BioHealth Innovation CEO Richard Bendis has always loved the health care industry. His winding career — which has taken him from Kansas City to Philadelphia and now to Washington, D.C. — could always be tied back to that industry no matter what role he held.
That's why he feels so passionately about finding great talent and creating opportunities in the DMV to keep entrepreneurs here. In 2015, BioHealth Innovation, along with a few partner companies, launched their five-month healthtech incubator in Rockville, Md. Bendis isn't too concerned about the future of the biohealth field in the DMV, but he does hope that one day more serial entrepreneurs will stay in the District.
Tell me about Relevant Health.
Basically, Relevant Health is a program within BioHealth Innovation. One of the things that we did when we created it was look at the gaps that are in this region that were not being noticed by other people. So we created some programs that we thought were needed to fill this gap, and one of those was health technology accelerator programs.
We created Relevant Health, which is based in Rockville, Maryland, and put out this solicitation for companies that we would pull from around the United States to spend five months in an accelerator in Rockville, and that's how Relevant Health was born.
A lot of our smart entrepreneurs or researchers or scientists or spin out companies were not staying in the region.
Why do we need a health tech accelerator in DC?
If you don't have that opportunity to be nurtured on a competitive basis here in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area, then you're going to go to Philadelphia, you're going to go to New York, you're going to go to Boston, you're going to go to California. And that's what was happening.
A lot of our smart entrepreneurs or researchers or scientists or spin out companies were not staying in the region, and we needed to find a way to retain them here and create some of our own programs to compete with some of the national programs, like Techstars or Y Combinator or Dream Adventures up in Philadelphia. So that was a gap that needed to be fill.
Do you have any concerns about attracting talent to the health tech field to D.C. in the coming year given Trump's stances on healthcare?
Regardless of what a new administration is going to do around healthcare, one of those things that's not going to change is Health and Human Services is always going to be located in D.C. You're going to have the Food and Drug Administration up in Montgomery County. You're going to have the National Institute of Health in Montgomery County. The Center for Medicare Services is going to be in Baltimore.
You have all of these healthcare policy and regulators located here, which is a natural attraction for people who would like to be next to what's happening within policy and the regulatory environment.
In addition, there's a whole bunch of large corporations and research institutions that are based here that have survived regardless of whatever changes have been made within public policy or different administrations in the past, and the region has thrived.
I'm not so concerned about us losing people. One of the challenges we face in this region is that we don't have too many serial entrepreneurs in the biohealth space, and that's one of the things we're trying to do is foster a culture where entrepreneurship is stronger and we can attract more entrepreneurs who have the ability to lead some of these emerging companies.
If you attract the right people, the money will follow.
I'm not so concerned about us losing people.
What do you think makes the startup culture unique in D.C.?
I think the culture is emerging. There has always been some very successful entrepreneurs within this region. If we go back in time, with AOL and Steve Case and what he's doing with trying to spur more investment in entrepreneurship in this region. We have another tremendous entrepreneur in Kevin Plank with Under Armour, and even though it started in the sporting industry, they're investing a lot of money right now in the healthcare field and wearables and smart clothing and ways that they can take their strengths and apply it to the healthcare industry.
There's a culture of entrepreneurship, but what we need to strengthen is creating more successful entrepreneurs and then training entrepreneurs to become serial entrepreneurs, which you see reminiscent of what goes on in maybe Boston or San Francisco.
I'd say we have the tools. We have strong incubators. We have good accelerator programs and co-working spaces right now where people can convene. There are intermediary organizations who are helping the entrepreneurs to connect the dots to resources that they need.
Why did you choose the path to be an entrepreneur and an investor?
I had great mentors and people who had mentored me. During my life, I had the chance to work with Edwin Land, who was the founder of Polaroid. I worked for Texas Instruments when that was big in the chip industry and the technology area when they were developing their consumer products.
So I always wanted to create incentive programs for people to share in whatever they help build because it's not all about the entrepreneur and the leader. So all of those factors — being influenced by people who impacted my life — have enabled me to say how can I pass along some of the skill sets or knowledge that I've been able to obtain to other people so that they will have the same chance as I have.
You have to be very patient and at the same time you have to be persistent.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs?
Generally, I always talk about the two Ps. The first one is patience. At the end of the day, the entrepreneurial life is a roller coaster and it doesn't go along smoothly all the time, but you have to be very patient and at the same time you have to be persistent.
If you really have a passion for something, you really believe in it strongly, persistent in trying to make it a reality, and at the same time you have to understand that if the market is telling you that you're concept an idea is not as strong as you think it is, be willing to hear from outside people.
Sometimes people get so obsessed with their vision, but at the end of the day, they won't listen to what the market is telling them about that. The first thing that I advise all of the entrepreneurs they work with is to form an advisory board of experienced entrepreneurs to surround yourself with.
