Steve Case presented an over-sized $100,000 check to Baltimore-based health tech startup Sisu Global Health on Monday, the first winner of his latest Rise of the Rest bus tour. Sisu pitched at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, one of eight local startups hoping to win the money.
"The pitches were exceptional across the board," Case said in an interview after the competition. "All eight really have potential to be significant companies."
Sisu has developed a product called Hemafuse capable of removing blood from a patient with internal bleeding and re-transfusing it safely into their veins. The hand-operated system is designed to be simpler and easier to use than the current standard in U.S. hospitals. In particular, it's aimed at developing countries that don't necessarily have access to the equipment used in U.S. hospitals.
CEO Carolyn Yarina began with a claim that the device could save 11 million lives, a number than clearly caught the attention of the crowd. Case in particular was interested in Sisu's plan to bring Hemafuse to Ghana, a country he recently had traveled through as part of another entrepreneurship tour.
"A lower-cost, easier-to-administer approach is the kind of thing that is necessary to be successful in communities in Africa," Case said.
Sisu was one of the six health tech companies competing for the prize, which Case attributed to the influence of Johns Hopkins University nearby. The mix of companies had several with JHU connections, including one for digital pathology, disease analysis via computer, one for better ovarian cancer detection and one by a group of JHU students who have built a platform for arranging small-group fitness classes at gyms.
Sisu has previously raised $500,000 and the new money will go toward a new $700,000 they are raising. Mainly though, it will serve as validation in their market and help them get new interest and new contacts for future investment.
"We have Steve Case's name behind us now as we're going to other investors," said Sisu CEO Carolyn Yarina.
Case considered who to choose as winner with a group of judges including OrderUp CEO Chris Jeffrey, former NAACP President Ben Jealous, Julie Lenzer Kirk from the Commerce Department, Johns Hopkins entrepreneurship advisor Christy Wyskiel and Revolution Ventures partner Bobby Ocampo. While the judges had plenty of positive things to say about the other competitors, they came back only minutes after the end of the last pitch to announce Sisu had won.
"We really thought it was a kind of change-the-world idea," Case said of Sisu. "It can save a lot of lives."
Case was quick to point out that the leadership team of Sisu is all female, and that there was a lot of diversity among the company leaders pitching. He compared that favorably to the the usual winners of investment in Silicon Valley.
"It's usually all white guys," Case said. "We want the playing field to be more inclusive."
Case said that being inclusive is something he plans to focus on during the rest of tour, even as the tour itself touts diversity in terms of startup homes outside of Silicon Valley, New York and Boston.
"Rise of the Rest is about leveling the geographic playing field," Case said. "But we want to level it for all kinds of people, so everybody feels like they have a shot."
