"Think Amazon.com built from the ground floor specifically for the medical device market," says
MedPassage Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Mike Biselli, who started the company with CEO Gavin Fabian.
After Biselli and Fabian met at San Diego-based NuVasive, they realized there was an opportunity to "flatten the space," as commissions for medical devices sometimes top 50 percent, explains Biselli. They launched MedPassage with $350,000 in seed funding in late 2012.
MedPassage charges just 10 percent commission. "Whenever you have commission rates of 35 percent or more, it's ripe for innovation," he says, citing a lack of transparency as a major problem. "Everybody knows it's a broken system and we've got to fix it."
Price transparency "is what we need to correct the market and that's what we're doing," adds Biselli.
The plan calls for MedPassage to move into "different ports"of the medical device market, such as surgical tools and orthopedics, and develop specific platforms for each niche.
A MedPassage beta is currently underway with a full-scale launch slated for Q2 or Q3. Biselli says the
Galvanize-based company, now comprised of the co-founders, an intern and offshore developers, will grow when the company closes on a Series A funding round between $3 million and $5 million.
"That's very fluid," says Biselli. "We're in talks." He says funding will allow them to bring development team in-house and hire six to 10 employees "overnight."
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