Sid Jawahar is heading Swiftarc Venture's efforts to work with Nottingham Spirk, the Cleveland design and innovation collaborative, in a commercialization partnership around telehealth — the practice of "seeing" your doctor on a screen rather than in an office.
Through its recently raised $75 million telehealth fund, Swiftarc — an early and growth-stage venture capital firm in New York City — aims to support the next wave of disruptive technologies to improve health care coverage, increase access and lower costs.
Jawahar, Swiftarc's founder and managing partner, spends half his time in Cleveland working with John Nottingham and John Spirk, co-presidents of the local product design house, and their crew to take telehealth proof of concepts to market.
Jawahar spoke with Cleveland Business Journal about what attracted his firm to Cleveland and what it hopes to accomplish here. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Why did Swiftarc choose Cleveland for its telehealth commercialization work?
Some folks from our team had been looking at expanding partnerships that could help our entrepreneurs bridge the gap between proof of concept and getting their technology in the market. We felt that consumer and health care are two industries that need to be built alongside other folks in the ecosystem to provide the best results, whether it be product innovation, impact or outcome. That's when we began looking for partnerships, and Cleveland came up in two ways.
One is, we had some roots with the Cleveland Clinic. (Both Nottingham and Spirk are members of the Clinic's board of trustees.) Two, we are trying to build the missing pieces in the venture capital model. A lot of the time, that's bringing a product to market by providing the research and development support that founders don't have the budget for.
The footprint that Nottingham Spirk has in consumer health is one of our main attractions to the Cleveland firm. We are looking to participate in the visibility they provide for consumer products and consumer product design.
When a venture capital firm scales up, it can end up having aspirations to have a design studio or an incubation engine of its own. That's sometimes a trap. We know exactly where our lane is and where it isn't. That's when partnerships are immensely useful to us.
Here are other Nottingham Spirk stories in this series:
- Nottingham Spirk's 'vertical innovation' worth millions to medical device industry: It's not that scientist- or physician-inventors don't think about how patients could interface with their products, but the Cleveland design collaborative has developed a knack for tapping into the minds of consumers.
- Nottingham Spirk takes team approach to developing medical devices: Most medical devices are developed in silos, which is partly why only about 5% of them are commercialized, says John Nottingham, co-president of Nottingham Spirk. "While the world has gone specialized, we’ve done the opposite," Nottingham said.
When did Swiftarc start working with Nottingham Spirk?
I'd say we started our discussions with Nottingham Spirk in mid-2020 and launched our commercialization partnership in the fall of 2020. If we have an interesting product that could have a disruptive impact, we can bring it to Nottingham Spirk. They're skilled in redesigning some of the aspects of the product and providing advanced commercialization support to take a portfolio company or technology to the next level.
Do you have an example company or technology of this partnership?
We have engaged deeply on two potential projects. We couldn't be more excited about both, but while it's premature to openly discuss them, they're very much within the theme of improving the human condition through product innovation and supportive capital.
