STARTUP SERIES
How A UK Doctor Launched His AI Startup Without A Tech Background And Got Incubated at Harvard
Beware! You will no longer have any excuses left.
Imagine this, you are going about your day, just doing your routine like you do every other day.
But!! Out of nowhere, you get this brilliant mind-blowing idea for a startup (I usually get them in the shower, but to each his own).
You are convinced this is your golden ticket out of your soul-sucking 9–5, and you are determined enough to overthrow even the Gods if they dare stand in your way!!
Except it’s not the Gods that stand in your path to financial freedom, but your lack of tech knowledge to bring this idea to fruition.
Your situation is one that countless innovators run into every day.
So, read on to find out, how a doctor in the UK built his Artificial Intelligence Startup, got incubated in Harvard and MIT Sandbox, and launched his alpha stage product for his customers to test out with absolutely zero prior tech experience.
There was this particular doctor in the UK who when supervising trainee doctors found out that many of them had trouble finding effective preparation material for a final exam in which they are asked to diagnose an actor disguising as a patient in real-time.
Due to the nature of the exam and a lack of preparatory materials, many trainees failed in this last leg of their becoming a doctor journey and that got them extremely distressed as there were several severe consequences to failing this exam.
Witnessing this one too many times, he began to think to himself. “What if there was a product that could help doctors in training prepare for this exam by using real people or at least “simulating” real people with Artificial Intelligence?”
If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.
The idea made a lot of sense. It had a clear problem that needed solving, potential users at hand, and working knowledge on what kind of material would appear for the exam is a doctor himself so a clear idea on how the solution should look like.
He immediately got to work trying to bring this idea to life, but there was a huge obstacle waiting for him…..he didn’t have any previous tech experience.
He was understandably confused about what to do next and how to proceed further.
But unlike many others, he did not throw up his hands and moved on with his life adding another “What if?” to his regret list but persistently kept searching for pragmatic solutions to overcome this issue.
Opportunities are for those who seek them.
That was when he heard of this event called “Hackathons” where techies come to hack together a working prototype overnight. He did not need another push. He searched for ongoing popular hackathons and found about “MIT Hackathon” happening at MIT, the reigning top university in the world.
He applied and fortunately got selected.
Now, proclaiming you would do something vs actually doing something are two different things.
But this man was driven. He wanted no excuses to have on the day, so as soon as that invitation came in, he immediately booked a flight from the UK to the USA. Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
He explained,
This is how it went: I landed in the US, drove to the event, and explained my idea on the slack channel of the hackathon.
Now, I didn’t know what exactly was the skillset I needed so I was still clueless on what exactly to look for.
Surprisingly, people liked my idea and actually reached out to me to explain their skillsets and how it can be used to build the prototype!
After finalizing and forming a team, and making sure we had everything we needed, we built a prototype by combing my subject knowledge and their tech expertise OVERNIGHT!
It was only an MVP, but we really built it in one night.
Even I find it hard to believe when I say I actually collaborated with complete strangers I met just a day ago to build out my idea.
Even more, we actually won the hackathon and got incubated at MIT Sandbox!!
If your readers are curious about the product, we are currently alpha testing and will soon move into beta.
You can check us out here.
— Humaine CEO
“It takes a little bit more hustle and a little more subject matter expertise to pull it off,” he says. “But you can definitely do it!!”
“I think anyone who believes they have a formula for what a great founder or founding team should look like is being unrealistic. Great founders and great pairings come from unusual places all the time.
Sometimes it is technical expertise that makes somebody an exception and other times — a lot of times — it’s some other type of expertise or even a founder’s particular psychology.”
— Hannah Arnold
Final Words
I am helping build the end product as a freelancer and I couldn’t help but want to share it when I learned the founding story.
I hope this story can help non-tech innovators understand they don’t have to despair just because they did not choose to major in Computer Science.
There are many ways you can build out your company without being a tech wizard and joining hackathons is one of them, but with a lot of extra benefits.
