StartX Med is a medical vertical of StartX focused on accelerating the development of Stanford's top medical entrepreneurs through experiential education and collective intelligence.

Recognizing that medical start-ups have industry-specific needs not addressed by the typical accelerator, StartX Med was developed by Divya Nag, a StartX alumni who founded Stem Cell Theranostics, and her company co-founder, Andrew Lee. The two sought to bring additional resources such as wet/dry lab space, animal testing facilities, clean rooms and specialized instruction on med-tech intellectual property and the FDA approval process to medical companies.

Today, StartX Med focuses on "Advancing breakthrough healthcare technologies by accelerating the development of Stanford's highest-potential medical entrepreneurs." We do so by focusing on people in order to develop a community and educate our founders in their efforts to transform healthcare. We support founders across the entire innovation life cycle in biotechnology, medical device, health IT, care delivery innovation, imaging and diagnostics.

StartX Med companies apply through the same competitive StartX process and work alongside the entrepreneurs in the StartX program.

We take 0% equity from founders.

  • 135+ companies

    135+ Medical companies have gone through StartX Med,raising over $920M+ in cumulative funding across all medical fields. (Med devices, Biotech, Digital Health and Diagnostics)

    24 FDA approvals over past 4 years and counting.

  • Life Science

    All top 10 global pharmaceutical companies are paying customers of StartX Med portfolio companies.

  • Medical Partnerships

    Clinical partners of StartX Med companies encompass over 250 hospitals, 30,000 care centers, 50,000 physicians, 60M annual patient visits.

StartX Med Labs is dedicated to empowering entrepreneurial scientists to build successful companies.

  • We offer core facilities on-site for research in biology, chemistry, and medicine (ex. fume hoods, tissue culture facilities, PCR, gel imaging system, and more).
  • StartX Med Labs is entirely community-operated, and is structured as a non-profit cooperative to serve the StartX Med community.

  • Click here for more information about StartX Med Labs Cooperative.

 

A Community for Founders

StartX Med has accelerated the development of some of Stanford's best medical entrepreneurs.

Our founders range from undergrads and masters students to post docs, professors, and Stanford alumni. We are proud to be building a community of all the top medical founders from Stanford.

Our founders have released products, become profitable, raised funding, filed patents, and been covered extensively in the press, including TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal, Inc Magazine, Forbes, and many more.

  • "StartX Med has been instrumental in helping us develop as entrepreneurs. The community is very supportive and has pushed us to never give up. Our mentors routinely go beyond our expectations to advise us and connect us to their personal networks so we can reach our goals. I would strongly advise any entrepreneur serious about starting a company to apply to StartX."

    - Andrew Lee
    Stem Cell Theranostics, StartX Med First Session

  • "StartX Med has built an unrivaled founder and mentor community that has seen exponential growth in its influence and impact. Our community enables both alumni and current founders to access a wealth of knowledge and experience that each individual entrepreneur or company cannot possess. This is indeed a privilege, one that helps avoid mistakes, solve real problems much faster, and learn to navigate often-complex industries like healthcare. "

    - Victor Gane
    DermLink, StartX Med First Session

  • "StartX Med mentors are accomplished entrepreneurs who guide you in building your vision into reality, without pushing their own vision on to you. The tools, insights, success and failures they shared, inspired us and helped us learn to purposefully make effective decisions that soon turned out to be of great strategic importance for the success of our business."

    - Pratik Verma
    AgeTak Inc., StartX Med First Session

  • Drug screening using human cardiomyocytes derived from patients to accelerate the drug development process. Recently received a $20M grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine

  • Optimizing Operations of Clinics With Specialty ERP Software

StartX Med Companies

 

World-Class Mentorship

StartX Med benefits from the best mentors in Silicon Valley ranging from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to professors and lecturers from the Med School. We have selected the top experts in today's technologies such as Web 2.0, SaaS, cloud computing, mobile application, as well as business expertise on marketing, sales, operations, and finance.

The mentors will provide your teams guidance and advice based on your specific needs through panels, lectures, and informal meetings. By forming personal relationships with the best and the brightest entrepreneurial minds, you will not only gain access to their unique networks, but you will be provided the guidance you need to start your company off on the right track.

Med Mentors

Paul Yock Director and Founder Stanford BioDesign Program
Missy Krasner Founding Member Google Health
Tom Ruby Co-founder Miret Surgical
Uri Lopatin Senior Director Clinical and Translational Research at Gilead Sciences
Mike Kaplan Founder and Managing Director Altos Health Management
Marta Zanchi Managing Director Medinnovo
Michael Alvarez Founder BayBio
Arjun Rao Clinical Effectiveness Lead Stanford Hospital
John Flygare Senior Scientist Genetech
Scott Barclay Investor Data Collective
Joe Mandato Managing Director De Novo Ventures
Boyd Faust Chief Financial Officer Titan Health Corporation
Sean Handel Senior Vice President of Product Management Epocrates
Milt McColl Founder Gauss Surgical
John Fesko Director of Business Development Roche Molecular Systems
Marco Smit President Health 2.0
Albert Chan Chief of Digital Patient Experience Sutter Health
Carl Bouthillette Founder Metis Lighthouse