Shane Lowe-CEO of Vitrue Health talks healthcare tech, unexpected challenges and advice to other start-ups
Vitrue Health is a tech start-up backed by Techstars, a global platform for investment and innovation. Vitrue are a company on a mission to change the way that we assess and treat musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions across healthcare through computer vision technology. MSK health is one of the most important aspects of health related quality of life. Standard assessment methods are subjective and insensitive and until now technological solutions are unusable in daily assessment pathways. Vitrue EVVA takes leading clinical, biomechanics and motion capture technologies and makes them viable in everyday care.
We caught up with Shane Lowe CEO of Vitrue Health to talk about life as a start-up founder:
Please tell us a little about what Vitrue Health do, and your new product launch earlier this year?
At Vitrue we develop tools to help clinicians to assess and treat musculoskeletal issues — everything from an older person having a hip replaced to a professional football player recovering from an acl tear. Currently physiotherapists and other clinicians mostly have to rely on their sight to assess their patients which is extremely difficult to do objectively and accurately.
Our products use computer vision-based technology to accurately assess a person’s performance of simple functional movements like a squat or standing up from a chair. We can then provide clinicians with the information they need to make the best treatment decisions and patients with personalized reports to help them understand what exactly is wrong and why they’ve been prescribed a certain rehab program.
We launched our initial product earlier this year in the UK market and it has been going great. We have users in elite sport, corporate health and some fantastic physiotherapy clinics.
Vitrue are a Techstars backed company, how was your journey through this accelerator?
Techstars was amazing for us. Before Techstars we hadn’t set an accelerator as a goal for the company particularly. But after we met Eamonn Carey who runs the London Techstars program we were converted. It’s just really striking when you speak to someone who has seen the problems you’re facing a hundred times before. Not that they have all the answers but they’ve seen the thousand things others have tried. You come across lots of people who talk like they know what they’re doing in the startup world, but in Techstars everyone you meet can really back that up.
We went into it with pretty specific decisions that we wanted to stress test. Things like route to market (musculoskeletal health is huge and picking the right initial vertical crucial), pricing and growth strategy. Within the first two weeks we had done one hundred twenty-minute pitches to mentors who had done it all before and who don’t hold back in feedback!
We came out of the program with a massively refined business model and a really clear path ahead of us. I wouldn’t say it was an easy three months, but we moved the company forward massively. I’m a huge fan and would encourage anyone who knows what their company needs to improve to consider it.
In your opinion, is the day of starting a start-up in the garage over? Are tech incubators the future?
I don’t think that day is over. We started this company three years ago in Starbucks. For the first six months we were sitting there for hours early in the morning and late in the evening making a cup of tea stretch further than it should!
But I do think starting it in the garage and reaching the big exits or IPO without a lot of help is getting closer to impossible, certainly in our healthcare markets.
We started in Starbucks but it didn’t take long to realize that to make leaps forward we needed funding and a proper space to work. But there are some amazing resources out there. We secured a small grant from InnovateUK and got free co-working space in a building called Camden Collective through an amazing initiative run by Camden Town Unlimited.
Once we got a working prototype, our first traction and our first private investment, input from mentors was so important to helping us grow to the next stage and build the right team. And finally, Techstars has helped us get to that next step and ready to begin massive growth.
What has been the biggest unexpected challenge you discovered as CEO of a start-up?
The level of adaptability you need. I was an engineer before this and was constantly coming up against new problems every day. But all of those problems broadly fit under the umbrella of software or electronic engineering. I thought during my PhD I was managing a lot of different areas but again they were relatively related.
As a start-up founder that is just not the case. Every day you have 30 different things that need your attention or your decision and the variety between those things is staggering. From product to sales strategy and traction to fundraising to hiring to financial projections and managing staff. You have to develop your context switching skills to a massively higher level than I’ve ever needed before. And people’s jobs depend on you doing it well!
It’s a challenge, but it’s also one of the biggest perks of the job.
A lot of talented professionals are tempted by the start-up world; However, they are deterred by the risk of leaving a safe, well paid role. What would be your advice to anyone thinking of taking the plunge?
Think long and hard! It’s the best job I’ve ever had but also by far the hardest. There are a lot of things I used to do that I just can’t at the minute either because of time or money. The days are long and the lows are very low.
But all that said, the highs are amazing. The excitement of seeing the product work for the first time, closing the first sale, securing the first investment, convincing the first hire of the company’s vision. The feeling of pride and achievement for those moments more than makes up for the sacrifice.
If you really value having 9-6 hours and switching off completely outside of work, I’d think twice about founding or joining an early start-up. It’s just not compatible in my experience. But if you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you can dedicate yourself to it, you have support of your partner or family and your financial obligations allow you to go lean for a few years then it’s an amazing route to take and the rewards vastly outweigh the costs.
What do the next 6-12 months look like for Vitrue Health?
We’re at a really exciting stage in the company. We have our first product developed and on the market, we’ve refined the business model and built an amazing team. Now it’s time to focus on growth and get the product in the hands of as many physiotherapists across our markets as possible. Now that the product’s core functionality is complete, we’re getting to build really exciting features we’ve wanted to do since the start and because it has been rolled out, we’re getting to do it with immediate feedback from users.
We’re planning to add to the team and launch a suite of products that focus on the home as well as the clinic and we’ll be publishing studies with professional football teams, leading knee surgeons and NHS partners. So, it’s a huge year for us.
What has been the impact of Covid-19 on business for Vitrue Health?
There’s no doubt Covid-19 has an impact. We’ve definitely changed our hiring plans for the coming months a little and we’ve brought forward remote assessment products in our roadmap. The biggest impact is on our customers. We’re partnering with physiotherapy clinics across the country who of course right now are seeing a lot fewer patients than normal. As an industry, physiotherapy has missed out on a lot of the schemes available and is under a lot of pressure. That obviously affects us in the short term.
That said, Covid-19 isolation will have a massive impact on the musculoskeletal health of the population. Tens of millions of people hunched at kitchen tables, activity levels through the floor and tens of thousands of surgeries cancelled every month will lead to a tidal wave of musculoskeletal patients. Physiotherapy businesses will obviously be crucial to dealing with this.
So, while our customers are facing tough times right now, they’ll be in more demand than ever once things start to open up. And we’ll be there to help them deal with it.
Besides running your company, what are you doing to pass the time during the lockdown?
I’d love to have a more interesting answer to this but during lockdown there isn’t all that much time where I’m not working on the company! I’m trying to use the commute time to learn piano and I have “twinkle twinkle little star” nailed but can’t claim much after that!
Thank you to Shane for this contribution, you have given plenty of insights into what life is like as a CEO of a start-up. From a network point of view Vitrue Health are always interested in making new contacts in the musculoskeletal, corporate or sports health world, if this is you then please do get in touch with Shane and the gang at Vitrue: www.vitruehealth.com or email LIBS on londonirishbusinesssociety@gmail.com and we will be happy to introduce you to Shane.
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