The HEARTio team (from left to right): Michael Leasure '17, Utkars Jain, PhD '20, and Adam Butchy, PhD '20. Photo courtesy of Utkars Jain.
In our next installment of our "Beyond the BIC" blog series, we're catching up with Utkars Jain '20, a Pitt alum and Co-Founder & CEO of Pitt spinout HEARTio, as he shares the inspiration behind his startup, what Big Idea Center lessons he still uses to this day, where HEARTio is at now, and what advice he has for student entrepreneurs!
- What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
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- I always liked the idea of being my own boss, but I think my style of working sort of makes this job more appropriate for me – I like to spend stretches of time just working on problems nonstop.
- What was the inspiration behind HEARTio?
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- My grandfather passed away because of a chest pain misdiagnosis. In the ambulance, they believed he was having a heart attack, but he actually had an ulcer so he passed away. People make life and death decisions every day, and if we can help them with accurate point-of-care information – we feel like we have an obligation to give it to them.
- How did you become involved with the Big Idea Center?
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- We participated in the Randall Family Big Idea Competition and developed relationships with Babs and many entrepreneurs in residence (EIRs) at the Big Idea Center.
- In what ways did the Big Idea Center help the startup?
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- The Big Idea Center helped with office space, EIRs, and friendly conversations!
- What lessons from the Big Idea Center do you still keep in mind to this day?
- How to work through a market analysis, how to think about the value proposition, and how to conduct customer discovery.
- What were some challenges that the startup faced & how were they overcome? What were some wins that the startup had?
- One of the challenges that we had was figuring out the makeup of our team. Initially, we had more individuals on our team, but we mutually found out that our paths weren’t aligned. Another challenge has been the messaging of our product. Initially, I think we just assumed that people knew the space we were trying to occupy, but we quickly figured out that this wasn’t the case. We needed to fundamentally change how we messaged our product. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s far better than where it was.
- Where is the startup now in its journey?
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- We are looking to raise funding to close out our seed round and continue with talks with the FDA.
- What are next steps for the startup?
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- The next steps are to prove that our product works on a large scale.
- What advice would you give to a current student that is thinking about starting their own business or wants to learn more about innovation/entrepreneurship in general?
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- I think that the best advice is to just do it – in whatever way possible. If you know that a certain product or service has to exist AND you are the one that needs to make it, work on it as much as you can – even if you think it’s a relatively small amount of time. The important thing is to make progress and know when you’re reaching a point where you need external resources (team members, capital, expertise).
About HEARTio:
HEARTio is a digital diagnostic startup utilizing artificial intelligence to help emergency providers identify heart abnormalities more quickly, more accurately, and at a fraction of the cost. We’re committed to savings lives, reducing healthcare costs, and improving the Emergency Department experience for all.
If you want to learn more about HEARTio, check out https://www.heartio.ai and follow them on LinkedIn and Facebook!
Utkars is currently pursuing his Ph.D in Bioengineering at the University Pittsburgh. His fields of interest include machine learning and artificial neural networks. Recently, Utkars has been applying these fields to medical data in novel ways hoping to create new methods for diagnosing patients. He has undergraduate degrees in Applied Mathematics and Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh.