Satish Tadikonda, a Managing Partner at Avigo Solutions (Burlington, MA) and an Executive Partner at Blue Cloud Ventures (New York), specializes in the life sciences and healthcare sectors. As an entrepreneur and early stage investor, Satish has helped found and/or fund more than a dozen innovative companies in technology, health care and the life sciences. He is currently an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Rock Center of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. Satish is a member of the Board of Directors of TiE-Boston and Anju Software, and serves as the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of TiE ScaleUp
Satish’s primary interests lie in Healthcare IT and at the intersection of drug, medical device and diagnostics development, and software systems development, primarily for accelerating clinical trials and regulatory approvals.
Satish holds a Doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering for BITS, Pilani.
Congratulations on being chosen as Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard. Could you tell us a little about that opportunity?
Being an EIR at Harvard Business School is a wonderful opportunity to provide entrepreneurship advice and help to MBA students eager to start new ventures. It also allows me to interact with faculty on research and course development throughout the academic year. The EIR program allows me to mentor aspiring entrepreneurs about product ideas and refinement, product development, customer acquisition and early organizational scale up.
Could you tell us a little about Avigo Solutions?
Avigo Solutions is helping life sciences companies optimize their R&D efforts especially in the areas of clinical trials and regulatory operations. As an example, one such area is the optimization of clinical trial design and patient recruitment i.e., helping companies find the right patients given a set of trial parameters and also to design a trial appropriately based on a set of available patient profiles.
What motivated you to become a entrepreneur?
I specialized in cardiovascular imaging during graduate school and early in my career, I started working on advancing medical devices and drugs through clinical trials and regulatory approval. In those days, the clinical trial and regulatory processes were largely paper-based, slow and cumbersome. I felt there was an opportunity to automate these processes and accelerate drug and device development through innovative software. The desire to bring this innovation to the market motivated me to become an entrepreneur. Looking back, I am glad I chose an entrepreneurial path!
You are very actively engaged with TIE as an angel and mentor. Can you tell us why TIE is important to you ?
TiE is one of the world's largest organizations for entrepreneurs and for those interested in entrepreneurship. I like the fact that TiE provides a number of opportunities for networking, education, mentoring and funding through its various programs, and provides me an avenue to give back to the entrepreneurial community. TiE also gives me an environment where I am intellectually stimulated by engaging with fellow charter members who are building game changing companies as well as budding entrepreneurs who are pushing boundaries with their disruptive ideas.
What do you look for in a company that you decide to invest in ? Is there a success story you would like to share?
I primarily bet on the entrepreneur - either someone who had previous success or has the right traits to be a successful entrepreneur. As a second filter, the company has to pursue an opportunity that has a big market, with a product or idea that has the potential to succeed in capitalizing on the opportunity. Local companies such as Maxwell Health and Levant Power (now ClearMotion) are two examples of success stories; both companies have fantastic entrepreneurs as founders and have innovative products addressing a large market need.
Can you tell us a little about TIE Scale Up?
ScaleUp was founded in 2015 to provide startups a path to breakthrough growth through access to investors, mentors and classes/workshops. Most existing accelerators and entrepreneurship programs help founders convert an idea to a product and/or establish product/market fit; however, ScaleUp focuses on helping founders on issues ranging from customer acquisition, operational excellence to growth capital. The program enables companies to critically evolve their organziations and avoid typical problems that prevent companies from scaling successfully. Each ScaleUp session runs for a duration of 6 months and approximately 30 companies are selected annually through a competitive process to participate in the program. For more details, see
www.tiescaleup.org.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who have received seed funding and now ready for scale?
As a company looks to scale beyond its early stage, it is important to add the right amount of structure and process to help the company scale, yet be nimble and open to changing course quickly. It is essential to lay the foundation for a great company culture, and founder entrepreneurs play a significant role in creating an identity and culture for the company. Most importantly, as companies scale, they need to intimately understand the customer in order to navigate through market challenges and competition. I recommend that entrepreneurs seek out other seasoned entrepreneurs as advisors and they should not hesitate to ask for help from their advisors and mentors.
Are there other interests you would like to share?
I love playing golf, often to the detriment of my sanity! However, I do find a round of golf relaxes me and often is a great way for me to spend time with friends and with my son. I am also a big fan of college football, especially of my beloved Hawkeyes.
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