Sarah Lee
Title: CEO, Relavo
Age: 24
When Sarah Lee went to college, she didn’t imagine she would end up starting her own business. Now, Lee and two fellow young co-founders are building Relavo, a medical device startup that is aiming to make home dialysis safer and more accessible for some patients with kidney failure.
Relavo's device is designed to disinfect tubes used in peritoneal dialysis, a form of at-home treatment for kidney failure. Since its founding in 2018, the startup has brought in about $1.5 million dollars in funding, developed a working prototype and completed early efficacy and safety studies. Lee said the company’s next milestones include raising a seed round, staffing up and preparing for submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2023.
It wasn’t her plan, but Lee is excited about the opportunities ahead for Relavo, and that she decided to forego the normal post-graduation job route and build something entirely new.
There are so many important health challenges that could benefit from new innovations and technologies. How did you decide on building a device to help prevent infection among dialysis patients?
I was first introduced to the problem of infection in peritoneal dialysis by Dr. Alicia Neu, chief of pediatric nephrology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, through the BME (Biomedical Engineering) Design Team program at Johns Hopkins University. As part of the program, clinicians pitch various clinical needs to student teams, and each team then filters and evaluates them to decide what to work on. My team and I were struck by this need for a few reasons. First, kidney failure is so pervasive and affects so many people both in the U.S. and globally, and we were interested in a project that could have large clinical impacts. Second, this hadn’t been solved before. Health care-related infections are usually such a hot topic in health care innovation since it represents such a large, unnecessary expense, so we were surprised that this need still existed. Based on this, my team and I were excited to tackle this important need and make an impact on the millions of dialysis patients globally.
What was it like trying to launch a business while still attending college?
It was definitely hard to balance, especially in the beginning. A lot of my friends were headed towards med[ical] school or other professional schools, so there was a lot of emphasis on grades. I always wanted to succeed and do well in school, but I think the biggest thing that I learned while trying to launch Relavo in school was that I couldn’t put 100% of myself into everything. There were times when I had to prioritize school, and when I had to prioritize Relavo. It’s easy to feel guilty about letting things fall through the cracks, but it’s a feeling that’s inevitable, and that I had to learn to be OK with.
Do you have concerns about being underestimated as a young, female entrepreneur in the medical device space? If so, how do you deal with that?
The medical device space is hard in general — there’s not as much capital available in this area as there is for life sciences or digital health. I think it’s especially hard being a young, female entrepreneur. I don’t have decades of clinical or research experience or a long string of degrees after my name, so there’s an inherent lack of trust in my, and my co-founders’, ability to successfully develop a medical device. It’s also well known that female-founded companies receive much less venture capital and investment dollars than male-led teams. While change is in progress, it’s slow, and this is the reality of the entrepreneurial field now. Knowing this, it’s hard to not be concerned about being underestimated. But I’m also optimistic because of the number of emerging groups and funds that aim to change the status quo and support underestimated founders. We actively seek out angel groups and [venture capitalists] that focus on female founders, because their members understand how the fundraising journey is different for female founders.
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