The Clinic alumni earn top spots at Startup Survivor pitch competition

By Eileen Hoftyzer

The three winners of The Forge’s Startup Survivor pitch competition this year credit the coaching and mentoring they received through The Clinic’s Health Innovation Bootcamp and Residency as essential to their success. The programs provided core knowledge about business and commercialization, and their mentors connected them to networks and gave them confidence and motivation to grow their companies.

Startup Survivor is a four-month program led by The Forge business incubator, in which students complete a series of entrepreneurship challenges to advance their business idea, culminating in a competition to pitch their company to venture capitalists.

“I’m really appreciative of The Clinic’s programs. Entrepreneurship can be pretty daunting, especially for health sciences students, but The Clinic is great for anyone exploring entrepreneurship as a possibility,” says Ibrahim Iftikhar, a student in McMaster’s integrated biomedical engineering program who received third place in the pitch competition.

Iftikhar himself had originally planned for a career in medicine, not business, but he really enjoyed the innovation and commercialization courses in his program. He decided to register for The Clinic’s Health Innovation Bootcamp, a six-week intensive program, in 2022 to gain more knowledge and skills and apply them to a business idea.

When Iftikhar applied to the Startup Survivor program, he was no longer pursuing the same idea as at the bootcamp and had come up with something completely new – CrowdVision, a software program that uses crowdsourcing to acquire video clips of large events and produce a seamless final product. Even so, Iftikhar says that the knowledge and skills he gained during the bootcamp, along with the mentorship and coaching, helped prepare him for the competition.

“The bootcamp was an important stepping stone to get to this competition, and I don’t think I would have been confident enough to do the Startup Survivor program without the bootcamp. The mentorship was really beneficial to build up my confidence and skills,” he says.

Second-place recipient Mann Parikh, a student in the biomedical discovery and commercialization program, also credits the mentorship he received at The Clinic as particularly important to his success. Parikh says that his mentor during the program, bootcamp facilitator Lianna Genovese, founder and CEO of ImaginAble Solutions, showed him how to tailor and deliver pitches to different audiences.

“Lianna’s input was essential in helping me cater my message for various audiences, and that was really helpful,” he says.

Parikh completed both the Health Innovation Bootcamp and the nine-month Residency @ The Clinic, where he developed his idea for NerView, a tool to help surgeons see and avoid nerves during surgery, reducing the incidence of nerve injuries. He valued the breadth of information and resources that were included in the programs and the opportunities to practice and hone pitches to potential investors. His business is now incorporated, and with the capital from the pitch competition, he will be working to further develop and test the product to advance it to the point where it can be used in a clinical setting.

He says all of these learning experiences have confirmed that he is pursuing the career path he wants.

“I’ve always had an interest in business and science, and these two programs, especially the residency, helped me solidify a place where I feel comfortable in that environment,” says Parikh. “This intersection of science and business, health innovation and entrepreneurship, is the sweet spot for me, and this is where I belong.”

Shania Bhopa, a PhD student in Global Health who received first place in the competition, has always considered entrepreneurship as a possible career path. She started her first business at age six and has been an entrepreneur throughout her life.

She was drawn to Residency @ The Clinic as a way of meeting and connecting with other like-minded students, researchers, and clinicians. She also wanted to advance her business idea, TechMedic, an app for children and parents to use in hospital emergency departments to explain diagnoses with animations and child-friendly language. With the $15,000 in funding from the pitch competition, Bhopa will be further developing the app and conducting a pilot study in an emergency department setting.

When she started Residency @ The Clinic in 2022, she had the idea for TechMedic but needed some guidance on how to market to and work with hospitals. She credits mentorship during the residency for helping her gain valuable knowledge in that aspect of business.

Bhopa says that entrepreneurship can be a fulfilling and exciting career path for those who are able to dedicate the time and energy to it.

“If you have the opportunity to change the lives of people everywhere, entrepreneurship is the way to accelerate and deepen that connection between you and the end user,” says Bhopa.