Probably my favorite so far. What is the business model and how do you get your first customer?
The first customer is our easy part. We've already signed up Florida Hospital, the nations largest hospital (3,282 beds at one campus) to agree to be our clinical trial partner when we are ready. Obviously that's a ways away, but they are on board. IF the trials are successful they'll be our first customer.
The business model is something we don't know about yet. Using the YC Fellowship money we want to go out and further understand where we fit in; can we license, do we need to do this ourselves, what is the most profitable business model, what is the lost cost to market model, etc. We haven't been on this for very long, it was over a year that we spent trying to figure out were we fit into the solar market (with no funding) before we learned it's not a good market just because a $20 price increase per panel. It was 2 months ago that we pivoted to infection resistant materials and wanted to find out if the science worked. Well it does and now we feel comfortable committing real cash into understanding our model.
But that's one of the things we need to learn - are there any big players not in the market that want in and will commit real money to do it?
I'd rather not lose money because we didn't do that work now. At the same time, what is a Cook Medical and a Bard looking for in a license? Where do we need to be at, what tests do they want data for? Are they looking to invest in the catheter space?