A Whirlwind of a First Week for Bio LITE
The following post is from Bobby Hanes of team Bio LITE, which is working to develop a novel platform for pharmaceutical companies to test new, unproven drugs. Bio LITE earned a spot in the Sandbox through their involvement in Student2Biz, the Panasci Competition, and UB's Pitch Competition. While Bob addresses the commercialization aspects of his business, his teammates are spending the summer further developing their product in labs at the University at Buffalo. Not one to waste any time, Bob was the first Sandbox team to present at VCAMP's Pitch In event series (pictured at right). The following is his account of the first week of Buffalo Student Sandbox.
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The first week has been an absolute whirlwind down at D!G with too much to do, which is a great thing. First off, it is both an honor and a privilege to be part of the WNY Innovation Hot Spot Student Sandbox for the duration of summer. Bio-LITE hopes that we can accomplish a great deal before our time runs out and that we can make some great connections that could be key to the growth and sustainability of our company. Finding our first customers is going to be a big challenge since we will have to prove that our technology works to gain their trust.
Attempting to explain the underlying fundamentals of our technology to people with non-technical backgrounds has been one of our biggest challenges so far. We have already gone through countless iterations of our 30-second pitch and each time it gets just a little bit better. Getting investors to have a fundamental understanding of our technology so that they can see what our company has to offer to pharmaceutical companies.
Navigating through the complexity of the pharmaceutical industry is going to be very tricky for Bio-LITE and there have already been so many offers of help for us. Many people have offered so much in return for nothing, such as connections to people, legal advice, marketing advice, website design and much more. I never knew how tightly knit the entrepreneurial community in Buffalo was until the start of this accelerator. Bio-LITE is looking forward to this great opportunity that will hopefully be the start of something big!
