My MDCTP experience and what I learnt

The title says it all; The Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program (MDCTP). Even then it’s hard to understand how this may be relevant to you if you are a clinician or researcher working in a clinical or academic setting.

Researchers and clinicians are at the forefront of changing health and medicine around the world. However, it’s a challenge to take an innovative and impactful idea that you may have, and translate it into a commercial reality. The language, the pathway, and the environment is different to a traditional academic one.

The MDCTP is a program designed to bridge that gap.

This is a training program designed to equip you with new skills or refine the ones you may already have. This is a program that will push you a little out of your comfort zone so that you can think differently and approach your research or idea with a new perspective. This is a program that allows you to map out the journey that your idea or product would need to get to the end user successfully so that you can impact the world.

So if you have an idea that could revolutionise health, then this is the program for you!

I myself did this course in 2015. Even though my startup had been around for 5 years, I still found so much value in what the course had to offer. The MDCTP allowed me to put real data around my product validation, learn to better identify and map out my customer base, and refine my pitch technique so that I could communicate my science to anyone at all. It was like a special pair of specs: I gained a whole new perspective and the value from this course is still applied to my work today.

For me, it was about being able to navigate both the commercial and research worlds to better execute my product so that it could do what it aimed to do: impact lives.

I set aside the one day a week for 12 weeks that MDCTP required for me to improve not only my start up, but also myself. The course was free and it seemed like a wasted opportunity to not give it 100%.

I was awarded an international engagement scholarship — which was amazing — but I also came out of the program as a member of the Cicada community; connecting to their incredible network was something which was invaluable and still a part of my life today. The long term benefits from the MDCTP have shaped my career, my company, and myself.

I am one of the 80 graduates of MDCTP Core since its launch in 2014. Here are some of our other MDCTP Alumni stories and successes.

Ali Fathi (PhD), Trimph, Co-founder and Director, MDCTP 2014

Trimph Technology Pty Ltd is an Australian biomaterials company that has developed a platform technology for repair of bone, cartilage and connective tissue. Their first product is TrimphDent, an injectable scaffold applied immediately after tooth extraction, has been developed specifically for dental applications and aims to improve success rates and recovery of oral surgeries.

Ali is a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering who incorporated Trimph after coming out of MDCTP in 2015. Since its incorporation in August 2015, Trimph has secured more than $3.4 million in both private and public sources, including NSW-Health special grant, $1m from the Medical Device Fund (2018) and Accelerating Commercialisation grant. Trimph has developed its own sterile facility in Alexandria, Sydney, which is a key asset for the company from IP protection and quality control point of view. Recently, TrimphDent was administered to the first patient in Australia.

Robert Gorkin (PhD, MBA), Eudaemon Technologies, Co-founder, MDCTP 2015

Rob is a biomedical engineer and holds a PhD and MBA. He is a serial entrepreneur and also leads an Australian Graphene solutions company called Imagine Intelligent Materials.

Eudeamon Technologies are developing the next-generation, non-allergenic condom. It is hydro-gel based and blocks, sperm, viral molecules and bacteria that cause STIs. They have secured $1 million from the Medical Device Fund in 2018 and also have a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation innovation grant.

Thomas Millar, Beyond 700, Co-founder and CEO, MDCTP 2016

Originally an academic with a PhD at Western Sydney University investigating tear film and dry eye, Thomas is now CEO of Beyond 700. Beyond 700 is a medical device company that has developed a device to visualise the tear film in real time so that eye surface diseases can easily be diagnosed. Thomas found that the MDCTP enhanced Beyond 700’s capacity to be determined, resilient, attentive and inventive leaders; characteristics highly desired by investors. Even after the MDCTP, Thomas valued the continued support through the networks gained, irrespective of whether or not the specific project succeeded. He found that those who did the course walked away with a toolkit and portfolio that could be applied across a broad spectrum of endeavours beyond medical devices. In 2019 they received $830,000 from the Medical Device Fund.

Sarah Macdonald, 2017, Baymatob, Founder and CEO, MDCTP 2017

Sarah is a mechatronic engineer, founder and CEO of Baymatob. She started working in the obstetric technology space after the traumatic birth of her second child, Oliver. Determined to improve the technology available for obstetric monitoring, Sarah embarked on a PhD focused on understanding the normal progression of labour. It was during this PhD that Sarah encountered and applied for NSW Health’s Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program.

Since graduating from the Program as part of the 2017 cohort, Sarah has completed her PhD in medicine, established Baymatob as a company and progressed development of the Oli technology. The learnings and experience provided by the MDCTP were instrumental in setting the foundations to this success. This has assisted the company to further develop the Oli technology, broaden research and clinical relationships, enabling the company to gain further supporting data from both animal and clinical sources.

Sarah won three MDCTP awards and also went on to receive funding from the Medical Device Fund, not once, but twice ($1.47m in 2017, and $2.96m in 2019).

Maryam Parviz and Iman Manavitehrani, SDIP Innovations, Co-founders, CEO and Director, MDCTP 2017

SDIP Innovations Pty Ltd aims to provide the first credible generation of safe bioresorbable implants. This implant material which dissolves from bulk and degrades harmlessly into water and carbon dioxide within the body. This platform reduces the need for repeat surgeries and improves post-surgery recovery without adverse cyst and inflammation.

The technology was co-invented by Iman during his Ph.D. at the University of Sydney. Together with Maryam, who is a biomedical engineer with a PhD in nanomedicine and chemistry, Iman founded SDIP Innovations in May 2018. Both founders successfully graduated from the MDCTP in recent years. Since then, they have established robust IP protection; secured private and public funds, completed several animal studies were awarded the NSW-QB3 Rosenman Institute Scholarship which provided space space within the QB3 medtech incubator in San Francisco for two years (2019- 2021).

Applications now open!

We have opened applications for the 2020 CORE Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program.

The Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program (MDCTP) is delivered by Cicada Innovations in partnership with NSW Health, the program sponsor. The program is designed to accelerate commercialisation of medical technologies in NSW to bring lifesaving healthcare innovations to patients, hospitals and governments around the world.

The MDCTP CORE offers an invaluable opportunity to NSW based medical device technologists to build knowledge, skills and network needed to successfully commercialise medical device technologies.

Applicants may apply from Startups, Universities, Research Institutes, the NSW Health System and Industry.

Since 2014, 80 graduates of CORE have launched 15 companies and raised over $53M to commercialise their ideas. Graduates of CORE are eligible for post-program support (Product Development Award, International Discovery Grants, Intellectual Property Strategy Award, Regulatory Strategy Award and Cicada Innovations Incubation Award)

It is also free!

Applications close: 27 OCT 19

Apply now here.

If you are or know a researcher, clinician, or entrepreneur with a new solution for improving patient outcomes, then this program will be a highly beneficial experience for bringing that solution to commercial reality.

Cicada Innovations is holding two information sessions in the next month to provide attendees with the opportunity to understand everything the program has to offer, including meeting some of the MDCTP Alumni.

Tea, coffee, and afternoon tea provided so please register your attendance here.

Please share this link with postgraduate researchers, final year PhD students, clinicians and representatives from NSW university tech transfer offices, hospitals, and research organisations.

Any questions, email: dharmica@cicadainnovations.com

Got a medical device idea that could change lives or significantly impact the healthcare system? was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the first week I didn’t need to go through my daily ritual before work. What’s been 2 years and 8 months since I moved from Brisbane to begin my role at Cicada Innovations, feels more like 10 years. Not in a bad way, but in a way I could never have imagined having the smorgasbord of opportunities I got to grab and run with.

The organisation went through a complete transformation since I started in September 2017, with the leadership of our CEO Petra Andren — she was the reason I joined the company after meeting her through my technology scouting days at Cook Medical. We went through a complete re-brand from the former ATP Innovations to Cicada Innovations, establishing ourselves as Australia’s home of deep tech (when deep tech never used to be a term) and reshaping how we would create, accelerate and incubate deep tech startups.

2 years and 8 months later..

One thing I am grateful for working at Cicada, is that it prepares you to be able to take on anything. It almost was like being a founder, having full responsibility and autonomy to imagine, create, execute great ideas with purpose. It did have its challenges, especially as I transitioned from the corporate world- tight budgets and drop dead delivery times, like a startup, but the freedom of creativity and control was liberating and exhilarating.

Since my time at Cicada my role has evolved, where I never saw a dull moment. From starting off as a business mentor, I’ve been an industry engagement liaison, manager of a state-wide commercialisation program, to co-founder and manager of a national medtech accelerator program, set up a makerspace, been a lecturer and facilitator of Lean LaunchPad methodologies, working with hundreds of present and emerging founders and entrepreneurs. Oh and also the community meditation guide.

These roles usually had me wearing multiple hats, nothing like what my chemistry and finance degrees set me up for initially. I mentioned lean budgets and resources earlier, which meant in my roles I had to be everything from marketer, comms person, sales, graphic designer, analyst, program designer, stakeholder manager, investor, event coordinator, and mentor.

When I joined I didn’t even truly know what it meant to be a mentor (which I think a lot of people still don’t quite understand) and lots of experience of Microsoft Paint from primary school (though I did dabble in Photoshop). I’ve come a long way in terms of the way I know think and approach problems, learned the art of being a hacker, new tools and databases to get sh*t done efficiently and also appreciate what good company culture really is. What was just a job, for me was an accelerator journey for my career and for my personal development that really comes down to the mission we were on and my amazing colleagues.

I’ve observed and learned something from every person I’ve worked with at Cicada. Though I have to make a special thanks and mention to these particular people who through my journey have challenged, supported, and encouraged me every step of the way — Alfred Lo, Ben Wright, Petra Andren, George Peppou, Warren Bingham, Tarika Wickremeratne, Britt Hartnett and Marin Peplinski.

What I’ve learned is that you have every opportunity to create something massive, from just one idea, and that the people you surround yourself with is just as important as the idea. And having fun along the way is a requirements — I used to think that having fun equalled not working. This is not the case!

To whoever will be replacing me as MedLab Program Manager, you have an amazing opportunities in the role ahead of you, have fun with it, grow with it along with the amazing medtech founders you’ll work with along the way.

I’m now off for a few months to get married, learn a new language and to indulge in long summer days over in Europe. I’ll be back in August, but this time in Brisbane, my hometown where it all started. Where it also looks like the startup scene is beginning to flourish…

Alles Gute für Euch und bis bald!

What I learned from working at the world’s best deep tech incubator was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We get asked all the time ‘what exactly will we do in GrowLab’? So we are lifting the veil and giving you a peek into what happens during our agrifood tech accelerator GrowLab. This is the story of how we work with a select group of six high potential pre-seed stage agri and food tech startups each year.

The program

GrowLab is a national program, open to participants from across Australia — in fact, we’ve had companies from Israel and the US go through our program.

Our unashamed focus over the relative short time of the program is to supercharge each by distilling and accelerating the early-stage business fundamentals that is so critical to get right (but often not). And as a vertically focused deep tech accelerator, we have the ability to go very deep into subject matter that specific to your industry whether that be content or connections.

So how do we go about that? Here’s a rundown of what goes on during that time.

We split the GrowLab experience in half, with the first 12 weeks being far more structured and culminating in a demo day, and the second 12 weeks providing the space and support to ‘do what they said they would’ avoiding that sense of falling off the post-accelerator cliff!

What an average week looks like

Ok, so there aren’t many “average” weeks, but those that are look something like this:

Here’s what each of these sessions will look like:

Weekly 1:1

Every week, each team has a 30 minute check-in with the program manager on their goals, progress and blockers. This is a short, sharp session to make sure you have the right mentors to help you with whatever you need and keep on track with priorities.

Weekly all hands

Every Monday, all of the GrowLab and MedLab companies gather together, here we do three things:

1. Share and celebrate any big wins also share the big challenges to let the collective brainpower of twelve deeptech startups lean in to help.
2. Awards for best hustle and most resourceful.
3. Ask for help with whatever you need to reach your goals, this should be crystallised in the 30 minute 1:1 with the program manager earlier in the day.

Content Session

Each week we have a content in which an expert will come and teach all of the GrowLab (and MedLab companies!) about a key skill. From building a team, to distribution in ag, to food regulation to raising venture capital funding, to IP strategy and many more. These sessions will give you the basis of everything you need to know to build an outstanding agtech or foodtech startup.

Week 1–8

Building a great company serving farmers or food industries is a hard thing to do from our home base in Sydney, so we spend a few weeks of the program based out of regional centres to get to know our customers better than ever.

To kick things off we will head out to Gunnedah’s AgQuip to spend a few days with all of the GrowLab companies together getting to know each other, setting your goals for the next 12 weeks and, of course, spending plenty of time at AgQuip. We’ll grab a house for all of us to stay in, we’ll eat, sleep and work hard in the house together.

Then, from week two things settle into the regular weekly rhythm, as we work with you connecting you to mentors and pushing you towards the goals you set way back in the first week. This will be the time when you can put your head down and work on the business.

Around week 6 we will head out to Moree to spend a week hands on in the community, you will have a chance to spend a couple of days hands on in the farming system of your choice. Whether it’s cropping, horticulture or livestock you are targeting you’ll get to grips with the reality of being an Australian farmer.

Week 10–12 Pitching, pitching, pitching

With the last few weeks of the structured part of GrowLab our attention turns to absolutely nailing the pitches. We’ll have three weekly pitch practice sessions, this will take up a big chunk of your time for the last few weeks. We’ll mix things up by having the MedLab companies join for some of the pitch practices so you won’t be seeing the same pitches a dozen times!

Week 12 — Investor-only Demo Day

The structured part of GrowLab ends with an invite only demo day, alongside our friends from MedLab. You will be pitching to a select room of Australia’s leading deep tech investors.

Week 13 — Festival of Deep Tech

To celebrate everything you’ve achieved you’ll have the chance to show off you and your company at Cicada’s first Festival of Deeptech. With over 1,000 attendees expected over the day, you’ll meet lots of future hires, partners, journalists and suppliers all in one convenient place. In the evening all of the GrowLab teams will showcase the amazing things they have achieved, all for an audience of 400+ people.

Week 14–24

For the remainder of GrowLab you’ll continue to have access to all of the amazing facilities at Cicada. From rapid prototyping in our Engine Shop to the share office spaces, meeting rooms and, of course, all of the wonderful community events. You’ll still have plenty of access to the mentors and GrowLab program team during this time. Here’s your chance to do all of the things you’ve planned during the past three months.

One thing that should be clear — it’s hard. Our purpose is to accelerate you — not just your business progress, but your thinking, the way you learn, to create new good working habits that scale beyond GrowLab.

Sometimes it will be hard, some teams will fail others will succeed way beyond their own expectations. It’s our job at GrowLab to surround you with all of the resources you need to be successful, or to expose any weaknesses so they can be fixed. Being part of GrowLab won’t be easy, but it will place a rocket under you as you for Mr Market.

What happens at Cicada GrowLab was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Running in parallel for a richer experience and a new investment approach for flexibility

At Cicada, we’re always looking for ways to better help deep tech founders.

Last year, we ran our first vertical specific deep tech accelerator programs, GrowLab in agrifood tech and MedLab in medtech, and they made a splash in the early-stage deep tech startup landscape.

Applications for MedLab and GrowLab launch next Monday May 6 and we’ll be announcing more details about the next intakes shortly but we thought to share a few key changes that will make them better than ever.

Aligning GrowLab and MedLab to run in parallel

In 2018, our programs were run distinctively separately, GrowLab between May and August and MedLab between October and February. Founders loved the program (founders gave NPS of 85 and 82 for GrowLab and MedLab respectively which we’re very proud about) but we know that there’s things we can do to make it even better.

Alongside being highly mentor-driven programs with some of the best players in the business involved, our accelerator programs reply on the tacit knowledge and personal experiences shared between founders.

That’s why we’re increasing this surface area this year and will be running our programs in parallel. This is why we think it’s going to be great:

• More companies is better for everyone We noticed that the most important knowledge gained during GrowLab and MedLab are broad commercial skills including leadership, team, sales, etc. Simultaneous programs allow for these experiences and learnings to be shared between medtech and agrifoodtech founders.
• More (friendly) competition Seeing others winning is a great motivation to push harder. More companies gives more chances for big wins to inspire one another. In fact, we’ll be having a weekly all hands with all 12 companies (six from GrowLab and six from MedLab) to share networks, celebrate wins and put our heads together to overcome challenges.
• More energy A dozen startups sharing space and working on their businesses together gives an unreal buzz.

The benefit of vertically focused programs is we’re able to go very deep and specific into the key and critical elements that other programs won’t and can’t delve into.

But you might be thinking that understanding how medical reimbursements work won’t be relevant to a company building on-farm robotics! Medtech and agrifood tech are still very different.

This is why MedLab and GrowLab will continue to maintain their own dedicated program team, separate pools of mentors and domain experts. They will be distinctively seperate but we’ll bring cohorts, experiences and learnings together where it makes sense.

Changing how we invest

We are changing how we invest into two components: a Program component and a Cash Investment component. We’ll explain how this works further below but it will essentially mean Cicada investing its time and money to receive between 3.6% to 4.8% of each business that participates in a program.

Program equity

We back ourselves in how our programs adds value to each of the companies that participate in them. Across three cohorts, over $16m has been raised by companies from Cicada’s accelerator programs and the increase in valuation has been in multiples from the time of our initial investment.

Our non-cash investment is significant and includes a dedicated team to work with you, bringing together events for you including investor and demo days, arranging field and customer visits, access to our on-site facilities such as hardware maker space and wet labs, as well as an additional three months of space after finishing the 12 week program.

In exchange, we ask companies for 3% equity upfront to participate in the program which will be diluted at any future capital raise the company is able to complete. This is common stock, the same type you hold as a founder, so if you sell the company we only get paid when you do. No liquidation preferences either.

A new way of investing

Valuing a company at an early stage can be hard, sometimes even harder in deep tech when validation of science or customers can take longer. In the past we’ve made a straight equity investment ($30k cash for GrowLab and $50k cash for MedLab) with a standard valuation for each company (A$600k post-money for GrowLab and A$1m post-money for MedLab). This means really early-stage companies feel very happy while companies who might be a little further down the track may not apply.

So we’re changing how our cash is invested. We are using a convertible note to invest our cash in your business, $30k for GrowLab and $50k for MedLab. Depending on the valuation a company raises at, this will determine how much equity Cicada our cash investment will convert into. This will be around 2% of the business based on what we typically see post-accelerator startups raise at.

If you want more detail on how this works and how we invest, we’ve published our term sheet along with a plain english explanation of what it means for you.

Combining the Program component with the Cash Investment component leaves Cicada roughly with an equity stake of between 3.6% to 4.8% after the conversion of the convertible note. Naturally this is indicative and will be dependent on the specific terms of a company’s funding round.

We’re excited about the changes we’ve made for Cicada accelerator programs and think it’s going to make it an even better experience and outcome for deep tech founders. Hope you do too.

Changes for Cicada’s Accelerator Programs was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As Australia’s Home of Deep Tech, Cicada’s mission is to help the best founders who use research and science-based technologies at the heart of the early-stage businesses they’re building. It’s our raison d’etre.

Since opening our doors in 2000, medtech has been a major part of Cicada’s community; of our 70 deep tech company residents, we’re proud to be home to nearly 20 startups and scaleups solving important problems in the medtech space.

To expand our early-stage medtech cluster, in 2018 we launched a new program to support and invest in Australia’s next generation of world-class medtech business builders. Cicada MedLab is a full-time, on-site, three month, mentor-driven accelerator program for early-stage medtech founders based out of our Incubator in South Eveleigh, Sydney.

Our investment has shifted slightly between our inaugural cohort and our next program, but the approach remains simple. Each cohort is made up of six companies to each of whom we offer $50k via a convertible note which is on top of a 3% equity stake. If a company has raised over $250k before coming into the program, our cash investment will match those terms.

Our formula is three-fold:

1. Mentors: When we say we’re a mentor-driven program, we’re not kidding. We’ve pulled together a special group of industry and investment mentors to help MedLab founders achieve their ambition — the best in the country we think. People like Alison Todd (SpeeDx), Stephen Ruffels (ResMed), Mark Bregman (Quidnet Ventures), David Fisher (Brandon Capital), Ali Fathi (Trimph), Sam Wong (Blackbird Ventures), Jamie Stanistreet (ex-Medtronic ANZ) but there are so many more. We are privileged to have such a high calibre group of people paying it forward and guiding the medtech founders of tomorrow.
2. Knowledge Baselining: Alongside business fundamentals, exposing MedLab founders to the technical nature of the medtech commercialisation pathway is a super valuable component of the program. Health economics, regulatory pathways, procurement, clinical trial strategy are just a few of the hurdles founders must overcome on their journey to market. We help by bringing in experts, panels, guest speakers and make introductions to the right people at the right time.
3. Accountability: Whilst our team at Cicada has a deep expertise in medtech, we see the most important role we have is to keep founders accountable to the goals they set. It’s a balance of being good cop and bad cop, lots of love and tough love. Succeeding as an entrepreneur requires not just a different skill set but often a starkly different mindset and this is particularly the case with founders from an academic, research or clinical background.

So far, we’ve been pretty happy with our early results. Even though the medtech road to commercialisation tends to be long, our companies have already sold product internationally, been awarded multiple grants, and are in deep discussions with A grade investors.

Which brings us to the people that make all this happen.

We’re excited to announce that we’re hiring the Program Manager for MedLab. She or he will be key to MedLab’s success and will act as the conductor to bring this all together. Someone that leads the charge for every cohort.

In this role, you will have the opportunity to learn from some of the world’s best founders as they navigate the challenges of building companies from the ground up. Your service will support engagement in the Cicada medtech and founder community and bring out the potential for MedLab’s founders by unlocking access to best practices in what it takes to build a great medtech business. On top of that, you will seek new ways to help medtech founders, stay on top of trends and expand Cicada’s network in medtech.

When you join Cicada, you join a team of believers.

Experimenting with new things, and understanding and being excited by the science that our founders bring us is a core value here, and it’s reflected in who we are.

As Australia’s first technology startup incubator, we’ve been home to deep tech companies that are at the very beginning of a long journey. Some have gone on to become Elastagen, Propeller Aero, Morse Micro, Clarity Pharmaceuticals and Prospection.

But at the start, we’re here to provide the tools, resources and community founders need to win long term. The Program Manager for MedLab is just one example of how we’re laser focused in service of deep tech entrepreneurs. This person will be supported by the Cicada Programs team which has both broad and deep medtech and early-stage technology commercialisation expertise.

Interested? If this is you, then we’re interested too:

• Medtech is your shtick: You’ve got a voracious appetite for all things medtech. You might have worked in or founded a medtech startup in the past or cut your teeth at a global medtech player. We wouldn’t be surprised if you have a T-shaped profile.
• You work at startup-speed: Our world is all about being quick on your feet and adapting to changing situations. You have mastered the art of doing things quickly without sacrificing quality and attention to detail. Organised and systematic, you believe in the power of using the right tool for the right job and you always know where to find it.
• People and communication give you energy: While in program, a big part of your role will be talking to founders both individually and as a full cohort, to hold them accountable day-to-day but also to keep them motivated and inspired to kick goals. You are comfortable switching hats to whatever is needed at any given time, for any given founder, and will seek to get the involvement of MedLab’s wonderful mentors.
• Just the word ‘autonomy’ makes you happy: We’re really looking for a self-starter who will take responsibility for the day-to-day running of MedLab and play a key part in its design and strategy. You’ll be the face and driving force of the program where you’ll pull in people and resources as and when you need to.
• Slick operations are your thing: With the support from our Program Operations Manager, you’ll play a central part in pulling together program design, cohort selection, demo days, office hours, mentor roulettes, speakers, perks, our website and comms strategy, our international immersion trips and any other events/introductions the teams might need.
• You’re a founder advocate: You bring a genuine curiosity about founders’ business objectives and goals and use this deeper understanding to align our efforts with the founder’s needs. You engender the Cicada ethos of “paying it forward” by being helpful to founders in any way you can.
• Steep learning curves thrill you: You already have experience and good instincts when it comes to understanding medtech, markets, moats, distribution and defensibility. Great. But we’re always trying to push the envelope — keeping our eyes fixed on new trends, new networks to develop, and new products, services and systems to build in the service of the Cicada medtech community.
• You understand the power of connections: You can identify organic growth opportunities with existing relationships and understand how to strategically expand our network to make sure that Cicada MedLab is top of mind for the right people at the right time, particularly when it comes to considering joining a medtech accelerator program. Finding, recruiting and keeping it interesting for the best mentors will be key.
• An open mind: The truth is, we don’t know for sure how MedLab might evolve in the coming years. The Program Manager will help us chart the course for what MedLab becomes.
• Habitually curious: Curiosity is the kernel that sparks the pursuit of knowledge and drives a bias to take action to learn. You might find that you’re one of those with a constant itch to hit up Wikipedia. Or follow rule breakers and thought leaders on Twitter. And never afraid of asking sometimes what can be the obvious question. We love your type.

Details

We think this is a wonderful opportunity for someone who’s at the stage in their career where they’ve learnt a lot and can bring that experience to bear. You don’t necessarily need deep knowledge of how to run an accelerator or how to invest in a startup, but you should be willing to learn it fast.

The role comes with a competitive package but most importantly, significant mentorship, coaching and feedback from smart, passionate colleagues at Cicada and the Cicada community.

So if your interest is piqued, send an email to alfred+medlab@cicadainnovations.com along with a link to your LinkedIn profile and up to 300 words about why you’d be a great fit as Cicada MedLab’s Program Manager.

Cicada has been long running at the front of the tech startup community in Australia. Come run with us and help us help you help the next generation of world-class medtech founders in Australia. Can’t wait to hear from you.

We’re hiring the Program Manager for Cicada MedLab was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our Origin Story

In spite of — or perhaps because of — Cicada Innovations’ long and deep history with medtech in Australia, we at Cicada MedLab believe that we have only just scratched the surface of our potential to bring out the best in early-stage medtech founders in this country.

Australia has a proven track record of leading by innovation in the field of medicine: giants like ResMed and Cochlear attest to this. But it is common knowledge that getting to this stage — for medtech companies in particular — is a long, complicated and expensive journey pockmarked with pitfalls along the way. Getting the right support and expertise from the very start can make all the difference.

So we gave ourselves a challenge and a mission: how do we best support the next generation of early-stage medtech business builders to be more successful? From here, the concept for a medtech accelerator was born.

MedLab bridges the gap between our long running Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program (MDCTP) which we run in partnership with NSW Health and our Incubator which over 70 deep tech startups call home. It’s aimed at early stage medtech companies whose founders have made the commitment to work on their startup full-time, and come along armed with intellectual property and a prototype.

The timing was ideal: in early 2018, one of our portfolio companies Elastagen was acquired by medical giant Allergan for nine figures. As one of the earliest investors, the proceeds from our share allowed us to fund MedLab.

MedLab 1.0: The sprint

After running info sessions in many of the capital cities across Australia, we invited six startups to join MedLab’s inaugural cohort in October 2018:

• Beyond 700 is developing an infrared camera technology to visualise the tear film of the eye for the first time, helping clinicians to diagnose and monitor eye conditions affecting over 580M people globally.
• Loop+ is bringing to market a sensor mat to assist wheelchair users and their care teams to proactively manage and prevent debilitating health conditions such as pressure injuries that cost the Australian healthcare system over $1B annually.
• Renature Labs’ is transforming insulin into an indigestible tablet, using their technology aimed at protecting fragile and therefore injectable-only medicines in the stomach.
• SDIP Innovations is the only bioresorbable implant that degrades harmlessly into water and carbon dioxide in the body, reducing the need for unnecessary implant-removal surgeries, and aiding post-surgery patient recovery.
• Doclink’s proprietary AI algorithms detects and diagnoses lung cancer with a single scan, helping clinicians to diagnose the disease earlier than before and be proactive in their treatment plans.
• Neuromersiv is providing brain injury patients with faster and more effective rehabilitation outcomes using their VR and haptic glove combination which simulates real life and adventure scenarios instead of the mundane and repetitive movements currently used.

Over the next 16 weeks, our mission was to accelerate these six companies; articulating and setting goals, encouraging experimentation and curiosity, and challenging the norms that each founder brought. An unashamed focus on team, leadership and culture was a huge part; regardless of the validity and promise of a technology, success is integrally set by this.

A distinguishing attribute of the accelerators run at Cicada is that they are Mentor-driven. Through our personal networks, we brought together what we think are the best mentors and industry experts for medtech startups in this country handsdown. If our founders are our superheroes, our mentors are the superpowers that help in so many ways:

• Holding court with regular office hours for advice and mentoring
• Giving talks and Ask-Me-Anything sessions on topics ranging from regulatory pathways and health economics, to how to raise capital and business fundamentals like financial modelling
• Opening up their rolodexes and created some crucial connections between their contacts and the companies
• Mock VC sessions were particularly valuable in giving founders real world experience in understanding what investors looked for

The 16 weeks were never easy. Getting out to talk to customers, figuring out the complex pathways to market, solving for team roles and responsibilities, and preparing to speak to investors were just a few hurdles to leap. A huge shout out to the six companies for pushing through and growing so much; from scientists and technologists became storytellers with solid and exciting plans to reach ambitious goals.

MedLab culminated in its Demo Day on February 28 and being the largest event in Cicada’s 20 year history. Over 400 from the medtech industry and startup ecosystem saw six amazing founders pitch their version of the future. Each startup is currently in conversations with investors, and one has already sold their first product to a major clinic in Europe. We are also gearing up the cohort for a US medtech visit to San Francisco and Medical Alley in Minneapolis to meet business partners, healthcare players and investors.

For the cohort, the MedLab journey still isn’t over. Staying on at Cicada until October this year, we’ll keep supporting them as they raise capital and build out their teams. It’s going to be exciting to see their stories unfold in the months and years to come.

MedLab 2.0: the journey begins…

When one chapter ends, another one begins. That is certainly true of MedLab 2.0 which we have already started planning.

We launched an initiative called Founder Matching which is aimed at bringing together great technological and commercial minds passionate about solving the world’s biggest problems in healthcare. Who knows: that shared passion and the opportunity to meet a like-minded entrepreneur with complementary skills may just lead to the creation of the next future medtech startup unicorn! On the heels of the success of our first Founder Matching event, we will be keeping our inboxes free for further expressions of interest and hope to continue this as a rolling exercise over the course of the year.

We’ve got many exciting ideas in the works for MedLab 2.0 and look forward to sharing them with you in the weeks and months to come.

If you’re interested in finding out more about MedLab 2, or becoming a Mentor or Domain Expert, please reach out to us at medlab@cicadainnovations.com. Here are some other ways to keep up to date with what we’re up to: sign up to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

***

The Cicada and MedLab community received unexpected and very sad news just over a fortnight ago: Dr. Alistair Laos, founder of our cohort company, Renature Labs, passed away on Tuesday April 2 2019 due to complications related to a long-standing illness.

Alistair was not only an outstanding scientist and committed founder, but a true friend and uplifting spirit to our MedLab family and the Cicada Innovations community. Our thoughts are with his family and friends and we will never forget his spirit and the brilliance of his vision and work.

Vale Alistair.

Our Journey from MedLab 1.0 to MedLab 2.0 was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Cicada GrowLab we spend a lot of time thinking about the future of food, agriculture and everything in between.

Last year we shared some of our thinking on how our future agrifood system will unfold. We described ‘three waves’ of startups: those making the current system work better, new ways of producing and processing food, and new biotechnologies to do things other technologies can’t.

Over three posts we will be delving deeper into these three waves of agrifood tech innovations.

This post, the first of the series, will be focusing on companies that are making the current systems work better than ever before.

A couple of decades from now, we predict Australian agriculture will be deeply digitised and highly automated. From sewing, to drafting, to picking, on-farm robotics will be ubiquitous. Connectivity issues will be a distant memory thanks to new generations of long range, low power wireless capabilities and all of the data collected on-farm will be easily accessible and able to be interrogated to learn from.

First things first, going digital

But how are we going to get there? It’s common knowledge that agriculture is notoriously analogue. In fact, agriculture is often pointed to as the ‘problem child’ of the digital revolution, frequently ranked lowest, or close, for digital adoption.

What this means on the ground is there are many farms, large and small, that are running their operations using a paper notebook, making it impossible to take advantage of the digital tools used in most other industries.

Now the word is out, and agtech has been booming in Australia for the last few years meaning new digital tools for agriculture are becoming available all the time.

From Sydney’s Agriwebb, focusing on livestock producers, to WA’s AgWorld for growers and agronomists, farmers now have access to excellent tools to record and analyse what is happening on their farms.

And this trend is continuing all the way down the supply chain: an example being Sydney’s Agridigital which is digitising contracting and supply chain management for the grain industry around the world.

All this being said, there is still a lot of work needed to create a totally digitised agriculture system. For example, paper dockets are still required by truck drivers to transport live animals in NSW!

Increasingly precise analytics

So now we have data. Great. What do we do with it?

Once we have consistent data collection agronomists and farmers are able to use this to make proactive decisions based on what is likely to happen in the future rather than guessing based on what has been observed in the past.

For broadacre applications there are a plethora or remote sensing tools, including GrowLab portfolio company Flurosat, which applied AI to remote sensing to support on farm decision-making.

Others, like Maia Grazing are bringing decision support tools to the pasture. In a similar vein, companies like The Yield use IoT devices to help with on-farm decisions.

For the livestock industry, a number of companies are introducing technologies to monitor and manage animals more precisely: these can take the form of smart tags (like Herdogg’s or Ceres Tag) or even implants under the skin, as is the case for Livestock Labs.

All of these companies are bringing together better data collection approaches and cutting edge analytics to move from recording what has been done on farm to recommending what should be done next.

These predictions are typically fed back to the farmer using a mobile app or text messages, meaning they spend less time monitoring and more time acting on the insights gleaned from the data their newly digitised tools have collected.

Automation everywhere

Now that we have the technology to tell us what needs to be done (whether it is spraying, weeding, harvesting or otherwise), then why not outsource the ‘doing’ part of it as well?

Across the world, agricultural robotics have long been promised as a panacea for high labour costs as well as for giving producers the ability to precisely manage each and every plant or animal individually.

We expect that by 2030, robots will be a common sight on Australian farms, dotting the earth and skies day and night, spraying, weeding, picking, monitoring animals and more.

Globally there are many, many players in the agricultural robotics space. Probably the best known example is California’s Blue River Technologies, with it’s $305 million acquisition by John Deere in late 2017.

Locally, we have world-class research and a small, yet burgeoning startup ecosystem around agricultural robotics. Australia has a long heritage of agricultural robotics research, with the University of Sydney Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) and Queensland University of Technology’s Agricultural Robotics Program.

In terms of Aussie startups in this space, Queensland’s Swarm Farm see a future in several small and relatively cheap robots working smarter, faster and together on a range of tasks. They are already demonstrating automated spraying. Further South, Melbourne’s Thingc are working on even smaller robots and currently testing autonomous weeding.

So what comes after we have digitised and automated farms? You’ll have to wait until Part 2 to find out!

Why we are so excited about agrifood: Part 1 — the future of farms was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since 2000, Cicada has been home to more deep tech startups than anywhere else in the country. But we know building a startup is a tough game. There are more founders that don’t realise their ambition than ones that do.

Australia’s always punched above its weight in deep tech with the likes of Cochlear, Radiata, ResMed and Elastagen trailblazing for many that have come after them. Although Australia produces excellent research, we are terrible at making it available. In fact we are ranked last of 33 OECD countries for collaboration between researchers and business.

This challenge is at the heart of how Cicada thinks about how it helps deep tech founders. We scanned our database for the companies we’ve worked with that succeeded and that failed to understand this better.

Those that succeeded had any number of reasons as to their success; great technology, impeccable timing, visionary founders etc.

But for those that failed, one reason stood out.

It wasn’t getting outplayed by the competition, not being able to raise capital, or the technology failing.

It was team.

Team is paramount in any business and founders along with early employees set the culture, vision and ambition to build the momentum that’s needed to get off the ground. It’s complicated with individuals’ personalities, circumstances and chemistry.

But business is a team sport and almost always requires a different set of skills and experiences to productise and commercialise a technology.

Frans Johansson said in his book “The Medici Effect”, that innovation comes from diverse industries, cultures, and disciplines when they all intersect, bringing ideas from one field into another. We strongly believe this.

So that’s why we’ve extended an initiative we announced last month for agrifoodtech founders to medtech and it’s called Founder Matching at Cicada MedLab.

We want to help teams that already have great science and technology with commercial and marketing chops that’s essential to building a great business.

Our goal is simple. Can we either:

1. Bring teams together than wouldn’t otherwise startup; or
2. Supercharge teams that already exist

What we’re doing about it

Step 1. Finding the best medtech breakthroughs

We will be hosting workshops for clinicians and researchers who might be at the earliest stages of commercialising their technology or have been curious about what it takes to build a medtech startup.

For technologists (honours, PhD or academic) who don’t know where to start, we will be coming to medtech centres of research excellence and providing free half day workshops to see if this could be the right path for you.

You’ll learn the basics of Lean Startup Methodology, meet like-minded people and sharpen your idea. You’ll come away with a clear set of next steps to take if a startup is right for you and your technology.

Step 2. Bringing technical and commercial people together

Ok. So now we’ve identified a bunch of breakthrough technologies and the boffins behind them. The step is to make it easy for commercial gurus to matchmake with these amazing inventors.

We’re looking for curious, passionate and experienced commercial people who want to make their mark on the world and there’s no better place to make an impact than the Australian medtech scene.

• Are a serial tech entrepreneur looking for a global and worthy problem to solve?
• Are you an executive that’s harboured a desire to launch your own venture?
• Or are you just finishing an MBA and want to forge your own destiny?

We are looking for you!

Our role is to take out the friction for you to find your entrepreneurial simpatico and catalyse the formation or supercharging of game-changing teams.

Once we have pre-screened technologies and people, we’ll bring everyone together. We will do this in two ways:

1. “Speed networking” style events where we’ll invite people from commercial and technical worlds to come together; and
2. One-to-one matchmaking: where we think it’s appropriate, we will make individual introductions.

So, are you a researcher? A commercial expert passionate about medtech? Reach out, we’d love to get you involved!

Step 3. Moving forward as a new or supercharged team

The excitement of a new team joining forces to achieve an ambitious goal is intoxicating. But overcoming the startup inertia and figuring out how move quickly, make decisions and bed down a shared vision still takes work.

We’re still planning out what we’ll do to assist but some thoughts:

• Holding a weekend bootcamp to help you and other teams think through the highest priority matters and set you on track
• Offer Cicada Innovations as a place for teams to meet
• Tap into our amazing network of MedLab mentors

Stay tuned for more updates and we look forward to hearing from you!

UPDATE 11/2022: Unfortunately Cicada Innovations no longer runs the Founder Matching program. I’d recommend you checkout Startmate, UNSW, UTS Startups, Cyrise and Antler.

The Medici Effect: Founder Matching at Cicada MedLab was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After over a year of building excitement throughout the Australian agrifood ecosystem, the date of the inaugural EvokeAG event finally arrived. Positioning itself as the one-stop-shop for all things ‘Ag’ in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, it did not disappoint.

EvokeAG brought together well over 1000 delegates across 5 continents and startups in all areas of agrifood tech, to see a star-studded line-up of expert speakers. It certainly delivered on its promise to bring together “leaders, farmers, startups, innovators, accelerators, researchers, universities, businesses, corporates, government and investors” to give a sense of what is currently happening in hot space of agrifoodtech in our corner of the globe.

There was a hefty amount to absorb in just 2 days, but here’s brief overview on the key highlights we at GrowLab took away from the conference:

1. Mining boom to dining boom: Value added foods are the future of Australian agrifood. Anthony Pratt, Executive Chairman of Visy opened day two of the conference with this exciting and intimidating proposition: Australia can only grow food for 100 million people so let’s focus on where we can add value by creating food products rather than focusing on growing more on the same amount of land. To put this into perspective, Adam Melonas of Chew Innovation noted that “one tonne of wheat is worth $100, one tonne of flour is worth $800, one tonne of bread is worth $10,000”. New food and fibre tech is needed in Australia to realise the ‘dining boom’ that is transforming our excellent agriculture commodities into world-class foods.

2. Agrifood tech is becoming a legitimate investment for Venture Capital around the world: Michael Dean of Agfunder highlighted the maturing venture capital market for agrifood tech, signalled by an increase in total investment as well as deal numbers. There is more venture funding flooding into the agrifood space than ever before, from both specialist agrifood investors as well as sector agnostic venture capitalists. Startups just need to know where to look, how to navigate the world of VC’s and find the right people to guide their journey.

3. The Australian ag innovation model is shifting: Conventional Research and Development organisations like GRDC are moving into venture capital, with a $50m fund called GrainInnovate, announced in partnership with Artesian. This is alongside a grass roots partnership between Wine Australia, Meat and Livestock Australia and other RDCs to launch Farmers2Founders: a program to teach producers the skills to be a great founder. So the pathway from being a producer to a startup founder is becoming smoother than ever before.

4. Getting everyone under one roof is critical: EvokeAG attracted over 1100 delegates, including dozens of startups, international and local venture capitalists, agribusiness investors, growers groups, agronomists and plenty more. Having this critical mass in each group made it easy to connect across the value chain. The sheer numbers, depth and range of expertise in attendance at EvokeAG really highlighted the willingness of the growing agrifood ecosystem to support Australia to become a global exporter of superb agrifood and a base for world-class agrifood tech companies.

So that’s a wrap — at least until EvokeAG 2020!

Cicada Innovation’s GrowLab was a member of the Pitch Tent Steering Committee and a proud supporter of EvokeAG.

Four key takeaways from EvokeAG was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How did the owner of a small engineering design firm from Orange end up founding one of the hottest up-and-coming agtech startups in Australia?

I sat down with GrowLab Crop 2 graduate, Dave Finlay of Moisture Planting Technologies (MPT), to find out.

How it all began…

Dave has spent his life in farm country, eventually settling in Orange NSW where he, along with his wife Wendy, started their design and engineering company, Trang. Being very much an ideas man, Trang gave Dave the chance to put his inventor’s brain to work to solve tough problems, many of them agricultural.

In 2014, for example, they had a client whose planter for sowing seed was constantly breaking. The client came to Trang to design a solution to this problem, the crux of which was the large amount of force required to drag the planter through the soil, which caused the machinery to break.

The birth of the war room

Over the years, Dave and Wendy noticed a frustrating trend: Their clients would come in asking them for expensive designs but with little or no idea about how to take the finished products to market. As a result, a lot of Trang’s promising designs ended up going nowhere.

That was when Dave’s war room started to take shape. Each time another innovative design came to nothing, Dave refused to let it die, continuing to tinker on the ideas, evolving the concepts behind them and looking for potential in the market in his spare time.

Over time, the war room grew until it had over 20 product ideas on its walls. One of these was the Tech-Enabled Broadacre Planter, born out of the 2014 client’s need to prevent his machine from breaking. Dave realised that if he could measure where the optimum amount of moisture was sitting in the soil, he could adjust the machine to place the seeds into the shallowest available moisture, reducing the depth at which the tines had to drag into the ground — thereby greatly relieving the force on the machine as a whole. The result: a machine that wouldn’t break, and better yet — one that would help farmers increase their yield through a revolutionary planting technique.

Enter… GrowLab

It was a quiet afternoon in the office when Dave decided to travel down to Sydney to attend the GrowLab info session in early 2018 with the moisture planter idea in his back pocket.

When he was accepted into the program, he persuaded Wendy to join him. “I didn’t even know about all this until we were accepted into GrowLab!” Wendy exclaims, but she’s grinning as she adds, “But once I did, I realised we were suddenly on a journey”.

Dave and Wendy came into GrowLab acutely aware they had large gaps in their knowledge. Despite having run a successful business centred around highly complex and inventive engineering design, they were still new to the startup ecosystem and were unsure how to identify and interact effectively with potential customers — a crucial step on the way to building up MPT as a business.

They had learned from their experiences at Trang that technical excellence only got them so far: the best ideas they saw were from technically brilliant people but those were also the very same ideas that generally never made it off the page. It was usually the less technical people with less inventive ideas but the added ingredient of sales savvy that saw their ideas become commercial successes.

A crucial pivot

In the early days of GrowLab, Dave and Wendy were intent on building smart farming equipment to be sold to farmers at a one-off cost.

But context is everything. 2018 was dry — really dry. So much so that MPT’s customer interviews revealed that many farmers didn’t even try to put a crop in the ground. In one case, a brand new $700k planter was sitting idle in the shed whilst the owner was still paying interest on a machine he couldn’t use.

Dave and Wendy realise that they needed a better approach: What if farmers only paid for what they used?

This would mean less on-boarding, a cheaper option for customers, an easier model to scale, and therefore more profitable for MPT in the long term.

Where Dave and Wendy benefited most from GrowLab was in developing that path to market strategy, which included being coached on how to identify their customers and make those key connections and critical decisions early in the game.

“A great learning from GrowLab was on how to formulate a customer theory and how to go and test that so you’re putting your time, your money and your investors money in the right place” Wendy says. Dave agrees that doing that analysis first and having the results inform their first full-scale prototype was a more efficient way to ensure they were on the right track and building a product that could address a real problem and be a real benefit to farmers.

What Lies Ahead

So what’s next for MPT Technologies? Having graduated from GrowLab Crop 2 in December 2018, they are now proud members of the Cicada Innovations Incubator. Dave has been across Australia connecting with customers preparing to kick off commercial planting trials in April this year.

All of this momentum is creating quite a buzz around MPT, punctuated by being chosen to pitch at Sydney’s Tech23 in October 2018 and being featured in The Australian and Business Insider in December 2018.

“We have the confidence now that we are onto something — something big” says Dave.

By gauging the best moisture profile in soil and placing crop seeds accordingly, a lot of the guesswork and uncertainty that plagues a typical farmer is removed from the equation. In other words, they will be able to obtain a significantly higher yield using their current resources. We are going to need to feed 10 billion people by 2040. By enabling us to maximise our finite resources, technologies like MPT’s will be a critical part of meeting that challenge.

Want to know more about MPT? Check out their website!

Want to know more about GrowLab? Get in touch!

GrowLab Case Study: Moisture Planting Technologies was originally published in Cicada Innovations on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.