Lessons from an MBA: Venture Club October

This meeting had spotlight presenters giving pitches for their new ideas and also had a guest appearance from Michael Huber, Chamber of Commerce.

The first presenter was Mark Repko from MedDiary who is trying to target the chronic illness management market of which 45% of the US population has and accounts for 75% of the healthcare cost. Healthcare treatment is beginning to focus on patient engagement and remote management outside of a medical facility. MedDiary is focused on a chronic condition management app that links with several physicians so that the patents’ diet, medication, treatment and general well-being is monitored and tracked using a single app that combines several other treatment apps into one. MedDiary is currently seeking series AA capital and has completes its web phase I and customer engagement.

Personally I’m a bit wary of app developments as a business project because I rarely seen something that distinguishes one app from another. As one of my classmates said, there are over 16,000 healthcare related apps, this is just another one. We voiced several concerns mostly based on product uniqueness, the difficulty in getting physician buy-in and the reluctance of the boomer age group (majority of the chronic illness patients) to use mobile devices and apps to manage their health.

The second presenter was TowYard Breweries. Everyone was excited about this pitch because they brought tons of beer for tasting afterwards! They plan to capitalize on the recent boom in craft beer and make a new recipe for sale in the Midwest. They seemed very connected in the beer industry and a member of their team already successfully launched a craft beer Triton that is well received in Indianapolis. They have raised $311,000 out of their projected $550,000 budget. They have a 20 barrel system and right from day one of production, they project to be the 4^th largest beer producer in Indiana with 12,000 barrels production per year. They have a brew master with 10 years of experience and they have secured distribution through Anhauser Busch /Zink. They also plan to can their beer to make them distinguishable and to make it easier to distribute.