Meet the SVC Finalist: Pareto | Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Nine WashU student-lead ventures are finalists set to compete for $22,500 in awards in the 2020 Skandalaris Venture Competition (SVC) later this month. This week, we are publishing Q&A articles to feature each venture team. Today’s featured team is Pareto.
Pareto is developing an automated storage and access system that draws a dose sterilely and then dispenses a syringe to the provider. To protect the sterile internal environment of the vial, we will inject sterile, inert gas into the vial, thus forcing the medicine out through an inserted syringe. This is a similar concept to the Coravin wine preservation system.
Industry: Biotech/ Healthcare
Number of Employees: 3
Total Funding (as of March 2020): $2,000
What problem are you solving?
In order to prevent cross-contamination after a dose is drawn, excess medication in a vial is often thrown away. This leads to billions of dollars of infusion drug waste every year in the US.
About the Founding Team:
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since starting your venture?
The most important part of starting a venture is finding the right team. It is often more important to tackle what you can and then look for additional help rather than trying to do everything yourself- getting impactful technology to market quickly can be the difference between the product becoming realized or having it fade into creation oblivion. Trying to do everything yourself is the surest way to slow down your product’s development. That has been one of our biggest strengths so far – the depth and bread of team member expertise.
What do you love about being an entrepreneur?
We love the freedom and creativity that comes with being an entrepreneur. We love coming up with the weird, out-of-the-box solutions that differ from the status quo. You don’t know that they’ll work (or maybe you even know they won’t), but getting the ideas out there for others to build off of can lead to innovation. You don’t get that in more structured and established roles. We also love the ability to work on something about which we are passionate and that it has the potential to help a lot of people. Finally, though entrepreneurship requires teamwork (no one can do it all), it also requires everyone to wear multiple hats. We thoroughly enjoy being able to work across multiple roles within an organization, which is not something commonly found in more established firms.
What words of advice do you have for those interested in starting a business?
Know it will take more than you think, that the timeline will most likely be longer than expected and that you will go through lots of ups and downs. Also, keep in mind that working within a startup is similar to starting a family in many respects. It will take a lot of time, patience, and energy, and who you choose as your partners will make the difference between a successful experience and a failure.