After Helping Medical Device Startups Raise Funds, I Realized The World Needs To Eat Healthier.

Rather than solve a problem that's going to occur, we ought to eradicate the root.

The root being fries. (Image by Midjourney)

So here I was working on a medical device startup market research for a company that's trying to have its footprint out there and actually enhance the medical world.

Med tech or health tech, in general, is one of my favourite industries because when you're working on some product in this industry, you feel the impact. You feel that you're actually saving lives potentially.

So during my work, I had to research some elements in the global market and in Switzerland. I realized some statistics that got me out of the business goggles for a little bit.

We're all operating in the business world. And that's what most entrepreneurs work on. They focus on the business world and how to make it bigger.

But the fact that the number one reason for mortality of the human race is cardiovascular diseases, not cancer, for instance, is quite shocking when you think about it. When it comes to cancer, there's a lot we don't know, which makes it okay to be one of the most difficult medical situations to handle.

But when it comes to cardiovascular diseases, the majority of CVD or cardiovascular diseases are due to the fact that people are living an unhealthy lifestyle with a lot of unhealthy food, smoking, and not being physically active per se.

I look at that number and it just shocks me that we're trying to raise funds of billions and billions to work on such a problem.

The Capitalist Paradox

The fact is this contradicts directly with the capitalist world we're living in and that's why it's a problem. I could build a new company tomorrow that could decrease cardiovascular diseases and mortalities by 80% if people apply the principles of it, which is simple.

Stop eating McDonald's, stop eating french fries, don’t smoke and go for a daily walk or run. That's my startup. Such a simple idea, wouldn't you say? And I'm pretty sure that this is going to decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases if you keep doing that for a very long time.

But here’s the paradox. Fast food, McDonald's and all those things contradict what my new imaginary startup stands for. Additionally, such companies are what's building economies.

• McDonald's is contributing to the GDP of the US (actually, the world.)

• The iPhone wants you to sit and hang out with it, and watch it while not really going out for a walk.

• Instead just use your phone for social media, which is another big conglomerate in the world with Meta, having trillions of dollars of market cap.

The upcoming AI world is not going to change that per se. It goes around with the same concept. It goes around with the idea of let's “solve the situation”, not eradicate the root cause.

The Future of Medical Device Startups

The truth is when it comes to this sector or this industry, I believe that we, as humans, have lost a little bit of our path to capitalism and to this fast-moving world. I would be extremely supportive of a startup that actually tries to do simple things like help people work out or so. As it's really eradicating the problem from the core of it.

But due to this paradox, the fact that this is going to stop other companies from growing. For that, I'm pretty confident that my imaginary startup is going to fail.

So here's what's going to happen in the upcoming days. We're going to keep talking about how diseases like cardiovascular diseases and so on are increasing.

We're going to keep trying to resolve them at a later stage by doing innovations in the tech field, in the health tech and med tech field. We're going to keep on building products that facilitate this lifestyle of ours, not really thinking of what a healthy lifestyle should be like, not trying to cut the problem from the core, but rather enjoying the struggle of trying to fix a problem later on.

And this will make sure that companies and economies will keep on growing as much as the future allows them to. It's a pessimistic view of looking at it. I'm pretty sure you would think that at this stage.

But the truth is when I was working on this research, I noticed sometimes the solution is the lack of innovation, by going back to basics.

A New Age of Struggling Startups

This is what a new age of startups should look like. A good example is a Kickstarter campaign for a device that I've seen on Instagram, the irony of me checking out Instagram and still talking about this.

It was called the Balance Phone and what it does is it eradicates all the attention needing apps like Instagram, YouTube and so on. Then just lets you have a phone with simple apps like WhatsApp. So it's similar to an old Nokia phone, but instead, it's just with the much-needed apps that do not have this dopamine-addictive kick.

It's a good idea of a startup that I would support very much as they took a step back and went back to basics. I'm pretty sure they're going to have difficult times growing because, can you imagine a world when the iPhone doesn't exist, when you're not checking your phone all the time and instead just using it when it's necessary?

At the moment of writing this, I would say this is a utopian world that I'm pitching. It is what it is and we have to cope.