In this “5 questions….” interview, their fantastic CEO, Muhunthan Thillai, talks about what Qureight does, his aims for the company in the future and some tips for fundraising and first-time CEOs.
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and Qureight?
I am a respiratory doctor at the hospitals in Cambridge and co-founder and CEO of Qureight. We founded the company a few years ago out of the Accelerator at the Judge Business School. We wanted to solve the problem of potential blockbuster drugs in lung and heart diseases failing during the clinical trial process. Qureight has built a software platform which uses real-world data and machine learning tools to create products to help clinical trials and we've had some great traction recently signing a number of commercial deals with biopharma companies both in Europe and the US.
2. Where are you aiming Qureight to be in 5 years?
In five years I want Qureight to be the largest data platform in the world running multiple clinical trials in lung and heart diseases. Our ambition is for the platform to be fully integrated with global biopharma companies, hospitals and contract research organisations and to use a variety of machine learning based products to help our clients get the best drugs to market faster. All of this is to help patients with these diseases get access to cutting edge treatments.
3. Can you give an example of a recent challenge you have had to navigate as a CEO?
We recently completed a contracting process with a client which was very complicated due to the nature of the trial they wanted to run on the platform. The contract went back and forth several times and the client (whilst well meaning) kept trying to push down the costs. For any start up this is a challenge that many of us at leadership face. We sometimes have to make a decision to would walk away from a deal rather than cut corners. In this particular case the client was happy to complete signing and start the work. It was a really important lesson for me that as we scale, we of course have to hustle for every deal, but at some point we have to have a benchmark that we stick to if we are to grow as a company.
4. Do you have a couple of fundraising tips for entrepreneurs in the medtech space?
I think the first point would be to always follow the science. In medtech most companies at the early stage will not have recurring revenue and many of the contracts they sign may be small pilots but it's really important to focus on the technology itself and use that to explain the true value of the company that you're building for future growth. Another point is to find the right investors. The fund raising environment is difficult at the moment but if you are lucky enough to get more than one investor, it's really important to work out who you want to grow with over the next few years rather than just accepting the first term sheet that comes your way.
5. How has having Cambridge Angels in your investor group assisted you?
The Cambridge Angels have been fantastically supportive. We have five on our cap table and they all come with different skills. Rather than naming all of them, the one person I would single out is Simon Thorpe who invested in our very first pre seed around three years ago and is a great person to get advice from in terms of company strategy and direction. The angels as a group have a number of events for networking and introductions to both investors and the wider ecosystem and we're very fortunate that some of them have backed us at the early stages of our company.
