Ade Adesanya, Co-founder & President of Moving Analytics Inc.
Ade Adesanya, is the Co-founder & President of Moving Analytics Inc, a telehealth company that is increasing access to cardiac rehab and helping patients recover faster at home through an innovative app-based virtual cardiac rehab program, Movn. Moving Analytics’ programs are developed in partnership with Stanford University, and are based on more than 30 years of published research. Ade is also a lecturer of entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California. Prior to launching Moving Analytics, Ade helped researchers at the University of Southern California to commercialize their research into startup ventures. Ade grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to the US to study electrical engineering at the University of Houston, he later got a master’s in engineering management from the University of Southern California and a certificate in Finance from UCLA. He was recently recognized as a top 30 under 30 in healthcare by Forbes magazine.
Ade joins me today to discuss the impact of his company and the growth with the increase of Telehealth in this post COVID environment. I ask him why it takes a life changing event like cardiac arrest for some people to change their health habits. Ade shares his founder’s story with us and the growth of the company over the past few years bringing him to 2000 patients. He discusses how Stanford university’s technology transfer office was pivotal in his company’s success.
Today on Startups for Good we cover:
- Finding the why when founding a company
- Knowing when to bring on extra staffing
- Is Vertical integration a pattern to be repeated in other areas
- Common barriers in Telehealth
- Fundraising challenges for minority entrepreneurs
Connect with Ade through LinkedIn
Ade’s non-profit MAIN (Multicultural Angel Investor Network) can be found on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Miles
Welcome to Startups For Good Ade, It is so great to have you on.
Ade
You too Miles.
Miles
Thank you. Thank you. You know, where I'd love to start is, what is your view on why it takes a catastrophic cardiac event for some people to make the lifestyle changes that they need?
Ade
That is a great question. And it's a question I've been thinking about a lot lately. And I think it just boils down to motivation, right. So when you think about the risk factors for heart disease, things like hypertension, or cholesterol, oftentimes, they're symptoms that we can't appreciate, you know, you have to go do a lab test or put on a blood pressure cuff and you get a number, but you're not feeling like, Oh, my blood pressure is high, or my cholesterol is high, versus like, if you had a headache, right, or migraine, where you're like, Hey, you know, I need to get rid of this pain, and I'm gonna do something about it. And so you have a situation where it kind of creeps up on you, and by the time you God forbid, have a heart attack, then, you know, it's, it's now like, very real. And what we what we find from a lot of our patients are that this is the first time they kind of confronted them what mortality and morbidity, you know, and now they're very motivated to want to change because they've had this at this event happen. And so I think it's just like, motivation, right? There's no, you know, there's this quote that I read a long time ago, and I didn't know who said it was like, people don't change to the pain of staying the same is, you know, greater than the pain of change. And to, it's just that, you know, I think it's more behavioral science than anything.
Miles
Yeah, I think that's fascinating, because you're basically in the change business. You know, I've heard the change formula described as the the pain of the status quo, and also the vision times times the vision of the new thing, plus any first or next steps. So like, first steps are just a little addition. But the multiplier is your vision, how wonderful it could be, but that pain seems to be a big motivator, in most cases.
Ade
Yeah. It is, is unfortunate, but it definitely is. But I agree, I agree with you that the vision is also important. I think that that's something that, you know, in my experience, and in my work, one of the things that are coaches do with the patient's really is to ask them kind of like, what's the new why, you know, so you've had this cardiac event, you know, you're at home one day watching TV, you get a heart attack, you rush to the hospital, we get a surgery, you made it through that surgery, and what's your why now? And in a lot of cases, you know, people want to live enough to live long enough to see the kids graduate, or, you know, walk their grandkids down the aisle, or, you know, make it to some milestone, you know, in their journey. And we find that, that vision, like you mentioned, we then use that to kind of put the rest of their care in context. You know, sir, you know, we know, after heart attack on things you should be doing, like improving nutrition, your sleep, exercising, taking your medicines, and this is all fine and good, but when you put it in context of, you know, hey, you need to do this, because, you know, if you do, you will be able to, you know, see your grandkids or do whatever you want to do, I think then, you know, people are more willing to be adherent to those behaviors. And, you know, one of the things we're finding in our program is, is actually never had to incentivize a patient to do our whole program in terms of like, giving them cash and money or prizes. You know, we, a lot of our patients are so intrinsically motivated, because of, you know, they've had that near death experience, they don't have it again. And like you said, there's division for now. You know, I want to I have purpose in my life and in my health, you know, to achieve whatever those those goals are So, very interesting formula. I had to take that on board that and share that with my team.
Miles
Yeah, I think you also help with the first steps part of it. When someone knows they need to make a change, part of your program, as I understand it, is to lay out and make very concrete and accessible those first steps they should be making.
Ade
Yeah, I think that's a big part of this, you know, change and philosophy is that a lot of times people just feel overwhelmed with the amount of information that they need to comprehend to then figure out how to change. So I think it's like, so I have a Peloton, right? And one of the things that I really enjoy about the Peloton with the bike experience, but also just using the app and doing the you know, the classes is that it takes away that cognitive process of like, thinking about what you need to do, you know, so before, as you think about, like, how many reps do I need to do, how many sets and all that kind of stuff, right? And that in itself, like, I feel like reduces your willpower, you know, eventually to go do the exercise you need to do in that particular case, until we're finding that, you know, typically after a patient has discharge, they go see the cardiologist and the cardiologist like, hey, great, you made it, well, we're going to need you to do XYZ things, I need you to take the six medicines every day, I need you to exercise, change your diet, sleep better, like, and it can become very, very warm for the patient. And to one of the things that we've found, that patients have given us feedback on is that they really value with that they have this coach, you know, who is an experienced clinician, so they typically had nurses or exercise physiologist that have cardiac rehab background. And the patient says this coach as this like authority, but also as a guide, and a friend and a mentor, that's going to help them through this process. And they knew that that person is going to break down, you know, all the things they need to do into like, just simple daily goals. So they don't have to kind of overthink, you know, like, their recovery. They know that, you know, I have, you know, faith as my coach and faith is going to really kind of walk me through this process. And so people are just more able to be adherent, you know, when they have that kind of have the sense of you know, they have a coach, and I think that was a very powerful tool in just change.
Miles
Yeah, having a coach having accountability, that makes a lot of sense. When did you decide that you were going to hire clinical staff?
Ade
Yeah, that's a big one, I think when I met you (unintelligible) that. And so I think we have thought of doing. And I think innovation is interesting, right? When you think about how you innovating the space, especially healthcare where it's super regulated, and it's very difficult, the initial business model, moving Linux was a SaaS business model, right, where we built a platform, and we expected that we could sell it to quite existing cardiac rehab programs. And we expected that they would be able to use that to offer care virtually. And while that sounds good, on paper, we've got some customers against that model, we learned that track getting traction, that was gonna be hard for a couple of reasons. One was the staff already in the clinic in the in the cardiac rehab centers were already very busy and overworked. In many cases, they're understaffed, so kind of add any new technology to the workflow was creating more work, and there's no firepower behind it. And then we think about healthcare, fundamentally, the business model, the providers are now very incentivized to invest in like long term prevention, you know, their business model is they make most of their money from doing the big heart surgeries, you know, or the transplant or the, you know, those those big interventions. And we think about like rehab in context of that the revenue is so small, that they're just not very motivated to invest in that. But we flip it over to who cares about, you know, quick cares about improving, you know, about cardiac rehab or recovery after a heart condition that to me, would I really care the patient number one, right, they've had this event, I've talked about the patient's perspective. They don't want to get a second heart attack, and they don't want to die. Right? So that's a very strong motivator for a lot patient. We're in American healthcare system, you know, patients don't want to pay for care. Now, on the other side, you have the insurance company, right? That is the patient is paying a monthly premium to and then they have like all the motivations around reducing costs, because every time someone has a heart attack, it's about $30,000 for them. And on average, you know, the research shows that, you know, almost 40 to 50% of people get a second heart attack within 12 months. So when you think about that, you know, then have like a population of people who are costing north of you know, $60,000 a year and then that becomes very expensive population. So as we thought about who you know who really had the need, we kind of had to evolve the business model to address those two groups, right? The hospital is kind of a interesting middleman in this case where they do the surgeries, but the post acute care piece is not as exciting to them. And so instead of trying to convince someone that's already very motivated to do something, we said, Why don't we kind of align more with the pair and the patient as a to do that, you know, the health plans know how to buy three things, they know how to buy Provider Services, drugs and devices, and the need to pay for that. And so, as we're doing this exercise, we kind of figured that we had to align with one of those pathways. And the provider pathway was something that we could align with. And so essentially, we evolved our business model to where we are a virtual cardiac rehab clinic, you know, and we have, you know, in the different states that we'll create, we have registered a medical group in our states, and our medical group goes to contract with a health plan. And so we're providing the network, so from a health class perspective, is actually pretty easy, because they aren't. They just pay us the way they'll pay any other, you know, doctor in the network. And so, and as part of that, you know, we also normally provided technology, but we provide the, you know, the coach who's like a nurse on access physiologist, who also have medical director of the cardiologist who oversees the care. And so in our business model, now we can sell directly to a hotline, you know, and kind of be vertically integrated. And it's allowed us to capture a lot of the value, right? So before we're trying to charge a SaaS model where we're getting maybe like, you know, up to $100 a month, you know, per user, at the best, you know, and in this case, we're getting 1000s of dollars in managed care, because now we're taking care of the whole thing. And so that's, that's kind of like the thought process going into, like that (unintelligible).
Miles
Yeah, that's fascinating. I wonder if there's any lessons there for other founders who are thinking about healthcare? Do you think that vertical integration is a pattern that should be repeated in other areas?
Ade
I really think that it just depends on your value prop rate, and you have to kind of boil it down to who's really going to benefit from this, right. A lot of times the providers not the one benefiting from it. And to in as much as like you want speed, to to capture the value, I think one of the things that we also thought about in this in this exercise, as we're going through this business model pivot is, you know, I can sell like 20 hospitals, and it's going to take a long time, and the revenue per hospital is going to be x, I can sell like, you know, two, three pairs that would give me like, 1000s of patients a year, right, because this, that's all concentrated. And so, I feel like just, you know, when you think about who's really going to benefit from your service, you know, thinking about that vertical approach is important. And for me, you know, this is not something that I discovered on my own, you know, one of my close friends, and now a board members, Adrian James at Omada Health. And when they, when they started, I was very fascinated by the fact that like, this digital health company that had founders that weren't, you know, clinicians to build a clinical service where they had, like, you know, health care providers, providing care, and that's something that I thought was like, you know, like, wow, like, it felt like rocket science to me. And the more I talk to Adrian, you know, the more he kind of helped me understand the dynamics, and it didn't seem as big of a task, you know, to kind of notice, you feel like, Oh, I like, you know, being a healthcare provider. scared about that, that whole approach and taking on that risk. But this (unintelligible) get that risk from a liability perspective, where it's actually not as, as daunting as it may seem.
Miles
What else did you learn? And through talking with him? I mean, I think so what is okay, we said, I said, it's not a starting point, the same time we'll take on, you know, this type of model, they only think about, like a little regulatory thing, interact compliant and like, how you make sure that you're, you're just playing by the rules. So that's something that's important as well. And then, you know, we talk a lot about just scale. I think they had a point where they've, they've obviously the half a million patient, Mark, you know, so, you know, I think it's interesting, you know, when we talk about vertical like the vertical approach in healthcare, because in that model your service provider, right, fundamentally going to the health plan or customer and saying, Hey, I'm going to manage the entire delivery of this service for you, right, I think we're different is that you're now dealing with technology and to your technology enabled provider of care in that way, while you still are a service company. And so, you know, we've kind of struggled with, okay, on our business model, we are a provider. But do we really want to be in the business of like hiring like a ton of cardiologists, and nurses and like all the students on how does that scale over time. And so we're also experimenting with different models of like, that kid, every piece where in some cases, like we're partnering with established organizations, for example, we signed a partnership with the Mayo Clinic, where the Mayo Clinic is actually powering our program to the cardiologist and the nurses and the anesthesiologist in some of our counterpart by the Mayo Clinic, in some of our counties, they're part by our own, you know, people that have hired and trained in ourselves. And so we're kind of watching the dynamics of this two models to see kind of scale long term, you know, which one works, right? Because I mean, if the layer partnership works, then that would be an interesting business model, right? To kind of, on the front end of the house contract, as a provider on the back end have like another provider that has like a lot of experience being a provider, we're on that ship. And so those are different things that we get to talk about. with him. I kind of like bugs and get his thoughts on, and it always makes it very fun and thought provoking conversation.
Yeah, great to have that kind of mentor.
Ade
Yep.
Miles
You both, I think are in this space of telehealth, digital health. And the world has really embraced that over the last year. I'm curious what that change has been like for you.
Ade
It's been exciting because it feels like Finally, like we're getting heard, heard by my customers, I feel I've, it's interesting. I've been building this company since 2013. Right after grad school, we didn't immediately launch a product in 2013. But in 2013, after we graduated from grad school, we, we had some some intellectual property that we eventually kind of commercialized due to what we're doing today. And I've been going to the rehab conferences for now, five years. And initially, I was like, you know, what this guy's on? What's virtual rehab, and there's like the commercial wedding. Well, prove to me that you can deliver a virtual cardiac rehab, as safe and as effective as brick and mortar. So a lot of the time, we're spending educating people that like, hey, look at all the science from Stanford, I, from what organizations that do in cardiac rehab at home is safe and effective. And then, you know, people can we'll go over that. And I think with COVID, two things were happening, when people became more interested in Okay, so how do we actually implement a program instead of thinking through, like, if it's going to work, and then the second piece of it was the biggest buyer we've had in our business model is the insurance coverage, right to retro rehab, for the most part hasn't been reimbursed by Medicare, and many of the commercial payers, you know, up until last year to be last year. Or the pay is going very bullish on telehealth, you know, and including Medicare, even though that took it took it took a bit of efforts to make Medicare actually cover cover virtual rehab, that that really kind of broke, you know, a lot of the barriers people had before it's appropriate, like, it's not reimburse, we don't know if it's the science behind it, you know, we don't know how can they implement it, and to feel like, you know, all of the, it was kind of the last, you know, piece of the puzzle to really open, like, create the market. And so, now, it's like, you know, the market is open, and now we're seeing like, a ton of competition is coming to space. And it's really interesting, just kind of watching that. And it's like, hey, we've been here preaching this gospel, virtual rehab for for now pretty, almost almost a decade. And, you know, really, everybody's coming around to it. And, you know, when I when I go to pitch today, customers are asking me or prove to me that this works, they kind of just want to know how this is logistically is going to interface with their own workflows and their own processes and how we implement it. And that's been really good, you know, I think to just finally have the market, you know, kind of be in a place where it's ready to buy a product like this.
Miles
Now, the market is finally catching up to your pioneer. I'm curious for you to share with us that founding story. How did it come together?
Ade
Yeah, that's an interesting story. So, prior to studying analytics, I was working at the University of Southern California, in our technology transfer office, (unintellibible). And so what we did in this office was we essentially, were reviewing all the intellectual property that was being created through the Research Campus. And we were flagging the ones that we wanted to file patents on, you know, and then some, we just said, Yeah, there's not a lot of commercial interests, or, you know, we the necessary file intellectual property on them. Now, once we got a patent for, for technology, those two things we could do with it. So we could either try to license that, you know, IP to enlarge a company, you know, so, I think, the we think so the oil LED screens, though, very popular with Samsung phones, USC had a patent for that, you know, so, in that case, you know, USC licensed this oily D, technology to Samsung and Samsung, you know, pays them a lot of money for that. So that's one pathway. The second pathway is we take that IP and say, Hey, why don't we launch this company, you know, work with the professor to spin out this company out of the university. So I was on the team that was doing the, you know, the spin offs, or the the new ventures team. And so part of my job was, you know, understanding the tech technology capabilities of the intellectual property kind of challenge juxtapose that on the market as in terms of like, you know, okay, so where the war would this, you know, this makes sense. You know, a lot of times, academic innovations are very, you know, designing a very controlled lab environment, and they're already thinking through the reward use cases a lot. So part of what I need to do using my engineering background was kind of figure out, okay, where, what kind of technology, you know, contribute to the industry. And then once we kind of figure that out, was then quantified. other entrepreneurs in our space, what does something similar, so and then have them become like a mentor team, to the professor who's developed this technology, and then with the professor, kind of walking with them around the gate, so how evolved, you want to be with starting this company, you want to be the CEO, or do you want to be like a CTO or technical adviser, and so in some cases, also thinking through hiring a CEO for for, for that venture. And so that's kind of my job. I did that for a bunch of, of technologies. And in 2012, my boss back then her name is Carrie (unintelligible). She's also a venture capitalist now. She assigned me a project that essentially became movie analytics. (unintelligible), was my co founder and CEO, he, he was a postdoc at USC, getting his completing his research. And he got some patents around the use of smartphones, to track physical activity, especially caloric expenditure. And also he had gotten some patent around some behavioral models to get people to exercise more. So he was looking for an opportunity to commercialize that research. And one of the things I really struck me about Harsh that that made me gravitate towards him. And his work was Harsh was very bent on becoming an academic. So he was in this phase where he could become a tenured professor, or he could quit the industry or do whatever he wanted to do, you know, at Northern academia. And he said, I don't want to be an academic I want to do products are going to reach me as a people. And that, to me became something that I'm looking back was a very important attribute. You know, I had worked on so many projects at USC, that the technology was great and groundbreaking, but there whenever we could become commercial, successful ventures, because there was no passionate leader for it, you know, the researchers kind of wanted to keep that tenant positions. And they didn't really want to go out and start a company. And so in this case, you had Harsh who was hell bent on suddenly company, and he also had an open mindedness about you know, he didn't have to be exactly related to what he was doing. So we didn't have to literally try to commercialize that particular palette. He just wanted to do something that was in that arena. So to me that was like, I felt that one, you know, this is an interesting area, but we don't have the problem of social figured out yet. I have so lots of really brilliant that I feel like if we put our minds together, we would find a market opportunity. For this technology and be able to build a company. And so back then I asked him a question I said, you know, so we all know we should exercise. And that's important, right? for like, like we started this conversation with right motivation, right? Why do people wait till they have a big event before the day they change? I was like when healthcare is exercise so important to the recovery process, that patients will be motivated to exercise? And that's an interesting question back then. And we didn't know the answer. So we said, Why don't we go and talk to other clinicians or USC medical school is called USC teck, and asked him that question, like, where were people motivated in health care to exercise? So, you know, we got a lot of feedback, you know, from them around chronic disease, like diabetes and heart disease and heart failure. And they were like, exercise is very important in preventing the disease was also very important in the recovery process. And so it was through that, we started to kind of narrow the scope of what we wanted to do into like this chronic disease management arena more broadly. But I had a very interesting encounter with someone from the American Heart Association and mathematics and black issue event ago in Santa Monica. And he was like, you know, what do you do? And I told him what we did. And they said, You know, I work for the American Heart Association, we're very passionate about exercise. So why don't you send me some ideas and proposals on how we can work the organization to use technologies to get people to be more active. So I sent him some some ideas. And he fought the advance the leadership of the HA, and they came back to us. And they said, that is cool. But there's this area of cardiac rehab, that we spend a lot of time and money trying to advocate for it. And we think that the future of cardiac rehab is virtual. And so would you be interested in building the technology for us to do some research studies to validate that, you know, tele cardiac rehab or virtual cardiac rehab is would be a viable option? So we were like, sure, we'll do it. You know, so they said, apply for some research grants. They never really got any grant. But Harsh, like, kind of, you know, progress. I said, What is this cardiac rehab feed anyways? So why don't we go out, do our own research, our customer discovery around cardiac rehab? And let's see, you know, what we can do? So we have this strategy of battling Western students. So I think it was interesting when you play this card, where a lot of people want to talk to you as a student. So we said, Hey, we're students at USC, we're trying to build this app for cardiac rehab, but we had no idea what you do. So can you tell us, what you're doing cardiac rehab? What are the biggest challenges? What do you think is the future? But do we interviewed about 100, cardiac rehab centers, just asking them the same questions. And everybody told us the same thing, cardiac rehab is great as a service for people who've recently had a heart attack. When you do cardiac rehab, they live longer, they have fewer readmissions, the problem is they sentronics out people do it today, because they can't get to rehab center that's close enough to the home of work, or they have to travel. And then there are other factors, like the cost of the program that makes it very expensive for patients to do. And to their vision was, if there was a way for them to be able to do deliver cardiac rehab at home, that will be effective and powerful. Until, like, we have, at this point, almost 70 people tell us the same thing about like, cardiac rehab and why it's effective. It's like that. And so we really kind of held on to that. And the next question we had, and one of the things we learned from customer discovery, is the importance of science and clinical validation and health care submitted, people tell us Yeah, but if you were to create a virtual rehab app or program, we're going to want to make sure that, you know, it's safe for people. There's research behind you that shows how this effective. And so that was, that was a requirement for them to buy, essentially. And so Harsh and I started doing another set of research. And we're looking at who does any kind of work in virtual rehab from a clinical perspective, like, had any organization done any clinical studies to show that that kind of model worked. So we found that at Stanford, they had done a bunch of research in this space for over 20 years. And they created a model called motivate that was very effective, that essentially showed that to get four times more people to do cardiac rehab at home. And the clinical outcomes were the same as if they went to, you know, a brick and mortar location. They did in a very old school paper based way where people got like a binder and the nurse will call them every week and have ask them what did you eat and what's your blood pressure and it was kind of very archaic in the way it was delivered. What they had fantastic outcomes. And so we were like, hey, it'd be amazing if you partner with Stanford and take this research and digitize it, and so we built this virtual rehab product that's based on, you know, over 20 years of research. And so we I literally co called Massey Houston Miller, who's our chief medical officer. Now, she used to be the director of cardiac rehab at Stanford before. And I said, Hey, you know, same pitch grad students trying to put on AI for cardiac rehab. We saw your research with these amazing. And, you know, she picked up the phone number one, and we had a great conversation the first time and essentially me at heart. Every week, we had a strategy of just finding a reason to talk to Stanford team. And so we always had like a question that we ask them every every week. And he went from like phone conversations to find out to Palo Alto and hanging out at Starbucks on on on University Avenue. And it took us a year to build our relationship with Stanford by the end of 2015. They agreed to walk us into the technology licensing office, and they helped us negotiate a deal with Stanford to essentially license or the research they had done in virtual cardiac rehab to us, and you know, that's something that I feel very grateful for, and very fortunate for, to be kind of a custodian of of that research. And Nadia Daugherty, Bosque and Linda, who worked at Stanford, also, were planning on retiring, but they agreed to join our company in some form. So Linda became join us full time, Nancy and Bob were more part time, until they helped us kind of like take all that research and translate into digital product. And they are still with the company today, you know, we're now a couple of years into their license and losing exclusive global license to Stanford for that research. And so they've helped us serve with Safford behind us were able to go raise some, you know, venture capital, build the product, launch it. And so that's kind of how we got here. So look at your question. But that's that's kind of the party started moving analytics.
Miles
Wow. So you licensed technology from two universities? Is that what I'm understanding?
Ade
No.
Miles
So not from USC, just from Stanford. Any any advice? Given your background, working with a technology transfer office? And doing this license with Stanford
Ade
I think that different offices have different attitudes?
Miles
How do you say more about that? Yeah, say more about that.
Ade
Yeah, so So I think, you know, different different universities have different philosophies, I think what was pretty fascinating about Stanford, is that they just had this attitude of like, we want to get this out of the door, like as soon as possible. So they were more interested in kind of getting the IP into the real world. And so they want to go, we did that, during my funny half was pretty quick, like, I was pretty surprised as to like how fast we were able to do that deal. And, you know, we told them, initially, they had proposed a certain set of terms to us, we told him that, you know, that was very favorable to the business model. And so we went from like paying them, like, per person license to like a flat license. And then we also, they said, Hey, we'll also invest in movie analytics to to keep our equity. So we give them some equity, we pay them an annual license. But they said, you know, whenever you want to raise any kind of future funding rounds, we're in for 10% of that round, so that we can keep our pro rata. And so that was like, wow, okay, so you're not just going to also license the product, you're also going to be an investor, and to Stanford was very, very forward thinking, you know, and very pro commercialization. Now, I'm sure that I love the Trojan family, but I feel like the USC dress office was not as attractive in that way. I think they thought of licensing IP as almost like a business venture. And so they were trying to get more of more immediate return for it. So they wanted to participate and be much more money upfront to license the technology. And also, the terms of law says it'd be more onerous under startups. And to, you know, we tried for like a couple of years to license the IP. And, you know, at the same time, the business model kept pivoting to the point where we actually didn't need it anymore until we just never did that to because we didn't need that IP. By time, we had figured out what we wanted to do with the business.
Miles
Fascinating. I would assume that Stanford is a more successful tech transfer office in terms of dollars generated back for university, just an assumption and talk about it. That's Yeah, and and I wonder if there's any lessons there and that different attitudes that you encounter? That's fascinating.
Ade
Yeah. It's just more thinking like, you know, they're thinking more like investors and it's just like, hey, let's get it out. And Let's make it easy for the startup answer. I think that attitudes help them a lot. Now, obviously, Stanford's in a place where they're pre endowed, and they don't need to make a lot of revenue, in the short term from those intellectual properties, they have too many. You know, Google has a lot of like, you know, unicorns that come out of there. Sure. You know, I feel like that perspective also based on on some of that factor, too, but anyways,
Miles
Right, they have the capital to be able to think longer term.
Ade
Yep.
Miles
I'd be curious to know more about the numbers today for moving analytics, number of patients money raised anything else you can share?
Ade
Yeah, so last year, we serve about 2000 patients. That's our all time high, you know, this year, we have contracts for almost triple that volume. And we're just, we just finalized it last Friday, some additional capital, so we're announcing that we've restarted sure 6 million.
Miles
Well, congratulations,
Ade
Thank you, to help further our work. So to date, we've raised a total of nine and a half million dollars, until there's some of the metrics, but I think we're pretty excited now just for just the growth, I think with with some of the customers we have, I mean, just the amount of volume we could do with each of them is pretty pretty. I mean, one of them has like 10,000 eligible cardiac rehab patients every year. Another one has, like 100,000. And so I think it's, it's now kind of, for us use capital to start to put in the infrastructure to help us be able to scale, you know, and to be able to really capture you know, the value of the true value of our our customer contract, I think the contract we have right now watch the kind of considered pilot where the customers are the kind of saying, hey, let's start off with a disqualifies a patient, right, so that we can cash out, this goes, what we want to be in a place, you know, in the next quarter to where we can say, Hey, bring, bring your patient. So I said, you know, let's truly penetrate your population. And so, so yeah, so that's, that's kind of where we are.
Miles
So you're raising money in the midst of tripling your patient numbers and, and set up to scale even more, but you still find time to pay it forward. And to help other people. You started, for example, this nonprofit Main, I'd love to hear more about.
Ade
Yeah, so Main, Main is an interesting one, where means the multicultural and all the rest of that work. And that that's a nonprofit, I started and though he came out of being a black founder, you know, and, obviously, I've been fortunate to raise venture capital, and to be able to grow a company successfully, so far. And I get, every week, there's three to five other black farmers that reach out to me and be like, Hey, you know, really inspired by your work. I have this idea, and I want to refresh your capital, and I don't know how to go about doing it. And a lot of times you I think when when a culture right now, where to push up is, is pretty sexy, and almost everybody knows about entrepreneurship, you know, like shark tank has done a good job of like democratizing the idea of like venture capital and how those things work. So a lot of people are thinking about like, candy, I want to get XML, you know, investors for adventure, regardless of the stage. And so, in talking to many founders, I think one of the things I realized is that, you know, one day needed to get, you know, a different family and the angel round, you know, before you get to venture capital, because she obviously had to show traction with get VC eventually. And when you think about how a lot of early stage angel investing works, it's really kind of you invest in people, you know, right, like, if I'm an angel investor writing 10, to 50k, checks, you know, I'm gonna invest in people that are in my network, in my community, people that are building, you know, solutions to problems that I can empathize with. And when I thought about that, you know, for a lot of black founders, that a lot of not a lot of people in their communities who are writing, you know, Angel checks right now, they're thought of athletes have many great and they have a lot of professionals and executives of color. But, you know, up until very recently, the idea of angel investing hasn't been something that's been very popular in our community. And so the whole vision for Main is that, you know, is really to create a culture of angel investing amongst, you know, executives or color or professionals of color