So completely removing the need to actually take the camera out from the body and interrupt the surgery.

That would be really huge for us.

And then also to make sure that all of the distractions that arise from cleaning a camera lens can be reduced as well so that surgeons can stay completely focused on the procedures that they're performing.

What is your business model?

We are leveraging a licensing revenue strategy.

So there are optics companies that manufacture the camera systems.

And since we're purely software based, we have a module that integrates with these existing systems that are on the market.

And so our plan is to license our software to these companies who have the in with the hospitals already and the marketing reach since we offer a competitive advantage to them in terms of what they already offer and then improving their current offerings.

So licensing strategy and our product can also be applied to any type of endoscopic surgery, which is really exciting.

And that's why we're taking that licensing approach.

What is your funding situation?

Right now we're currently operating on non-dilutive funding that we have received through various pitch competitions in the Montreal startup ecosystem.

But in order to unlock the extra non-dilutive funding that exists from the Quebec government and the Canadian government, we're looking to raise 750K in dilutive funding sources.

So right now we're starting the process with reaching out to angel investors and VCs and also venture studios in the US as well as venture funds as part of the optics companies that I mentioned who are customers.

What's your biggest learning as a founder?

I would say pivoting and being comfortable with pivoting as you develop your product, not being too attached to one idea or feature or segment of the market, because as we have been validating our product and testing the use cases with the surgeons and the customers, we have had to change our path.

So really learning to be flexible and also be comfortable with being agile in your product development, depending on what the market truly needs.

What's your biggest lesson in pitching your startup?

That is, yeah, a fun question.

It's been really great pitching and being able to win funding from that process.

I would say throughout the my time pitching, we're currently incubated with Sentec and also Next AI who've been able to provide a ton of amazing feedback to us.

But that also means there's a lot of feedback from many different people.

So making sure that you don't try and integrate every single thing that every person says.

Otherwise, it's really difficult in a long process to truly integrate that, but collectively listening to all the feedback and trying to integrate it in a way that makes sense and being able to keep things in the presentation that people are interested by.

And I think that's a big part of the pitching process.

Do you have any tips for founders?

I think us interviewing 30 surgeons before we even thought of a product idea was really beneficial.

We were able to find out that there was a true need or a problem that had to be solved.

And in order to build on that and also come up with a product idea, having that initial feedback really helped us and also allowed us to get buy in in the pitch competitions as well.

So making sure that you're continually validating with your customers and your end users to make sure that it's something that they want.

Otherwise, you may not be able to sell your product, which at the end of the day is I think what we're all working towards.

What's one book every founder should read?

I would recommend 4000 weeks time management for mortals by Oliver Berkman.

For me, that book was really great because before I went full time on my startup, I was working full time doing a master's doing my startup and another side project and it talks about having a finite amount of time and dedicating yourself to what is truly important to you and really putting all your all into it, which I think can be scary sometimes, but could also have a high chance of rewards.

So putting that into perspective of how you spend your time and where you want to spend it, I would recommend that book.

Where can our listeners connect with you and vote medical online?

You can check us out on our website at www.vote.ai or on LinkedIn, we can be found at vote medical and then also by email Amy at vote.ai.

And all those links will be in the show notes for those listening on the podcast.

I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to be part of who are these startups.

Great.

Thanks so much for having me.

This has been Who Are These Startups?

Find out more at WhoAreTheStartups.com and check out our live events at TorontoStartups.com/events.

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