{"387611":{"#nid":"387611","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Patel\u2019s Team Takes Startup Crown","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EFormer Petit Scholar mentor Yogi Patel developed the technology and Team Bioletics developed a sense of direction that led them all the way to first place in the 2015 Georgia Institute of Technology Startup Competition, Monday night (March 9) at the Scheller College of Business.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOpen to all graduate students, the program \u2013 formerly known as the Business Plan Competition \u2013 pits teams of various sizes against each other in a contest designed to find the best startup business. This year, out of the more than 40 teams that started, the team that won is built around technology Patel has developed as a Ph.D. student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u201cAs a team, the goal is to try and figure out the best options to commercialize the technology. In my case, I focus a lot with electrical stimulation,\u201d says Patel, who works in the Neurolab of Robert Butera.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe competition starts in September with a workshop series as students come together and form teams \u2013 interdisciplinary teams are encouraged. In Patel\u2019s case, his team emerged from the Scheller College\u2019s vaunted TI:GER Program (for Technical Innovation: Generating Economic Results), which teaches its student participants that the main hurdles to commercializing research are seldom technology-related. So, TI:GER brings students who are accepted into the program together to form five-member teams. These include two MBAs and two law students who focus on commercializing a Ph.D. student\u2019s research \u2013 in this case, Patel\u2019s research.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETeam Bioletics was comprised of two law students from Emory, Sarika Mathur and Mark Luo, two MBA students from Georgia Tech, Maggie Lovatt and Hassan El Majidi, and Patel. They won the $15,000 cash prize for first place and something new this year, the Edison Prize, which comes with an additional $15,000, in the form of a convertible note to the winning team\u2019s company.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe competition, presented by Georgia Tech\u2019s VentureLab, forces teams to think beyond the technology, the idea being that most tech startups fail because they start executing before they have a proven business model which includes getting to know who your customers are. Patel\u2019s device is designed to electrically stimulate nerves and control glucose levels. So, Team Bioletics\u2019 targeted customers are diabetes patients. Right?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWhen we started, we thought about human patients,\u201d says Patel, whose team considered the challenges and costs of FDA regulation and had to think about another market. \u201cWe learned quickly that we can go to the pet market, because there are tons of diabetic pets.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey did their research, validated their customer base, spent time talking to owners of diabetic pets, talked with veterinarians (\u201cWe actually went to the largest vets conference,\u201d Patel says) and industry executives, the experts at VentureLab, and pitched the idea around.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe also had to test our idea out, see if people would buy it,\u201d Patel says. So they spent January and February showing off a prototype, and asking pet owners if it was something they would buy. Then they spent the past few weeks in the heat of the final rounds of competition, which whittled down to 12 teams before Monday\u2019s finals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis is all part of Patel\u2019s best-of-both-worlds plan. Nearing the end of his third year of Ph.D. studies, he has plans to enter the academic world while starting a successful company. He is currently researching universities, letting them know he\u2019ll have his Ph.D. within the next year, year and a half, telling them about his research. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut meanwhile, there is more to do with Team Bioletics in the next few weeks. It turns out that there is at least one team from Georgia Tech that will be competing in the madness of March, and they won\u2019t have to take care of the ball or make a free throw. Instead, Team Bioletics will represent Georgia Tech in this year\u2019s edition of Startup Madness, a bracketed competition among Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) schools, March 26-27 in Raleigh, N.C.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPatel and his teammates have a tough act to follow. Last year\u2019s Georgia Tech Startup Competition champion, CheckDroid, went on to win the ACC crown as well.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECONTACT:\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"TI:GER team built around biomedical technology wins $30,000"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETI:GER team built around biomedical technology wins $30,000\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"TI:GER team built around biomedical technology wins $30,000"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2015-03-13 12:58:15","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:03:00","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-03-13T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-03-13T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"387601":{"id":"387601","type":"image","title":"Yogi Patel","body":null,"created":"1449246275","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:24:35","changed":"1475894398","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:58","alt":"Yogi Patel","file":{"fid":"75454","name":"yogi_patel.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/yogi_patel.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/yogi_patel.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1054269,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/yogi_patel.jpg?itok=DVpAfW7V"}}},"media_ids":["387601"],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1808","name":"graduate students"},{"id":"8457","name":"TI:GER"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}