On Thursday, July 10, 10 startup teams took the stage at Trailhead Boise to compete in the Startup World Cup Regional Qualifiers. Of the 10 entrepreneur teams competing, four included alumni of Boise State’s Venture College program — including the event’s winning company, Rattler Medical.
Donald Young (Venture College entrepreneurship course, 2019) founded Rattler Medical, a company that develops technology to support healthcare delivery in challenging environments. Young’s pitch focused on the company’s product, Life Hold, a temperature-controlled, battery-powered container used to transport blood.
Blood saves lives, Young explained in his pitch. Severe bleeding can quickly lead to death for patients who have sustained a traumatic injury. If EMS is able to bring blood to a trauma patient, chances of survival dramatically improve. But currently, only 100 EMS units out of 13,000 in the United States have the capability to carry blood. According to Young’s data, sixty thousand deaths in the U.S. last year could have been prevented if EMS had the universal capability to carry blood.
Life Hold, Young says, is the life-saving solution. Where other blood coolers are bulky and high-maintenance, Life Hold is sleek, portable and practical.
“It’s designed to be mission critical, mission portable, easily used and easily integrated into Standard Operating Procedures,” Young said in his pitch. “It has a 48-hour viability and is battery-operated. So, instead of using gel or ice packs to maintain that temperature, it’s as easy as swapping a battery out in your power tools at home.”
Young’s product solves an urgent problem, but it takes more than a solid idea to win a pitch competition. Practice, he said, makes perfect.
“Before today, I spent three hours in the basement here just rehearsing my pitch, recording it, watching it over,” Young said. “Change this, adjust that. And I was like, I got four good runs. I like all four. Stop there, and we’ll go pitch.”
Young’s regional win gets him a ticket to the global stage. On Oct. 17, Young will compete in the Startup World cup finals in San Francisco, where companies from around the world will vie for a $1 million investment prize. For Rattler Medical, this prize would mean getting their product fully developed and out to market.
“This is going to help reach that gap to make blood more accessible throughout urban and rural EMS,” Young said. “It will really make a difference to save lives.”
For the founders that didn’t walk away with a first-place title, the Startup World Cup regionals still represented a key opportunity to get eyes on their business. Nick Stoppello (MBA, construction management, 2021) is the founder of Flashpoint Building Systems, a company that laser engraves blueprints directly onto the subfloor of building construction projects. Stoppello, also an alum of Venture College, valued the opportunity to share his company’s mission with potential clients and investors.
“I’m sure somebody was standing in this room that’s going to call,” Stoppello said. “That’s how this has always been. Every time I get on stage and talk, somebody I didn’t know about and didn’t know about me has called. It’s blossomed into other opportunities.”