“How can we have the biggest impact globally?”Vascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Currently symptoms do not appear until the late stages, often when it is too late. Two PhD students, John Carroll & Eamonn Colley made a breakthrough discovery that enables a radically earlier diagnosis.They founded Vexev to create an affordable health service that maps the vascular systems of customers, observes how it changes over time, and alerts doctors if something is about to go wrong. This technology has the potential to impact millions of people, transcending humanity beyond vascular disease. In this episode, you’ll learn about the initial research that led to Vexev, the size of the problem John and Eamonn are solving, and why Tip Piumsomboon was convinced to invest in their idea.Episodes air every second Wednesday/Thursday at 5:30 am. Don't forget to subscribe.Episode interviewees: Vexev co-founders John Carroll,Eamonn Colley and Blackbird Principal Tip Piumsomboon.Key topics covered:* How John and Eamonn went from academics to entrepreneurs * The changing healthcare landscape * Proactive, not reactive, medical treatment

The best of John and Eamonn: * “We were PHD students: running a company and even working out how to email was new to us.” * "“If we're tracking the coronary arteries over time, things like heart attacks are no longer these sudden events, it's actually a long, slow development over time.” * "This is happening and we're completely blind to it. We just wait until it's so bad of a problem that the patient is taken into the emergency room.” * "If our system can work in those remote communities in the middle of outback Australia, we're very confident that they're going to be able to work all across the world.” * "We found the further you are away from the hospitals, the more likely you are to probably need them due to health inequality and socioeconomic issues.”

Tip Piumsomboon on Vexev: * “With healthcare, there's a lot of variables. Going into the market and understanding the regulatory part of it, the IP part of it, the different stakeholders - it’s not like a software product where you can just launch it on the internet and see who downloads it. It’s a lot more systematic.” * "They did what they said they would do in the space of two months.” * "When things are hard, it gives me a lot of comfort that John and Eamonn have each other to talk it through and it helps them make better decisions versus dwelling in their heads about it.” * "The challenge, as with every startup, is going from building a product to building a team. How do you bring another two or three or 20 or 50 other people into the circle? And how do you create a culture that allows everyone's voices to be heard?” * “Being on someone's board is kind of like being on someone's team, and the most important part of the team is trust.”