Three of us from CIF (Clinical Innovation Fellowship): Anton and Semra from Team Medicine, and Jenny from Team Rehab, had the honour of traveling to Barcelona and joining the Moebio (Biocat, Barcelona) fellows to participate in their graduation ceremony! Each of the three teams presented their respective projects in a final graduation pitch to a jury, followed by a question period – wow, what an impressive display! We wish you good luck and diplomacy in pursuing the market in present day in your country(ies). There were also several speeches including a keynote speech by Toby Reid (Biocity, UK), some of whose points we summarise below. Following the graduation we participated in a networking mingle and dinner, as well as a knowledge-sharing workshop the next day.
”Get connected and find true validated product market fit and everything else will get a lot easier.” Toby Reid
We weren’t the only lucky fellows to be part of this ceremony, three Bioinnovate (Ireland) fellows made the trip as well! There was a lot of networking and some really great information sharing going on. All this was interspersed with some delicious food (all dining recommendations gathered by food maestro Anton), shopping enjoyed by all, some barefoot beach walking enjoyed by Semra, while Jenny could not get enough of the sun. The constant ’cafe cortados’ kept us all going strong despite our early morning flight.
We learned that even though we’re in different hospitals, in different countries, our experiences are much the same. We learned that the first reason for startups to fail is that there is no market need. We learned to not make it easy for ourselves to prove a need, we need to question and revise it all the time!
We had an inspiring and constructive knowledge sharing session between our three programs. The Irish fellows are also at the beginning of the needs validation phase, as we are, and the now all-knowing Barcelona graduates were able to share there experience on all our needs validation and team building questions! The international knowledge sharing across schools was a great concept that we hope to keep up!
We enjoyed the people, the feedback, the weather, the food, and have gathered energy and ideas to bring home to our teams. We feel inspired and ready for the next phase!
Congratulations again to all the Moebio Biocat Fellows – well done!
Anton, Jenny, and Semra
