By Christopher McAndrew (EMBA ’16)
Koniku Ltd., a startup focused on improving clinical trial success rates in the pharmaceutical industry, took home the top prizes at the MIT Global Startup Workshop held this year in Guatemala City and hosted by Universidad Francesco Marroquin (UFM), Guatemala. I was happy to represent the Koniku team and put into practice some of things we had studied just weeks earlier in Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, the class taught by one of the team advisors, Anderson’s Professor George Abe.
My UCLA Anderson EMBA colleague Christina Salys (’16) entered our team in the competition after learning about the program through an email from the Price Center for Entrepreneurship. Koniku’s team represented the global nature of the program, with us as members from UCLA Anderson, along with Laura Brightmann and Mark Brown from the University of Cambridge and Oshiorenoya (“Osh”) Agabi from Imperial College London. Christina, Osh and I traveled to Guatemala to present as finalists in the Business Plan Competition that highlighted the workshop.
The Business Plan Competition was open to early-stage startup companies from around the world. With clinical trails failing over 85% of the time, Koniku developed a system, based on Osh’s Ph.D. research, that allows drug developers to replicate human organ drug interactions using “lab on a chip” technology in order to radically improve preclinical testing procedures. The competition organizers received over 120 applicants in the first round and eight finalists were selected to present their plans to a panel of judges in Guatemala. Finalists were given five minutes to present their plans followed by a three-minute Q&A session with the judging panel.
Our teammate Osh was flying in from London, and once we all hit the ground in Guatemala City it was nonstop work. One of the judges noted that he knew who we were when we got on stage because he had seen us every morning at breakfast huddled together and debating and discussing how to present the plan. Thankfully, the 10-page business plan was due a week before the trip so, outside of seeing mistakes we knew we could not correct, we largely ignored it knowing that we had to nail the presentation as well.
I represented the Koniku team in the Elevator Pitch Competition, delivering a one-minute overview of the highly technical product Koniku plans to develop over the next two years. I wrote my pitch and finalized it three days before the trip. I must have practiced it 150 times in order to internalize everything and feel comfortable hitting the hard 60-second stop. (They had a huge buzzer, so good thing I did.) We were still doing competitive research two hours before our pitch and writing answers to possible questions the judges might have. We wound up with five pages of potential questions, and for every question they asked us we had already discussed our response, so all three of us were equipped to answer.
After the presentation, we had a few hours to unwind before the gala dinner and results. At that point we were eagerly listening to feedback and thinking about what other work we still had to do. We’re thrilled to say that our team won the top award of $10,000 in the Business Plan Competition, guaranteeing us placement in the second round of the prestigious MASSChallenge in Boston in May for a spot in the four-month long accelerator program. And I took home the top award of $2,000 in the Elevator Pitch Competition.
Christina said, “It was an amazing experience, MIT and UFM put on a fantastic program and we were thrilled to take part. We were also thrilled to have the support of UCLA and represent Anderson on a global stage. We made great contacts and gathered feedback that we were already incorporating on the plane ride home. We’re so excited to get ready for MASSChallenge and can not wait to see where we need to go for the second round pitches.”
Flying home, Christina and I pored over the judges’ feedback since we had to submit our Knapp Venture Competition plan the next day! We are still finalizing patent filings and conducting even more competitive research.
The momentum of the win has led to a few open doors, including a tour of a relevant lab here on UCLA’s campus, meetings with industry professionals and potential customers, and tips for other competitions and accelerators we might want to look at. We are still looking to raise additional capital from angels and VCs in addition to filing for grant funds both in the U.S. and EU in order to complete R&D and fully commercialize Koniku’s proprietary system.
Without a firm date yet for our MASSChallenge presentation in Boston, we anticipate that we might present for Knapp on a Monday and then hop on a redeye and present Tuesday or Wednesday in Boston. It is a crazy time but it is an amazing learning experience.
We made great contacts, traveled to a new country and, we hope, have seen the future of drug discovery technologies. For me, the most thrilling experience was seeing Osh’s face light up when he realized we won! He is one of the smartest people I have ever worked with and in all our presentations and materials the “secret sauce” is the result of his research. Osh generously said, “It was truly a team effort from a remarkable group of talented people in putting this all together.”
Our professor, George Abe, helped us greatly in preparing, and we would not have been ready without his guidance. UCLA Anderson Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Susan Judkins and Knapp Venture Competition Program Manager Angela Klein were also instrumental in enabling us travel to the competition. They went out of their way to support us and we are very thankful for this.
There is still a lot of work to do, not just for competitions but to turn Koniku’s vision into a reality. And I look forward to the journey.
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