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DatosX Boosts Innovation & Product-Market Fit Through Faster Tech Trials · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey, everyone. Logan Plaster here, back with another episode of Startup Health Now, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and the innovators who are transforming health.
• 0:09
  [gentle music] So at Startup Health, we work with founders and have coaching sessions and master classes every week, so we get a lot of exposure to what their greatest challenges are.
• 0:18
  So often, particularly with the earlier stage health companies, the fundamental struggle is finding product market fit.
• 0:25
  Is there alignment between what the founder is building, their core passion, and what the market actually needs? Often, a founder is ahead of their time.
• 0:33
  What they're building is amazing, but for whatever reason, the market's not quite ready for it. Maybe there's not reimbursement yet, or maybe it's not integrated into other technologies, so it's a bit too siloed.
• 0:45
  But it goes deeper than product market fit. On a recent fireside chat we held, Robert Garber, an investor at Seven Wire Ventures, talked about the concept of contract market fit.
• 0:55
  The idea is that if you wanna raise funding, you need to have more than market alignment. You need proof that people will really and truly pay for it.
• 1:03
  At the center of this conversation about product market fit and contract market fit is my guest today, Robin Roberts, the CEO and founder of a company called DatosX.
• 1:12
  Roberts spun his startup out of an initiative at Novartis called The Evidence Lab, and the idea is to help validate digital health technologies through cost-effective trials...
• 1:22
  uh, usually about eight to 10 times less costly than what you would normally find in, uh, in the ecosystem out there, and, uh, about 50 to 80% faster.
• 1:31
  DatosX is a two-sided marketplace helping buyers of health tech, like hospitals, pre-validate their purchases while also helping startups create buyable products.
• 1:41
  The interesting result of that positioning is that Roberts has a clearer picture of what buyers actually want.
• 1:47
  With hospital systems, what you'll see is a lot of them are really interested in making their physicians more efficient. He also has seen firsthand where startups often miss the mark.
• 1:56
  Tech companies, generally speaking, not always, but are interested in the best technology and are interested in putting out the best technology and the coolest technology, and that doesn't always align with the same problems that the healthcare systems are looking to fix.
• 2:08
  But where there is current misalignment, there's also opportunity for savvy startups to move in and create products that move the needle.
• 2:16
  We'll hear all about those trends and why Roberts is finding his work in high demand in 2025. Let's get into the interview. [upbeat music] Robin, good to see you. Good to see you, Logan.
• 2:27
  I interviewed you one year ago, and you were just launching this company, and so you're kinda hitting an anniversary here, so it's exciting to, to hear what's changed. But first, just level set, what is DatosX?
• 2:38
  What have you built? Uh, absolutely. So thanks again for the opportunity. Uh, DatosX is a company that's focused on running digital health tech-focused trials, uh, in partnership with leading healthcare systems.
• 2:49
  And what that allows us to do is to execute those trials in a cost-effective and time-efficient way, uh, usually about eight to 10 times less costly than what you would normally find in, uh, in the ecosystem out there, and, uh, about 50 to 80% faster than what you would normally find in the ecosystem.
• 3:05
  And, and that's, uh, really given an ad- an advantage to the companies that we've been able to work with and the companies that we'll be working with in the future.
• 3:12
  Is this a p- is this a product tailored more for a startup that needs to find clinical validation, or is it more for a buyer that needs to know whether what they're buying works? Both.
• 3:22
  Uh, so we were born out of, uh, uh, we spun the company out of Novartis.
• 3:26
  Uh, it's something that we created that was originally called The Evidence Lab, but it was created out of a need, uh, for, in essence, a, a large organization to better test the solutions that they wanted to use and bring alongside, uh, their therapies.
• 3:38
  And then we spun that out, that very model that we, uh, refined over the course of two years, into its own company known as DatosX now.
• 3:45
  Uh, and we're able to provide that service not just to large organizations but to even small, uh, digital health tech companies that are looking to submit data to the FDA for sub- for approvals, that are looking to make a new claim in a market, uh, that are looking to spur on a partnership with an organization like Novartis or Johnson, Johnson & Johnson or any other.
• 4:04
  So really a two-sided marketplace. Absolutely a two-sided marketplace. Okay. So you're one year in. Has it played out the way you expected it to? Not really. [laughs] So it's, it's actually been a lot better.
• 4:15
  So we launched the company at HLTH, uh, last year, um, keeping in mind that we had already a couple of years of experience of running the organization, running the model within Novartis.
• 4:24
  So we had a, a pretty good understanding, we thought, of exactly what the demand would be and how we would be able to execute and what our revenue run rate would be, and, uh, it turned out to be much more demand than what we were expecting.
• 4:37
  Uh, once we launched, we, we, uh, started to see the top of our sales funnel really fill up. We now have, uh, close to $10 million in revenue within, uh, our sales funnel, uh, and, uh, and we're gonna, uh, hit...
• 4:49
  We should be hitting somewhere or booking somewhere in, uh, around a million dollars for our first year, year zero, um, uh, before the end of this year, uh, with doubling that, over doubling that next year and moving on, uh, from that.
• 5:00
  So we've seen much more demand than what we were ever expecting, which is a, a really, really good thing. But what it's provided for us is the opportunity to reconfigure our ideas of how we would phase up the company.
• 5:13
  Uh, we always knew that, uh, in order to really expand and scale this company, we would need to build out a platform that would allow us to do what we do more efficiently, that would allow us to engage with our, uh, customers more efficiently, but more importantly, allow us to engage with healthcare systems more effectively.
• 5:29
  Uh, and what we've found with all of that demand is that we're gonna have to do that faster 'cause we need to scale up for that 10 mi- $10 million of revenue that we have sitting in the sales funnel today.
• 5:38
  [upbeat music] Hey, a quick plug about Startup Health before we get to the second half of this interview.
• 5:46
  Uh, we have been organizing mission-aligned networks called Health Moonshot Communities in order to level up the world's most ambitious healthcare entrepreneurs.
• 5:55
  We've been doing this work since 2011 and have helped more than 500 companies from more than 30 countries.
• 6:02
  Membership in Startup Health is open exclusively to founders and CEOs in health tech, biotech, and life sciences who are dedicated to solving the biggest health challenges of our time.
• 6:13
  You can learn more about the benefits of membership, and you can read hundreds of success stories, member testimonials, all at startuphealth.com. [upbeat music]Okay, yours is an interesting ecosystem play.
• 6:27
  You're seeing what hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, they, what they want. You're seeing what startups are building. What trends are you seeing in terms of where the, where the hottest interest is?
• 6:38
  Yeah, um, and it, it doesn't always align. [laughs] So with hospital systems, what you'll see is a lot of them are really interested in making their physicians more efficient.
• 6:47
  Uh, they're interested in, in making sure that their physicians can provide the best possible care as quickly and effectively as possible so they can move on to the next person and provide that care for them.
• 6:56
  Uh, tech companies, generally speaking, not always, but are interested in the best technology, and are interested in putting out the best technology and the coolest technology, and that doesn't always align with the same problems that the healthcare- Hmm...
• 7:07
  systems are looking to fix. It doesn't mean that healthcare systems aren't looking to do other things. Uh, these are just...
• 7:13
  This is just the area where I know if a solution is solving a particular problem that makes physicians more efficient, for example, that's a home run with any of the healthcare systems that we have within our network.
• 7:22
  Whereas, if you're solving a very s- uh, strategic or specific problem, uh, within a specific therapeutic area, it gets a little bit more difficult.
• 7:29
  Not, not too difficult, but a little bit more difficult in terms of finding an organization that has a, a specific interest in that area. So there's a, there's a small misalignment- Hmm...
• 7:39
  uh, in terms of what the main interests are for healthcare systems and what the main interests are for, uh, the tech companies that are out there, but it's not that misaligned where there, there isn't a lot of partnerships to be made.
• 7:51
  And where there's misalignment, there's future opportunity. Uh- Absolutely. Yeah. And, uh, because you stand in that gap, do you find that you're able to then inform either side on how to sort of meet in the middle?
• 8:04
  That's exactly right. So when we execute our trials, uh, there's a co-development that happens, uh, particularly with the development of the protocols, for example.
• 8:12
  That co-development is not just with DataSex, but also with the healthcare systems that we've selected and brought into the fold to execute on that study.
• 8:19
  So now they're getting information from not just our expertise, but from the healthcare systems themselves that can become and are intending to become customers of theirs, hopefully long-term customers of theirs, telling them, "This is the kind of data that you need to collect that would convince an organization like ours that this works and that this is effective for our patients, that this is effective for our healthcare providers."
• 8:39
  And that kind of information is incredibly valuable for digital health tech companies that often don't hear from their customers often enough to build something that's fit for purpose. You have the ear of the buyer.
• 8:51
  Uh, if you just turned off DataSex and tomorrow you started a startup to meet the needs of those buyers that you now know so much about, um, what kind of company would you build?
• 9:01
  Obviously, you said physician efficiency is kind of a baseline. Right. But, like, where do you see the greatest opportunity? I... It's there. It's, it's, it's, uh...
• 9:08
  I would build a, I would build a platform that somehow miraculously engages really easily with, uh, either Epic or Cerner, probably both, uh, that, uh, that is very, um, customizable, uh, for the different organizations so that they can ensure that each one of their physicians, no matter what department they're in or who they're working with or what ki- what way they like to see the data, is able to customize what they see, uh, see what they need to see when they need to see it, and be able to provide the best possible treatment.
• 9:37
  And then allow that platform to incorporate into all kinds of other, um, technology opportunities that are out there so that it future proofs itself. Yes.
• 9:47
  Never really thought of that myself, but [laughs] maybe I should start that company. I don't know. Exactly. Uh, what would you not do? Wow. What would I not do? Um, I would- What would you avoid?
• 9:57
  I would avoid, I would avoid, uh, the trap that I see some CEO founders fall into on the tech company side. Uh, it is...
• 10:06
  It's one thing to have a really cool technology that is, to the tech person, is unbelievable, the fact that it got... that it works and that it's, uh, and that it does it in such a incredible way is, is beautiful.
• 10:19
  But if it doesn't solve the specific problem for the patients and/or the healthcare providers that you're supposed to serve, then it's gonna sit on a shelf, and it's never gonna see the light of day.
• 10:28
  So that, that's something that they need to be constantly looking at is, "What is it that my end user really needs and really is, is going to need to, uh, to, uh, provide the, the answers to the problems that they have?"
• 10:42
  I love it. Robin, thanks for giving me the update. Yeah. We'll, we'll be watching your progress in the next year. Thanks so much. All right. Nice to meet you. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening to Starter Health Now.
• 10:53
  We'll be back again with another episode next week. [upbeat music]