Ninety percent of startups fail, and healthcare startups— despite their noble ambitions— are not immune to this harsh reality. Even the most well-funded, well-intentioned, star-studded startups can find themselves going in the wrong direction. And some, under immense pressure to succeed, make horrible decisions that don’t just sink the company, but also tarnish their reputations.
I put together the below case studies for my class not with a sense of schadenfreude (for the most part), but with a resolve to learn. We look at the product, what supposedly happened, and where the founder is today (spoiler-alert: most the founders, even after losing tens of millions of investor dollars, are doing just fine).